I Had a Visit From Flat Stanley - Who is Flat Stanley

Yesterday I had visit from Flat Stanley. Do you know who Flat Stanley is? Flat Stanley is a character in a series of books written by Jeff Brown.

In 1995 Dale Hubert, a grade three teacher in London Ontario, began the Flat Stanley Project. The Project focused on literacy. Students begin by reading the book and becoming acquainted with the story then they make their own paper Flat Stanley. They then document the places and adventures of their very own Flat Stanley. Usually a teacher will assign their students a two week time frame to have their own Flat Stanley adventure.

Since then, Grade's 2 and 3 students all over the world have been participating in the Flat Stanley Project and I'm happy to have recently been visited by a local Halton Hills Flat Stanley. Madison McMaster a grade 2 student from George Kennedy Public School brought her Flat Stanley to the Civic Center for a visit. His conversation with me was rather flat. All kidding aside, I think this a great character and the kids have a lot of fun using their minds to create adventures for their Flat Stanley.

I never knew who Flat Stanley was but now I do.

Georgetown Hospital Asks Town for Financial Support

We are in very tough budget deliberations. On our plate we have two to three arenas we have to build during this term, we have requests for senior's centers in both Acton and Georgetown plus many more big ticket items as well as the usual of road repairs, maintenance of our facilities. Last night at council the CAO of Halton Health Care John Oliver presented quite a compelling case for a $4.456 million dollar grant to the Georgetown Hospital for a new CT Scanner, improved Digital Imaging as well as an expansion for the hospital.

The total cost of the project is over 12 million dollars. Council members campaigned to be elected on the usual Municipal requests like the arenas, libraries etc. Hospitals normally are a Provincial jurisdiction. But I guess the Province is in difficult financial times as well as there are many hospital projects throughout the Province.

The hospital is confident that they can raise the money through the Hospital Foundation (they do wonderful fundraising), as well as the Hospital volunteers and through parking receipts etc. The Town will have to debenture the money over ten years if we do decide to go ahead which will be a Hospital Levy of up to 2% on the taxes. Council has asked our Treasurer to look at how we can finance this urgent need. There are many stories out there our CT Scanners do save lives. If council decides not to support this it may be 8 - 10 years before we get one.

Council supported a motion to have a public meeting on Jan. 24th to hear from you, our Halton Hills residents on whether they would support this as I stated earlier this is not really the norm for Municipalities. Having said that, Oakville and Burlington have already committed through their taxes support for their hospitals. It was only a short time ago that many people of Halton Hills along with myself, councillors of the day fought to keep obstetrics open in Georgetown.

I would like to hear your opinion on this issue. You can email me at mayor@haltonhills.ca We recognize the need, but can we afford it now is the question?