Geraldine Hardcastle is Georgetown Hockey Recipient

Tonight I will be attending the annual Georgetown Hockey Heritage Award dinner. Georgetown has a long history of volunteers who supported the sport of hockey for years. This years recipient is Geraldine Hardcastle who started volunteering as young teenage waitress during the Georgetown International Hockey Tournament. Geraldine became involved in an effort to assist needy families to make their registration payments. She was so adept that the funds were raised in one day and a few phone calls.

In 1993 she became involved in organizing the Georgetown International Bantam tournament and for seven years helped provide a very well recognized component of our Hockey Scene.

Geraldine has been an active volunteer for minor hockey over the years. She had positions from convener, scheduling, providing training for coaches and trainers in our area.

She also participated in " Shave Off Heads for Cancer , the Dudley Hewitt Cup and the Hockeyville submissions.

As you can see Geraldine Hardcastle is a most worth recipient of the Georgetown Hockey Heritage Award. This dinner is always a lot of fun as there a few former N.H.L. players and Olympic Athletes who attend.

Congratulations to Geraldine as you make this community so proud!

Meeting with Minister of Health

This week I met with the Minister of Health Deb Matthews. The purpose of the meeting is to get Provincial funding for the expansion of the Georgetown Hospital and CT Scanner. This is a $12.2 million project. The Town of Halton Hills is being asked to fund $4.5 million and the rest will be fundraised or raised through parking at the hospital. I feel the Ministry of Health should be putting some money into this very worthwhile project. Myself and Councillor Jon Hurst attended the meeting.

I knew going into the meeting that there were only a two scenarios. One being the Minister would listen and not make a committment right then or two where the Minister would listen and then flat out deny our request.

Well we got the best case scenario. The Minister listened and we left with another strategy for funding that I will present to the Minister in another letter to her. I am not optimistic as we are behind the eight ball. The best that we are trying to do is to come up with options that Minister Mathews can't refuse.

Civic Action - Greater Toronto Summit

The G.T.A. economy was hit hard by the global financial crisis and resulting downturn that began in September 2008. In 2009, the G.T.A. economy's had the worst showing since the recession of the early 1990's. The job market was sideswiped by the global recession. Employment fell by 1% in 2009.

Fortunately the economy began to recover and to some a lot quicker than first thought. The Municipal economies in the GTA region are highly interconnected and dependent. Regional strengths and challenges do cut across munipal boundaries. The problem is economic efforts are generally localized, fragmented and often competing. This is a serious issue.

A week a go I attended the two day Civic Action Summit held in Toronto and was chaired by CFRB radio host John Tory. It was very interesting as this was not the usual conference or summit attended by politicians. It was actually attended by few politicians but really a cross section of various business entrepreneurs, executives etc. There were many workshops on opportunities for action. There were over 600 delegates at this conference.

All of the material from the workshops will be sent out. I was pleased to have attended as this one was really business driven not politically driven. It was worthwhile and I hope to attend next year.

Enjoy Family Day Holiday in Halton Hills

This will be the third year that this will be a long weekend in Ontario. Premier McGuinty pronounced Family Weekend after just be re-elected for a second term. There was some push back as this may cost money to companies having to pay employees for a new statutory holiday. Personally, I like the idea of a long weekend in February. It's just a long month or as some would say we are in the " winter blahs". Not a bad weekend for some to exercise and enjoy what winter brings.

This year our Recreation and Parks are asking our residents not to forget that there are free activities on Family Day Feb. 21st. It's all fun and fun for all thanks to our generous sponsors - Canadian Tire Georgetown, RBC Georgetown, Tim Horton'. Come on out and enjoy swimming, skating,c rafts, yoga, ZUMBA and a Youth Room.

For more information visit www.haltonhills.ca/familyday for the day's activity schedule.

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?

New Acton Library on Schedule

I had a tour of the new 9,000 square foot Acton library this week. Councillors Jon Hurst, Clark Somerville and Jane Fogal were also on the tour. We were all impressed with building thus far. It is going to be a great improvement of the outdated building that is the library now.

The best news of the day is that the library is on time and on budget. That is music to Municipalities ears. This new library will be almost three times the size of the present library. Statistics show that since 2003, circulation is up 45%, children's program attendance is up 23% and in-house Internet usage is up 50%.

The current Acton branch cannot meet the community needs. Not was space limited, users do not have enough room to work and read, and many larger programs cannot be accommodated. This new library will be more accessible for wheelchair users, people with mobility issues and young moms with strollers. Natural light will be maximized, will have more Internet stations.

The new Acton branch is due to open in late February or first of March. The new building will be heated and cooled using Geothermal. The cost of the new branch is expected to cost 3.5 million dollars which is being split between Federal, Provincial and the Town of Halton Hills.

For Acton and area library users this will be an exciting time to see the new building completed.