Hastings County Warden Bob Mullin takes a lot away from the annual AMO conference but he also feels the rural voice is fighting to be heard at the annual event.
Mullin was in Ottawa representing the county and as part of the Eastern Ontario Wardens’ Caucus.
“AMO is one of the better conferences for smaller municipalities, but I found this time around that the rural portion of it seems to be getting less and less every year. It’s focused mostly on the larger urban centres and deals with issues that, while they apply to some extent to the smaller municipalities, really are beyond our means to deal with,” he said.
Mullin said one of the priorities this year was healthcare and getting more available doctors. Infrastructure is a top issue as well, and he noted that sometimes smaller, rural municipalities do not have the resources to apply for the provincial programs available.
Hastings County added in a media release that infrastructure is a top priority for the warden’s caucus and they were pleased with an announcement at the conference that the province is allocating an additional $1.6 billion for the Municipal Housing Infrastructure Program.
“The grant applications can be quite extensive and actually quite costly to produce because you need studies and data,” Mullin said.
“And even sometimes when we can get applications, we don’t have the dollars for matching grants. We have to be very careful which ones we can apply for.”
Mullin said he felt optimistic about this year’s conference as there were a record number of delegations given.
“The Eastern Ontario Wardens’ Caucus is really the main lobbying group for eastern Ontario because we represent almost a quarter of the municipalities in the province – over a million people. I think their voice – the united voice – gives them a lot more strength than just, Bob Mullin going in as warden of Hastings County,” he said.
“So I think there is strength in numbers, they do excellent presentations. I believe in the latter part of October we have a Parliament Hill meeting with MPs, specifically with EOWC, and we’ve been very consistent with our message. We go in with updated packages but the same needs – housing, homelessness, infrastructure funding. Until that’s dealt with, the message isn’t really changing.”
