Editor’s note: This is a new feature on horseshoenews.com called About Town. The format allows some opinion mixed with what’s going on around Kingston. Hope it’s informative.

Sunshine List

So, did you make the sunshine list?

The province has come out with its annual list of civil servants who earned more than $100,000 a year. The list includes thousands of names of doctors, educators, fire fighters, police officers, bureaucrats and other administrators. At City Hall, there are about 200 names on the list including members of the police department. The top earner in 2017 was chief administrative officer Gerard Hunt, who pulled in $233,260. The next highest municipal administrator was community services commissioner and deputy CAO Lanie Hurdle, earning $173,287. Fire chief Shawn Armstrong made $148,753, while police chief Gilles Larochelle made $215,976.

It’s believed Kingston’s highest paid public servant in 2017 was Dr. David Pichora, who made $715,034 as president and chief executive of the Kingston Health Sciences Centre.

The annual disclosure of public sector salaries is based on a 1996 provincial law. It requires hospitals, schools, municipalities, judiciary, crown corporations and other public sector employers to disclose the $100,000-plus salaries at the end of March. If the threshold was adjusted for inflation, the actual disclosure benchmark would be around $145,000.

Proposed high rise under construction at 845 Gardiners Rd., next to the Cataraqui Centre

Gardiners High-Rise

You may have wondered what’s being built on Gardiners Road, near the entrance to the Cataraqui Centre. Four years after it was approved at city hall, construction of a high rise apartment building appears to be underway on the site of a decommissioned gas station at 845 Gardiners Road. The property is unusually configured for a large building, but the developer managed to secure the necessary council approvals for a 14-storey apartment on the triangular lot back in 2014. CJM Property Management says the 167-unit building will consist of 49 one-bedrooms and 118 two-bedrooms, plus balconies, roof top terrace and amenity space. There will be 209 parking spaces, 59 of which are proposed as surface parking and the remaining 150 spaces as underground parking, according to documents submitted to the city in 2014.

At the time this project was approved some had complained about the building’s size and the potential for more traffic congestion on Gardiners Road near the eastern entrance to the mall. The site has 113 metres of frontage along Gardiners Road with two access points. No traffic lights or additional turning lanes are planned.

View from Princess Street of the proposed 16 floor Capitol condo

OMB Gone

Speaking of high rises, the marathon Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) hearing into the Capitol condo is wrapping up in mid-April after closing arguments. But it could take the adjudicator some time to render his decision on the $90,000 citizen-based appeals that claim the 16 floor building is out of scale among the mainly low-rise and heritage buildings of the downtown. IN8 Developments president Darryl Firsten also attended the hearing, citing the need for more intensification downtown.

Interestingly, the OMB was officially dissolved in the midst of this hearing. It’s being replaced with a new, less powerful tribunal. The aim is to put more planning powers into the hands of councils and municipalities rather than the unelected OMB. However, the long overdue reforms won’t alter the status of current or pending appeals, such as the Capitol condo, as they were already in the hopper before the OMB was scrapped.