By: Sylene Argent, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Essex Free Press

Over the past 30-years or so years, he has served on Council for 12-years.

His first stint as a municipal decision-maker was in 1992 for Colchester South Township. He was part of a committee that helped to make amalgamation go as smoothly.

Rogers said he supported Sherry Bondy as Mayor of the past term, and believes she has been a breath of fresh air in her approach and communications.

“I believe we are on a positive progression. I don’t want to see the Town go sideways.”

As someone with past experience on Council, Rogers said he is not one to go out and make promises. A Councillor is only one voice at the table.

His prime drive, having been on Council in the past, and going forward if afforded that opportunity, is that he listens to people, looks at the issues, and tries to educate himself as best as he can before voting.

Rogers votes for what is the most positive outcome for the most people involved.

There are some issues Rogers would like to address with Council, but they are issues everyone is looking at, including drainage, flooding, and development.

There has been interest for development in Ward 3 and a push for more, but it can’t jump ahead like Ward 1 has done.

“We don’t have the backup infrastructure to accommodate it at this point in time, and we still have a lot of the drainage issues and a lot of the flooding,” he said. Ward 3 also doesn’t have the infrastructure, like roads.

A 400 unit development in Colchester could bring in potentially another thousand people into the village. The capacity to handle that is not there, he believes.

While there are some developments underway in Colchester, Rogers would caution Council accepting and pushing for them when there are a few subdivisions in Harrow he believes are not taking off the way they should.

He would like the Town to work with upper tiers of government to promote affordable housing in developments already in the works. In working with upper tiered governments, perhaps there can be some kind of plan in place to offer subsidies to developers to include appropriate affordable communities within their development.

Colchester is a great area for tourism, but “let’s look after the people we have and look after the issues we have with the people who are already here and calling us home, and take controlled steps towards increased visitation.”

When Rogers had the opportunity to serve, he was very involved in what was going on in other areas of the Town of Essex.

One initiative for which he is proud was using grant funding to add street lights at rural intersections to improve safety. He noted that there were some areas where they couldn’t be installed, because there was no hydro available.

“People don’t even realize what it was like to be driving home or looking for a beach road at night with no lights on anything.”

Overall, he feels his “time on Council has been spent in a positive manner towards our community at large. I can continue that. I have the experience a ratepayer can trust. And I’m not going to

do something that is going to be adverse for our community.”

He does not have individuals behind him with their own agendas. He also doesn’t have a personal agenda.