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The Goderich Signal-Star, 1979-02-01, Page 63 PAGE 6—GODERICH SIGNAL -STAR, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1 , 1979 Spend $25,000 now -save millions later BY JEFF SEDDON Huron County council learned Friday that it could spend $25,000 and save the county houing industry millions of dollars in interest. Months of waiting for approval for housing projects in the county can be avoided and huge interest payments on money, raised _ by developers to finance those projects can be saved according to a report given council by the county planning board. The project basically turns approval power for housing projects in Huron County over to county council. Any projects now planned for the county have to go to the ministry of housing for final ap- proval and under the suggested system final approval, if no objections to the d_ evelo-pment are lodged, would rest with council. The bulk of the savings would be realized • by avoiding the provincial approval. Many plans clear the red tape of planning locally only to sit ' on the desk of the minister of housing for months. .Developers are not permitted to start building until final ap- proval is given by the province and end up. waiting an undetermined amount of time. County planner Gary Davidson said the ap- proval by council could result in "enormous savings". He said it could chop six months off the waiting period that is a thorn in the sides of developers. He said the savings may be passed on to consumers meaning slightly cheaper housing but pointed out that any decision to pass those savings on would be made by developers. The planner said the project came b.efore council because if council decided it wanted to go ahead with it the county planning department would have to clear up all its outstanding work by Searls ... • from page 3 cards are played by the night crew". Councillor James Magee agreed with Allen claiming "there was not a dollar to be saved" and that the split shift Would be "hard on equipment". Councillor Stan Profit supported the split shift idea claiming some snow removal could only be done at night. He said the crews simply could not move some snow during their , present working hours because of -parked cars. Profit said he had come to his...barber shop. on The Square on more than oneoccasion over town streets that were -41ike' "skating rinks". Profit said he never could understand why the town did' the core area first when it -plowed streets pointing out .that if a -person doesn't live near The Square how are they -supposed to get uptown if their streets, aren't plowed. • Councillor Elsa Haydon reminded council that the discussion was about a group of town employees not some machinery. She pointed out that there appeared to be a "certain disregard" for the em- ployees.When suggestions were made to have this man work this day and that manwork that day. Haydon said it was that type of treatment that made employees join unions. "Treat people as people," she urged council. Searls' motion was defeated but the coun- cillor may not be through with his idea. He did not say he planned totake the matter back to council but indicated that many of the points raised against his motion were questionable. He said he is still convinced the town could save money by going to a split shift and would get better snow removal to boot. He questioned Allen's statement that a split . shift had been tried before in Goderich. He said he had checked around and had been told that there had been no attempt at a split shift in at least the past eight years. He added that if the town was not prepared to at least try the split shift how. could anyone say it wouldn't work. He said he felt efforts should be made to prove beyond a doubt that the split shift won't save money. Searls said the town pays overtime to have the crews move the snow and that overtime has to' be paid because it takes the men twice as long to remove... it - because. of traffic. He added that comments were • made suggesting the crews would have nothing to do at night if there was no snow. "What the hell do the men do in the daytime, when there's Ino snow?" '- • .+ck,Pd. He said he could think of lots of things to occupy the night crew if there was no snow.. to move. He Suggested painting park benches and outdoor equipment in preparation for spring and cleaning up the fire trucks. He said he was in the fire hall recently and noticed the trucks were filthy. "The town's got a lot of dollars tied up in that fire equipment," -lie said. The councillor also can't agree with the suggestion that there would be no way to keep tip the -practice of putting one man on each piece„ of equipment. He said that practice was foolhardy pointing out that the men should be able to handle ,any piece of equipment the town owns. "How would°it be if the police wanted a car for every cop?" he asked. "Do we buy ten cruisers? If a guy on the work crew goes 'oh holidays do we put his equipment in mothballs? The men should be trained on all the equipment." • Searls said the only way the work crew can keep ahead of the snow removal is to have a reliable system worked out. He said there is no way road superintendant Stan Meriam can drive around town jotting down notes on particularly bad areas to have the men come by later to fix them up. He said there should be, a system worked out so the snow is automatically cleaned up and no bad areas ailowed to develop. "The road superin- tendant and the com- missioner of works should work out a schedule that the men can folio* during the day and at night," said Searls. "If they can't do that what are we paying them for?" he asked. He added that he felt the suggestion that the night crew would not work without supervision was nonsense. He said factories that have night shifts do .not keep supervisory "staff on top of employees all ` night. Searls said he didn't think the town crews needed somebody to "stand over them 'to make sure they worked". Searls said the town had passed a bylaw requiring people to keep their cars off the streets at night to permit streets to be cleaned of snow. He said the bylaw keeps the streets free of parked vehicles., all night but there '`are no plows operating. He said he felt his suggestion for the split shift complements the no parking bylaw. He also didn't feel a split shift would send the crews into a union adding that he was `elected by the people of Goderich not the employees". , "If' I can save tax- payers money that's what I'm there fort" he said. , January 1. He said a junior planner would have to be hired by the county by the fall of 1979 to permit someone in the department to take over responsibilities created by the approval takeover. In a report to council the planning board said the total cost of the change would be about $25,000. The initial setup of the system will cost about $1,500 and the salary of the junior planner to be hired is about $16,000. The remainder of the money will be used to set up the administration process to be followed locally. The ministry of housing is eager enough to give local governments ap- proval of developments to give those governments, grants to set up systems to allow those approvals to be given.' Ministry officials 'indicated that grants are available from the province for such a move locally. In its report planning board said'' the grants have only been suggested and no firm corri- mitments or amounts IMMINNINNIM Our Entire ■NNINuIinimeis. 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