Letters: May 2/13

May 02, 2013

Ambulance Cuts

Frontenac County Council owes an apology to our Paramedics. A video of their presentation to council against the proposal to cut an ambulance is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyBvVvFMfwU

Janet Gutowski interrupts the paramedic making the presentation to remind her of the 15-minute time limit even though the video very clearly shows that she had been speaking for just over nine minutes. She was interrupted a second time even though she spoke for 12.5 minutes total.

Seeing the flat expressions all around the table and knowing glances being passed between some councillors, would lead anyone to believe that they had their minds made up going in and were merely humouring the paramedics’ union - and doing a very poor job of it. The fact that they had no questions after the presentation not only confirms they were simply going through the motions but also that there is no disputing the union’s valid arguments against the proposed cuts. Council was rude and completely disinterested in a very serious subject.

They decided to cut back all presentations to 10 minutes. Apparently it pains them to have to listen to the public they were elected to serve. Or perhaps, as evidenced in the video, their attention spans are severely compromised to that of two-year-olds!

The ambulance issue should be a no-brainer but look who we are dealing with! How can they say that cutting 4,380 hours will not affect coverage? What if only one of those hours is the one hour of your life when you need it the most? How can they say that cutting one ambulance in such a large geographic area will have no effect on the level of service? It is already scary enough for those living in the more remote areas to wonder how long help would be if needed. What if a guy in Snow Road has a chain saw accident but the ambulance was sent in to Kingston to cover off? What if someone is turning blue in Glenburnie and the closest ambulance is in Parham? I guess the best you can hope for is an off-duty paramedic living next door who happened to see you drop.

This is risk management at its worst. It is also contrary to everything we know about the demographic shift we are experiencing. Health care needs are increasing and we should be putting more ambulances on the road, not pulling them off!

Surely cost savings could be found in less critical areas of the paramedic organization—like trimming some top heavy management or foregoing an SUV or two for the multiple supervisors (you see those SUVs everywhere, including movie theatres).

The public needs to put the heat on this dysfunctional council because they don’t appear capable of making sound decisions on their own. It’s obvious that their priority is discrediting Warden Gutowski at any cost.

If they do cut this ambulance, I can only hope that Karma gets to work and one of the individuals who finds these issues a waste of his time happens to be the one wasting his precious time waiting for the ambulance that no longer exists.

Lori Greenwood

 Re: Ambulance Cuts

If you ask a paramedic about their “worst call ever”, you’ll probably not get an honest answer. Our worst experiences lie in a dark, cold place that we never expose. What you likely will hear is that things are getting worse. We’re busier than ever, health problems in the community seem more acute, mental health in the community is under-resourced, and paramedics are too often the ones to manage the unmanageable.

In Frontenac County, especially in Kingston, we’ve had call volume go up an average of 12 percent each year for the past several years, with no additional paramedic resources. You don’t need to be an economist to see that this is unsustainable.

To address the budget needs, County Council has opted to cut one ambulance from Kingston, laying off four paramedics, instead of addressing the root problem: More calls with fewer paramedics will increase sick time, increase injuries, and increase overtime, but most importantly, it will increase the time it takes for a paramedic to get to your loved one when they need us most.

I guess when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail - Council, and management, need to examine root causes before hammering this very sensitive problem.

Dave Parkhill

Welcome to the Deans

It is with enthusiasm that I have been watching Mr. Dean and his workers move into town and quickly start major renovations to the old grocery store in the center of the village. Renewal seems to be all around us these days: first the new school which is steadily taking shape, the great work that Sandra and Frank White did and continue to do on the hotel, and now the grocery store. Closer to home, Lake District Realty also has new and greatly improved digs on the main drag.

Rural communities have been under siege since the late fifties; cities and urban areas are sexier and more exciting for the young looking for employment and for many of us because of the services that they offer. Entertainment, shopping and recreation are just more readily available.

Many rural communities across Canada have already lost their post offices, drug stores, doctors and many of their retail outlets. Our only hope seems to be that some centres will keep these services and we hope Sharbot Lake will be able to do that, and in turn, service many outlying smaller villages. The medical centre is a wonderful gem that provides a broad range of services to a much larger catchment area; a state of the art K-to-12 school will assure that our students will continue to receive good educations and training; a pharmacy that is as good as they get and now a new and improved grocery store owned by a family-based entrepreneur. What great news and hope for the survival of this area.

I wish Mike Dean and his family the greatest of success and I encourage all of us to make a concerted effort to support their new venture. Not a pretty spectre for us to lose our grocery store and the only way we will keep any of our community-based services here is to use them.

Wayne Robinson