Premier Doug Ford is striking a conciliatory tone with municipal leaders over his government’s next budget after an uproar over cuts last year.

Ford promised at the Rural Ontario Municipal Association conference in Toronto there would be no surprises to municipalities after being forced to backtrack on major cuts in last year’s budget to public health and child care funding for local governments.

Ford also announced five-million dollars in new funding for economic development partnerships with rural communities and confirmed a current 500-million-dollar municipal partnership fund will remain in place through 2021.

That met with mixed reviews from North Bay’s budget chief Councillor Tanya Vrebosch.

“It’s still not giving us that long term forecast that we’re looking for and by that I mean the rest of the government’s term. But atleast we know 2021 and we’ll be ahead of the game when we do our budgeting at the end of the year,” she says.

She says the North Bay delegation met on Monday with the Minister of Transportation Caroline Mulroney on the possibility of changing the responsibility of Ontario Northland from Northern Development to Transportation.

Vrebosch says no decision has yet been made.

The city delegation met with the province on the connecting link application they’ve put in but they were told it’s going to be difficult to be successful as the province has lots of interest in that fund from across the province.

The city needs the money to make improvements to the HIghway 63 corridor.

Vrebosch says they are meeting Tuesday with the Minister of the Environment Jeff Yurek on pharmaceutical companies taking more responsibility on paying for the cost of picking up used needles.

“They put the needles out but the cost of picking them up is put on the citizens or the taxpayers to collect and dispose of them. It’s quite a hefty cost to dispose of needles,” Vrebosch says.

She says the premier also talked about Community Hubs and that piqued her interest.

Vrebosch says they also met with the Minister of Health on steps taken by the Mayor’s Roundtable of Mental Health and Addictions.

(photo by station staff)

(with files from Canadian Press)

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