When Grey County’s new Warden Andrea Matrosovs looks back on 2024, a big highlight is the beginning of construction on Rockwood Terrace Long-term Care Home in Durham.
Matrosovs recently recounted some highlights and challenges of the year in an interview with Bayshore Broadcasting News.
She says, “We’ve done our groundbreaking ceremony. We did that back in June, well attended with the minister of long-term care and the foundation is in and the walls are going up as we speak,” says Matrosovs. The roughly $90 million care home with 128 beds is anticipated to start taking residents in early 2027.
Matrosovs explains, “This home, this Rockwood Terrace long-term care facility will be adding more long-term beds to our local supply and ensuring that long-term care services are available right through southern Grey County that find that’s the best location for their loved ones.”
Another highlight Matrosovs says, is the recent groundbreaking for the new paramedic services base in Durham, adding, “Then we have more as the years progress, we’ll be looking at Feversham and some other areas in the county.”
Matrosovs also highlights the new roundabout at Grey roads 3 and 4 near Hanover. “We had a chance to watch drone footage of the vehicles making use of that and moving smoothly through traffic. I always thinks it’s kind of like watching a ballet of vehicles going around in a circle.”
She says the County made some progress in addressing homelessness, noting, “We have increased access to our short-term emergency shelter by actually purchasing a motel. The opportunity came up and we realized that on a per-night basis we could actually save money this way for the County and provide more beds for people. So we can look at offering nights of accommodation to those who are experiencing homelessness. It’s right down the road from our facilities. We’re able to bring in lots of support services because that is now our own facility.”
She says, We certainly have been working together as our nine municipalities coming together under the banner of Grey County looking for how we can best serve members of our communities that are experiencing homelessness or at risk of becoming unhoused.”
Matrosovs adds, “We feel that right across the province. We’re seeing that as housing prices are increasing it’s making it more difficult but there are complex factors involved and that continues to be a challenge. We know that mental health and addiction is often connected to unpredictability of where somebody is going to find a place for the night. We want to make sure that we’re offering a comprehensive support network that way. So we’ve been working collaboratively with our community partners as well to address these issues and through tested methods such as the emergency shelter model as well as the kind of innovative programs such as our SOS program, Supportive Outreach Services.”
Matrosovs says another challenge is being worked on by the Road Exchange Task Force. Its job is to look at County roads and see if they would be better serving the community in they were lower-tier roads taken on by the municipality. But Matrosovs notes, having sat on the task force herself, “We have to make sure that if there’s going to be transfer like that, if a road is going to be downloaded from the County down to a lower-tier municipality that we are making sure that it’s done around fairness and making sure that nobody is inheriting something where we cant make them whole financially.”
The County has also been having problems with misuse of its trails. Matrosovs says, “We have 8,500 acres of County forest across 45 different properties, but the challenge we’re finding is that a number of our trails are becoming damaged due to unauthorized use of ATVs, so ATVs traveling where they’re not actually permitted. They’re damaging the trail base and instead of investing in trail improvements, we’re having to divert our money towards restoring them rather than being able to expand our networks.”
She adds, “We want to make sure everybody gets the chance to enjoy our forests and do the activities that they’d like to but we all have to pull together and follow rules on when that can be done.”
Looking at 2025, Matrosovs says, “We are launching our celebration of local agriculture and the food scene through what we call the “Gather campaign’ so you’ll see some social media directing people towards that. There’s going to be some exciting videos coming out which are going to highlight the food connections between our local farms and our restaurants right across the county. We are so rich in the number of food related businesses and farms that have been providing and we want to be able to showcase that and draw people in and bring in tourism to enhance our economic development here
She says, “There is a lot to explore because we have have a good rural fabric right across the county and there are some fantastic culinary experiences happening here. Matrosovs notes the County has its first culinary ambassador, Roger Mooking, and he has been showcasing excellent local products and producers and chefs already.”
Matrosovs adds, “I’m really looking forward to 2025 and having an opportunity to visit the nine municipalities that we have in Grey County, participate in events and visit with those those who have great things to show us about our wonderful county.”