Kincardine council

To Comment on this article Click Here

Kincardine chief administrative officer (CAO) John deRosenroll is leaving Kincardine and heading east to Perth, Ontario.

In closed session Wednesday night (July 13), deRosenroll tendered his resignation and it was accepted, with regret, by Kincardine council.

Originally from Ottawa, deRosenroll began his career in engineering, and spent five years developing subdivisions. He then moved to the Town of Renfrew where he worked in public works and planning for five years.

From there, he went to the Town of Mattawa where he was public works manager for five years before being hired by the former Town of Kincardine as public works manager in December, 1996.

A year-and-a-half later, he was public works manager and CAO, taking over from Maureen Couture, for a year until Kincardine amalgamated with the former Bruce Township and Kincardine Township in 1999. He was the first CAO for the new Municipality of Kincardine, and Jim O'Rourke was hired as the public works manager.

Now, after 14-and-a-half years in Kincardine, deRosenroll and his wife, Niamh, and daughter, Meibh, want to move back to eastern Ontario to be closer to their families.

"I was fortunate to have the opportunity to be hired as CAO of the Town of Perth," said deRosenroll. "It's smaller than Kincardine - about the size of Hanover."

So, what have been some of the highlights of his time as CAO of Kincardine?

"The biggest thing, of course, was amalgamation," said deRosenroll. "We were dealing with the transition board and building the new Municipality of Kincardine right from the ground up. We had to rewrite every document and bylaw; it was an exhaustive process. People had the perceived idea that it was insurmountable, but in reality, there were commonalities that brought everybody together."

He was part of the process to bring the Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) to Kincardine - the permanent storage vault for low- and intermediate-level waste from the nuclear plants in Ontario. Kincardine initiated the discussion about assisting Ontario Power Generation (OPG) with a solution for long-term nuclear waste management and from that grew the DGR project, he said.

Financially, Kincardine has been very fortunate over the past decade, said deRosenroll. "It's been a golden era for infrastructure replacement. We've done miles of road, upgraded the sewage plant, the water treatment plant, built new parks. And we've done it with an average three- to five-per-cent tax increase, using reserves and reserve funds."

He said, moving ahead, Kincardine will now work to finish off the larger projects - the Davidson Centre addition, and the Kincardine Arts Centre. "There will be a move toward supporting arts and cultural activities to enhance the quality of life in this municipality," he said, including a proposed study next year of ways to upgrade the interior of the arts centre.

"There is a building sense of community in Kincardine," said deRosenroll. "We've seen a huge difference from 1999 to 2011. We have more people in the community. We have community events, such as the Bruce Power Beach Party coming up this weekend. There is a renewed interest in theatre. The Kincardine Women's Triathlon, held last weekend, brought in a lot of participants."

He said it all ties back to the Kincardine Community Plan, completed last year, which pushes for better quality of life in the municipality.

"We completed a strategic plan in 2005, and when you look back at that plan, we have completed about 90 per cent of it," said deRosenroll. "Looking ahead, the municipality can use the Community Plan and the upcoming Sustainability Plan, to move forward with the needs of this community."

When deRosenroll arrived in Kincardine, Charles Mann was the mayor. Then Glenn Sutton was elected, followed by Gordon Jarrell who passed away in office, so deputy mayor Gord Thompson took over; then Larry Kraemer, followed by Sutton, and now Kraemer again.

^{for world news, books, sports, movies ...}

Thursday, July 14, 2011