Bill Vrebosch, mayor of the Municipality of East Ferris, has been elected as chair of the Rural Ontario Municipal Association (ROMA).
Elections took place at the annual joint convention of ROMA and the Ontario Good Roads Assoociation (OGRA) in March.
As chair, Vrebosch retains a seat on the board of directors for the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) and is involved in numerous committees, including the 911 Ontario Advisory Board.
Vrebosch additionally serves as the representative for Zone 9, which encompasses northern rural communities north of Gravenhurst and west to Manitoba.
In a press release, Vrebosch said he was pleased to be elected to the two-year term and vowed to bring “a strong northern voice to the table.”
“The North is a vast area and we need to be at the table when our resources and quality of life are being discussed,” he said in the release. “I would encourage municipal representatives to contact me with their concerns so that I can bring the message to Toronto and AMO.
Despite covering 80 per cent of the land mass of the province, rural Ontario only has 20 per cent of the population, and because of that, tends to be lumped in with larger areas, Vrebosch commented.
Working with numbers alone, bureaucrats “sometimes seem oblivious to the distance problems we face in the North and rural Ontario,” he added.
ROMA represents rural Ontarians at the provincial level, bringing attention to issues that affect the North.
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