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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Goderich Signal-Star, 1979-03-08, Page 1Ted Doherty, his knees bearing ' scars of the ----battle, triumphantly -removes the netting from . the basketball hoop atter. the_. GDCI junior Vikings defeated Stratford to wint e uron- Perth basketball champ nship Tuesday. More details on the sports . , oto- by,-{Da've Sykes) Lyndon resigns housing authority John Lyndon, manager, of the Huron County Housing Authority, resigned from that position Monday morning. Lyndon submitted his resignation to the county housing . authority effective immediately. He said Wednesday that he was "fed up" with everything in the job and did not want to comment on some of his reasons. He said he had been considering the move for•quite a while and just decided after a holiday -to make the decision he made. The manager said he was tired of the bureaucrady of.the job.• He conceded that on occasion he got into problems in the job but said that is true of any line of work. Harold Knisley, chairman of the housing authority,.said the board planned to advertise for a replacement for Lyndon. The chairman would not comment on the recigaa .ion Ministry won't toler Officials of the Ontario Ministry of Health have advised members of the board of Goderich's Alexandra Marine and General Hospital that the government will not tolerate any public financial support for the operating expenses of community hospitals of this province. Vice-chairman of the board Jim McCaul and Administrator of the board, Elmer Taylor on Monday confirmed this attitude of ministry spokesmen after a meeting in Toronto last Friday. ' Taylor told the Signal -Star that the ministry will recognize public funding of capital projects, but for the dayto day operating ex- penses of the'hospital, boards must stick to the funds provided through ministry guidelines. "This effectively rules out the possibility of any lotteries or public canvasses for extra money to keep beds open," says Taylor. "The ministry is firm in its decision to reach the 3.5 beds per thousand referral population. It is to be uniform across the province." Taylor explained the ministry does not want a situation arising where one community is able to have an unlimited number of hospital beds open and in active use because there is plenty of private community funding while another community must get by with much" fewer beds because private funding isn't so readily available. WRITE NOW McCaul further advised that the ministry has promised it-. will not deal with protests from hospital board members about bed closings. "This means that our only recourse is to continue to ask the people of Goderich and area to write letters of protest to the government," said McCaul, adding that alreadyministry officials have been Swamped by corres.pon dcnce from this part of the province. The' board of AM&G has •not changed its position - to protect its budget first by corn-, plying with ministry regulations by April 1,1979 and to work : secondly towards getting the ministry guidelines ' back in tune with the community's need for health care services. Both McCaul and Taylor pointed out this week that there has been a near complete changeover of medical staff in Goderich during the last„ few months, and that the new doctors who are in to town now as well as those who will come in the future, are much more interested in keeping patients in the community. There are fewer and fewer referrals to other hospital centres. McCaul said he has noticed that more surgery is• done in Goderich now because the new doctors in town are putting their trust in staff surgeons for more and more procedures instead of referring patients to out -of -area professionals. the deric 1 tepay your own w Taylor also said he'd been observing more and more maternity patients in AM&G because the newer doctors in the community enjoy the obstetrics side of their practices and are delivering more and more babies right here in the Goderich hospital. "There has been a definite change in the type of medical practice we have seen for a while," said Taylor. MORE PATIENTS There are a steadily increasing number of patients at AM&G„ Taylor said, pointing to previous hospital statistics. Even with the bed closings, Taylor 5aid_-he did not expect the number of patients to decline. "The occupancy rate will probably run closer to 90 or 95 percent then," said Taylor. Some figures show the hospital's occupancy rate running well over 100 percent in certain cir- cumstances. McCaul said 80 percent is an ideal occupancy rate and added that in the future, patients will have little choice about accommodation. There will be virtually no semi -private ac- commodation at AM&G. "People will simply be happy to get a bed, and they won't have an opportunity to select the type of accommodation they would prefer or is provided through their hospital insurance," said McCaul. There had been some question in the mind of Y administrator Elmer Taylor whether the ministry was correct in its computation of the number of bed$ that should remain open at AM&G in relation to the referral population for the hospital. Taylor said this week he has gone over some of the figures and discovered that the ministry formula .for reaching their decision is calculated on varying percentages -for different. age groups in the referral population. For in- stance, less beds per thousand referral population are allowed for ,children'under 10 than for some other groups. According to Taylor, there is .some question in his mind whether the ministry has been fair in its caculations for the age group over 65. It is a well known fact that Huron County has a high percentage of senior citizens, with Goderich and area being a popular retirement spot as evidenced by the findings of the Ontario government's housing ministry when the study was done here to determine the need for senior citizen housing. Just Monday evening, Daryl Kreuzer, project co-ordinator for the community housing branch of the ministry of housing, assured Goderich Town Council the' need for senior citizen housing had been amply demonstrated, and the ministry was committed to the housing project in Goderich to correct that situation. L STAR 132—YEAR 10 THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 1979 35 CENTS PER COPY,, Council split on Arts donation .• BY SHIRLEY J.KELLER By a slim 4-3 margin, Goderich Town Council agreed-Monda-y-even=ing to= gi'v'e -$-1; 5.00 -nova asp:-- donation to the Performing Arts Foundation for its proposed building on 5... th. Sreet and to designate an additional $1,b00 Towards the project as a discretionary item in the 1979 budget proposal. Voting in favor- were Reeve Eileen. Palmer, and Councillors Elsa Haydon, John Doherty and Brian Knights. Those opposed to the donation were Deputy -reeve Bob Allen and Councillors Stan Profit and. Jim Searis. Mayor Harry Worsen and Councillor Jim Magee were absent from the meeting. Councillor Haydon explained there was a tune_ Lrnit on he p .aj *n- der. Slime said 'f the town was contemplating a donation. to the Foundation, now would be:the most appropriate time to get involver,; She said the group most raise $50,000 before the end of March when the owner of the former Polley: Livery -Stable on South Street, Ken Hutchins who now resides in Hawaii, will return to town to settle the matter. • Haydon said if the money is not available to Hutchins at that time, the former Goderich developer still has a permit to level the building which until last summer housed Glenmark Lumber. x MrsLornthy Wn11nee of. Goderich.,. made an initial downpayment on the building last fall to ,save it from the wreckers' hammers. But she needs to raise the remainder of the down - payment by March 20_or lose possession of the property. Haydon said that to date, Foundation workers have raised over $10,000. "We will raise the required funds," Haydon insisted when the reality of the whole project was questioned by other council members. But she urged council to make its donation ewer students means fewer teachers BY JEFF SEDDON • The effects of declining enrolment were felt in Huron County for the first time Monday when the board of education reduced its teaching staff by 11 for the 1979-80 school year. In three seperate reports the board approved recommendations to reduce kindergarten staff by one, elementary staff by three and secon- dary school teaching staff by seven. The staff requirments for next yearwere determined by director •of education John Cochrane by ap- plying the pupil -teacher ratio in teaching contracts to the total number of students ex- pected to enroll in schools in September. C.ochrane..said .Monday the reduction of staff Council to slash X200,000 to hold taxes BY SHIRLEY J.KELLER Preliminary estirriates by town clerk Larry McCabe suggest that Goderich taxpayers could be in for a hefty increase in .property taxes for 1979. But those are only preliminary estimates, and town council' won't really get down to the budget nitty-gritty until Monday, evening when elected officials meet in their monthly com- mittee session. This committee meeting, however, is a public session and residents of Goderich are urged to get down to the town council chambers •on Monday evening to hear the beginning of the budget debate which is bound to result in some pointed and purposeful discussion. Finance committee chairman, Reeve Eileen Palmer, said thaf during 1978, the town operated in the black without having to borrow any money. In fact, .the municipality earned about $50,000 in interest during the year, with. the astute financial management of Clerk McCabe and his assistant, Lee Ryan. But the picture•could be a little different in 1979. Early figures show that it will take about $11/2 million of municipally raised funds to carry out all the projects that are planned in the various budgets of council. Total proposed expenditures for municipal purposes could be as much as $4,094,826 of which $2,592,482 would be raised through sources other than municipal taxation. Translated into mills, that would mean a residential mill' rate of ,122.81. for municipal. purposes, up 16.48 mills over 1978 or 15J50 percent. To hold the budget 'to a 7.8.1 percent increase or a mill rate indrease of 8.30 'mills over last year for residential assessment, would require that $100,000 must be cut from the budget. Council would Peed to trim $191,000 from budget estimates in 1979 to keep things on a par with last year. Even then, the mill rate for residential property'would increase slightly by .86 mills or one percent. It appears that Clerk McCabe and the finance committee are recommending a middle-of-the- road approach to municipal spending in 1979. The preliminary budget contained suggestions-• for' cutting $92,800 from the first expenditures draft. There are some other factors that could send even these early budget figures all out of all proportion. A few projects which have been proposed and which are deemed important by •certain segments of the municipal population would have costly impact on the total budget. Some of these are the Business Improvement Area sidewalk project; the Neighborhood Improvement ,Area project in the north-east corner of town which calls for a pumping station and road construction; the senior citizen complex on West Street; any capital expenditures proposed by the recreation board; and expenses for Founders' Day and Canada Week such as were provided -in 1978. The requisition for the Huron. County Board of Education could rise dramatically this year some council members feel, but _it has been agreed to go ahead and set the municipal priorities independently of the education budget: . The financial requirements for Huron County Council are not expected to change much from 1978. will mean layoffs for at least three secondary school teachers and possibly more. He said the Huron board has,not laid off teaching staff ill its 10 year history'addi•ng he knew of no other way of reducing staff. Cochrane explained that 'natural attrition should permit the board to reduce staff in elementary schools but there appeared little hope of that happening at the secondary level. The director said layoffs were not a certainty but were a .projection. He said the board now employs 274 teachers in the secondary panel and next year needs 267. He said several teachers are eligible for early retirement but are not required to announce their intentions until the end of May. He added that two teachers had applied for one year leave of Turn to page 22 • now, without delay. "Psychologically and otherwise itis very -important;-"- Haydon claimed: • Deputy -reeve Bob Allen said he was in a "bit of quandry". '"'97 e Said " 7esaid we wouil"not' T one centbf public funds to the arena project and we didn't. We said we would .not give one cent to the grand- stand project and we didn't. I can't see that we should support this project either • with tax- payers' money," said Allen,who-admitted he was personally in favor of the project. The deputy --reeve continued,"I can"t see that $1,500 is.going to turn this thing one way or the other. If the public wants the building, then the . public will have to pay for.it." Councillor Stan Profit seemed to echo those sentiments, although he was much Tess positive about it. "This is a sticky one," commented Profit. "Twenty-five hundred dollars' is a lot of money. It.think the whole amount should be referred to the 1979 budget discussions as a discretionary item." Councillor Jim Searis said he hoped that if the cultural centre became a reality, the Foundation would not find it necessary to "fall back on the taxpayers to keep it running". 'Cent raffia and 1Warift":Weather has cau ed some minor flooding and a ajor ice jam along the Maitland Rive. The ice jam is most Visible a pound the Maitland golf Course area which is covered with huge chunks of ice that made their way downstream this week. The ice jam begins at Saltford and extends It() the river mouth at the lake. This photo was taken at the Maitland Country Club, Monday. (photo by Dave Sykes)