DSSAB likely to be hot topic at annual meeting of municipalities

FORT FRANCES—The 16th-annual general meeting of the Rainy River District Municipal Association is set to go this Saturday (Jan. 27) in Emo.
But while several presentations simply will offer informative updates, there could be one controversial issue regarding the Rainy River District Social Service Administration Board.
“They haven’t got a whole lot of time on the agenda, but there certainly are issues,” noted RRDMA president Emily Watson, who also is reeve of La Vallee.
“The biggest being, of course, the cost overruns in the Fort Frances ambulance garage, the Fort Frances office building, and now a new issue is the lease-to-purchase of the ambulance garage in Emo.
“They’ve leased a facility and now we’re going to be going out to tender on that and again will mean more money.”
Reeve Watson said it’s likely many of the municipal leaders will have questions about the budgets and where the money will come from.
Lake of the Woods Mayor Val Pizey, a former DSSAB chair, has promised to speak at Saturday’s meeting.
“She plans on speaking on behalf of DSSAB to explain to people exactly what has gone on with all these building issues,” Reeve Watson said. “And I’m sure there will be questions from that.”
But she added it’s possible the issue could go better than she expects.
“I don’t know, maybe I’m the only one who thinks it’s controversial,” she remarked. “Maybe it’ll just go smoothly—who knows?
“Maybe no one wants to know and doesn’t care about it any more because it’s a done deal,” she added. “But I have a feeling there will be some quite pointed questions asked.”
Meanwhile, Reeve Watson said she’s been working on building a better working relationship with area First Nations and hopes to see some of their community leaders at Saturday’s meeting.
“[The RRDMA executive] were given some direction that we wanted to meet with them and try to get more input from them, more participation from them,” she remarked.
“And, in fact, yesterday I attended a meeting at the Chief Secretariat in Fort Frances to issue a personal invitation for them to come.”
Reeve Watson noted they sent out a standard letter inviting all the First Nation leaders to come to the meeting, but haven’t had a very good turnout rate from that.
“So I thought I’d do a personal invitation and hopefully it will grow from there—that we will get some participation on Saturday,” she stressed, adding a couple did give a positive indication they would be there Saturday.
“I’m sure they will see we have similar kinds of issues and concerns at the municipal level as they do at their community level, so we can work together rather than individually.”
Reeve Watson also said one of the many presentations on Saturday will be from an Ontario Forestry Coalition representative.
“We’re still working and jobs are still being lost, so just having them come to give us an update,” she noted.
“Of all of the communities, Fort Frances seems to be in the best position right now because we’ve had some fairly positive new about the bio-mass boiler here while other communities are still losing jobs and businesses are being shut down.
“We seem a little more hopeful here then other communities.”
Others scheduled to speak during Saturday’s RRDMA meeting include local MP Ken Boshcoff, Geoff Gillon (Rainy River Future Development Corp.), Garry McKinnon (Atikokan Economic Development Corp.), Thunder Bay-Atikokan MPP Bill Mauro, Robb Anderson and Kevin DesRosiers (Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing), Iain Angus (NOMA—Regional Recovery Plan), and Pete Sarsfield and Bill Limerick (Northwestern Health Unit).
Rounding out the list are Grace Silander and Hugh Dennis (Rainy River Valley Safety Coalition), Deane Cunningham and Larry Cousineau (Riverside Foundation for Health Care), Craig Ravnaas (Ministry of Northern Development and Mines), and Dave Lucas (OPP).
The meeting will run from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. at the Emo Legion. A banquet and entertainment by the Borderland Community Orchestra will follow.