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8 - Orono Weekly Times, Wednesday. October 28. 199 Wild West Halloween Clarke High School Drama students are putting on a scary show of their own these days. Till October 30, students are participating in a drama where the town sheriff and deputy protected tourists from zombies running amuck. The show takes place from 7:00 till 10:00 at Doc Ville - the Wild West Ghost Town on Mill St. north in Newcastle. Staying in Touch by JohnO'Toole, MPP Taxes are on everyone's minds and small business oper- ators certainly made this very clear over the past couple of weeks. As I have said in my articles over the past two weeks, your inquiries have prompted me, as well as other MPPs, to question our Premier and Minister of Finance to address this serious problem for small business, Small business accounts for 80% of all jobs and certainly these family oper- ated businesses have their entire lives invested. They have their homes mortgaged, they work often six or seven days a week and they don't have any government-supported gold plated pension plan. J admire these entrepreneurs wo e making their own futu es as well as often supporting local sports teams and other commu- nity activities. I would agree that our gov- ernment has wrestled with the difficult reforms to the assess- ment system. In fact, we have had six pieces of legislation to try and get it right while still allowing municipalities the flexibility to address local deci- sions. I also recognize that the previous Liberal and NDP gov- ernments attempted to reform the system but backed away. The Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) has pressured succes- sive Ontario governments over the years to address the old out- dated unfair system of assess- ment. It is never easy to make changes and we are a govern- ment who said "a promise made is a promise kept". Arguably, those who are seeing an increase were not paying their fair share and those who are getting a decrease have been paying too much for too long. In my view, the time has passed when we can sit back and point fingers at each other and blame some other level of government. People I talk to are sick of each level of government blaming the other for the problems. They say, "fixit and get on with it". I agree that good government has to have the courage to nmake changes and still go back and make further changes until we get it right. On Friday October the 23rd, Finance Minister Ernie Eves made the announcement that he was introducing legis- lation that if passed would require municipalities to limit the impact of our changes on small business to 10% in 1998. These changes are lim- ited to industrial and com- mercial businesses. These changes will NOT be allowed to effect the residential prop- erty class. Furthermore, the legisla- tion will extend the assess- ment appeal period to December 31, 1998. Landlords with gross leases will have to advise their busi- ness tenants of their intention to pass on the property tax increase and business improvement area charges for 1998 by December 15, 1998. The changes in the commer- cial tax area involve the elim- ination of the Business Occupancy Tax (BOT) and the Business Improvement Area (BIA) levy. These two old taxes on business have been eliminated but the rev- enue still has to be collected. That is to say, municipalities cannot probably get along with any loss in tax revenue so generally the BOT has been simply spread from the banks to the small businesses that used to pay less. I am convinced that our recent changes were necessary and will help small businesses and will have no impact on the residential property tax payer as was mentioned in one of the local newspapers. The health care challenges are not going to fade. The most recent news about the emergency room backlogs is not new. However, your gov- ernment is-committed to reform the delivery of health care into a more integrated health care system. Keep in mind that we have changed the funding of health care from one primarily hospital focused to a more community based model. We are spend- ing over $18.5 billion on health care, more than any jurisdiction in Canada on a per capita basis. Hospitals have traditionally had long term care beds and the inten- tion is to move these patients to more appropriate facilities. This will free up over 700 hospital beds and relieve the hospital emergency room congestion. We have commit- ted over $102 million to Community Care Access Centres, supportive housing and other community service agencies. Emergency room funding is a $225 million plan. - $75 million applied to additional hospital funding, - $55 million is allocated to 1700 long term beds, - $94 million to home care services and - $ 1 million to train additional nurses. Our Lakeridge Health Corporation will receive almost $500,000.00 with almost $50,000.00 for the Bowmanville site. Port Perry & Uxbridge emergency is funded on a call in fee for doctors. An integrated health care delivery model means putting the patients' needs first. Hospitals are high order technical places whereas home care is what people need to remain in the comfort of their own home for as long as possible. All sectors and providers of health care are I believe, working together to improve our health care sys- tem. On the educational front, some boards and their associ- ations have reached tentative agreements while some have been unable to reach agree- ment. Non-teaching educa- tional workers are now begin- ning to negotiate for a new contract and I hope this does not cause more loss of educa- tional time for our students. Often, people who work in the system (health care, edu- cation or public service) have a difficult time in focussing on the proposed system changes and their job securi- ty. Correction ORONO SR. CEES Oh! Oh! Jean made a boo-boo. The turkey dinner is November 12 at 12 noon, riot the 8th as I reported last week. RECYCLE .sherry framboise, a woman her thirties is missinrg. indicate the n Police circumstances of are suspicious her disappearance JNRAVEL THE MYSTERY November 13th... it's a Friday Orono Town Hall Cocktails at 7 p.m. e Dinner at 730 p.m. Dinner Tickets $22.50/person Tickets available ait The Apple B'lossom Shop, Orono Limited number (f seats available... call now to reserve yours. Sponsored by Orono DBIA in conjunction with the 100th Anniversary of Orono Town aill X-7-7-:77 !, 7:77-7-2-7 Au