KINGSTON — A controversial plan to reform the city’s discount program was sent back to the committee from which it came for further study.

City council agreed to the deferral after rejecting two of the seven options before it, including a staff recommendation that had been voted down at the administrative policies committee last month.

Council voted 9-4 against the staff recommendation that would have scrapped the age-based discount system in favour of one based on income.

The staff recommendation was rejected by the city’s administrative policies committee last month but still came before city council for consideration.

But the optics of eliminating discounts for senior citizens — even in the name of keeping the system financially sustainable — was a bridge too far for many around the council table.

“Not palatable,” was how Pittsburgh District Coun. Ryan Boehme described the plan.

“I’m not about to offend the seniors in my district,” Loyalist-Cataraqui District Coun. Simon Chapelle, who called seniors discounts a “rite of passage,” said.

“It’s not about who gets what and who deserves what,” Kingscourt-Rideau District Coun. Mary Rita Holland said, adding that discounts can be valuable to those struggling to make ends meet.

“I think it is pretty clear we have a collision between good policy and good politics,” Mayor Bryan Paterson said.

Council was about to vote on an option of Paterson’s own, one that would have kept seniors discounts for those who currently have them and expand the number of low-income residents who could qualify for them, when the deferral was passed.

In 2017, city staff started looking at ways to provide discounts for city services, such as transit and recreational programs, to more people based on their income instead of their age.

The city currently offers discounts to people based on age and income.

Age-based discounts are available to about 16,000 people aged 15 to 24 years old and about 24,000 people age 65 and older.

Staff had recommended the discounts be provided to people whose income was below Statistics Canada’s low-income measure, after-tax, plus 15 per cent, which would have provided discounts to more than 30,000 people in the city, two-thirds of them aged 65 and older.

Adding 15 per cent to the low-income measure, after tax, would mean about twice as many people between age 18 and 65 would qualify. That addition is meant to include many households that would be considered as experiencing “working poverty” or having “modest incomes.”

Trillium District Coun. Robert Kiley said basing discounts on income would help more people for less cost.

“It deepens the discount while at the same time easing the burden on the taxpayer,” Kiley said. “It’s good financially and socially.”

Part of the rationale to using income and not age to determine who gets a discount is the city’s statistics about seniors income.

When compared to similar communities in Ontario, such as Guelph, Barrie, St. Catharines and Whitby, Kingston’s seniors have some of the highest incomes, partly because the city is home to a large number of public service workers with well-funded pensions. Plus, almost one in three people aged 65 and older is still working.

Kingston “ranks third among these communities for median income but has the highest median income levels for those over the age of 65,” according to a city report in April 2017. “The median income of those over 65 is almost equal to the median income of the community as a whole.” “Many of our seniors are doing very well and they would acknowledge that,” Lakeside District Coun. Wayne Hill said.

But that data did not sway some councillors, who said some of the changes could create a two-tier discount system.

Collins-Bayridge District Coun. Lisa Osanic noted that other municipalities, including London, that made similar changes to their discount system later reversed the decision.

Williamsville District Coun. Jim Neill said he supported a universally accessible system that provided discounts to people based on their age, not their income.

“I don’t know why we are trying to create this two-tier system,” Neill said. “No senior that I know would feel comfortable going into social services and requesting this.”