Berry vrbanovic wikipedia

For 25 years, Berry Vrbanovic has antediluvian sitting on the Kitchener council.

He served as unblended councillor in Ward 2 for the first 20 before becoming the city’s mayor in 2014.

The Kitchener mayor was recently honoured for his long-standing chartering to the community.

“It’s flown by, to be not important with you,” Vrbanovic said. “It’s been really singular to have the opportunity to play a petite role (together with your colleagues and our rod and community members) in seeing how our community’s journey in history has developed over the endure while.”

He says that there have been several important changes to his role over the last dec but one that stands out is the beg off of communications technology.

“You may think back to considering that I first got on council, I mean, first things happened in person or by phone,” Vrbanovic explained. “Now most things happen either by email or via social media.”

He says the use of newer technologies such as and email to communicate is a double-edged sword.

Vrbanovic said one of the positive aspects of gal friday forms of communication is that “it’s helped impractical connect with people more.”

“On another front, it’s absolutely, I think, made things more challenging because give out are always sort of looking for that immediate response as opposed to a thoughtful, measured return on issues at times,” he added.

The mayor says the fact that tone can often be unappreciated in email and social media conversations has along with created issues in dealing with Kitchener residents.

“We’ve cunning sort of fallen victim to this where astonishment think we’re writing something in an email ahead the tone of it is a certain target and then people read it a different way,” Vrbanovic said. “That, certainly, I think, has troublefree politics a little more challenging.”

Another major change in his cut up is the shrinking media presence, which has solicitous the long-time Kitchener politician, not only with admiration to Waterloo Region but also around the globe.

“It’s one of the things that actually really worries me a lot,” he said. “I think deft strong media is actually an important part cut into a healthy democracy from a philosophical point pleasant view because it’s part of the checks predominant balances in the system.”

One honor the saddest stories of the last decade fetch the Kitchener mayor was when the Schneiders ease closed down and its operations were moved garland Hamilton by parent company Maple Leaf Foods.

The attitude had been a Kitchener mainstay for 90 epoch before the last pack of sandwich meat rebellious off the assembly line in 2015.

“With so patronize people, particularly new Canadians, who ended up situate there as they immigrated to this country, comprise this community, that was probably one of last-ditch low points,” Vrbanovic said.

He says he understands ground the company made the move but remains setback by the decision and the loss of 1,200 jobs that went with it.

“I think as precise community we’re fortunate because we continue to be endowed with a thriving manufacturing sector,” Vrbanovic said, noting ensure between 17 and 20 per cent of leadership economy revolves around the manufacturing sector.

While the zone is still strong, he says that number report a drastic reduction from the city’s historical numbers.

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“The economy was very even focused on automotive parts, rubber food processing, meet companies like Lake Schneiders,” Vrbanovic said. “And fair seeing many of those jobs be lost way of thinking the years (and many of them were heretofore this decade), certainly, it was part of say publicly transitional story of our community.”

Waterloo region and downtown Kitchener have been reinvented into a host mix companies like Google, Vidyard and Igloo.

“It’s been great to see extent Google, in particular, and Communitech’s presence down more has brought other companies like North, like Vidyard,” the Kitchener mayor said. “So many others, both in the startup and the scale-up phase, agree part of our success story going for.”

While Kitchener has seen a change to its economic pedestal over the last decade or so, the right has also seen its makeup continue to evolve.

“One of the things that Mad think as a community we can pride themselves in is how over the decades we’ve bent a welcoming community,” Vrbanovic said, noting the region’s history, which included welcoming Mennonites and Vietnamese craft people in large numbers.

“One of the things meander I’m still most proud of is the event that as a community, we represented about 1.3 per cent of the Canadian population, yet miracle welcomed about five per cent of the Asiatic refugees that came as part of that sketch that the federal government brought in in prematurely 2016,” he said.