As president of the Association of Municipalities Ontario, Dundas councillor Russ Powers is in Ottawa this week presiding over the annual four-day AMO conference.

Powers joins Mayor Bob Bratina, the mayor's chief of staff Peggy Chapman and Tim McCabe, general manager of planning economic development, at the conference.

Key subjects this week include policing costs and Premier Kathleen Wynne's promise to help municipalities attract future investment. Powers talked to CBC Hamilton about a couple of these issues.

I think we all believe Hamilton has turned a corner. In order to continue to attract new initiatives and new types of concepts to the city, there needs to be the tools for it. We don't know the details. She mentioned it in the most generic of terms. But she said we'll work together in order to develop those tools to make it that much easier and better to attract business to Ontario.

It's a $60-billion deficit in Ontario. Nationally it's $120 billion. The suggestion put forward by AMO earlier this year was if circumstances allow an investment of $6 billion a year over the next 10 years, we'll get the province's infrastructure back online and therefore municipalities can afford to maintain either new or improved infrastructure.

Hamilton alone has a $150-million identified deficit in infrastructure and we even see that when we get into our budget discussions. We just can't afford it.

We have a stand-alone police force. A lot of municipalities, particularly in small rural areas, get their policing from OPP. In 2014, the OPP will receive a salary increase of a minimum of 8.55 per cent. And I say minimum. Their agreement says the OPP will be the highest paid police force in province of Ontario. So the cost of policing is an issue.

Ours was negotiated fairly with regards to wages. It wasn't arbitrated, it was agreed upon. Which is a segue way into the other issue at AMO, which is interest arbitration. Under the current scenario, police and firefighters and some emergency workers are not allowed to strike. If there's not a voluntary agreement reached, they can go to arbitration.

The issue thus on behalf of the 444 municipalities is that process is not transparent and accountable. The hearing officer hears everything, renders a decision and does not have to give his or her reasons for why they achieved that. Too often, the solutions are what we refer to as cookie-cutter solutions. A perfect one was that Toronto achieved a settlement with their firefighters. With Fort Francis, a very small community with eight firefighters, the arbitrator reached a decision that basically mirrored the one in Toronto. It would have been a four-per cent increase in taxes in Fort Francis so they chose to lay off firefighters and reduce their force from eight down to six.

The minister of labour is indicating he's going to put in place a process where all of us around the table will have a discussion. Hopefully it will be resolved and we'll move on from there.

What we're asking for is that in interest arbitration, the hearing officer takes into consideration the economic health of a community and at the same time the settlements that have been made voluntarily between other unions within that particular community.

We have over 1,600 people from across the province from the smallest hamlets to the largest of our municipalities. We've got 50 concurrent sessions going on. In all cases, there's dialogue.

I've seen our mayor and Peggy dialoguing with other municipalities talking about possible partnership arrangements where we can reduce our costs by working together. They've had face-to-face meeting with various ministers. I helped broker a meeting between the mayor and the minister of education on some issues. We've got 21 ministers and their staff here and the mayor's able to get face to face.

I, in my capacity as president, have had personal dialogues with 17 ministers. Where it's appropriate for me, I put the case for AMO and then kind of get in a side referral for things that would benefit Hamilton. So my presidency is, in my opinion, a real asset to the city.