Contributing to the local rumour mill

There is a persistent rumour floating around the Town that has both angered and intrigued groups of people. On one hand because the rumour concerns the largest non-profit in the Town some believe that its activities, because they are funded entirely by public donations, should be transparent and open, and others believe the opposite - it may be funded by public money (donations) but it is a private organization and the way they run things is their affair.

Well where the rubber hits the road, in this case is the rumour - "Did the United Way give the CAO a $10,000 raise?"

If it is true two or three things have happened: one is that members of the Board who disagreed with the process and the event have leaked the info from an in-camera session held earlier in the week. Two the event has enraged some prominent people in Town who are pushing the MSM to ask questions. Three asking questions of this organization is not a politically wise thing to do as the CAO is a major player in ALL the activities in this community and payback would be a problem.

Finally why did the Board, if it is true, award the CAO a $10K raise when the heavy lifting of the recently successful campaign was done by Bill Patchett? One reason being floated was the fact that Board was faced with the prospect of the CAO moving to an open job in Peterborough. So - let her go and start fresh, It was only through the efforts of Mr Patchett that an extra $250,000 was raised after losing $100K in checkoffs caused by layoffs.

Let's kill or confirm the rumour - have the UW issue a statement confirming or denying the tale.

Yesterday may the start of something

A panel of investigators came to Town looking for local symptoms. Health Care cuts and the impact on local communities was on the agenda: "Tell us what is going on in Northumberland!". The community responded - over 100 people came out to see what was going on and some gave their opinion, stories and pleas, in public for the record. The Panel, part of the Ontario Health Coalition's mandate, was out to see what was really going on the delivery, and reallocation of, local health care.In a briefing note, click here to read it, the Coalition has collected, from public sources (as the MoH has not been forthcoming with requests for information), a collection of bad news. All of the Local Heath Integrated Networks (LHINs) have been following the same formula - cut hospital resources by 1% from last year. The effect has been devastating and predictable. Communities have lost services and more damaging, the services that remain but have been shifted to the community, are not free anymore.

A lineup of local people stood and spoke about their issues: Dawn Forster spoke about being a Care-Giver, with llittle support now, let alone in the future when in-hospital rehab services will be gone. Pat Cory spoke about the impact of the cuts on him, as a volunteer still healthy but wary because he moved here to be near the new hospital.

Deb O'Connor spoke about the effect of the cuts on the poor, who have, because of inadequate income have disproportionately higher levels of bad health and therefore use the hospital more than other groups - no money - no services - no health! The president of the local Nurses Union spoke, predictably about the impact of losing 30 nursing positions, likewise the president of the local CUPE unit said that because of the balancing of the cuts the job losses will be more like 45 jobs lost.

The end result will be a 20% downsizing in hospital resources and up to 45 well paying jobs lost.

It should be noted that very few solutions were proposed but in a report today the major fundraiser for the hospital - Bill Patchett, has announced that a group of local peole will be attending the next phase of the process, the Board meeting of the LHIN where these proposals are to be ratified.

The CAO of the hospital should be able to say he done his job - balance the budget, but the flaw in this plan is that most of the cuts will not be effective until the community resources are available. As the LHIN has not been funding Long Term Beds in the community so far how will Mr Biron be able to clear out the "bedblockers"?

Besides there is a potential for terrible abuse of the community, remember when the Developmentally Challenged were moved out of D'Arcy Place, and other institutions? The community was supposed to have community resources in place before the move - that worked out well didn't it?

In an ever increasing cycle of budget cuts and the need to balance the treatment of sick people you have the fixed cost of allocated money butting up against the need to treat the sick no matter what it costs. Just how many times can the health system be examined for efficiencies and methods? But as we heard yesterday the local hospital may have heard from an internally designed panel that wasn't allowed to discuss the overall picture, i.e. cutting the administration, but Mr Biron has not, according to the two local Presidents, spoken in any  way with them for their ideas. Doesn't sound very cooperative to me.

This is how to get press

With a small announcement that the "Mayor of Toronto will be holding a press conference tomorrow morning" the fourth estate went into overdrive. Miller Announcement Causing Stir | Toronto Election News
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So what will Miller say: "I've got another job and I'm off to do it, that means that you guys - Council who will have to elect another Mayor, and my opponents who can't run against my shadow, will have to be original".  Well done David keep them all guessing and in the meantime go and do good work!

Just a quick note to all

Get your votes in now - the Shelter Valley Folk Festival is in the top 10 for the best Folk festival in the Country in a CBC poll. If you voted before do it again click here to start the process

I know there is a story here, but what story

Is it the 30 lost jobs, is it the move to force people to pay for programmes previously covered by in-hospital visits, is it the apparent non-transparency of the consultation process is it the seemingly non-randomness of the selection of the CAP panelists, is it the move to shitf beds in the Alternative Care Sector and moving them to no-existent programmes or is it just one of each of those items?

In a week where the incumbent MP boasts about creating jobs but can't prove it the news that 30 high paying jobs are going to be lost is pitiful. But what is more pitiful is the Northumberland Hills Hospitalc cutting 34 beds from the active care side of hospital operations. So we didn't lose the Palliative Care beds, that will make the donors happy, but cut active care beds instead. In the end the donors will wish that the Palliative Care beds would have gone as the level of care has now been hit. 

The total BS of it is that the beds in community programmes, that will take over from the beds in the hospital, do not exist yet, so reading between the lines, i.e. don't cut anything until the community beds are there, will mean that no money is going to saved just yet. The only cost-cutting measure that has taken place is to shut down the Diabetes Clinic.

If the hospital administration was serious about saving money and getting everybody to pull together it would look seriously at the administration ratio of admin wages to operating departments wages and cut out a few admin jobs. After all when the layoffs and bedcuts take place the admin ratio has gone up not down.

Still all is not lost, in one of the infamous "Yes Minister" episodes there was the tale of the fully finctioning hospital that had no patients. "We have won all kinds of awards Minister, we are very efficient!" Perhaps NHH will go that way to demonstrate working within a budget by not having pesky patients to force the costs up.

Fire Chief Mann has been a busy man!

Cobourg's Fire Chief has been doing what administrators do best - churning out reports for his bosses to read. Now most reports die a speedy death, either due to the quick adoption or the embarrassed rejection of them. In the case of the two reports written by the Chief and their inclusion in the Monday night Council meeting these reports deserve a speedy resolution. But because they make so much sense it probably will not happen and one of them will probably fall due to petty politics at the County level.
Chief Mann has written one report that is addressed to the County and copied to the member Councils for information. In this report he outlines the cost of replacing the current, obsolete, fire communications systems with new equipment. He also referred to two previous reports prepared for the County by a consultant, familiar with the County system, to buttress his case for new equipment. But as the consultant's report reported to the County about the need to establish a county-wide despatch centre Chief Mann repeats the two service delivery options: have the County establish its own centre or contract with a third party for despatch services. However in a move that sets Cobourg against the rest of the County he flags the fact that "fire chiefs of Northumberland County would prefer a purpose-built centralized fire despatch centre."
In his second report he obviously states a case for Cobourg running the third party despatch centre, as his report ends with a recommendation that Coburg develop a proposal for the provision, by Cobourg, of fire despatch services.
So the bottom line is this: the County needs fire despatching services, Cobourg wants to provide those services and the Warden of the County is the Mayor of Cobourg - see any potential here folks? If Peter Delanty wants a 'legacy project' he should forget about putting his name on the new Community Centre but get this despatch centre run by the Cobourg Police comm-centre. Any realistic observer of County politics realises that this is an uphill battle.
But from the perspective of a sane and rational taxpayer this is an opportunity to consolidate ALL despatch services in a brand new standalone comm-centre. Cobourg and Port Hope face million dollar expenditures on police comms, the ambulance probably needs an upgrade by now and we know that the fire departments do. So why not build a multi-purpose Emergency Centre? Too much common sense in that question so it will not happen. So our prediction is that the taxpayers will take another bath as the rural rump wanting to stick it to Cobourg again will demand a brand new fire despatch centre run by the County. The local police departments will demand new communications and because there will be little coordination of the projects local taxpayers, in Cobourg and Port Hope, will pay through the nose. The BurdReport just hopes this pessimistic scenario never comes to pass.
But in order to achieve tax savings the spotlight will be on the Warden of the County to see if he is up to the job of producing the leadership and persuasion needed to bring all the County Mayors on board to have all despatch services run through a brand-new Cobourg comm-centre.

Aha the Town admits that it was responsible

In a stunning turnaround the Town of Cobourg is obviously 'backfilling' as fast as it can. We refer to the issue of the recent flooding in the Upper George St. area. Soon after it happened the following quote was recorded: "Any flooding that occurred (in the area) was not due to any negligence whatsoever on the town's part," said Mr. MacDonald. "We (Town of Cobourg) have worked hard over the last 20 years to improve infrastructure to limit any damage that may occur during flooding."
That obviously was not quite true, in the literal sense, but what was true was the response to the opinion expressed by the BurdReport in this post here where the following questions were posed:

• If the Town has worked hard to improve infrastructure how come this area flooded?
  
• If the Town is responsible for Storm Water Management how come they haven't ordered private property owners to improve their facilities to modern standards?
  
• If the Town knew that this Railroad culvert was inadequate twenty odd years ago why haven't they followed the standards of the latest Storm Water Management Report and ordered changes on the railroad property?
• If the Town is denying culpability why didn't they tell the Homeowners to sue the Railroad Company?

So what has the Town done in response to the delegation that faced them and demanded action? Quite a lot as a report to be revealed Monday shows. If one clicks on the image readers can see the salient points of the report. It tells of a report received from the engineering firm of Gordon, in 2004, about the problems of the CN lands and its inadequate culvert and its undersizing for a 100 year storm.
The Town report also recommends that a storm water retention pond be built upstream of the George St problem area. Council in adopting the report will make a motion to spend the money to plan for such a facility. It should be noted that retention ponds aren't so great during a 100 year storm cycle, witness the failure of the ponds on the Nickerson Creek that overflowed their banks and produced epic flooding on Elgin St. Incidentally the intersection didn't flood in the '80 flood as development in that area was non-existent and the flood plain was larger than today. It was reduced to assist in the expansion of the building envelope by whiny developers. The result is apparent; modern planning in that area failed to prevent flooding.
But the questions still should be asked "Is the Town liable, and should they compensate the flood victims?" The BurdReport thinks so. But it remains to be seen if they will.

"It must be true because I said it"

In a classic example of the title statement, our MP expects us to believe something because he said it. This story, tells of the C of C's breakfast budget meeting wherein Mr Norlock was asked to explain the statement that this Riding has produced new jobs This riding has net job gains: Northumberland MP - Northumberland Today - Ontario, CA. "Where are these jobs?" one fellow asked? "I'll get back to you." was the answer. So in the light of last months Statscan report where we showed that Unemployment has doubled in the economic region in one year here it is doubtful that he can prove what he said. New jobs: what are they and where are they? Take for instance the County's new ambulance depot. Peak construction has been working there for a few months did they or any of its subcontractors take on new people - I'll bet that they kept on their existing workforce. No new jobs but perhaps new work for old jobs. Until the Cons post stimulus figures on the web, as Obama does, then transparency is not achieved and we are left with the fact that official spokespeople can get up and say anything they want and expect to be believed because they said it.

The first of many..... Budget 2010

The first of many pundits' reviews Peering into tomorrow, blind as a bat - Inkless Wells - Macleans.ca

Everybody should read this

In writing, reminiscent of Hemingway and the Spanish Civil War, local lad Adam Day (who took the pic), son of Port Hope lawyer Wilf Day, has published an account of his embedment with the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan last year. Written in an honest way the story, which is Part one of ?, recalls the smells the follies and dedication given to the task of working in Afghanistan Assignment Afghanistan: The Struggle For Salavat – Part 1 | Legion Magazine. I can't wait for the next part Bring it on Adam - well done.