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The Wingham Advance-Times, 1984-10-24, Page 1NEI 1AI o Library t.. 4, Box :*, bam, Ont . ti RNA DONATION TO HOSPITAL -Margaret Casemore and Elva Ritchie of the Registered Nursing Assistants' Association at the Wingham and District Hospital presented a cheque for $1,000 last week to Tom Miller, chairman of the hospital fund-raising committee. The donation, which represents money the RNAs raised through a bake sale and a mass mailing involving stuffing, labelling and coding J5,000 envelopes for the provincial RNA association, will go toward the building pro- ject at the hospital. Miss Ritchie is president of the local RNA association while Mrs. Casemore is a member of the finance committee. Wingham, Ontario, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 1984 Property taxes in Wingham are Highest in Huron County Ont. Queen of Furrow has energy, ambition By Stephanie Levesque "Don't turn anything down because you're afraid of it". Powerful words — words that a 19 -year-old Huron County woman happens to live by. Light fixture causes fire The Wingham Fire De- partment responded to a call at 1:10 a.m. Tuesday morning at the home of David Hedley, Lot 34, Cdn. 6, East Wawanosh Township. Fire Chief Dave Crothers reported a pot -type light fixture in a bathroom ex- tended to the attic and started smoking in the in- sulation and wiring. Although there was no fire, the Hedleys contacted the local department. Mr. Crothers reported the damage was neglible. Turn back the time The young woman is Lynne Dodds of RR 1, -Seaforth, who has gone from receiving county recognition to gaining province -wide . recognition as Ontario. Queen of the Furrow. , It was only a few short weeks ago, at the 1984 Inter- national Plowing Match in Wellington County at Teviot- dale, that Lynne received her crown. The daughter of Maja and Don Dodds is a second -year student at the University of Guelph, majoring in family , studies. She has her goals set al- ready. After four years at Guelph she will take another year of university to get a This is the weekend — the time to catch up on that lost hour of sleep • when clocks moved ahead to Daylight Saving Time in April. At 2 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 28, clocks officially will be set, back one hour to read 1 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. So don't turn up an hour early for church on Sunday, • or cook the living bejeepers out of that Sunday dinner because your•guests arrive an hour later than when your stomach tells you it's time to eat. Man charged with arson A Wingham man has been charged in connection with a recent fire at the Beaver Lumber store on Josephine Street. Town police reported that Darryl Cranston, 19, of High- land Drive was arrested last Thursday eveningand charged with arson. He is scheduled to appear at provincial court in Wingham on Nov. 28. ' .The fire, which was set among wooden pallets stacked outside the lumber store, caused about $200 damage. Police are still in- vestigating other incidents in which railway ties were set ablaze, as well as a recent fire irn, a mail drop at the Wingham Post. Office. By Henry Hess Residents of the Town of Wingham hold the dubious distinction of paying the highest property taxes of any municipality in Huron County. According to a study carried out last week by The Advance -Times, a ratepayer in Wingham whose home was valued at $40,000 would have paid a total property tax bill during the last three years of $3,168.50, an average of $1,056.17 per year. This is pearly $100 a year more. than that same ratepayer would have paid in taxes for a similarly -valued home in Clinton, which has the second-highest munici- pal tax burden in the county, and $200 a year more that he (or she) would have paid for a $40,000 • house located in Exeter, which boasts the lowest taxes among thefive towns in Huron. Had the ratepayer been willing to sacrifice some services and do more teaching degree. Miss Dodds says she'll probably go to Althouse College at the Uni- versity of Western Ontario. "I want to teach family studies and English," says Miss Dodds, who adds she would like to encourage young pepple to all the education they can. She says people should never shut the door on any opportunities and relates that thought to her own ex- periences in competitions. Miss Dodds says some girls , live,,, turned down: competing in such things as the county Queen of the Furrow competition because they are afraid to give the - speech. She admits that giv- ing the first public speech is a little nerve wracking, but now speaking in front of a crowd is no bother. In fact, Miss Dodds has even preached, in church. Even if a girl enters a competition and doesn't win, the experience of public ,speaking and the inevitable interviews help in the future. Competition interviews can help one prepare for job int terviews, she says. On the Dean's List at uni- versity, Miss Dodds doesn't consider the queen com- petition a. beauty contest. Besides having been county • Queen of the Furrow for two years, she has been Seaforth Fall Fair queen. LIBERATED , Miss Dodds says she has been called a liberated per- son by some people and ad- mits she will hold a door open for a man or woman, calling it common courtesy. Please turn to Page 5 Escape serious injury Three persons escaped serious injury in two separate accidents in the Wingham area over the weekend. •Daryl Dunbar, 20, of Belgrave and Danny Beck, 19, of Wingham both were taken to . the Wingham 'and District Hospital for treat- ment of minor injuries fol- lowing an accident in East Wawanosh Township Satur- day afternoon.. ' Provincial poliee reported that Mr. Dunbar was driving along Sideroad 39 -40 -just south of Con. 6-7 when a wheel of the car he was driving dropped off the edge of the road as he was at- tempting to pass another vehicle. The car then left the road and struck a tree, in-. juring Mr. Dunbar and a passenger in the car, Mr. Beck. Damage to the vehicle, a 1974 Mercury Capri owned by William H. Glousher of Blyth, was estimated at $2,000. Malcolm Thomson, 19, of RR 1, Lucknow, escaped with minimal injuries when the vehicle he was driving into' ttle ditch and -struck az. tree along Con. 12 at the Kinloss boundary in Turn - berry Township at 12:30 a.m. on Saturday: Damage to the vehicle, a ,1977 Ford pickup owned by Bruce Thomson of RR 1, Lucknow, was estimated at $1,800. Hospital. rummage sale raises record amount A rainy day last Friday brought out the crowds to the Wingham Hospital Auxilia- ry's fall rummage sale. Donors, buyers, auxiliary workers and other helpers from the community jointly mac19, it the most successful sayet in terms of total re- ceipts. Almost $2,500 was taken in, which will enable the auxiliary to help con- siderably with providing for the care and comfort of patients at, the hospital. People from all areas ser- viced by the hospital con- tributed in various ways to the success, and patients from the whole,.area will benefit. The auxiliary reported the following receipts: ladies' clothing, $474.86; ladies' miscellaneous, $198.24; men's clothing, $385.41; shoes, $338.97; hats and purses, $111.16; children's clothing, $285.51; books and toys, $85.33; china, $366.95; furniture, $107, and draperies, $134.11 for a total of $2,487.48. The next Hospital Auxiliary rummage sale is planned for April. driving, he could have escaped with a total tax bill of just $1,244.47, an average of $414.82 a year, by living in a comparable house in Belgrave, the lowest -taxed of any of the 14 residential areas examined in the survey. The hamlets of Ethel (the figures for which came in too late to be shown in the ac- companying charts) and Bluevale were almost as thrifty, while residents of Wroxeter, Gorrie, Fordwich, Belmore and Lakelet would have paid on average about $80 a year mire in taxes for a like -valued property. Taxes in the villages examined fell generally between the levels for hamlets and those for the towns, with the exception of Blyth, where recent tax bills 'ranked third-highest' •in the county, ahead of several of the towns: • The survey,. which covers the years 1982, 1983 and 1984, confirms a commonly -held belief that Wingham ratepayers do indeed carry a heavier tax burden than their counterparts in neigh- boring municipalities, even those providing similar levels of service. Wingham (the portion im- posed by the town to pay for its own expenses and not including the school""board and county levies) at $508.66 is running at nearly 25 per cent above the average for the other four towns in the county and is almost 50 per cent higher than the corresponding average for Exeter, where municipal taxes have been consistently low during recent years. Something which the survey by itself is unable to show are the reasons for these differences, but there are a number of possible explanations. One which invites' at- tention is the relationship between the level of services provided by a municipality and the amount of property on which taxes can be levied to pay for those services. This explains, for instance, why the hamlets, which lack many of the costlier amenities provided by the Please turn to Page 5 • HIGHEST TO LOWEST PROPERTY TAXES '(Three -Year average) 1. WINGHAM (T) $1,056.17 2. Clinton (T) .964.49 3. Birth (V) 925.84 4. Seaforth (T) 925.19' 5. Goderich (T) 918.12 6. Exeter (T) ',856.86 7. Bayfield (V) 728.21 Brusse Is- (V2 655- .,84 Wroxeter (H) 527.23 Belmore/ Lakelet (H) 497.67 Gorrie (H) 496.62 Fordwich (H) 496.40 Bluevale (H) 475.17 Belgrave (H) 414.82 6. 9. 10. It also confirmed that, as expected, ratepayers in the towns, who pay for such additional services as their own police departments, generally pay higher taxes than residents of in- corporated villages. One surprise, however, was the village of Blyth, where property taxes for the past three years have run at about the same level as Seaforth's and are higher than for either Goderich or Exeter. The study also showed, as expected, that taxes paid by residents of unincorporated hamlets, usually running at the same level as township taxes or slightly above, are the lowest of any of the residential areas in the county, reflecting a corres- ponding trade-off in the level of services. Among other findings of the study: the three-year average for the municipal portion of property taxes ill (Average of property taxes paid in 1982, 1983 & 1984 on, a residential property valued at $40,000.) T = town V = village H = hamlet JOY MAIER of Fordwich is one of the first to attest to the value of the Town and Country Homemakers. She has had homemakers off and on for four years, even before her young son John was born and throughout her long battle with•cancer, which is in remission now. Jean Young, director of the homemaking agency, enjoys visiting at the Maier home and is very pleased with Mrs. Maier's progress. How the survey was done Following is an ex- planation of how the com- parison of property taxes was carried out. All five towns in Huron County were included in the comparison, as well as three of the five villages and seven hamlets. To keep the survey from growing too cum- bersome, the villages • of Hensall and Zurich, which lie in the southern portion of the county, as well as many of the more distant hamlets were not included. An arbitrary value of $40,000 was selected for the purposes of comparison. This represents the market value of a residential property in 1975, the base year for tax assessment in Huron County. A higher or lower value could have been used, but this would not have changed the relationship, between tax bills in the various municipalities. To get the comparison, the property value ($40,000) was multiplied by the Section 86 factor for each municipality, obtained from the regional assessment office. This yields the assessed value of the property in that par- ticular municipality. For example, the Section 86 factor' for Wingham is 0.08797, which means the assessment on a $40,000 property would be $3,518. In Bayfield, which has a factor of 0.05807, the assessment on a property with a similar market value would be $2,322. This assessment was then multiplied by the residential, public school mill rate for each municipality to arrive at the total tax bill. The general or municipal portion of the taxes was obtained by multiplying the assessment by the local portion of the mill rate, not including school or county levies. Mill rates were obtained from the clerk -treasurers of each of the municipalities included in the comparison. To make the comparison as fair as possible by averaging out the effects of any sudden, one-year fluctuation in the mill rates (as in the case of Howick Township, which raised its mill rates sharply in 1984 after having left them un- changed for five y rs), a three-year average was included in the study. This showed an average of the tastes for each municipality for the years 1982, 1983 and 1984 (see Table I) as well as showing what the taxes had been for each of the three years (Table II). Although it would have been interesting, no attempt was made to take the comparison back past 1982 since prior to that time there was not a common basis for assessment across the county and the comparison might have become inac- curate. One note of caution: although the same property value was used to calculate the taxes in each municipal- ity, it should not be assumed that this implies identical properties. Property values are higher in some areas, such as Goderich or Exeter, so that a $40,000 house there would be a more modest dwelling than in a town such as Wingham. On the other hand, a $40,000 property in a village or hamlet might be even more elaborate. BEA VER APPLE DAY—Terry Lediet was out Saturday morning helping his friend Cormack McKenna raise money iri the annual apple drive held by the Wingham Scouting association. The Beavers were out In full force; as the Scouts also held their fall paper drive.