North Frontenac council voted this year to sell the public shoreline in front of two next-door lots on Kashwakamak Lake, and the two land prices came out $2.65 apart. Both were figured by the square foot off one survey drawn in 1998. The township didn't appraise either strip, and it says in writing it doesn't have to.
Of the two, Andrew and Kathryn Kerr went first. In February, council passed a by-law selling them their strip for $7,187.40 plus tax. Janice Way applied for the lot next door. Her sale by-law passed in August. The 1998 survey, by P.A. Miller Surveying Ltd., laid out shore road allowance in front of five lots on this stretch. In June 2021, council directed that the strip in front of a third lot on it be sold to that lot's owner. That makes three of the five.
The Kerrs and Way used the township's published process and paid the posted price. It's a standing program, and Sand Lake, Big Gull, Mississagagon, Mazinaw and Grindstone are in it too. On September 11, council approved another shore road allowance in principle, on Buckshot Lake.
The township's land policy tells the Clerk to get an appraisal of surplus land, then exempts road allowances sold to the owner next door. Only the owner next door can buy a shore road allowance, so this land never gets valued. Council doesn't have to sell. The policy says so. When it does, the price is the surveyed area times the township's rate, 55 cents a square foot for these two. I looked for the square footage in the by-laws and the staff reports, and it isn't there. Each by-law states a dollar total and stops.
If you live on this lake, the township doesn't have to put a sale like this in the paper. The neighbours get a letter. Notice goes on the township website, and the buyer puts up signs at the waterfront and the driveway. Inland road allowances also get a notice in the Frontenac News. In the August by-law that covered Way's strip, the newspaper ad went to the inland parcels. The Kashwakamak strip got a sign. The staff report's comments section reads, in full: "No comments have been received regarding the Road Closing Applications."
This year there's a second step. In March, the township's lawyer wrote that changes at the Land Registry Office "may affect" how the township had long made a sold strip merge into the buyer's lot. Until this year the township used an agreement with each sale, and now says it "can no longer use" them. Without a merge, the strip can sit as its own parcel that could be sold on by itself. The April staff report also flags a second assessment roll, which would mean two tax bills. Council rewrote its land policy in April to make the merge happen. Both lots sit on a subdivision registered in 1960, and the fix there is a deeming by-law.
Council passed the Kerrs' deeming by-law in June. We searched the agendas through early October, and there's none for Way's lot yet. A sale by-law takes effect when it's registered, and on a Big Gull Lake file the solicitor flagged the need after that. One for Way's lot could still come on a later agenda.