Meaford council welcomed back a familiar face at its regular meeting last Tuesday evening.

Former Mayor Gerald Shortt was appointed to the council seat that was made vacant when Gunter Neumann resigned from office.

Shortt finished sixth in the race for the five council chairs in the November 2006 election. He was the first Mayor of the amalgamated municipality, was the long time Reeve of St. Vincent Township and has extensive experience as a member of county council. Shortt is a past Grey County Warden as well.

“We’re extremely grateful there are people in the community willing to step and serve. Gerald has a lot of experience,” said Deputy Mayor Francis Richardson as he introduced the resolution to appoint Shortt to council.

Councillor Jim McPherson said Councillor Shortt’s extensive experience in municipal government is going to be put to work over the next few years.

“I know he ran a tight shop and we need to run a tight ship this year. I’m looking forward to having Gerald here this year,” said McPherson.

Councillor Shortt said he was pleased to be back at the council table and was looking forward to getting to work.

“I cared enough to put my name in for the last election and I felt if the opportunity came up to serve I thought I should,” he said, noting that he is coming to the council table at a very difficult time.

“It is scary to see the (financial) figures. There’s a lot in our finances needing to be worked out. It’s not going to be an easy fix,” said Shortt.

As mayor and reeve, Councillor Shortt was well-known for keeping a keen eye on finances, taxes and municipal roads.  Shortt said council needs to get together and decide how to move forward with fixing the municipality’s finances.

“All of the elected councillors need to get together and see where the bucks are going. We should get right at it,” he said. He also pointed out that it has been approximately seven years since the Municipality of Meaford had a tax increase of any kind. He said a two-per-cent tax increase each year for those seven years would be a total of 15 per cent - a number the municipality is looking at as being realistic increase in 2008 due to the deficit situation.

“Maybe we should have been increasing it a little bit every year. Now we’re going to have to bit the bullet,” he said. “I’m happy to be back and I hope we can get things sorted out,” he said.