East Garafraxa Mayor Allen Taylor, who last year nominated incumbent Warden Gordon Montgomery, the mayor of Mulmur, for the top Dufferin County post, has thrown his hat in the ring for the upcoming election.

Although there is a rumour that Warden Montgomery will seek a second one-year term, he could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

County wardens are elected by their peers yearly, and the weighted vote does not apply to the balloting. Unlike other county business, in which Orangeville, for example, has 13 votes between its two county councillors, the warden's election is "one person one vote."

Mr. Taylor wouldn't go so far as to say he will be elected to the position, but "no one so far has said 'no' (to lending their support).

"But I am not a good campaigner," he said, although he is now in a second term as chairman of the Rural Ontario Municipal Association (ROMA) and has been invited to serve on a nuclear waste management committee that's "putting together studies to find suitable sites for nuclear waste."

At the county, Mr. Taylor is serving his first term as chairman of the Dufferin Oaks committee, and is the county's representative to the Wellington-Dufferin- Guelph Health Unit.

The retired high school teacher and vice-principal says he's excited about the nuclear waste challenge, an undertaking that's not as simple as finding a safe dumping ground.

He says the waste has to be disposed of in such a way as to be retrievable in future. You could, for example, drop it in an abandoned mine shaft, perhaps safely, but how then do you get it out?