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The Citizen, 1987-11-04, Page 1Canada Post promises to change its ways BYTOBY RAINEY Ethel residents turned out in force last week to show Canada Post that they do not intend to take any threat to their post office lying down. Serving Brussels, Blyth, Auburn, Belgrave, Ethel, Londesborough, Walton and surrounding townships. VOL. 3 NO. 44 WEDNESDAY. NOVEMBER 4, 1987.45 CENTS Fire badly damages Ethel area home A Grey Township Fireman sprays water onto the smouldering remains of a collapsed roof on the home of Terry and Gail Sproul near Ethel on Monday. Fire of unknown origin heavily damaged the main part of the house but a large new addition to the back was unharmed. Huileft's Jewitt seeks top job John Jewitt of RR 1, Londes- boro, has stated his intention to seek the position of chairman of the Huron County Board of Education at its inaugural meeting next month. Currently serving as the board’s vice-chairman, Mr. Jewitt is the school trustee for Hullett and McKillop Townships and for the Town of Seaforth. He declared his intention at the board meeting in Clinton on Monday, and asked for the support of his fellow-trustees. At the same time, present chairman Art Clark of Wingham Alarmed by recent reports that the crown corporation intends to eliminate most of Canada’s rural post offices over the next ten years by offering untenable contracts to post office operators, more than declared his intention to step down, returning to the status of trustee for the remainder of his term in office. The Wingham, Howick and Turnberry trustee has served for twoyears as chairman of the board, and as vice-chairman for two years just previous to that. Joan Van Den Broek of RR 4, Goderich, trustee for the town­ ships of Goderich and Colborne, announced that she would seek the vice-chairmanship at the Decem­ ber 7 meeting. Mrs. Van Den Broek Continued on page 28 150 angry citizens packed the Ethel Community Hall last Thursday to hear a Canada Post spokesman try to explain the situation, and in the end, to offer concessions which served to satisfy them for the Fire about noon on Monday caused very heavy damage to the home of Terry and Gail Sproul on the 10th of Grey township, just at the junction of County Rds. 16 and 19. There was no one home when the fire broke out and Grey Township Fire Department received the fire call from a passer-by on the highway. Firemen said the blaze was well underway by the time they arrived and an upstairs window blew out just as they were getting set up to fight the fire. Deputy Chief Gary Earl said Monday night that the fire seemed to have started in an upstairs Blyth rec agreement problems solved Problems with the Blyth and District Community Centre Board agreement seemed to have been solved when representatives of five area municipalities met at the Centre October 27, although only when all councils approve the revised agreement will the matter be settled for sure. Full councils from Blyth, Hul­ lett, Morris, East Wawanosh and WestWawanoshsat down to go over the agreement clause by clause to iron out problems. The meeting had been requested by Hullett council. HullettReeveTom Cunningham led off the townships’ response to the proposal pointing out a number of problems “of a fairly minor nature’’. The agreement seemed to give the Blyth clerk-treasurer a vote on the committee and this put the clerk-treasurer in a bit of a difficult position, Reeve Cunning­ ham said. His council also felt, he said, that the chairman of the proposed board should have a vote (the agreement said the chairman would only vote in the event of a tie vote). Since the board will be working under the Municipal Act and the chairman of council (the reeve or mayor) has a vote, then the recreation chairman should also have a vote, he said. Reeve Cunningham felt the percentages of arena use used calculate the sharing of costs between the five municipalities should be set up according to this year’s figures. He also felt there should be some mechanism for dissolving the board if such should moment. Richard Bowness, Canada Post’s manager of community and media relations for the Huron Division, said that the corpora­ tion’s plan is “based on the harsh bedroom of the older section of the house but no cause has been pinpointed. The fire burned through most of the roof on the west side of the house and damage was also done to the east part of the roof both from the fire and from the work firemen had to do to get at the blaze. There is a large modern addition at the rear of the house and firemen said little damage had been done to that part of the house. Deputy Chief Earl said he couldn’t give an estimate of the damage and at press time insur­ ance inspectors had still not visited the site. be necessary at some point in the future. Reeve Cunningham also said his council thought it would be preferrable if all area councils had an elected member as part of their delegation to the board. The proposal had set up the new board exactly as the current one in which some municipalities have both council members and designated citizens on the board and Morris township is represented only by citizens. Morris Reeve Doug Fras­ er pointed out that his council has to deal with arena boards not only in Blyth but in Brussels, Belgrave and Wingham. Itwas Morris township, of all the townships, that had the strongest criticism of the proposal, not so much the agreement itself but of the cost of operating the Blyth facility. Reeve Fraser expressed uneasiness of agreeing to a percentage of the costs of the arena, noting in Brussels the township has been given a set amount of $4,000 a year to contribute to recreation costs. (The proposal would break down costs on the basis of the last available statistics on the home municipality of the users: Blyth 32 per cent, Hullett 25, Morris and East Wawanosh 17 each and West Wawanosh, nine percent. “Whenyou set up the budget areyougoingtosticktoit,’’ he asked meeting chairman Bill How- son of Blyth, “or are you going to expectthe townships to pick up the deficit.” We have too many arenas Continued on page 28 economic fact that we have to break even and can no longer afford to run small rural post offices which are resulting in a haemorrhaging of federal funds.” But he admitted that the post office had “dropped the ball on some occasions’’in its dealings with several rural post offices in recent weeks, and promised that his employer would try to identify these cases and try to rectify them - even to the extent of re-negotiating contracts that have already been signed. Mr. Bowness also promised that Ethel’s interim postmaster Doreen Suter would be given an extra 90 days to consider the terms of the franchising contract she had ori­ ginally been told to sign by November 1, andthatfrom now on, public meetings would be held in any community in which Canada Post is considering achange in post service. “The90-dayrule(of noticfe of change) has not been as rigorously applied as it might have been in some cases. We’re not perfect,” Mr. Bowness admitted. “But we’re not the Draconian monsters we’ve been painted. From now on, we’ll make sure that any action we contemplate will be fully discussed with the community in a public meeting, so people can get their feelings out in the open.” “Andrightnow, lamstarting the clock ticking to give Ms. Suter 90 days to decide what she wants to do. I think we can come to terms that will be acceptable to the post office and good for the people of Ethel,” he concluded. The solid support for Ms. Suter and for the retention of the Ethel post office was very gratifying to Lorraine Robinson, the local busi­ nesswoman who organized the meeting and acted as its chairman. Although Ms. Suter had told people right from the start that she wouldsign Canada Post’scontract, she made no bones about the fact that the terms of the agreement, which she estimated would net her about 80 cents per hour, were going to be hard to live with. Making the terms of the contract known was Miss Robinson’s first priority, and she made sure that the protest meeting received as wide publicity as possible, with committee members notifying the media in the surrounding area, as well as both London and Kitchen­ er-Waterloo daily papers and television stations. She also con­ tacted postmasters and people from other Huron County villages which have been reputed to be on Canada Post’s “hit lits”, and asked Viola Higgs to attend the meeting asguest speaker. Mrs. Higgs is the secretary of the Continued on page 17 Rail hearing postponed A hearing into the proposed closure of the Canadian National rail line from Listowel to Wingham through Brussels has been post­ poned, the Canadian Transport Commission announced last week. The hearing was to have taken place yesterday (Nov. 3) in Wing­ ham but has been postponed to Dec. 1. The CTC willalsohold a hearing on closure of the rail line from Harriston to Douglas Point on Dec. 5. Itwas tohave been heard on Nov. 5. CN closed the portion of the Listowel line west on Wingham to Kincardine in 1983. The railway says an average of 110 carloads of freight a year used the Listowel- vVingham line from 1984 to 1986. The railway says it lost $904,975 during that time.