County Warden Tom Bain is feeling positive after a 'dispute resolution' meeting with City of Windsor officials about the yet to be approved 2017 Essex-Windsor Solid Waste Authority budget.
Bain and Essex County CAO Brian Gregg met with Windsor's Mayor Drew Dilkens and CAO Onorio Colucci Wednesday.
Bain says, in addition to the budget, the group discussed changing the governance model of the organization to help avoid a similar situation in the future.
The budget hold up stems from a dispute over city representatives wanting to pass two budget years at once, both with 0% increases, and county reps voting against the idea.
Bain says alternating board numbers each year way not be the best way to do things.
"One year the city has five, the next year the county has five. There's always that 5-4 split. So what we're doing is looking at making sure that we don't get into a problem like we did with the budget so that a lot of this stuff can be resolved right by the Waste Management Committee."
He says he's confident a deal will be reached.
"Both the mayor and myself, being able to cooperate, come up with resolutions to the problem. City and county working together. Certainly the mayor and I have an excellent working relationship and so do our CAO's from both the city and the county. Hopefully it's the answer."
Bain adds, it's important to get this put to bed.
"When you're half way through the year and you still don't have your budget set before you, it puts a strain on a lot of the operations. So we don't want to see that situation again and we believe that we're well on our way to a resolution to solve that problem."
The budget will now be adjusted by both county and city CAO's.
The document will go to County Council and City Council for a vote in September.