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Written by Ozaukee Press Editoral Board
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Wednesday, 07 April 2010 14:11 |
With the nearest paramedic service located at the southern end of the county, Port Washington is right to consider upgrading to the highest level of first-responder careIt’s an understatement to say the people of Ozaukee County are well served by medical services, what with a recently enlarged hospital operating in Mequon and a new hospital soon to open in Grafton, numerous clinics throughout the county and EMT (emergency medical technician) services in virtually every community. Nonetheless, there is a gap in emergency services that should be closed, and the City of Port Washington seems well suited to do it.
The gap—or perhaps it is better described as a stretch—in emergency medical care is that the only paramedic service in the county is located in Thiensville.
There are no gaps in EMT coverage. Squads of these well-trained first-responders are headquartered in cities and villages within a few minutes of any point in Ozaukee County, and it is safe to say they save lives every year.
But EMTs are limited by training and state certification in the life-saving measures they can take when helping victims of accidents or medical crises.
Paramedics are medical professionals trained and certified to take more complex measures to stabilize victims before they reach the hospital. Unlike EMTs, they can gives shots and administer potentially life-saving drugs, including those specified for cardiac emergencies.
With the county’s only paramedics located at its southern end, people in need of these measures to augment first aid provided by EMTs must wait precious minutes—15 to 20 minutes or more for Thiensville paramedics to reach an accident scene in Port Washington, as an example.
There have been instances in which EMTs have met Thiensville paramedics in a roadside rendezvous enroute to the hospital to save time, an expedient that may get the job done but is hardly ideal.
Against this backdrop, the Port Washington Police and Fire Commission’s decision to study the possibility of adding paramedics to the first-responders of its ambulance service is welcome. A paramedic program based in Port Washington would make advanced emergency services available to northern Ozaukee County residents about as rapidly as they currently are for people in the southern half of the county.
The idea is particularly attractive because a good part of the preparation needed for the Port Washington ambulance service to take the step to paramedic certification has already been done.
The service already has a heart monitor/defibrillator, a requisite for paramedic certification that can represent a large capital investment. What’s more, three members of its EMT squad are already certified paramedics, and two more are close to completing their paramedic training. According to Fire Chief Mark Mitchell, an ample number of part-time paramedics is also available.
Staffing demands are not to be taken lightly, because state requirements for paramedic services include having one paramedic and one EMT on each ambulance run and round-the-clock coverage.
Even though Port Washington has certified paramedics in its EMT corps, they are not allowed to perform paramedic services until the entire ambulance service is certified as a paramedic program by the Wisconsin Department of Health, a process the city could initiate following its study.
The cost of operating a paramedic program and how it will be paid will, of course, be part of the study. If paramedic service would add to the tax burden, it would probably be a non-starter. If an operating plan showed program costs could be covered by fees billed to patients and their insurance companies, it would go a long way to making the paramedic upgrade feasible.
That could increase the cost of an ambulance ride for everyone, but it would likely be a price most would consider worth paying to close a gap that leaves northern Ozaukee County residents at risk of not getting the highest level emergency care when first-responders arrive. |
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Written by Ozaukee Press Editoral Board
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Wednesday, 31 March 2010 15:27 |
The high number of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunches is a telling sign of hard times—and a sign of government properly serving the publicFew measures of the impact on families in this area of the most disastrous economic collapse since the Depression are more telling than this one: Nearly one-fourth of the students in Port Washington-Saukville schools are getting free or subsidized school lunches because their families are living near the poverty level.
The children getting free lunches are from households with incomes of less than 130% of the federal poverty level of $28,655 for a family of four. These are families trying to get by on $37, 251 a year or less.
The number of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches increased from 15.7% of district enrollment last year to 21.7% this year—a sobering statistic that suggests many are being left out of the economic recovery said to be underway.
School officials make a concerted effort to identify students in need and encourage families to apply for the lunch aid. (Mindful of the stigma some people attach to accepting government assistance, schools keep the names of students receiving the free or lower priced lunches confidential.)
Administrators acknowledge that they promote the program not only out of humanitarian concern and because the connection between academic success and economic factors and nutrition is well known, but because participation in the free and reduced-price lunch program helps their schools get other federal educational aid that they believe has a direct effect on helping lagging students succeed.
Lunch program statistics are used to apply for federal Title 1 funding for disadvantaged children. During the current school year the Port Washington-Saukville district has received $204,000 in Title 1 grants, more than any other district in the county. The money is used to pay for services for struggling students.
The district was also the only one in the county that received economic stimulus funding under Title 1. The $105,000 was used to hire additional paraprofessionals to help at-risk students.
The lunch statistics are alarming as a gauge of the economic challenges many families here are facing, yet at the same time they are reassuring—in that they are evidence that federal programs aimed at helping students in need are working.
The lunch assistance comes from the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act. In 2008 it spent $8.9 billion to help more than 30 million students get a school lunch. It was signed by President Harry Truman in 1946.
The Title 1 funding to help schools teach academically challenged students comes from the No Child Left Behind Act. President George W. Bush pushed for passage of the bill and signed it in 2001.
These are big programs billed to taxpayers, spending billions, helping millions. Indeed, they come from “big government,” a term made into a pejorative that is increasingly used—sometimes shouted—as an indictment of government spending.
Vigilance for and criticism of government waste and overreaching is a time-honored exercise in American citizenship. But blanket indictments of government spending are lazy political rhetoric that ignores the human needs that are served by the federal government.
Programs such as those that are helping local students and their families are part of what some see as a problem. And it’s true that government, and the federal deficit, could be a bit smaller if it let families that are struggling because their breadwinners are unemployed or forced to work at low-paying jobs pay for their own student lunches.
Is that the government we want? |
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Written by Ozaukee Press Editoral Board
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Wednesday, 24 March 2010 16:58 |
Reducing the galaxy of lights on the Port’s airportlike Spring Street is a good idea; so are higher speed limits elsewhere and a new pedestrian wayIt’s no mystery why Port Washington’s South Spring Street is frequently compared to an airport runway: It looks like one.
A dazzling example of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation’s urban road-building philosophy—“There is no such thing as too much concrete”—this pavement extravaganza looks wide enough for a jumbo jet and is in fact wide enough for four lanes of terrestrial traffic.
The peculiar fact that in spite of its excessive width only two lanes of traffic can use the street—driving in the outer two lanes is forbidden—might lead to the assumption that the DOT paved the earth along the Spring Street right of way (and parts of the front yards of some homeowners) just because it was there.
In any case, South Spring Street as reconstructed earlier in this decade is about as appropriate as an entrance way to a pretty small town as a Boeing 747 would be landing on a rural airstrip.
To their credit, Port Washington officials didn’t let that sort of mistake be inflicted on the city again when North Wisconsin Street was rebuilt two years ago. That street was narrowed, rather than widened like Spring Street, and with its abundant newly planted trees and decorative lighting is every bit the welcoming northern gateway to the city it was intended to be.
The city is stuck with South Sprint Street, of course, and there is little it can do to soften an image as cold as concrete in January, but it is working on one good idea that promises to be at least a small aesthetic improvement—turning off half of the street lights.
One of the reasons South Spring Street inspires airport metaphors is that it’s lighted like a runway, with many more street lights than are needed. The ranks of closely spaced lights not only provide garish illumination of the street’s flaws, but must be an annoyance to residents forced to live in a synthetic version of the land of the midnight sun.
Unplugging 16 of the 32 lights between the Oakland Avenue and Portview Road intersections is proposed as a trial. If it’s deemed an improvement, the lights could, as Public Works Director Rob Vanden Noven has proposed, be removed and installed at the coal dock, where lights will be needed when the property is improved as public lakefront space.
Let it be done. Spring Street and its residents, the coal dock development and the taxpayers will all benefit.
South Spring Street, it must be said, does have one positive feature—a reasonable speed limit of 35 miles per hour for much of its length. This street/highway is built to safely accommodate speeds faster than that, but the 35 zone at least acknowledges that traffic should move faster on some streets.
Other streets taking traffic to and from the city are burdened by a 25 mile-per-hour limit. The slow zone seems endless on the outer reaches of Highway 33 at the west city limits. When that road is rebuilt in the near future a more realistic speed restriction should be applied.
The 25 limit on almost all Port Washington streets is conservative. City police take an enlightened view of enforcement, and it’s safe to say that while serious speeders are arrested, no one gets a ticket for driving 26 miles per hour. But there seem to be two schools of thought among drivers about speed limits. One is that 25 is a guideline, meaning drive slowly and carefully but not necessarily at exactly 25. The other is that 25 means 25, or maybe 23 or 20. The latter group of drivers get to control the speed of the traffic flow, which makes for unnecessarily slow going on many streets.
The 25 limit is right for downtown and residential neighborhoods. Elsewhere a somewhat higher limit would make sense.
The speed limit will not be an issue for Harborview Lane if the plan to turn the little lakefront street into a pedestrian way goes forward. Only two blocks long, Harborview doesn’t carry much traffic and really isn’t needed as a conventional street. And because it’s in bad repair and needs improvement of some kind, the city’s idea of turning it into a landscaped walkway and bike path (a short leg of the Interurban Trail) makes sense.
It would add to the beauty of the downtown by providing a landscaped, motor-vehicle-free connection between the historic Light Station and the marina complex with places for people to rest and take in the harborside ambience.
The project will have to wait until a new TIF district is created next Jan. 1, but planning should proceed now so it can be finished by summer of 2011. |
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