Huron-Kinloss mayor acclaimed Bruce County warden for another year

Huron-Kinloss mayor Mitch Twolan has been acclaimed warden of Bruce County for the second year in a row. This is his third one-year term as warden.

"I'm honoured to be selected," he said. "We have a lot of issues to deal with at the county level and I'm pleased to continue on for another year."

He said other counties have switched to a two-year term for warden and that makes sense, given the extensive amount of information involved in the issues that this upper tier of government must face.

Among the county priorities over the next year, is bringing natural gas to Huron-Kinloss, Kincardine and Arran-Elderslie.

"This is important, not only to these individual municipalities, but to the county as well," he said. "We can get some development going at the Bruce Energy Centre if we get natural gas here."

He said the long-term investment at Bruce Power was good news, along with progress at the AMMCan medical marijuana facility at the Bruce Energy Centre.

Unfortunately, the federal environment minister has delayed her decision, regarding Ontario Power Generation (OPG)'s proposed Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) for low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste at the Bruce Nuclear site, and that's difficult for the Kincardine area, as well as the county and neighbouring municipalities, said Twolan.

"Everywhere I go, I speak about nuclear, even during my trip to Paris for the Climate Change Conference (COP21)," he said. "But nuclear was not even discussed at the conference. I spoke to one person who was supportive of nuclear but wasn't allowed to speak of it."

Twolan said funding is always an issue at county council which just passed its budget last week. It includes a 3.61-per-cent increase, but once assessment growth is factored in, the actual levy will increase by 2.86-per-cent.