Mayor, councillors deem ROMA event a success

Roger Varley

Mayor Dave Barton and regional councillor Bruce Garrod said Monday their attendance at the Rural Ontario Municipalities Association (ROMA) conference in Toronto last week was productive and successful. Accompanied by councillors Willie Popp, Zed Pickering and Todd Snooks, the Uxbridge delegation garnered meetings with five provincial ministers over the course of the two-and-a-half day event.

Garrod said that was something of a coup, since some municipalities didn't have any ministerial meetings. He explained that municipalities indicated beforehand which ministries they would like to meet and provincial officials then determined who met with whom.

He said the conference included information sessions, networking and a wide array of vendors of municipal services, but added: "We focused our energies on meetings with ministers." Those meetings included sessions with the ministers of natural resources, the environment, long-term care, health and finance, at which they discussed a wide range of subjects, from the new urban provincial park to the new long-term care home and integrated health hub proposed for the hospital grounds.

Both Barton and Garrod were full of praise for Pickering-Uxbridge MPP and finance minister Peter Bethlenfalvy, who, they said, found time to attend all their ministerial meetings even though he had meetings of his own.

"He is 100-per-cent supportive of Uxbridge," Garrod said, noting that, as finance minister, other cabinet members listen to him.

On the urban provincial park, Barton said the park will open as soon as possible.

"This will be the fastest provincial park ever created in Ontario," he said. "Things should happen quickly."

Garrod said the discussions looked at what lands could be used to stitch together the parcels already set aside so that there can be a seamless trail down to Rouge Valley park. There was also talk about the possibility of using worked-out gravel pits as part of the park.

Elena Pacheco, chief operating officer of Oak Valley Health, joined the Uxbridge team to share plans for integrating the new 192-bed long-term care home into the Uxbridge Hospital build project and the efficiencies to be realized by the health care hub model.

"Our model is now their model," Garrod said. "This keeps our key project in front of the province."

He added that Oak Valley Health is "ready to put shovels in the ground" later this year.

While emphasizing the ministerial meetings, Garrod said the networking carried out at the confererence is also important.

"It's important to understand their challenges," he said. "Often we can combine voices to bring change."