2025 Year End Message

By Judy Dezell
Director AMO Enterprise Centre, Business Partnerships, LAS

At this time of year, we like to look back and reflect on the year behind us, celebrating our victories and learning the lessons that come along with challenges. 2025 has proven to be an eventful year for our team with great progress made in many projects, changes to our organization, and challenges that kept our team on their toes. 

As always, our team enjoyed meeting with our members to learn more about how we might be able to help with the work Ontario municipalities do every day. Staff attended several conferences throughout the year, including ROMA, AdvantageON, NOMA, OSUM, FONOM, OMAA, MISA, AMCTO, MFOA, OPBA, and of course the AMO conference in August. Thanks to those who stopped by our booth to chat. Staff also travelled the province meeting with municipal staff in their own offices, providing great insights to help us build new programs.  

Our work on a water and wastewater utility model continues, with progress being made on a potential business case. We expect to have further announcements in 2026. Stay tuned for more details. This year also included new partnership with the Ontario Public Buyer’s Association to cooperate more closely for the mutual benefit of our members, and with HealthPRO Canada to help municipalities secure lower prices for key medical and nutrition supplies. We added a Citizen Relationship Management tool to our digital offerings and continue to work on our Cyber Risk Protective Association. We were proud to award grants of $10,000 each to the Town of Shelburne, County of Huron, and Town of Midland as part of the All Risk Municipal Grant, in partnership with Intact Public Entities. 

Our Automated Speed Enforcement (ASE) program came to an unexpected close in November with the passage of provincial legislation banning speed cameras in Ontario. We’re disappointed with this change – ASE was proving to be an effective tool for improving community safety and was one of the few enforcement tools available to local governments. We’re proud of the program we built and would like to thank the municipalities who elected to work with us for their support. We would also like to thank the cities of Barrie and Clarence-Rockland for hosting our Joint Processing Centres, and all municipal Councils who passed resolutions supporting ASE as a community safety tool. 

In June of this year Brian Rosborough, AMO’s Executive Director and LAS President, announced his planned retirement after six years with the organization and 34 years in the Ontario public service. In July the AMO board announced that Lindsay Jones would become the next AMO Executive Director and LAS President effective September 1, 2025. We’re excited to welcome the new LAS President, and we wish to thank Brian for his skilled leadership of the organization over the last six years. 

I’d like to thank the entire LAS team for their hard work in 2025. It was a year of big challenges, lots of travel, and major progress towards our goals. I would also like to thank our members for their continuing support over the past year. We hope you have an enjoyable holiday season and look forward to working with you in the new year.