The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

stouffville suntribune thursday feb 3 2005 11 dont cut taxes at cost of safety police union by roy green staff writer the police budget is not the place to find tax cuts according to the york regional police association a proposal floated at a regional budget workshop last week called for 29 million in cuts to the 154- million 2005 police budget and included adding an extra year to chief armand la barges plan to hire 378 officers and 175 civilian employees by 2008 the police cuts were part of a plan to trim the first draft of the tax payerfunded portion of the budget from 459 million to 32 million reducing the tax hike from 89 per cent to 61 per cent but york region has the highest policetopopulation ratio among comparable services in ontario according to association president john miskiw were not even close to what other gtaarea services have mr miskiw said our population is growing in leaps and bounds and our frontline guys are really taxed the regions current ratio of one police officer to every 817 residents would drop to 1800 by 2008 under the fiveyear plan agreed to by council last year that compares to 1625 in peel 1679 in niagara 1750 in durham and 1795 in halton our goal is one to 700 but we went along with the chiefs plan to reduce that to 1 to 800 mr miskiw said i would hate to see that plan altered at all and cuts to the police budget will not likely be favoured by resi dents according to whitchurch- stoaffville mayor sue sherban safety and security is always a big issue among residents particu larly with the high level of growth were experiencing ms sherban said it was just a year ago we gave approval on this plan and now were going to derail it there are other places to make cuts maybe we could do a better job by rolling out the rapid transit system at a much slower pace police board vicechairperson danny wheeler said other options might be introduced in a presenta tion from the chief at a finance committee meeting scheduled for today the fiveyear hiring plan was accepted last year mr wheeler said there are other ways of attacking the problem the cuts proposed last week also include 26 million from transit 3 million from roads and 1 million from solid waste for a total of 14 million sherban whitchurch stouffville mayor says cutting police budget would be unpopular restaurateur donates mobility bus york region transit received an addition to its mobility plus transit service this week a van modified to transport passengers with special needs the donation came from ken stathakis owner of the octagon restaurant in thornhill the bus will be put into service immediately to pro vide additional accessible vehicle support for yrt cus tomers who use large mobil ity devices such as wheel chairs and scooters its the second time mr stathakis has donated a vehi cle to the mobility fleet through kps holdings he is a longtime supporter of the markham mobility foundation a charitable foundation established 22 years ago to raise funds for the transportation of per sons with special needs 500000 in smart grants the federal government is providing 500000 for two intelligent transportation initiatives in the region including 250000 to help coordinate its standard transit system with viva the new rapid transit operation that begins in september the funds will help inte grate computeraided dis patch systems automated vehicle location systems passenger counting systems and onboard information systems the other half of the funding will be used to help traffic control systems recog nize when there is a traffic bottleneck along a particular route and resynchronize signals to keep traffic moving efficiently ambulances recycled regional council has authorized the donation of two decommissioned ems ambulances and equipment to st john ambulance and another to south america its the second time the region has provided a decommissioned ambu lance through the friends of ecuador a volunteer humanitarian group work ing under the auspices of the consulate general in toronto helens cleaning and home care services cleaning personal services shopping drives to appts friendly visits rates to hit your 13uciget call 005 0420514 grant fullerton jam band a 800 pm 1200 am club room ml february 5 ip bring your voice your instrument your ears wbrsbt music with bill johnson carol 1 500 per couple upstairs no smoking room tickets purchased stouffville legion club room stouffville legion 9056429962 2005 sportage 2005 sorento 2005 sedona 2005 magentis 2005 amanti come in and enjoy our finance rates from on all our kia products eli kia motors zjkp he n fli csbsp bullock drk m for more information please call kia of markham 0ft flfi0 29 laidlaw blvd at bullock 9052010083 v bjelojcare coverage