ROMA gives rural communities a voice

Nowadays, municipalities are confronted with much more difficult issues than before.

Pam Sayne, a representative of the Rural Ontario Municipal Association, said municipal officials also face another problem: the polarization in communities created by social media comments.

Sayne, a Minden Hills City Councilmember, presented some highlights of ROMA’s work at the May 22 Haliburton County City Council meeting.

Municipalities have worked hard over the past four years to address homelessness, mental health issues and the ageing population. In addition, many federal and provincial concerns have been shifted to the municipal level.

“We have a lot of challenges that are new to us,” she said.

This new prominence of community polarization was recently discussed at a ROMA conference. It is a shared concern among many of the communities under the association’s umbrella.

“What is so important to the work of ROMA is dialogue,” she said. “We can agree or disagree, but we have to continue the dialogue. And that is so fundamental to our democracy here, within our communities and within our country, as great as we are.”

The association has evolved quite a bit over the years, she said, guided by a strategic plan developed through community consultation and representation.

“We are an action council,” Sayne said.

This action is reflected in the association’s response to the growing demand in rural areas for broadband internet, affordable housing and the drive for better access to services in the current health care crisis.

ROMA kept things going during the COVID-19 lockdown through online meetings, allowing representatives to stay in touch with other rural communities.

“That encouraged people to keep communicating and keep up to date with what was happening with other municipalities,” Sayne said. “It was a time when we all got through it.

“It’s left us with a brave new world of (information technology) and how we communicate and where we get our information.”

She said the group continues to work to make their voices heard. By using all means to make the association’s voice heard, they prevent trees from falling silently in the forest.

“I think it’s still important sometimes to acknowledge and say that we’ve all noticed that our opinions and ideas are always taken more seriously when we’re elected,” she said.

“Sometimes nobody cares what we think until we get elected. Then it suddenly becomes an important issue.”

Councilman Bob Carter, mayor of Minden Hills, said ROMA’s work provides rural centers with the opportunity to obtain some of the resources, such as housing funding, that would normally go to larger urban centers.

“The amount of money that is going from the highest levels of government to rural areas is far less than we need and far less than we, frankly, should be getting,” Carter said.

“A lot of our costs are higher because we don’t have the water, sewer, and infrastructure that we would have in cities or around cities. I think ROMA plays an extremely important role and we need to do everything we can to continue to support it to make sure that our voices are heard.”

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James Matthews, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Minden Times