Thursday, January 14, 2010

Budget Meeting

Kenora City Council's 2010 budget is expected to be approved by the February 8th committee of the whole meetings.

Council went over the draft budget again on Wednesday.

Finance Manager Karen Brown says they saw an increase in their share of the Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund.

Policing costs for the City of Kenora will also bring in a savings of 284 thousand dollars.

The savings found through policing will be put into a new contingency reserve.

Fire Halls

The City of Kenora is planning to dispose of its old fire halls in Kenora and Jaffray Melick once the new building on Barsky's Hill is complete.

Fire Chief Warren Brinkman says he would like to deal with the issue sooner rather than later, because people are already calling him about the old fire halls.

The City is planning to write up a request for proposals for the old fire halls and give
the Property and Planning Committee the responsibility of disposing of the buildings.

All Day Kindergarten Catholic School Board

The Kenora Catholic District School Board will be offering all-day everyday kindergarten at St. Louis School in Keewatin this fall.

The provincial government announced yesterday the 580 schools involved in the first year of the program.

Phylis Aikre is the Director of Education with the separate school board and says for them, St. Louis was the logical location to start up the program.

Aikre says they have lots of room at St. Louis to host the all-day everyday junior and senior kindergarten programs and parents in the communityhave been very supportive of the program.

Nursing Program Funding

Confederation College is expecting to offer a Bachelor of Nursing Program in several communities across northwestern Ontario this fall.

Kenora, Dryden, Fort Frances, Sioux Lookout and Red Lake will all be involved in the program.

Director of Patient Care at Lake of the Woods District Hospital, Leslie Brown says the students would actually register for the program through Lakehead University.

Brown says they need at least 32 students to sign up for the program across the region before it can go ahead.

The last nursing program graduated six students from Kenora.

Ontario Colleges Strike

Two-hundred-thousand community college students in Ontario will be worried for the next month about whether they will be able to finish their school year.

Their instructors have voted by about 57 per cent to support strike action.

Ted Montgomery of the OP-SEU bargaining team, says a walkout wouldn't happen for at least a month.

Both sides have indicated they would like to resume talks which stopped in December.