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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTimes Advocate, 1992-04-08, Page 2Pace 2 Times -Advocate, Aprt 8, 1992 Reassessment increases town's share of fire budget EXETER - The Town of Exeter will be seeing a "five to six percent increase" in its share of paying for fire department services this year. Reeve Bill Mickle noted this in- crease was not only due to the reas- sessment of Exeter and the rest of Huron municipalities, but because Exeter grew more last year than the three townships which share the Exeter and Area Fire Department. In fact, said Mickle, Exeter's share of the service cost went up as much as Usborne Township's went down. Under the -cost-sharing agreement, Exeter will pay $217,695 this year far fire services, Usborne will pay $98,345, Stephen Township $16965, and Hay $16,995. The fire board, reported Mickle, did decide to uphold town council's request to keep the fire chiefs posi- tion a member of town staff, rather than make him entirely an employ- ee of the fire board. Stephen repre- sentative Tom Tomes suggested the subject be discussed next year when the board reassesses its cost sharing system. However, councillor Ben Hoo- genboom asked council why coun- cillor Robert Drummond voted against council's request at The fire board meeting. "When it comes to an issue to be voted on, I vote according to my conscience," said Drummond.. "I do not feel in this instance...that I received an ultimatum from this council...that I should vote this way? Other council members pointed out to Drummond that he ought to have voted according to council's decision. Councillor Ervin Sillery said he voted according to council's opinion "whether I agreed with it or nor. Councillor Tom Humphreys ad- vised "you've got to abide by coun- cil" although you might not agree on it? Councillor Dave Urlin agreed, "that's not your position either to abstain. You represent council on that board." "We were elected by the people of Exeter to do the best for Exeter," said reeve Bill Mickle, adding that when counncil'decides an issues, its representatives should respect that decision. Drummond said there was no mo- tion for council to direct its fire board representatives how to vote on the fire chief issue, but Mickle said it is understood that any coun- cil resolution reflects council's wishes. "A resolution to instruct - that shouldn't be necessary," said Mick - le. Mayor Bruce Shaw said if discus= cion at a meeting reveals informa- tion that might change council's po- sition, then the issue should be tabled to bring it back to council, but otherwise representatives are "behoves" to vote as a member or council, not an individual. Boundary negotiations on hold GRAND BEND-,IfsimdtVibe drawing board far Stephen Town- ship, Grand Bend and 'Baaanquet Township as far as boundary nego- tiations are concerned. Representatives from those three municipalities, along with members of the Lambton County Boundary Application Committee are in the midst of trying to decipher a recent letter from the Minister of Munici- pal Affairs. On February 6, Dave Cooke sent a letter to the three municipalities, along with Thedford and Huron County stating there were several areas he felt had to be resolved. "Everybody has a different view of what that letter said," explained Grand Bend clerk -administrator Paul Turnbull. He added the committee is under the impression they will have to get back together and resolve some is- sues pointed out by Cooke. "The Boundary Committee has taken it upon themselves to report back to the ministry," said Turn- bull. Negotiations between the three municipalities have been ongoing for several years and the final re- port, which was released in late Au- 1 Hay issues agricultural grants ZURICH - Hay Township coun- cil has approved five grants for lo- cal agricultural organizations, total- ling $970. While some local councils have orbit .wismiliallagg the amount of Gamoiel armaeitibey will be offer- ing local non-profit groups in the coming years, Hay council agreed to grant the Huron County Farm and Home Safety Association $50, the Hensall Calf Club $20. the Zu- rich Agricultural Society $350, the Hensel( South Huron Agri^ultural Society $200, and the Federation of Agriculture $350. gust, took three fns to complete. Basically, what ifie report states, is that Grand'Bead will expand its borders into both Bosanquet and Stephen. Grand Bend is to annex 150 acres into Bosanquet and 450 acres into Stephen, as of January 1, 1993. Among the points which Cooke would Wale arse cleared up is the establishment of a Liaison Commit- tee to be named the Grand -Bend Li- aison Committee which would have ,representatives from the three mu- nicipalities and meet at least once a month. Suspended sentence following accident EXETER - A Woodham man received a sus- pended sentence in Justice of the Peace Court in Exeter Tuesday after pleading not guilty to a charge of disobeying a stop sign. James F. Tomlinson was charged December 17 following an accident at the interaction of Highway 4 and County RoaA4L The court heard that Tomlinson was travelling east on County Road 4 argued' ,00 p.m. during heavy, blowing snow. Aslesi Oproeched the in- tersection he braked but was unable to stop and was struck by a ve- hicle northbound on Highway 4, driven by Allen Rollings. Justice of the Peace Len Obokota issued Tomlinson a suspended sentence, citing weather and visibilitg factors. No license Michael W. Mailloux of Lion's Head entered a guilty plea to a charge of driving with no license. The court heard the accused had been stopped on January 1 on Highway 4 in Usborne Township, and when asked for his license, produced one that had expired. Mailloux was fined $102.75 with 120 days to pay. Speeding Darrin Lempriere of Varna pleaded guilty to a charge of speeding, after he was stopped on January 3. Police told the court radar read- ings registered 109 and 110 km/h in an 80 km zone. Lempriere was fined $52.50 and given 90 days to pay the fine. Speeding George Alton of Mississauga entered a guilty plea to a charge of travelling 89 km/h in a 60 km zone. Police told the court they on October 12 their radar registered the vehicle of the accused travelling 119 and 110 km/h. Alton was given 120 days to pay the fine of $213.75. No license Liana Goldsworthy of Hensall pleaded guilty to driving with no insurance. The court heard police were called to investigate an accident on March 3 in which the accused was involved. When asked for her li- cense, the accused said she had left her purse at home and was given until 6 p.m. to bring it to the station. Fuhrer investigation showed her license had expired February 19, 1992. Goldsworthy was given 300 days to pay her fine of $153.75. Young offender on probation after assault EXETER - A 16 year old area youth was wrested in the 'town of Exeter for assault and beach of probation last Monday. The youth was sentenced in Goderich Young Offender Court on April 2 and re- ceived six months Open Custody. The Exeter Police breathalizer was kept busy over the weekend with officers conducting several breath tests for alleged drinking and driving offences. A liquor seizure from an area youth reached in a 12 hour licence suspension for registering a warn on the Alert tester. Last week the Exeter Police re- posed an assault on an 8 year old girl on March 26. The investigation is now complete and this occur- rence is unfounded, say police. These types of occurrences, how- ever, do happen and the department asks that anything suspicious be re- ported to the police. Letters to Editoi Ubraries also at zero increase Dear Sir; I am writing in response to your article, "County Taxes to Jump 6.3%," on page 1 of your paper of April 1, 1992. In it, you wrote, "Waste management, social ser- vices and library were the only Ahme departments which did not tome in with a zero percent bud- get." ud- t3 I would like to point out that the library did indeed meet the zero percent guideline set by County Council, which was almost a 10% cut to the amount required to maintain county wide library ser- vice at the 1991 level. The most obvious service re- ductions are at the seven branch librar- ies to h_closed, the -- ,.-s-- S17,000 dt+atease to the beak bud- get, and the 810,000 decrease to the branch equipment budget. Beth Ross County Librarian Huron County Library Innocent until proven guilty Dear Editor; On page two of your April 1 edi- tion is an article entitled "Quick Action Needed to Protect Children from Sexual Abuse." Midway through the article is a statement, referring to Graham, which states "his innocence was proven and the case was dropped". The inference is that Graham was considered to be guilty until prov- en innocent. Let's go back to rational behavi- our, in which a person is consid- 111) ered to be inno- cent until proven 1 Instead of west- ing money creating solutions looking for problems, our tax dollars might bet- ter spent in steering us away from total bankruptcy. Sincerely Donald M. Jenkins DIAMONDS encourages accessibility Dear Editor: As consumers, physically chal- lenged people in Huron County prefer to support our -communities by shopping locally, Unfortunate- ly, this is often made impossible by physical barriers - steps, heavy doors, narrow doorways and aisles, high counters, etc. Disabled consumers are often forced to trav- el to cities where shopping is more accessible. DIAMONDS - United Physical- ly Challenged People in Huron County - welcome dialogue with business owners and managers to discuss ways in which their prem- ises can be made more open to dis- abled consumers. Also, if businesses that are ac- cessible include an access symbol in their advertising, physically chal- lenged customers would been to patmnize their establish- `� ments. You may be ask- ing, "Why should we make an effort to make our premises accessible when we don't see any disabled people around?" The reality is that there are many disabled people in No m Dear Sir, I would like to take this opportu- nity to comment on the situation at General Coach, Hartsell, whereby the Company has asked for an im-• mediate wage roll -back in late Jan- uary of $2.50 and/or bepefrts from its hourly -rated employees; with saidquest being turned down by the wrkers. Over the past several weeks I have followed with interest a num- ber of articles/letters to the editor which have been printed in local newspapers, including yours, con- cerning this matter. Statements and opinions have been made by the Union representing hourly workers, by the local management .sad by a fellow employee of mine, ,pttlining respective concerns. One load viler contained,* imte fawn Mr. Intense, Generalof the Hensel) plant. ) S made by him clearly inferred that the Union's spokesperson Mr. Sal- vona had provided false or mis- leading information to one of the papers involved, concerning cur- rent wages and benefits. The Exet- er Times Advocate in fact printed an open apology to Mr. Imaase for printing "a number of items re- garding wagc negotiations whiph appear to be incorrect." This could be likened to the pot calling the kettle black... as a nine year employee of General Coach I can assure any reader that Mr. Sal- vona "did not" misrepresent the facts. My wages do not fall within the ranges stated by the company, nor does any other employee's wages at this time, in actual fact these people are not scheduled to receive the wages stated by Mr. Imanse until April. So who is real- ly guilty of being incorrect? I've discussed what has been printed with a broad range of hourly em- ployees and most were very an- noyed with the fact that Mr. 'manse would have the public think we are higher paid than we actually are. More importantly, the original group of about 100 who were asked for concessions are not fullyrepresented by his state- ments. About 40 persons are at this time laid off and if recalled af- our communities, but inaccessibili- ty keeps them out of sight. May we work together to enable physically challenged consumers to support local business people. The DIAMONDS would be will- ing to act as consultants and to ad- visebusiness owners how to make their premises more convenient for the physically challenged. If you are fere ed please call 1-800- 267-0535 br contact us at the fol- lowing addresses: Sincerity, Ron Airdrie, Glen McLachlan DIAMONDS; Co -Chairpersons ore concessions ter April their wages will not in many cases be as high as Mr. Imanse's figures. The company isn't 111) giving the reader- ship all of the facts in this matter, to the detriment of the workers involved. Many of our people have alieady been subjected to verbal rebuking by persons in the community because we collectively chose to stand up to our employer and agreed that we wouldn't give our leadership the mandate to reo- pen our collective agreement and thereby accept wage concessions amounting to a 22% roll -back, re- gressing our real earnings to the level we enjoyed in 1984. No **t . tie are those who will brand us as "irresponsible un- ionists", as "greedy persons lucky to have a job, always wanting more". I've heard it all before, the familiar cry. yes, we are lucky to have a job, yes we do make more money than many less fortunate, but there we many among our com- munity who make far higher wages than we do, including Mr. Imanse. I would remind anyone of this school of thought that many of the benefits which ALL workers enjoy today, whether unionized or not, carne as the direct result of efforts by orga- nized labour to create legislation such as Employment Standards and Occupational Health and Safety laws to protect workers from uncar- ing employers. 71ie moderate wages at issue here and which our company wants to slash contribute toward the prosper- ity of our communities as a whole. When our Union's ludeip was asked for these co they were told in no uncertain terms that failure to obtain same would result in closure of the plant; employees would be recalled to work out their notices in lieu of termination pay. Slightly more than half of these people have been recalled to date without anyone receiving such no- tice, business as usual. In the past nine years the union- ized employees have agreed to four wage freezes; when most workers A across Canada enjoyed increases in line with the cost of living we went without. Once we were locked nut at Christmas for 11 weeks because we asked that our wages be kept in line with inflation. Moreover, dur- ing the boom years for our indus- try, •'86 to '89 we busted out butts and made a lot of money for this company, putting out a talky product we were proud of, b. Gond to none, but we continued to give concession when asked. Wage concessions will not save our plant; most of the workers know what many of the real prob- lems are and feel the sooner they are addressed the better. Readers ought to consider the fact that workers in a General Coach plant in B.C. were %Wendy lucky enough to nevi* wage increases it ti new contract which nearly equal the a►nount of the concession we are asked for.. Agreeing to reduced wages will only serve to lower the standard of living in our communi- ties; this is not fair to us, to you our children who are the workers of tomorrow. The $100 a week that Mr. Imanse is asking me to give up is that much less for me to spend in my community, perhaps I would no longer be able to afford the lux- ury of buying your paper. In my opinion it is time our poli- ticians addressed the issue of Amercian owned companies using threats and intimidation to control workers and to maximize returns to shareholders, no matter what the cost to workers' families. The cost this time to local management at the Coach is "complete lack of credibility". We the workers have decided it is better to chance losing our jobs rather than compromise ourselves further, gh is enough. We have shown in past that we cion make money f this com- pany and all we want is to contin- ue to produce a top quality product for a fair remuneration. As one fel- low worker rather succinctly put it. "If I am going to regress back to working for 1984 wages 111 do it for a Canadian. Kelly O'Connor RR 2 Ailsa Craig 1 1