The Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund (OMPF) will be sending $ 1,482,200 to Perth Ontario’s way for 2010 according to Ontario’s Ministry of Finance. This amount is said to be $ 185,100 more from this year’s allocation from the OMPF which should be more than enough to bring a smile to even more people in the county.

The increase in funding can safely be assumed as a result of the concensus Report of the Provincial-Municipal Fiscal and Service Delivery Review (PMFSDR) back in October of 2008. The report dubbed, “Facing the Future Together” was co-created by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) and the City of Toronto.

As a background, the OMPF has been set to aid counties with their social project costs which includes property assessments, the cost of policing, and other challenges associated with the municipalities in Northern Canada.

Some of the programs in Perth County that are directly affected by this allocation from the OMPF include the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) and the Ontario Drug Benefit (ODB).
By the looks of this, it seems that 2010 is looking better than this challenging year already.

With the decade ending, it is probably the best time for Perth Ontario to undergo an economic study to check in the realities of its labour market and its overall economy. These agendas will surely be covered with the coming Economic Diversification Strategic Plan and Labour Market Analysis.

The said economic activities are set to kick off after the New Year and when it does, businesses and residents from Perth County can expect to have their voices heard and accounted for. In fact, businesses can expect a formal invitation to participate in these important studies.

After the studies are completed by May of the next year, it will hopefully give the economic development officials of Perth County a good idea of what’s the best direction to undertake in terms of business and industries with the aim of diversifying the industries and preparing the labour market thereto.

Once this is taken cared of, the county will then have its hands full on setting the budget for projects inclined to such plans of business diversification.

This plan of action is expected to be a welcomed from everyone in Perth Ontario especially since this year has been quite a challenge thanks to a number of economic factors that hit not just the county, but the entire world itself.

After 6 weeks of public clinics to give H1N1 shots from those who are among the priority groups to the general populace, the number of residents in the Perth County who showed up to get the vaccine has been nothing but staggering relative to the regular flu shot campaigns of the past. To be more specific, there have been more than 20,000 residents (which is roughly 27% of the county’s population) who have showed up to get themselves an H1N1 vaccine whereas records from the previous year’s showed only around 7,000 people have been getting the seasonal flu vaccine.

This only goes to show of how successful the public clinics and the people behind them have been in their campaign to protect as many residents as possible from the dreaded H1N1 flu. We all need to give the medical practitioners a big hand for a job well done indeed especially given such a circumstance.

There are still plenty of vaccine supplies to come around at the health unit just in case they will be needed. There are also plans of catch-up clinics to be held starting in the new year just to make sure everyone who needs them gets a chance to get vaccinated.