Mayors Across Oxford County Discuss Common Rural Issues

Saturday, 11 January 2020 07:41

Mayors throughout the County discussed various issues including the Southwestern Integrated Fibre Technology (SWIFT).

OXFORD COUNTY - Mayors from throughout Oxford County met recently to discuss various issues.

The informal meeting included Mayor for the Township of Zorra Mayor Marcus Ryan, along with the Mayor of East Zorra-Tavistock Don McKay and others.

Mayor Ryan says one of the issues included Southwestern Integrated Fibre Technology.

He says the County has funded and been a longtime member of SWIFT.

"In the 2019 budgets, both Oxford County and the rural Oxford municipalities contributed an extra 2% of our budgets towards SWIFT Plus, we're calling it, to try and get even more leverage out of the SWIFT funding. And that's all going to be rolling out, that's all managed now by SWIFT which is an arms-length board from the County, it's a Southwestern Ontario initiative."

He added it was a review of where they're at with SWIFT and discussing the next steps.

He says for all the money that the province, federal government, Oxford and Zorra Township have put into SWIFT, it still won't get them near everybody having fibre in their home and having it connected so they need to keeping working on the next steps beyond that.

In addition to discussing expanded internet service, another topic included the Service Delivery Review.

Mayor Ryan says these are informal meetings.

"It's a way to really just share ideas and hopefully find better ways amongst us for doing things. Not every time we come up with a new idea does it have to be in a formal council meeting, obviously for any one of our municipalities to actually do anything with it, to make a decision or spend money, we have to bring it to a council meeting, but we can share ideas just informally quite often."

The meeting also saw Mayor of Norwich Larry Martin and Mayor of South-West Oxford David Mayberry on hand.