Owen Sound Mayor Deb Haswell has had both a positive and negative session with Liberal cabinet ministers at the AMO conference in London.
Haswell met with Economic Development and Trade Minister Sandra Pupatello on Monday to talk about the old PPG plant in the Scenic city.
The mayor says Queens Park has international contacts and a team that travels the globe discussing opportunities with various manufacturers — something the city cannot afford.
Mayor Haswell says the session with Pupatello was very positive and productive.
She feels the Minister will help the city in finding a new tenant for the building and they are working on some ideas.
The loss of PPG is costing the city of Owen Sound over 200 thousand dollars a year in property taxes.
Meanwhile, Mayor Haswell met with the Ontario Minister of Labour Charles Sousa on Tuesday to talk about the arbitration process.
Haswell tells Bayshore Broadcasting News the process is broken because the ability for a community to pay for services like police and fire departments is not being taken into account.
She says when a deal is struck with Toronto services, they become the standard for all of Ontario and communities like Owen Sound cannot afford the big pay hikes being handed down now.
Recently, firefighters in Fort Francis got a 16 per cent pay increase and the town had to layoff two firefighters to cover the extra cost.
Haswell says the Minister listened but didn’t seem impressed by her arguments.
