Thursday, November Day, Month X, XXXX 14, 2013
www.thebellevuegazette.com
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Bellevue, Ohio
Rec Department eyes grant for dog park
Downtown cleanup set
By Becky Brooks
Managing Editor
The Committee to Grow Bellevue invites the public to a fall clean-up of downtown on Saturday, Nov. 16 from 10:30 a.m. to noon. Those participating will meet in the city parking lot next to the Bellevue Fire Department on Southwest Street. Those volunteering are invited to stay afterwards to join the committee for a lunch downtown. For more information call 419-2171416.
Bellevue City Council approved two resolutions in one night Tuesday one of which gives the local Rec Department the chance to apply for a grant that could be used for a new dog park. Rec Director Mark Weisenberger asked the council to approve Resolution R11-13 as an emergency with three readings so he could
apply for $7,500 from the Sandusky County Park District’s 2014 grant program. He reported the deadline was in early December and he was seeking the money for a local dog park. Weisenberger commented that there has been interest in a dog park in the community and locations are being reviewed even before the department had applied for this grant. Councilwoman
Peggy Missler questioned whether the Rec Department would go ahead with a dog park if the city did not receive grant funding from the county park district. Weisenberger said he planned to try and find funding even if the grant is declined. The council approved that legislation as an emergency so it is immediately in effect. The other resolution approved by the council
Tuesday night was the annual legislation to confirm real estate tax collections from the counties, according to city auditor Steve Smith. In other business, Safety Service Directory Jeffrey Crosby reported he had received the last bills for grinding out stumps - left by damage from the July 10 storm. He added he would be submitting the city’s total expense soon to seek a grant from the state
to cover 75 percent of Bellevue’s city expenses for recovery. Crosby also reported that he had good news in that the city’s health insurance rates will not be increasing in 2014 for employees. He added that the city also has gained to holidays on payments in the month of December and January - it does not have to pay the premiums. See PARK | 2
Fish and Loaves yet to feel SNAP cuts
Volunteers believe more people could turn to pantry in coming weeks Today: Sunny, with a high near 46. Breezy, with a southwest wind 20 to 23 mph. Tonight: Mostly clear, with a low around 33. Southwest wind 13 to 18 mph.
Friday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 50. South wind 13 to 16 mph. Friday Night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 36.
Saturday: Partly sunny, with a high near 56. Saturday Night: A chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 47. Chance of precipitation is 50%.
Sunday: Showers likely. Cloudy, with a high near 59. Chance of precipitation is 60%. Sunday Night: Showers likely. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 48. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
By Becky Brooks Managing Editor
Volunteers at the Bellevue Fish and Loaves Food Pantry, 203 Maple St., said so far the reduction in monthly SNAP allowances has not resulted an increase in patrons using the local pantry. Les Sherman, a board member for the pantry, explained, “It just happened Nov. 1.” Ohioans lost $193 million which had boosted funds going into the the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) - formally known as the USDA Food Stamp Program. Estimates are that a family of three, two of which would be children, could lose $30 a month in SNAP support as a result of the reduction. “It probably will have an affect,” Sherman said Wednesday as patrons were standing outside the door waiting for Fish and Loaves to open at 1 p.m. This will not be the first decrease in food funding to families that Fish and Loaves has seen. The agency is noting its 30th anniversary this year. With 12 board members and other volunteers, the food pantry assisted nearly 13,500 people in 2012, according its website.
LAURIE KELLMAN and RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR Associated Press
Dita Alangkara | AP Photo
A woman survivor of Typhoon Haiyan weeps as she holds her daughter while waiting for her turn to get on a U.S. Air Force plane Wednesday to leave for the capital city of Manila, at the airport in Tacloban, central Philippines. Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest storms on record, slammed into six central Philippine islands on Friday, leaving a wide swath of destruction.
Patients in typhoon-ravaged city flood Philippines clinic JIM GOMEZ and KRISTEN GELINEAU
U.S. U.S. Postal Postal Service Service use use only only
Associated Press
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See SNAP | 2
Obama administration posts low health care signup levels
Monday: Showers likely. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 59. Chance of precipitation is 60%. Monday Night: A chance of rain and snow showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 37. Chance of precipitation is 40%.
Tuesday: A chance of snow showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 41. Chance of precipitation is 30%.
Photo by Becky Brooks
Fish and Loaves board member Charlotte Waskielis stands at the counter Wednesday behind items being prepared for pantry patrons. The local pantry saw 111 Loaves workers will be handfamilies last week alone. This ing out Thanksgiving baskets month, the pantry has only on Monday, Nov. 25 to 363 famithree Wednesdays that it will lies, who have signed up for be distributing food due to the distribution, the volunteers the Thanksgiving holiday, on reported. Nov. 28. That week, Fish and Volunteer Larry Ocker said
that officials at the the regional pantry which serves Bellevue are concerned about the U.S. Farm Bill. SNAP (food stamps) are funded in the United States as part of that bill, which is still being reviewed in Congress. Bellevue’s Fish and Loaves is served by Second Harvest Food Bank of North Central Ohio, which also provides food to more than 100 soup kitchens, pantries and shelters. Forty to 50 percent of the food stuffs distributed to local pantry patrons come through Second Harvest, Sherman pointed out. “We buy locally the rest of the stock,” he added. The local pantry has a budget of between $100,000 to $110,000 annually. Those funds provide basic supplies to an average of about 340 families monthly. Ocker said Fish and Loaves solicits support from the community and local businesses. Board member Charlotte Waskielis said on Wednesday that the local pantry has long had strong support for its mission. She added she had just received a check to the pantry from an insurance agency in
T A C L O B A N , Philippines — A rundown, single-story building with filthy floors at Tacloban’s ruined airport has become the area’s main medical center for victims of last week’s powerful typhoon. It has little medicine, virtually no facilities and very few doctors. What it is not short of are patients. Hundreds of injured people, pregnant women, children and the elderly have poured into the squat, white building behind the control tower since Typhoon Haiyan
ravaged the eastern Philippines on Friday, killing thousands. Doctors who have been dealing with cuts, fractures and pregnancy’ complications said Wednesday they soon expect to be treating more serious problems such as pneumonia, dehydration, diarrhea and infections. The medical woes add to the daunting tasks for authorities, including dealing with looters and clearing the bottlenecks holding up thousands of tons of aid material from coming in. “The priority has got to be, let’s get the food in, let’s get the water in. See TYPHOON | 2
WASHINGTON — Putting a statistic on disappointment, the Obama administration revealed Wednesday that fewer than 27,000 people signed up for private health insurance last month in the 36 states relying on a problem-filled federal website. States running their own enrollment systems did better, signing up more than 79,000, for a total enrollment of over 106,000. Still, that was barely one-fifth of the nearly 500,000 people administration officials had projected would sign up the first month of Obama’s signature program, a numerical rebuke to the administration’s ability to deliver on its promise. The 106,185 people who made it all the way through to selecting a plan represent just 1.5 percent of the 7 million people the administration hopes to enroll by next year. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said things will get better, and quickly. “There is no doubt the level of interest is strong,” she said. The administration
said an additional 1 million or so applicants have been found eligible for government-subsidized private coverage in new state-level insurance markets, and about half are within sight of having their plans lined up for the start of next year. An additional 396,000 have been found eligible for Medicaid, the safety-net program that is shaping up as the health care law’s early success story. The numbers landed amid a political storm on Capitol Hill. Democrats who had hoped to run for re-election next year on the success of the health care law are increasingly worried. It’s not only the website woes, but a wave of cancellation notices hitting constituents whose individual health insurance policies don’t measure up to the law’s requirements. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has scheduled an all-Democrats meeting Thursday with White House health care officials. The administration has staked its credibility on turning the website around by the end of this month. From the president on down, officials have said that HealthCare.gov will be running smoothly for the vast majority of users by Nov. 30.
Some outside experts are concerned. “People are starting to get nervous because there is not enough indication from the government that things are on track,” said Caroline Pearson, who runs the health reform practice at Avalere Health, a market analysis firm. “You wonder if there are still underlying programming problems that are causing the system to shut down when volume is high.” Administration officials have not specified what “running smoothly” means, or what would constitute the “vast majority” of users. On daily media calls, Health and Human Services department officials have described a situation where problems get fixed and then new issues crop up as consumers are able to venture further into the website. It’s a bit like traffic heading back to a city late on a summer Sunday: You get past one jam, and odds are you run into another. There was a hopeful sign this Tuesday when Julie Bataille, HHS communications director for the rollout, said that 275,000 people who got hung up in the early days are being invited back to try to complete their See HEALTH | 2