Perth County held their warden election today in Stratford, and Mert Schneider was re-elected to the position for a second term.
Schneider reflected on two of the big projects that the county completed in 2016.
"We had the opening of the EMS base, and we haven't had the opening for the new public works, but we built a big public works garage in Mitchell, which is state of the art, I think.," he said.
Warden Schneider also noted the farm house severance legislation that was passed, as well as the new school in North Perth, as some other big accomplishments for the county this year. Looking forward to 2017, there's a project in mind that he feels needs addressed in the county.
"Making the courthouse accessible, whether that happens in 2017, I don't think it will, but we are going to certainly look at plans for it," he said.
On the subject of budget cuts, Warden Schneider said going forward, a number of funding cut backs will provide challenges for counties and municipal councils. Despite some grant opportunities, the Warden says it isn't yet clear how OMPF and other losses will affect budgets.
"There are some grant opportunities that come every once and awhile that help you along, but not as much as before. It's really hard to say how some of these cuts will work out," he said.
The warden said Perth is looking at a budget of only a little over $5.4-million, which is a hard number to work with for a whole county in need of many different services.
