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WLMH ORs ready Sept. 14 By Mike Williscraft NewsNow The long-awaited re-opening of West Lincoln Memorial Hospital’s operating rooms will roll out Sept. 14. A Hamilton Health Sciences memo last Friday, Aug. 28 outlined what the reboot will look like, with one significant absence, no after hours obstetrics (OB) on-call. The key issue there is a shorage of OR nurses, a major issue which should have been resolved, say local officials. “Quite frankly, at this stage many in the community are concerned OB services will ever resume at WLMH after what will be more than a year of low OB volumes and minimal OB funding. This is a shame given how well known WLMH was for the quality of service and positive experience in our OB,” said Andrew Smith, chair of the WLMH Community Advisory Committee. The plan does include: • Continuing to build up OR nursing staff levels to increase on-call capabilities at WLMH and enable growth in surgical services over time; this includes the OR nurse training program currently underway, as well as ongoing, aggressive recruitment efforts; • Resuming endoscopy procedures; • Resuming gynecology and general surgery cases, with plans to expand to also include other surgical See WLMH, Page 4
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Life’s a peach (pie)
John Van Duzer (Left) receives some peach pies from Marb McMullen during Fifty United Church’s Peach Drive-Thru Saturday. The event, which also ran Friday, saw the church parking lot packed with folks looking to purchase peach desserts, preserves and other goodies. Marks - Photo
New, incomplete details sink condo project again Parking proposal, restaurant space, temporary shift for right-of-way leave questions, say councillors By Mike Williscraft NewsNow A variety of new details at the 11th hour proved too much for Grimsby council last week, leading to a defeat of a revamped Century Condo proposal. Adjusting the parking complement to include up to 16 tandem parking spaces, accounting for 1,000 sq ft of a proposed 3,000 sq ft restaurant as “front of house” to reduce parking needed for customers and a proposal to temporarily shift responsibility
for a right-of-way through the property during construction left too many unanswered questions for five councillors who voted against the proposal. Four were in favour. Councillors Dorothy Bothwell, Lianne Vardy and Dave Sharpe all asked extensive questions on those three items in particular, all of which were newly introduced at the special meeting of council, Aug. 27. “We are at a point today where it is still not resolved, the title is not re-
solved. We have not dotted our ‘I’s and crossed our ‘T’s,” said Bothwell on the question of the right-of-way ownership - on which a lawsuit to determine ownership is still before the courts. Bothwell also noted that the restaurant usage, which has a higher parking requirement, includes a 1/3-2/3 split for front and back-ofhouse. Using an industry standard for this ratio, she said 17 more parking spaces would be required. This
breakdown was included in the proposal for the first time last week. Grimsby’s director of planning, Antonietta Minichillo, told Bothwell “the onus is on them during the site plan” stage to deliver on parking requirements, suggesting the developer, Homes By DeSantis, would simply build fewer residential units to come down to match the prescribed number of parking spaces needed. Coun. Lianne Vardy said the details See CONDO, Page 3