Yourway
April 25, 2013
Vol. 13, No. 16
$1.00 incl. GST.
MINNOWS & WORMS AVAILABLE
South Frontenac Rental Centre
Complete Line of Paints Mon-Fri: 8am-5pm Sat: 8am-4pm Northbrook 613-336-2195
Your independent community newspaper since 1971
Circulation: 9177 households
Paramedics press County on service cuts
O
ver 30 off-duty paramedics from the Frontenac Land Ambulance Service attended a meeting of Frontenac County Council last Wednesday. They were there to support Chief Steward, Shauna Dunn, who made a presentation about Council’s recent decision to cut a 12-hour day shift at the Palace Road ambulance base in the City of Kingston. Although none of the councillors addressed the paramedics, they had to notice them because the paramedics wearing bright yellow t-shirts with the slogan “Cuts to your ambulance services can cost you, your life.” “The demand for emergency medical services in Frontenac County and the City of Kingston has been increasing by almost 12% year over year since 2009,” Dunn told Council. “We, as paramedics, have very serious concerns about the implications of the various budget mitigation strategies presented to Council for the 2013 budget. The elimination of one ambulance, four full-time paramedic positions, is of particular concern given the direct impact on the front-line emergency service resources … most, if not all, of the ambulance services in this province have been advocating for enhancements of service, not reductions. Frontenac County will thus have the dubious honour of leading the way in discovering the true cost of cutting ambulance resources in the face of an ageing population, increased demand for medical service, and the impending crisis in our health care system as a whole,” she added. She also made reference to statements made by Paul Charbonneau, the Chief of Paramedic Services for Frontenac County, to CBC News in February, about the need to prepare for what he called a “tsunami” of de-
by Jeff Green
Members of OPSEU Local 462 gathered outside the Frontenac County offices in the bright sunshine in advance of the April 17 council meeting. (photo - Lise-Anne Lepage-McBain) mand for service as the baby boomer population bubble ages over the next 20 years, and wondered how this jives with making cuts to local service. When the shift cut was announced, Charbonneau said that the service will still be able to meet the response time standard that it set for itself last fall, a standard that has been accepted by the Ministry of Health. That standard is for a response (by a paramedic or a first response vehicle) to a cardiac arrest within 6 minutes, 48% of the time. The response time to all high-priority calls is for a paramedic to be on scene with-
in 8 minutes of the call coming in 68% of the time, and to other priority calls within 10 minutes, 65% of the time. These standards include rural and urban calls, with rural calls most often being ones where the standard cannot possibly be achieved. The cut in service at Palace Road will affect service throughout Frontenac County, Shauna Dunn said. “The ambulance stationed in Snow Road, Parham, and Sydenham will undoubtedly have to provide emergency standby coverage and to respond to emergency calls in/
Stewardship Councils talk about beavers T
by Jeff Green
wo hundred people packed the Civitan Hall in Perth for a day-long seminar devoted to the ubiquitous Canadian Beaver, the loved and loathed creature that most closely resembles humans in its tendency to make changes to its surroundings. As creatures who alter their habitat to suit their needs and who seem to be unaware of
2013 North & Central Frontenac Rec Guide
L
ook for your copy of our Recreation & Activity Guide, which is inserted into this week's paper. If yours is printed on yellow paper, bring it to our office to claim a prize.
Spring 2013 North & Central Frontenac RECREATION & ACTIVITY GUIDE
the vast eco-systemic impacts of their own search for a comfortable home, humans should understand beavers pretty well. The problems between humans and beavers are not those of understanding. They are really based on conflicting land uses. The first speaker at the seminar was Dr. Cherie Westbrook, from the University of Saskatchewan. She has made a career of studying the impacts of beaver dams on water bodies in a variety of landscapes throughout North America, and has recently returned from a five-week trip to Tierra Del Fuego, Argentina where a “gift” of 25 pairs of beavers from the Government of Canada some 70 years ago has become an entrenched population of 150,000, with resulting impacts on the landscape and agriculture in Tierra Del Fuego. What Cherie Woodcock and her team have found is that one of the effects of Beaver dams is to increase groundwater quantity in an expansive swath of land up and downstream from the dams. In one major study that she has done on the Colorado River, she found that 70% of the water in the river was diverted by a single dam, which resulted in a significant defence against drought in the surrounding region. Beavers are associated with the development and augmentation of riparian zones, riverside regions that foster rich habitat for a large number of plants and animals.
Beat the Summer Rush Order your High Efficiency Air Contioner Now!
Woodcock said that beaver populations in North America have rebounded significantly from the lows of the early years of the 20th century, when they had been hunted to the point that their future was in some doubt. It is estimated there were between 60 and 400 million beavers in North America before beaver hats took Europe by storm. The current estimate is between 9.6 and 15 million in North America, and with the recent warming trend in Northern Canada, beaver populations are expanding northward each year. While a population of beavers can alter the landscape considerably, turning forests lands into riparian lands, when beaver are removed or leave, the riparian lands then become grasslands. With representatives from 12 different local townships in attendance at the seminar, the subject of beaver management was bound to come up. In introducing Mike Richardson, the public works manager for Central Frontenac Township, seminar host Gray Merriam said, “Now it is time to get a view from the trenches. When you call your township office to say your road is washed out from floods caused by a beaver dam, these are the guys who answer your call.” Richardson’s presentation, the Beaver and the Taxpayer, covered some of the re-
see "Beavers are here to stay' - continued on page 16
Come Join us
Leonard Fuels Ltd.
Central
Hartington • 613-372-2112 • 1-800-543-7884
Since 1948 leonardfuels@persona.ca
around Kingston even more frequently than they do now, subjecting county residents to even longer response times than they are used to.” The 12-hour day shift at the Palace Road base, which also operates two 24-hour ambulances, is set to take effect on May 20. The announcement of the shift cut came just days after OPSEU Local 462 launched a grievance to the Ontario Labour Relations Board over the county’s recently adopted practice of not replacing workers who call in sick during certain shifts. That practice was designed to save 5,000 hours in labour costs in 2013. The sick time policy, which was designed to give management time to determine why sick time has risen dramatically among OPSEU Local 462 members in recent years, was immediately abandoned when the grievance was launched. The shift cut could save more in labour time than the sick time policy was designed to save, over 8,700 hours. The collective agreement between Local 462 and Frontenac County expires at the end of the year. A few weeks ago, Chief Charbonneau told the News that it is impossible to speculate on the impact of this measure on the tenor of the negotiations for a new agreement. “A lot can happen in nine months,” he said. The presentation by Shauna Dunn elicited no response from members of Frontenac County Council. She was, however, warned twice by Warden Janet Gutowski that she was taking more time than was allotted to her presentation. She spoke for 12.5 minutes. The prescribed time allotment for public delegations is 15 minutes
North Frontenac to bump taxes by 7% by Jeff Green N
orth Frontenac Council completed a long budget process last Friday, leaving ratepayers on the hook for a 7% increase in the amount the township will be levying to ratepayers to pay for local services. The budget took several months to finalise in 2013 because North Frontenac was the first Council in the region to complete a comprehensive asset management and 10-year capital replacement plan. Waterfront property owners, who have seen a major increase in property assessment once again this year, will pay the lion’s share of the increase. The local tax rate in North Frontenac is only up marginally, less than 2%, with the rest of the increase coming from a 5% average increase in property assessment. The increase in local taxes will be offset for North Frontenac ratepayers by education and county taxes, which are not going up this year. A public meeting is scheduled for Monday, April 29 at 9 am. The budget will be presented and comments received at that time. It is anticipated that the budget will be approved on he same day, pending the completion of the Frontenac County budget process,
Tickets
$20/person
Fundraiser for Drew Cumpson *children under Buffet
Ductless
4317 Colebrooke Rd Harrowsmith 613-372-2662
Saturday May 4th, 7pm-1am,
16 free
100 Tickets
North Frontenac Arena, Godfrey Still Available Silent & Live Auctions Featuring Still Standing, Bauder Road, Killing Time Contact Lynn 613-374-5604 or 613-483-0473. Cash, Interac, Visa, MC available.