HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Goderich Signal-Star, 1979-03-29, Page 1Members of the Goderich Sports Committee toured the new gran-
dstand Sunday for the first time and met after to discuss fund
raising strategy. The committee has already staged a lottery to help
defray costs of the construction but clerk, Larry McCabe estimated
the group would need an additional $120,000 to clean up construction
Gus Chisholm
leaves Dearborn
Gus Chisholm has resigned his position with
Dearborn Steel Tubing. Beginning this. week,
Chisholm will be available to the firm as a
consultant and advisor until June 30,1979.
"I want to do something different," Chisholm
told -the -Signal Star. "rwenty years'in tailpipes
is alot of tailpipes." • '.
He and his wife Jean plan an extended'
vacation while Chisholm begins preparing
himself for his fourth career since coming to
Goderich. •
Chisholm came here in 1945 to work at Sky
Harbor Air Services as a mechanic. In -1950 -he -
joined Goderich Motors owned by,•the late Stan
Preyed, where he was sales manager until 1960
when. he joined Dearborn.
fir1561`he`%ok over as sales manager for
Dearborn owned by the Hotton family of
Tuscon, Arizona. He become general manager
of the firm in 1966.
Dearborn became a Canadian owned com-
pany in 1976 when the firm was purchased by
Robert Brown of Forest. Chisholm was named
executive vice president and general manager
of Dearborn at that time, and in 1978 became
executive vice-president of marketing.
"I've enjoyed the job tremendously,"
Chisholm said."Now I would like to change for
change's sake."
Election set
and bank loan charges on the project. Once council has made a
decision on whether or not to move the recreation offices' to the
grandstand the committee will proceed with fund raising activities.
(photo by Dave Sykes)
(Story on Page 20)
ur lu cuts the cuts
BY DAVE SYKES
Goderich town council met in budget session
Tuesday in a second attempt to trim the 1979
expenditures. to an acceptable level.
In a previous meeting council managed to
W delete $32,850 in expenditures, three-quarters of
which was eaten up by an additional capital
request by the recreation board, submitted
after the initial. me.eting.
Council faced a total general expenditure of
$4,086,960 for 1979, and less general revenues it
left $1,399,742 to be derived from taxation.
Those figures supplied .by clerk, Larry
McCabe, included an estimate on the school
board requisition and he confidently claimed
his projection -would be close.
Based on those figures the commercial mill
- rate would be 134.62 and residential, 114.42.
Council then deleted an additional $30,200 from
its list of discretionary items contained in the
capital budget to decrease the overall
residential rate to approximately 6.6 per cent.
The items canned from the budget included
$3,000 from the administration maintenance
and repairs budget,$13,300 for a new salt truck
box, $12,000 of the towns share to the fire hall
reserve fund and $1,900 from the parks budget
that was scheduled for parkland development.
The recre-ation board also had capital funds
scrapped as $15,000 for painting of the arena
beams was dropped as was $4,400 for new office'
furnishings.
Before more itmes were deleted from the
expenditure list council decided to wait until
the school board requisition was final. That,
could be as early as next Wednesday.
Many councillors were pleased that the
overall increase could be limited to six per cent
while the budget contained major capital ex-
penditures. Although listed as discretionary
items, $109,000 for a pumping station and road
construction in the North-East section of town
under the NIP project was left in as was $60,000
for the BIA sidewalk project.
Also $19,650 was left in for sanitary sewers in
the industrial park and $5,000 for a gateway to
the park.
Council members considered deleting many
of these items to bring the budget down to a
three per cent increase but those suggestions
met with disagreement. Councillor Elsa
Haydon disagreed with putting off many of the
projects for another year for the sake of cutting
the budget by a few per cent.
We are fooling ourselves by putting these
things off for another year," she said. " Next
year it will cost more and we don't know where
the money will come from
Councillor John Doherty echoed Haydon's
sentiments claiming that the taxpayers could
live with a six per cent increaseconsidering the
capital projects the budget included.
McCabe also cautioned 'councillors- on
deleting major capital projects from the budget
without knowing the school board budget. He
said it was up to council to decide, though,
whether to include the projects and ask for six
per cent or delete them and eb with a smaller
increase.
The only reason council is able to hold the
increase to six per cent and still have funds
available for the industrial park sewer project,
the connecting link projeet, NIP and the BIA
sidewalk project is a whopping $189,718 surplus
from 1978.
Without the surplus council would have had to
cut an additional $100,000 from the budget to
make it realistic and many of the abovi
mentioned projects would be scrapped.
The surplus resulted from increased com-
mercial and residential assessment during the
year, higher interest and discounts than was
originally estimated, expenditures equal or less
than what was budgeted for plus accumulated
surplus from other years.
McCabe said that due to the late start on
many road projects much of the money
allocated to the town was invested for 30 day
terms and realized higher interest than an-
ticipated.
Council has planned to meet next Wednesday
to again review the budget but they hope the
school board budget will be available by then.
•
132—YEAR 13
Canada's Liberal Prime Minister Pierre
Elliott Trudeau believes the time is right for a
federal election and Canadians will be going to
the polls on May 22. In the Huron -Middlesex
Riding, another three-way battle is taking
shape.
Incumbent R. E.McKinley, a Zurich area
farmer who• has carried the Progressive
Conservative banner successfully for several
terms, has stated he will seek another four-year
posting to Ottawa.
- On Monday evening, April 2, McKinley will
be speaking to the Goderich PC association
members and guests in Goderich Memorial
Community Centre at 8 pm.
The Liberal candidate will be Graeme Craig,
a Walton area farmer who was nominated 1aSt
year. Craig will be speaking in Goderich at a
Liberal association dinner meeting Thursday
evening, March 29 at the Country Club.
The New Democratic Party in Huron -
Middlesex has not named a candidate as...yet,
but a nomination meeting is expected to take
place in -Clinton Town. Hall within 16 days.
Moira Couper of Bayfield, was not available
for comment at presstime, b'ut reliable sources
say she is .a possible candidate for the Riding
Ni Ps. Archie Couper on Tuesday evening
_ confirmed his wife has been approached by
NDP association members to run for the
federal office, but would not say whether she
intends to accept the challenge.
THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 1979
35 CENTS PER COPY
.&.0. will fight Ministry edict
BY JEFF SEDDON
The Alexandra Marine and General hospital
board decided Tuesday night it would not
simply roll over and play dead for the ministry
of health.
The board took suggestions from Goderich
area residents to heart and decided to hire a
lawyer to investigate the legalities of the
ministry of health order to close active treat-
ment beds at AM&G. The suggestions from
residents were made at a special public
meeting held Monday night. The meeting was
arranged by the board to attempt to guage
public opinion on the bed cuts and find out what
residents of the area wanted the board to do.
Board chairman Jo Berry consistently
warned both the board and people at the public
meeting that although the ministry order to
close beds at AM&G was unacceptable , the
board still had to comply.
Suggestions at the public meeting ranged
from defying the ministry order to picketing
minister -of health Dennis Timbrell's office in
Queen's Park
Berry kept reminding people that the board
had to "be practical". She said it was nice to
say defy the minister of health but pointed out
that the board still had to pay staff at the
hospital. She said defiance of the bed cut order
may mean witholding of funds by the ministry.
She said if funds were not received from the
province payroll could not be met at the
hospital.
"Emotions ran high at the meeting," Berry
told the hospital board. "The general public
doesn't know all the facts and we have to be
practical," she added.
While the board failed to get a definite
solution from the public session Monday night it
did get the • impression that the public will
support them in any way. The general feeling at
the public session was that everyone was aware
of the problem but no one seems to have a
solution. The people attending the meeting
threw their support behind the board indicating
confidence in the board's plan to convince the
ministry of health not to close beds here.
Gerry Ginn said he had the same impression
after the public session. He said he had heard
lots about the problem but little about solutions.
He said he felt the key to the situation was MPP
Murray Gaunt's theory that the hospitals have
to unite. Gaunt told the meeting that hospitals
needed tounify their efforts to combat the
minsitry bed cut order
Gaunt told the meeting that hospitals "have
to hang together on this or we will all hang
Gaunt told the meeting that in Wingham the
hospital board had hired a lawyer to check into
the legalities of the ministerial order. He said
the lawyer had discovered that the government
may not have a legal right to do some ,of the
things it is doing. He said the Wingham board
had armed itself with a legal case and planned
to "negotiate hard and if they don't win go to
court".
Ginn said he felt there was a great deal of
merit in Gaunt's comments.But he pointed out
that to follow that line the AM&G board would
have to develop a plan. He said the board
needed to what it wanted to do to combat the.
ministry order and then go out and do it. He
said -the board lacks consistency in its . com-
plaints pointing out that two members of the
hospital medical staff had proposed two dif-
ferent concerns about the ministry order.
"We should know what we're after and get
behind it." said Ginn.
Doctor Michael Conlon told Ginn that
basically what ,the: hospital staff and board
wanted was to be left alone. He said the hospital
didn't want to cut any beds and wanted to be
left on its own to operate AM&G according to
community needs.
Dr. Bruce Thomson told the board thatit was
clear from Monday night's meeting that the
public supported AM&G and opposed the
ministry: order:. He said for years the hospital
had been underutilized by doctors and patients
in Goderich and that situation was changing.
He said the town was getting more doctors •and
that those doctors were making proper use of
the hospital. He pointed out that until the
hospital is properly used doctors won't know
what it is they want at the facility.
mpeople Thomson said that eople in Goderich are
informed and sophisticated and do not ar-
bitrarily
rbitrarily take a doctor's word for things. He
said doctors" can't convince people to enter a
hospital if the people don't feel they•need to be
admitted. He said people in Goderich suspect
"trickery" by the doctors and that the doctors
ability to administer health care ,has been
eroded.
Thomson added that the ministry of health
order to cut beds added to ,that erosion. He said
Turn to page 20 •
About 300 people jammed into the auditorium
at the Goderich Arena Monday night when the
Alexandra Marine and General hospital board
held a public meeting to discuss hospital bed
cuts. The board wanted to guage public opinion
of the ministry of health order to close 15 active
treatment beds at AM&G by April 1. It also
1
wanted to find 'out 1 t .e pub c supporte i the
board in a battle against the bed cuts and how
• that battle should be fought. Here Gerry Zur-
brigg, head of the community action committee
of the board, informs the meeting of actions to
date taken by the board. The panel for the
discussion consisted of (from left) board
•
chairman Jo Berry, nursing head Joyce Shack,
Huron -Bruce MPP Murray Gaunt, board
member Bruce Potter, Huron -Middlesex MPP
Jack Riddell, Zurbrigg, hospital administrator
Elmer Taylor and chief of medical staff br.
Ken Lambert. (photo by Jeff Seddon) 30
P