East Ferris Mayor Bill Vrebosch will be formally acclaimed to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario Rural Caucus in Ottawa this August.
Vrebosch will retain his seat on the AMO Board of Directors for the next two years. He also sits on the Rural Ontario Municipal Association as the Zone 9 representative. Zone 9 is basically all of Northeast and Northwestern Ontario.
According to a news release, AMO’s key advocacy priorities are focused on achieving fiscal sustainability for municipal governments, advancing federal and provincial partnerships for infrastructure, and strengthening municipal legislative authority to advance local economic prosperity and environmental sustainability.
Vrebosch said that one of his main focus points will be to illustrate to the provincial and federal officials that municipalities need guaranteed and stable income assistance because the municipal taxpayers can’t afford to keep footing the bill. When governments announce new programs they have to accompany the announcements with guaranteed funding.
“I don’t think that many Ontario taxpayers realize that of every dollar they pay in taxes (federal, provincial and local), that the municipalities only retain nine cents. Out of this nine cents, municipalities have to finance all of their activities and responsibilities at budget time, everything from local municipal infrastructure to area responsibilities. We need to get a bigger piece of the pie.”
AMO is a non-profit organization representing almost all of Ontario’s 444 municipal governments and promotes the value of municipal government as a vital and essential component of Ontario and Canada’s political system.
