Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Council Approves Additional Cash for the Library

The Kenora Public Library will receive an extra 98 thousand dollars this year to help cover off a projected deficit.

But city council isn't very happy about advancing the extra cash.

Councillor Ron Lunny supported the resolution to give the additional funding, but questioned how the Library consistantly managed to operate with a deficit over the past couple of years.

Council has agreed to provide an additional 52 thousand dollars this year to help cover the Library's budget deficit in 2011, and another 46 thousand to address an accumulated deficit over the past couple of years.

Hampton Touts NDP Platform

The MPP for Kenora-Rainy River says its time to put an end to damaging McGuinty policies.

Howard Hampton is about to embark on a tour of the Riding to promote the NDP Election platform.

Hampton outlines some of the highlights.

He says the NDP will also take the HST off hydro and heating bills as well as prices at the gas pump.

KDSB to lease new Defibrilators

The Kenora District Services Board has agreed to enter into a lease agreement to purchase 23-defibrillators for ambulances across the District.

The Board will spend 90-thousand dollars this year and 71-thousand dollars for each of the next 4-years to secure the new machines.

The move will save the Board about 46-thousand dollars compared to puchasing 5-machines per year.

14 of the current AED's are more than 10-years-old, well past the typical life of 5-years.

The KDSB says over the past 5 years they have had at least 3-major failures per year.

Village Corner Site in Vermillion Bay being Cleaned up

The clean-up of the Village Corner fire site in Vermillion Bay is underway.

Crews started demolition of the structure yesterday morning.

A fire ripped through the area landmark last Labour Day, leaving only the Casually Hip and Way North stores still standing.

Kenora BIZ ready to Celebrate Summer

A busy long weekend in Kenora.

Canada Day festivities will be book-ended by a couple of special events under the big tent on the Kenora harborfront.

Thursday night, the Winnipeg Symphony is in town and Saturday, Celebrate Summer makes a return.

Mort Goss is one of the people spear-heading the day-long event and says Harbortown BIZ is really the impetus behind Celebrate Summer.

Celebrate Summer will get underway at 1:00 on Saturday and wrap up just after 11:00 with a fireworks display.

OPP Summer Camp Taking place this week

Ontario Provincial Police have kicked off their annual youth summer camp in northwestern Ontario.

Forty young people aged 11 and 12 from across northwestern Ontario have gathered at Sunny Cove near
Fort Frances.

Constable Anne McCoy says they've plenty of activities to partake in.

McCoy says the camp aims to help youth through team building, mentoring, self-esteem exercises with police.

Residents Evacuated from New Osnaburgh prepare to return home

About 500 residents of the New Osnaburgh First Nation could return home as early as Friday, if the air quality continues to improve.

They were evacuated from the community near Pickle Lake a week ago to avoid smoke from a large forest fire.

A community official says the residents are anxious to go home.

About 300 firefighters are working on the fire, which officially remains out of control but did not reach the community.