Feature Article - October 11, 2007 Feature Article - October 11, 2007

KGH in Crisis: but Not for the First Timeby Jeff Green

The image that springs to mind when Joe de Mora, CEO of Kingston General Hospital, and Dr. Peter Munt, the head physician, described the current state of the institution at a recent media day, is that of the daily traffic jam on the Don Valley Parkway in Toronto.

Every morning the parkway fills up at about the same time, and eventually a backlog develops. Only when a sufficient number of cars have gone through does the bottleneck lessen.

At KGH, the bottleneck is represented by the emergency room. “The emergency room is a barometer of the whole hospital,” said Dr. Paul Dungey, the program director of emergency medicine at KGH.

Until a couple of years ago, there was a delay of about 3-4 hours for patients to move out of the emergency room to a hospital room once the emergency team had determined they needed to be admitted to the hospital.

“Now it takes an average of 16 hours,” said Dungey.

On some mornings, there are patients lined up in emergency waiting for space in the hospital, and if they are not cleared before the daytime rush of ambulances and walk-in traffic, people can get stacked up waiting for treatment. “We don’t have ambulances lined up six deep like they do in some larger urban centres,” said Dungey, “but we are getting there.”

The backlog at emergency is due to many factors, according to hospital officials. For one thing, there are patients staying in some of the 454 beds at KGH who should be in long-term care facilities, but there is a shortage of beds in those facilities, leaving some patients ‘parked’ in expensive hospital beds that are needed for other patients.

As the tertiary care centre for Eastern Ontario, KGH serves a large geographic region, 500,000 to 600,000 people, well beyond the City of Kingston, Frontenac County and the surrounding region. This population is older and sicker than other populations in the province. This leads to pressures on many parts of the hospital.

The intensive care unit at the hospital contains 21 beds. At about 11 o’clock in the morning on the day the media visited, all but two of those beds were occupied.

Down at the Cancer Care Centre of Eastern Ontario, staff struggle to juggle patients in the 15 chemotherapy chairs, and nursing staff struggle to make up correct dosages in a miniscule pharmacy as the patient load keeps growing.

Alastair Lamb, the program operational director for Oncology, said the “Cancer Care Centre was built in the 1970’s. At the time, the patient load was several hundred per year. It is now 3,500 and is growing by 3% per year.”

The 21-bed paediatric unit was established in 1999 when the department was moved over from Hotel Dieu hospital as part of a restructuring program. It has occupied temporary quarters since that time, leading to inefficiencies.

For example, the unit contains mostly 4-bed hospital rooms. With a patient population of boys and girls aged from very young all the way to 17, it is a challenge not only to ensure that boys and girls are separated, but also that teenagers are kept apart from very young children.

The media day at the hospital was part of an advocacy campaign the hospital administration initiated aimed partially at gaining public support in KGH’s attempts to secure more government funding.

“It appears now that we are in a crisis,” said CEO Joe de Mora, “but this is not the first time this has happened in the 160-year history of the hospital.”

De Mora said that in looking at some of the administrative archives of the hospital, he has seen minutes of meetings from 30 and 60 years ago that read “as if they could have been taken from meetings held six months ago. So we have faced financial problems in the past.”

The situation is a bit different now, however. The hospital is in need of some major redevelopment, and the good news is that approvals are now being given for major renovations.

The Cancer Care Centre will be undergoing a $50 million upgrade. The dingy basement, with no natural light, that holds the chemo-room and pharmacy will be replaced by a spacious 39-person capacity second floor room. As people undergo chemotherapy they will have a view of Lake Ontario. The new centre will take five years to build, but construction is scheduled to start soon.

Approvals have been secured for seven more intensive care unit beds, and the paediatric ward will be replaced with a proper paediatric centre, with construction starting next spring.

These new facilities are designed to be able to handle more patients, more efficiently, and should cut down on the per-patient costs.

“We are happy that the redevelopment is now underway,” de Mora said. “We would have been in a better situation if it had been done ten years ago, because we are now facing a large increase in patient load, which we will be dealing with while undergoing construction. If the work had already been done, we would be able to deal with the load more easily. But we are now facing an operational crisis as we undergo redevelopment.”

The solution seems to be more money, according to the hospital administration.

“By all efficiency measures we are doing very well,” de Mora said, “but we are in a budget deficit and we need more operating funds.”

The hospital is seeking an increase in annual operating funds in the range of $40 million.

“We are not asking for money at the expense of other parts of the healthcare system, however,” Joe de Mora said. “The hospital is the location of last resort for patients. Improved funding for Family Health Teams and Community Support Services in rural areas is just as important. We are certainly not saying give us all the money and ignore those other services which help keep people out of hospital, which is better for them and for the healthcare system.”

Letters - October 25, 2007

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Letters - October 25, 2007

Letters

October 25Re: Big Bull Moose, Judith BoutilierBig Bull Moose

With reference to an ad in your October 18, 2007 issue: 1st BIG BULL MOOSE:

What is happening to our society? Do people now celebrate the killing of an animal? I have no problem with hunters going out and shooting game in season but to brag and have parties to celebrate is another thing. It’s people like this that give hunters a bad reputation. I personally do not hunt and have no problem with people who do, but I have a problem with the publishing of an ad like this.

Judith Boutilier

Feature Article - October 4, 2007 Feature Article - October 4, 2007

Provincial Election 2007: A Voter's Guide to LFL&A.

This is the final issue of the Frontenac News before the provincial election on October 10. In order to help voters as they consider whom to vote for, we have included articles that provide a bit of background and some of the policy positions taken by Rolly Montpellier (Green), Randy Hillier (PC), Ross Sutherland (NDP), and Ian Wilson (Liberal). We could not reach Stella Postma (Family Coalition Party) early this week, but we did receive a letter from her, which is reprinted below.This will be the first provincial election in the new riding Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington and after it is over we will be represented by a first time MPP. The riding is listed as one of 14 “ridings to watch” by the National Post, and is either listed as too close to call, or as a riding which is expected to go PC in a close vote by various election prediction organizations. The local election results will not be printed in next week’s paper, which will be at the printer’s on Election Day, but we will post the local results at Frontenacnews.ca as soon as they come in.

Family Coalition Party: Stella Postma

Thank you for taking the time to read this introduction of myself as a candidate for the Family Coalition Party (FCP) in the electoral district of Lanark, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington. I have resided in the Addington County for 20 years and the first 17 years as an entrepreneur in the tourist sector of the Land o’ Lakes region. I have decided to run for the FCP mainly because of the referendum, which represents the real chance for the FCP to have a level playing field and fully participate in the political discussion in Ontario. A Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) has been successful in many countries. The FCP has existed for 20 years and have strived to alert the faith-based citizens of the declining morals and culture.

The FCP stands for 1. Upholding the Traditional family as a natural institution based on marriage. 2. Marriage as the union between a man and a woman. 3. Protection of life from conception to natural death. 3. Parental rights in the education and upbringing of their children. 4. The right to public Practice of personal freedoms of: conscience, speech, association, and faith. 5. The right to own property. For more detailed platform principals go to the website www.FamilyCoalitionParty.com.

Speaking for myself concerning Family and coming from a large family situation, I know how important principles are in sustaining a strong family unit. The family has been under considerable changes in many ways in the last decade. There .are many issues in this election campaign but the word "family" seems to be purged from it; it’s not politically correct and in Ontario Law every reference to real marriage and family terminology has been erased. Personally I feel that without the basic structure of family life for the present and future generation, there will be no hope for successful government.

May I urge all family conscious voters to consider exercising their rights on October 10 towards a turnaround for a stronger and healthier Ontario and a future for our children.

Green Party: Rolly Montpellier

Green Party candidate Rolly Montpellier is a relative newcomer to the region, having lived most of his life in the Sudbury area until moving to Buckshot Lake in North Frontenac with his wife Karen two years ago. He says, “The warm, open-hearted and neighbourly people we have met since our arrival have been the best part of our experience of moving to North Frontenac".

Shortly after moving to the area, Rolly joined the local Green Party and when he was approached to seek the nomination for this election, he says he "felt that the problems that we are facing as a society are serious and I had a moral obligation to run in this election". The highlight of the campaign so far for Rolly has been the opportunity to meet people throughout the riding, and he feels he has been able to give the Green Party a larger profile in Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington.

He brings an intense commitment to environmental issues to the election, hence the connection to the Green Party. "The Green Party is the only one that looks at the energy debate in terms of the limits on the amount of energy we can use in our daily lives, and as a society. There are real limits; that will have an economic impact. We can't change that simply by tinkering, by putting scrubbers on coal-fired plants, and things like that."

He has been disappointed, however, by the amount of time that has been devoted to the faith-based school debate in this election. “It has distracted from the real issues, such as the rural economy, the environment, health care and others. The faith-based schools discussion, which is not central to people’s daily lives, has derailed the whole agenda," he said.

Rolly Montpellier worked for many years in the education system in the Sudbury region, spending 20 years as a school board superintendent of business. He has long been active in his community, as a school board trustee, and a member of two different hospital boards, and the board of a credit union. He has also participated in government study groups, and served as CFO of several provincial and federal election campaigns in the Nickel Belt riding.

Rolly, the local Green Party Association, and the provincial party as a whole, have actively supported the anti-uranium exploration protests in North Frontenac. Party leader Frank De Jong visited the protest site with Rolly in July, and the two men supported the protesters at Parliament Hill last Friday.

The party is opposed to nuclear power and supports a moratorium on uranium exploration and mining throughout the province. In that sense they are similar to the NDP.

But as Rolly explained at an all-candidates meeting in Kaladar, the Green Party energy policy extends into their tax policy. They intend to introduce a 2-per-cent carbon tax on oil, natural gas and coal imported or extracted for use in the province, and a corresponding decrease in personal and corporate income taxes. The proposal goes under the slogan, “Tax what you burn, not what you earn.”

Liberal Party: Ian Wilson

"Unfortunately, I have a lot of time to devote to covering this large and diverse riding as MPP," Ian Wilson said at an all-candidates meeting in Verona when asked how he would try to be responsive to constituents’ concerns if he is elected next week.

This might seem like an odd response, but Wilson was referring to the fact that he is a widower, and he has had time to pour himself fully into the current campaign, which he has been waging since he won the Liberal nomination after a hard-fought selection process in early June.At church suppers, pancake breakfasts, summer fairs, and every other manner of summer event, Ian Wilson has been visiting and talking provincial politics for the past three months, and he seems to be enjoying himself.“It’s stimulating, it’s great,” he says, “you get up in the morning and that is what you are doing. By meeting a lot of people I’ve become better informed on a wide range of issues, and for someone who is a bit of sponge as far as learning is concerned, that makes for a good day.”

It has surprised Ian Wilson that during the writ period the issue of faith-based schools has come up repeatedly as he travels the riding.“It’s not an issue that you would think people would concern themselves with in a riding like ours, but you’ve got to find the money to do it somewhere, and if it goes ahead the impact will be felt across the province. The Liberals have invested in rural schools, and part of what makes a community is its schools,” he said.

He has also found that the issues that concern people “are very personal, and vary across the riding. The uranium exploration is important in North Frontenac and Lanark, and health care continues to be an issue throughout the riding.”

Ian Wilson came into the campaign with an extensive background in public service. He worked at St. Lawrence College for 36 years, as a professor and dean of the school of business: served as a councilor, deputy reeve and reeve of Ernestown Township and county councilor and warden in Lennox and Addington; served as board member and chair of the Kingston Area Economic Development Commission (KEDCO), and as founding president and chair of the Kingston Area Recycling Corporation; served on the board at Kingston General Hospital and chaired the board from 2001- 2003, and on the board of the Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority.

He describes himself as someone who is adept at working with government. “We are going to get a lot further in this riding by working with the government to make improvements,” he said.

In terms of health care and hospital funding, issues that are close Ian Wilson’s heart, he says the Liberal government is on the right track.“The Liberals have moved a long way in terms of improving the hospital situation, including a $21.5 million addition to the Lennox and Addington Hospital in Napanee and the redevelopment at Kingston General Hospital … this is a government that is investing in health.”

Ian Wilson has also taken a stand on the issue of mining rights and uranium exploration in the riding. He supports a moratorium on uranium exploration and has made the proposal, which he acknowledges is a position “that goes much further than the party,” that in certain parts of the province such as LFL&A, which is a tourist-based economy, “mining rights should be extinguished altogether.”

New Democratic Party: Ross Sutherland

This is the third time Ross Sutherland has contested an election for the NDP. He ran federally in LFL&A and provincially in Hastings Frontenac Lennox and Addington during the last provincial election.

"I'm enjoying it more this time around," he said earlier this week, "I'm getting a much more positive response than in previous elections, more sign requests, more literature requests. A lot of the traditional NDP vote seems to have come back, partly because people are unhappy with John Tory's ideas, and there is a general dissatisfaction with McGuinty. There's a lot of movement out there, people are going in different places, and I feel great about it.”

Another difference for Ross in this campaign is that he is a full time campaigner. A career registered nurse who worked in the emergency department at Hotel Dieu hospital for years, Ross stopped working last year to complete his Master's degree, and after receiving the NDP nomination he redoubled his efforts and completed his thesis in August to free up the entire election period for the campaign. This is one of the advantages that have come from the scheduled elections that Ontario has adopted; candidates are able to plan their time to take on the commitment to run.

As always, health care is an important policy issue for Sutherland, who in his role as a co-chair of the Kingston and Area Health Coalition has been an outspoken critic of privatization of health care delivery in Ontario, which he says is costly and inefficient. In his view, this has hit rural Lanark, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington in terms of the delivery of home care services.

"The province is spending more and more money on rural home care, and delivering less and less service, because of the competitive bidding system that was introduced several years ago."

He has noticed during this current campaign that people in the riding are concerned about the issue of downloading of services from the province to the municipalities and its impact on property taxes.

"People understand the downloading issue; they link it right back to Mike Harris, which is a problem for the Conservatives” he said. “The NDP have a plan to upload $1.4 billion in municipal services over 4 years.”

Sutherland has also taken an active role in supporting the anti-uranium exploration protests in North Frontenac, visiting the site on the first day of the occupation and several times since, and participating in rallies. He was in Ardoch when the canoes left for Parliament Hill in September 22, and was at Parliament Hill last Friday when the canoes arrived.

"The NDP is opposed to nuclear power, and to uranium mining as well. We support the moratorium on uranium mining that the Algonquins are calling for. Energy policy is something people want to talk about in this election," he said. “The McGuinty proposal to build two nuclear power plants at a cost of $40 billion is an expensive mistake.” To illustrate the financial costs of nuclear power, Sutherland has been bringing blow ups of his own hydro bill to all-candidates meetings, with the item “debt retirement charge” circled on the bill.

“That is the charge we are still paying on our hydro bills for the 30-year-old nuclear power plants we already have. The Liberals, and the Conservatives, would have us repeat an expensive mistake on a technology that will be devastating to the environment,” he said at an all-candidates meeting in Kaladar.

PC Party: Randy Hillier

Randy Hillier has already had a political career, of sorts.

As the former President of the Lanark Landowners’ Association and the Ontario Landowners’ Association, he has been at the forefront of what he calls “a rural revolution.” For several years, rural landowners, farmers and small business people who have run up against government regulations, ranging from the size of eggs for sale at farmers’ markets, to rules under the Nutrient Management Act, to regulations about sawdust piles, Randy Hillier and the Landowners’ Association have come forward to confront the situation on their behalf.

On a macro-political level, the Landowners organized tractor convoys to Parliament Hill in Ottawa and Queen’s Park in Toronto to protest against government policies and assert the rights of the farm community and rural landowners in general.

Randy Hillier’s flair for the media, and his steadfast commitment to a landowner’s right to the “enjoyment of his land”, have been the basis of the work he has done as a political activist.

Many of the issues he has taken on have to do with the relationship between rural landowners and government officials.

In a radio interview that is posted in his election website, he described the source of this conflict.

“Government does not respect or trust landowners and this is evident from the host of regulations. Trust and respect are traits that are earned and never is achieved through coercion, intimidation or legislation.”

Randy Hillier described his decision to run for office in an interview with the News by saying “I found that I’d gone as far as I could working from the outside, and decided to make changes to the system from the inside.”

Even though he is committed to working within a party structure, Hillier says he will not shy away from his political beliefs and the wishes of his constituents.

“There is nothing more powerful than a sensible, reasonable argument, delivered with conviction. That’s what I do now, and that’s what I’ll do in government as well.”

Randy Hillier made reference to two very recent developments to illustrate this point in an interview with the News on Monday.

He talked about the decision by Conservative party leader John Tory, announced earlier that day, to allow a free vote on extending provincial funding to faith-based schools, which he said came about because candidates from across the province convinced John Tory that they did not support faith-based schools.

Hillier had expressed support for the faith-based school funding proposal at all-candidates meetings, with the proviso that it would only be done after a process of public consultation.

“I still support the process that John Tory has outlined, which will allow everyone to look at this situation,” Hillier said in Verona on September 24th.

However, he said this week that he does not support funding faith-based schools, although he thinks looking at the idea in more detail is reasonable.

Randy Hillier has been an advocate for changes to the Ontario Mining Act, partly as a response to the ongoing protest in North Frontenac, and because of his commitment to landowners’ rights. This week, he announced that at his request, the party “has committed to addressing the conflict associated with the exploration of uranium in our riding.”

The release quotes John Tory, who said in a speech in Thunder Bay, “The PC Party will undertake a complete review of the mining Act.”

Feature Article - October 4, 2007 Feature Article - October 4, 2007

Electoral Reformby Jeff Green

In addition to electing a government, Ontarians will be voting in a referendum on electoral reform when they go to the polls next week. If 60% of the people who vote in the referendum support it, the next Ontario election will be held under a new system, the mixed member proportional representation system (MMP).

Fortunately, the new system is easier to use than it is to pronounce.

Currently, the Province is divided up in 107 ridings. Under the current system, which has been in place since Ontarians have gone to the polls, candidates from the different political parties will be contesting each of these ridings. The candidate in each riding that receives the most votes will represent the riding at Queen’s Park. The party that elects the most representatives will form the government, and if one party elects more that half of the members (54 of more), which happens more often than not in Ontario, they will hold majority power.

This will enable that party to pass legislation that they deem to be in the interest of Ontario for the next four years, when they will face the electorate again.

If the leading party elects less than 54 members, they will form a minority government and will need the support of at least one other party in order to get legislation approved at Queen’s Park.

A Citizen’s assembly that studied the electoral system concluded that it was flawed, and proposed a new system, MMP, to replace it.

The major flaw that the Citizen’s Assembly identified was the fact that all of the people who do not vote for the winning candidate in each riding end up casting a meaningless vote. In Ontario’s multi-party system where candidates often win their ridings with 35% to 40% of the popular votes, the majority of voters in most ridings do not end up with their choice being represented at Queen’s Park.

On a province-wide level the current system, which has been dubbed “first past the post” has particular implications for smaller parties. The most striking example of this is the Green Party, which receives up to 5% of the votes, but none of these votes has ever translated into any representation.

On the other hand, a party often wins a majority with well under 50% of the total vote. The Liberals won 72 of the 107 seats in 2003 on 46% of the vote. In 1990, the NDP formed a majority government with only 37% of the popular vote.

The Mixed Member Proportional system is the vehicle the Citizen’s Assembly chose to remedy this inequity. MMP is a modification of the current system. It proposes 90, larger ridings in place of the current 107. These 90 representatives would be elected in the same way that current representatives are elected, and the election ballot would contain the names of the nominated candidates in the riding from all of the parties, just as it does now.

In addition, the ballot would contain a list of parties, and voters will have the opportunity to cast a second ballot, a vote for their favourite party. The second vote, the party vote, will be used to determine the other 29 representatives at Queen’s Park.

Weeks before the election, each party will publish a prioritised list of 29 names as their candidates for “list members”.

When the votes are tallied on election night, the winners of the 90 riding elections will be determined using the regular ballot.

The second ballot will be used to bump up the number of seats for those parties who receive less seats than the popular vote would entitle them to.

If the results were the same as the 1990 election, for example, the NDP would only end up with 37% of the overall seats, and would have formed a minority or a coalition government instead of a majority government.

If the people of Ontario are determined to give one party a majority, over 50% of the voters would have to choose that party. Otherwise, when all is said and done, the most popular party, which usually receives around 40 - 45% of the votes, will end up with about 45 seats in the 129 seat legislature and will have to find 20 votes from other parties if they want to form a stable coalition government.

One of the major points made by critics of the MMP is that the list members will not be accountable to a direct vote of the Ontario public, they will be chosen instead by the parties. This tier of party chosen representatives will be, they say, beholden to the party that selected them, and not to the general public

Proponents of the system counter this argument by saying that each party will publish the list in advance, and that the media will be able to scrutinise the list. They say the electorate would penalize those parties that do not come up with their list members in an open and democratic fashion.

(There is more information on the web about the Mixed Member Proportional Representation System www.yourbigdecision.ca.).

Editorial - October 4, 2007 Editorial - October 4, 2007

But What if it is Broke?Editorial by Jeff Green

I support the Mixed Member Proportional Representation system and will be voting yes in the referendum next week.

I will be doing so even though I share some of the concerns that people opposing the proposal have raised. I don’t like the idea of giving the parties the opportunity to choose the 29 list members. I prefer electing an individual, who, even though they affiliated with a party, I can at least hold personally responsible for the decisions they make.

However, when I look at the way politics really work at Queen’s Park, I see that the Members of Provincial Parliament that we elect under the current system have little or no impact on provincial policy. The people who wield power at Queen’s Park are the premier and the un-elected people who work in the premier’s office.

They are the people who spend their time pouring over opinion polls and crafting political positions for the benefit of their boss. They are the people, who determine government policy.

The premier’s office staff, along with the deputy ministers and assistant deputy ministers, another group of un-elected officials, form the backbone of the government.

People who worry that list members are not directly elected, might look more closely at the way the systems works, or doesn’t work now. Our system is less than democratic. We have a broken democracy that is in need of reform.

The MMP, if successful, will shake up the system, if only because it will give more political power to the politicians by making coalition governments the norm. In a coalition government, the premier’s office would still run the province, but they will have to take the demands of their coalition partners into account.

No matter what system is in place, political operatives working for the major parties will learn how to exploit it for the benefit of the party leadership. That’s their job.

But a new system that will give each vote a certain amount of impact, and stands a chance of engaging more of the population in the political process, is something I can support.

One hundred and three Ontarians formed the citizens’ assembly that came up with the MMP. These are people who had no political axe to grind, no personal advantage to consider. Maybe I’m being hopelessly nae or hopelessly cynical, but I trust those people more than I trust the people in the premier’s office.

(There are many pros and cons to the MMP, and I have focussed on a single perspective. A google search under “MMP Ontario” will lead to a lot of information and opinions on both sides of the debate.)– Jeff Green

Feature Article - December 6, 2007 Back toHome Feature Article - December 6, 2007 Cloyne & District Historical Society receives Trillium Grant By Marg Axford

On December 1, the Cloyne and District Historical Society's annual FamilyChristmas Party was a little more festive than usual as MPP for Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington, Randy Hillier, joined them to make a very special announcement and presentation. Thanks to a $27,200 grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, the historical society will be able to improve access to their archival holdings.

In presenting a plaque from OTF to mark this special occasion, MPP Hillier said, “History is our greatest teacher because it records people's experiences. To progress and move forward beyond tomorrow we must first fully understand where we were yesterday. Historical societies are key to this: recording the efforts of our ancestors and recognizing the importance of our unique heritage of independence and self reliance…”

Over the next two years, the grant will help as the society starts to create a comprehensive archive of all their paper, photographic and audio holdings. With their ultimate goal of providing this archive on the web, this project will help ensure their vast collection of historic materials is available to people near and far. Volunteers will be able to use the new archives to create exhibits to place in local stores, schools and halls because the information will be properly catalogued.

The second part of the initiative will help the society to publish the fifth printing of the popular local history book: The Oxen and the Axe. First published in 1974, its popularity continues as new people move to the area, new cottagers come to appreciate the area, as family members grow up and leave the area wanting to take a piece of history with them and as former residents move back wanting to increase their knowledge of the community.

The Cloyne and District Historical Society was established in the early 1970's as the Pioneer Club, devoted to recording and preserving the history and heritage of the local area. While the organization's mission remains that of recording and preserving area history, a third objective is to educate the local community and visitors about the region's rich heritage. This latter goal is achieved most notably through the operation of the Pioneer Museum. Members expand their collective knowledge through interviews, documents, physical research of buildings, cemeteries and villages, and through the discovery of new artifacts.

Approximately 1,000 persons, comprising schoolchildren, cottagers, residents of both

Frontenac and Lennox and Addington counties, campers and visitors passing through the area, visit the Society's Pioneer Museurn each year.

Feature Article - December 6, 2007 Back toHome Editorial - December 6, 2007 Frontenac County Should Support Pine Meadow Editorial by Jeff Green

One item that was not included in the $35 million Frontenac County draft budget last week was any money for the Pine Meadow Nursing Home.

Representatives from the home had asked for a commitment of $25,000 each year for 10 years to help cover costs for planned renovations. A similar request was made to Lennox and Addington County.

County council should seriously consider this request.

Even if Pine Meadow is located outside of Frontenac County, it serves people from both Central and North Frontenac, and the county funds two other institutions that are not located within its own boundaries.

The Kingston hospitals, which will be receiving $54,000 each year from Frontenac County for the next 10 years, are located outside of the county but were successfully able to argue that they serve county residents.

The case of Fairmount Home, which serves the same population of seniors that Pine Meadow serves, makes for a more complicated comparison. Fairmount is located outside of Frontenac County, just as Pine Meadow is, but Fairmount is owned and managed by Frontenac County.

The complex long-term care sector in Ontario includes private for profit, not for profit, and municipally owned homes, and municipalities are required to support the municipal sector. This can be done through financial support to a home owned by a neighbouring municipality, or as in Frontenac County’s case, by owning and supporting a facility.

This year county ratepayers will spend over $1 million helping to make Fairmount Home a caring facility for the aged. From the limited exposure I have had to Fairmount Home, and from anecdotal reports I've received from people who have made use of the home, it is far superior to comparable institutions in the Kingston region, and the money county ratepayers spend each year on the home help the staff to concentrate on care.

However, the request from Pine Meadow, a 72-bed facility, is only $25,000 - 40 times less than the county will spend on Fairmount this year.

Pine Meadow is a community owned, not-for-profit home, but it is not part of the municipal system, so Frontenac County has no obligation to provide support.

But for families who need long-term care, distance from the community is the major factor, and people in the northern part of the county use Pine Meadow Home to care for their aging relatives. They reasonably expect that some of their tax dollars should be spent supporting Pine Meadow.

The county is also looking at some neat new ideas in IT, such as video-conferencing equipment at a cost of $22,000.

There were some indications at last week's preliminary budget meeting that county council might look favourably on the Pine Meadow request.

Here's hoping they do

Feature Article - December 13, 2007 Back toHome Feature Article - December 13, 2007 Santa visits the Plevna volunteer dinner by Katie Ohlke

Photo: Santa visits the Plevna Volunteer appreciation dinner at Clar-Mill Hall last Saturday. Lea White, 92 years young, shares her wish list with Santa.

Last Saturday a group of very special people gathered at Clar-Mill Hall. They are the community volunteers who help put on events and keep the hall running smoothly for all sorts of events. At the beginning of the evening there were a few special presentations; the first from Ed Schlievert and Gertie MacDonald to the Deputy Fire Chief Norm Mills. The community raised $500 for the North Frontenac Fire Department. The second was from Pat Cavanagh, president of the Golden Friendship club, who presented a $100 cheque to Ed and Gertie on behalf of the Volunteer Group. The Seniors Group also donated two dollies to help move chairs at Clar-Mill Hall and Ompah Hall.

After the presentations, a delicious potluck dinner was eaten by the group of almost 80 volunteers gathered to enjoy the evening. Followed by a delicious dessert, the games began! Karen Hermer drew 25 names for nine prizes, allowing people to "steal" other people's winnings. After several competitive moves for the beautiful Christmas wreath, Herb Tooley won it. The tables and the hall were beautifully decorated by Lynnie Barre and Betty McKittrick, which added to the festive spirit. After the games, the group received a special visitor - Santa! Both young and old were happy to see the jolly old elf, and many kids and kids-at-heart took a turn on Santa's knee.

To round out the wonderful evening, the Over the Hill Gang entertained the crowd with some great old-time country and holiday music! Thank you to all the local volunteers and to those who put on this fabulous party!

Letters - December 13, 2007 Back toHome Letters - December 13, 2007 Letters November 29Sydenham Water: The Crux of the Problem, Cathie WaughSydenham Water: the crux of the problem

Small rural municipalities simply can’t manage and can’t afford the province’s demands for water and sewage. Both South Frontenac Township and the province need to re-think how much the people of Sydenham should be paying for a system fraught with problems and for which the province now says is not financially sustainable for less than 3,000 users. Sydenham has 274.

When the province downloaded water and sewage on municipalities they didn’t consider that small rural municipalities often lack the technical or business skills available to manage complex projects. This seems to be the case for South Frontenac Township. There was no municipal representative with skills in water/sewage infrastructure that could oversee implementing the Sydenham water system. The responsibility was handed over to the consulting engineering firm with no one in the municipality capable of scrutinizing their work.

So the people gave it a shot, and found numerous discrepancies that seemed to skew the conclusions of the environmental assessment in favour of the water system. But when the people presented over 60 concerns to the township, they asked the consultant that made the errors to evaluate our concerns! And when we brought our concerns to the province, they deferred to the township since municipalities were deemed responsible for the project. Clearly, the people were hitting a wall.

Less deferring and more direction from the province would have been warranted. A simple guideline for using two different consultants, one for recommending a solution and one for building the solution, potentially could have eliminated a lot of problems for Sydenham.

Unfortunately these problems continue to haunt us. It’s now public knowledge that the water has been exceeding the provincial drinking water standards for trihalomethanes (potential carcinogens) since it started running. What’s interesting is that it appears no seasonal composite water testing was done prior to determining the water treatment process. And no one in the municipality identified this as a potential problem. Perhaps this was not a concern since the contract signed between the municipality and the consultant didn’t seem to address water quality. Normally contracts with consultants outline the expected results, how they are to be measured and consequences if the results are not achieved. Did we really pay $8 million for a water system and forget to ask that it produce quality water?

Both the South Frontenac council and the province should be taking responsibility for the sloppy management of this system; after all, the people’s concerns were well known. The province should be giving additional funding for a water plant they approved but didn’t scrutinize and now say is not affordable. And the municipality should be spreading the costs over the township since representatives from all the districts took responsibility when they voted for it. This won’t change the questionable need for the water plant, but it could be an important step for improving community relations.

Cathie Waugh, Sydenham

Feature Article - December 13, 2007 Back toHome Feature Article - December 13, 2007 Beauty Inside means beauty at home for Terry-Ann Hare by Jeff Green

Three months ago Terry-Ann Hare moved her esthetics and healing modalities business from Kindred Spirits in Sydenham to her home just a few minutes north on Alton road.

“I can put my kids on the bus in the morning, get dinner started when I have a break, I can do all those things so the day goes that much smoother,” she said over the phone earlier this week - in between seeing a client and running to the road to pick up her children after school.

And her clients don't seem to mind at all. Since moving her business, Terry has been able to keep all of her clients, and add new ones.

It's all part of a progression for Terry as she continues to juggle family and career responsibilities.

She originally studied marketing in school, and after graduating she worked for Revlon Canada as a sales representative. She went for a massage during her first pregnancy and struck up a friendship with Janet Howard of Kindred Spirits. This led Terry to consider starting her own business. She studied reflexology and Reiki and decided she needed to do esthetics as well to make her business viable, so she took a course in Kingston.

At the start, esthetics accounted for the bulk of her business, but that has changed and now it is only about 40%.

The ever expanding healing modalities offered at Beauty Inside; which include Reiki, for which Terry will soon be attaining her Masters from Earth and Sky in Kingston, as well as reflexology, and Indian Head massage, have become more and more popular.

“So many people are craving massage techniques, so many people are nowadays are stressed, that they are looking for something I can offer,” Terry said.

Another innovation that has come about since Terry has moved her business to her home, is the Wednesday afternoon Women's Circle she has organized, which is a meditation group.

With Christmas coming up, Beauty Inside is offering packages to help with stress, and provide a gift -giving opportunity.

One package includes a pedicure, facial, reflexology and a hour massage, all for $100 (a $50 savings).