ANALYSIS
On the evening of July 9, Frontenac Municipal Services Corporation came to North Frontenac council and delivered its annual update to shareholders. In law the shareholder is the Corporation of the Township of North Frontenac. In fact council committed $97,294 of tax money to stand that corporation up, and the money comes from the people who pay the tax bills in Plevna, Ompah, Cloyne, Snow Road and Harlowe. Those people could watch the meeting. They could not ask a question in it, and they cannot read the corporation's minutes, which it does not publish.
So here is the update again, in plain words, for the people whose money is in it. Three years on, at least $6.9 million of public money has gone into this model and the housing it is meant to serve, not one unit of housing has been built anywhere in Frontenac County, North Frontenac cannot be out of the corporation before the end of 2029, and the man who chairs its board is the mayor who sat in the chair on July 9 and did not say so. Every line below is on the municipal record, in the corporation's own documents, or in the recording of the meeting itself, which is public and can be checked by anyone.
What you own
You own, through your council, 15.7 per cent of the voting shares of Frontenac Municipal Services Corporation. It has five shareholders: the four Frontenac townships, which hold the voting Class A shares, and the County of Frontenac, which holds non-voting Class B shares. Councillor Fred Fowler put the plain question to the presenters on the night, "is your corporation set up like a not-for-profit?" Tyler Lalonde, the corporation's Administrative Coordinator, answered that it is not. "It's not a not-for-profit corporation," he said. "It's under the Business Corporations Act." What the township holds is a stake in an Ontario business corporation, and what that corporation intends to become, in its presenters' own words that night, is "the utility." As they described the model to council, a developer builds the water and wastewater system, the corporation takes the asset, a licensed operator runs it, and residents pay the bills the corporation sets.
What your council committed
$97,294. North Frontenac council authorized that figure on June 20, 2023, by Resolution #285-23, on a 5-2 vote, as the township's estimated share of the corporation's anticipated five-year requirement, which the same resolution put at $696,800. It is an authorization and not a receipt. NFNM has obtained no record from any of the four townships showing what has actually been paid to Frontenac Municipal Services, and the mayor and the corporation's chief executive have each put the township's recurring five-year billing at about $87,725, which is a different number from the one council voted.
What you have received
Nothing. No project, no site, no plan, three years on. The corporation's own website lists three projects and not one of them is in North Frontenac. The slide FMS showed council on July 9, under the heading "Supporting Rural Development in North Frontenac," offered ongoing discussions, a presentation to the township's Housing Advisory Task Force, and a commitment to support the township "as future communal servicing opportunities emerge." That is the corporation's own accounting, on its own slide, of what North Frontenac has received for its money. Councillor John Inglis put the arithmetic to the presenters directly. In return for the township's "$87,000 investment," he asked, what North Frontenac buys is "an increased incentive for a private developer, is that basically what this is all about?"
What it has cost, and what you have to show for it
Your $97,294 is a small share of a much larger bill. At least $6.9 million of public money has been committed or awarded to this model and the housing it is meant to serve. That is the corporation's $696,800 five-year requirement, $3 million in federal Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation money awarded to the project that designed and is replicating the municipal-services-corporation model, in which Frontenac Municipal Services is a named partner, $3.2 million in provincial money for servicing the Verona housing project in South Frontenac, and $29,719 that Central Frontenac has actually paid its housing consultant in two electronic transfers this past February. The same federal project was awarded a further $1 million at an earlier stage, and CMHC does not publish a breakdown saying whether the $3 million includes that $1 million or comes on top of it, so this total leaves the $1 million out and the real figure is likely higher.
Of all of that, one payment is the only municipal cash NFNM can actually show going out the door: Central Frontenac's two February transfers to its housing consultant, which appear on the township's own cheque-distribution reports. Everything else is money authorized, pledged or awarded. No township has produced a receipt showing it has paid Frontenac Municipal Services anything, and this newsroom has found none.
Not one unit built. The count is the corporation's own: its website, retrieved on July 13, lists three projects and describes none of them as built. Verona's servicing is "anticipated to become operational in 2027." None of this money has yet produced a single dwelling unit anywhere in Frontenac County, and none of it has produced anything at all here.
When you can leave
Not soon, and not on this council's say-so. Section 2.7 of the shareholders agreement your council signed says that no shareholder may give notice of withdrawal before September 1, 2028, and that a notice given by September 1 in any year takes effect only on December 31 of the following year. The earliest North Frontenac could be out of this corporation is December 31, 2029. On the way out the township hands its shares back for one dollar and carries the costs its own departure creates. The council North Frontenac elects this October takes office in November and inherits an agreement it never voted to join, cannot give notice to leave for its first twenty-two months in office, and could be out no sooner than December 31, 2029, in the final year of its term.
Who chairs it
Your mayor. The corporation's founding articles name Gerald Lichty one of its first directors, North Frontenac council appointed him the township's board representative by Resolution #428-23, he has chaired the board since the corporation's annual general meeting on February 24, 2026, and Frontenac Municipal Services lists him as its board chair on its own website today. On July 9 he introduced the presenters, and before he invited questions he told council "we can't keep doing what we've been doing" and "we believe that this system is, this methodology is the way to go." Across the roughly 42 minutes the item ran he put no question of his own to the presenters. He did not tell the room that he chairs the corporation.
The limits of that matter. A chair is under no obligation to cross-examine a presenter, and most do not. The item was received for information and council did not vote on it. Under section 4(h) of the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, sitting as a director of a corporation that carries on business on behalf of the municipality is not, by itself, a pecuniary interest that a member must declare, and NFNM alleges no breach of that Act. The councillors did their part on the night: Fowler asked what kind of company it is, Inglis asked what the township was buying, Councillor Mike Hage pressed on what North Frontenac is exposed to if a system underperforms or needs unplanned capital, and Councillor Vernon Hermer wanted to know who ends up owning the housing. What remains is the plainer thing: the endorsement came from the chair, before the floor was opened to a single question, and the room was not told that the man in the chair also chairs the corporation.
The rule you cannot check
Section 4.08 of the corporation's founding by-law permits its directors to contract with the corporation without being disqualified, and does not require them to account for any profit they make from those contracts. That permission is not unconditional. Section 4.09 of the same by-law requires a director to declare any direct or indirect interest in a contract or arrangement with the corporation, section 4.10 requires directors to comply with the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, and section 132 of the Ontario Business Corporations Act requires a director to disclose the nature and extent of such an interest in writing. Under that section the protection from accounting for profit applies only where the interest was disclosed, the board approved the contract, and the contract was fair to the corporation. NFNM has found no evidence that Mayor Lichty has contracted with Frontenac Municipal Services or profited from it, and makes no such allegation. The point is structural. Every one of those declarations is made to the board and recorded in the board's minutes, and Frontenac Municipal Services does not publish its board minutes. The rules exist. The record that would show they were followed has never been published.
The corporation you have not been told about
Your update did not mention this. It was not in the 117-page package council was handed that night, and it was not on any slide. Hermer pressed on a detail, whether Frontenac Municipal Services would be taking ownership of the Verona project, and the answer went further than the question. Lalonde told him no, the corporation would assume the water and wastewater asset only, and that the housing would stay with the townships, who are, in his words, "in a process of creating a municipal service corporation to manage the housing portion of that project." Nothing has been incorporated and nothing has been decided. South Frontenac's own public notice, posted June 25 and still live, says "No decision has been made to create an MSC at this time," and its public consultation closes on July 28, which leaves a reader who wants to say something about it two weeks to do it. Had Hermer not asked, North Frontenac's council would have left that room without hearing that a second corporation had been proposed at all, and the proposal appears in no North Frontenac agenda, minute, staff report, by-law or resolution.
What you have not been shown
Ask the corporation for its board minutes and the answer is that they are not published. NFNM put the question to Justin Bromberg, Frontenac Municipal Services' chief executive, and he replied in writing on April 17: "As is the case with most water/wastewater MSCs, FMSC Board minutes are not currently published." That is the whole of it. The minutes exist, and the people whose money stood the corporation up have never been shown them.
The rest of the corporation is built the same way. Its board does not meet in public, because Ontario Regulation 599/06, the regulation that authorizes municipal services corporations, exempts them from the Municipal Act's open-meetings rules. Nobody forgot to make those meetings public. The province wrote the exemption into the regulation, and the corporation lives inside it. What FMSC pays its executives has never been disclosed, and it does not appear as an employer on the 2024 provincial salary disclosure, a list that captures public-sector employees paid $100,000 or more, so its absence may mean that nobody there crosses that line, or that the corporation is not a covered employer. Either way, the corporation has not said. The formula by which it bills the townships that own it has never been released.
The same regulation does bring the corporation within freedom-of-information law, which means its records are reachable in principle even though its meetings are closed by design. That door is the only reason anyone outside the boardroom has ever read By-law #1 at all. A North Frontenac resident asked for it under MFIPPA, and that request is where the sections quoted in this article came from. NFNM is filing for the board minutes, the operating budget, the shareholder billing formula and the executive compensation, and will publish what comes back, including a refusal.
Nothing of the corporation's own governance record reaches its website either: no minutes, no agendas, no by-laws. What the public knows about the corporation's inaugural board meeting in January 2024 comes from a news release posted on a County engagement website, not from any minutes the corporation published. Two of the four owner townships, Central Frontenac and Frontenac Islands, have no public resolution naming what they agreed to pay, so half the owners of this company have no public record of their own price. A ratepayer in Plevna who wants to know what the corporation her council bought into has spent, and who it paid, and how it decided, has to file a freedom-of-information request to find out, and in nearly three years the corporation has volunteered none of it.
Which brings us to section 9.07 of the corporation's founding by-law, the same instrument that sets the rules for its directors' contracts. Section 9.07 says the corporation's annual meeting of members is open to the public, unless the board votes otherwise. So has one ever been held in public? Nobody can tell. No notice, no agenda and no minutes of any annual meeting have ever been published. NFNM knows an annual general meeting took place on February 24, 2026, a date the County of Frontenac's own chief administrative officer put before county council six days earlier, and that Mayor Lichty became chair of the board at it, which is on the record only because the corporation's chief executive wrote and said so. Of what happened inside the meeting the corporation has published nothing at all.
This is the shareholders update you never got. Under the corporation's own by-law, that February meeting was open to the public by default, and the board was free to vote to close it. Nothing on the public record says it ever did, and the minutes that would settle it are minutes the corporation has never published.
NFNM has not put questions to Frontenac Municipal Services or Mayor Gerald Lichty in advance of this article, and is sending right-of-reply requests to each on the date of publication, reproducing the quoted passages verbatim so that any misquotation can be corrected. This piece is written from the documented record and from the recording of the July 9, 2026 meeting, which is public. Any responses received will be published in full. Comment and corrections are welcomed at [email protected].
Disclosure: NFNM's publisher, Donald Morton, has announced his intention to seek the office of Mayor of North Frontenac in the October 2026 election. That is the office held by Mayor Gerald Lichty, whose conduct in the chair this article examines. Morton has not filed a nomination and is not a registered candidate. He directed the reporting behind this article and was present in the council chamber on July 9. It rests on municipal records, the corporation's own documents, and the public recording of that meeting. North Frontenac News Media does not endorse candidates.