For one year, Gerry Lichty sat in two chairs. He was North Frontenac's mayor and Frontenac County's warden. In that year the county paid him more than this township had paid him the year before. He was also named to sign for both sides of the same contracts. This council put township money behind a county trail, with his vote.
On January 16, two months after he stopped being warden, Lichty went first in council's portfolio reports. He told council what the county had done in December: Fairmount Home's accreditation, a neighbours program and a physician-recruitment alliance. Then he spent a long stretch on the Eastern Ontario Wardens' Caucus.
The township's portfolio schedule, printed in agenda packages all term, lists him under "Portfolio: County Business. Responsibility: Update Council on County Council Activities and Decisions." When he talks about Fairmount and paramedics, he's doing what the schedule tells him to. County council joined the physician alliance on a motion moved by Councillor Fred Fowler and seconded by Lichty. A month later he told this council they had joined. That's ordinary for a mayor who also sits at the county.
Only the four mayors can be warden here, a year at a time. Lichty was elected vice chair of the county's Administration Committee in his first year. The next year he was elected chair. The year after that, he was elected warden. In February the same committee elected him vice chair again. That's an unbroken four-year line from a standing start.
The county paid for that office. Its statement for 2025 lists him as warden at just over $43,000. That is more than double his county cheques of the two years before. It is about what Warden Frances Smith was paid for 2024. By its own statement, North Frontenac paid him about $34,700 as mayor for 2024.
He's named to sign as both, too. The shareholders agreement for the Frontenac Municipal Services Corporation names him as mayor for this township and, on the next page, as warden for the county. The same double block appears on the K&P Trail partnership. The 2018 planning agreement carried one for Ron Higgins, who was North Frontenac's mayor and the warden then.
In June 2023 this council agreed to sell the county three parcels for the K&P for a nominal sum. In August 2025 it said yes to $10,000 from its contingency reserve toward the county's application. It was an application to rehabilitate the trail from Snow Road Station to Wilbur. Lichty, Stephanie Regent, Roy Huetl, John Inglis and Fowler voted for it. Wayne Good and Vernon Hermer voted against. Lichty was warden at the time.
North Frontenac sends two members to county council. In November 2022 this council made Fowler the second. Fowler holds the trails files on this council. He seconded Lichty's nomination as warden.
Of the two, Lichty is the one who runs the township meeting. He talks far more at this table than Fowler does. He spends much of that time on township business: the procedural by-law, the building department, the Official Plan. He chairs the township's Housing Advisory Task Force. This year his reports have grown shorter and more mixed. The county-heavy pattern is strongest in the warden year.
This chamber heard about accreditation and a regulated paramedic college. The county's budget books don't say what share of the township's county bill is the ambulance and what share is the home.
You vote for mayor on October 26. That vote also fills one of North Frontenac's two county chairs. Fowler, who held the other one this term, has been acclaimed in Ward 3.
Mayor Gerry Lichty is a candidate for re-election on October 26; Deputy Mayor Roy Huetl and Councillor Wayne Good, named above, are candidates.