Friday, November 15, 2013 Day, Month X, XXXX
Toys for Tots sign up set The Marines’ Toys For Tots will assist children in need again this Christmas. se families with toys for their children so no Preregistration is required. Assistance applications will be taken at St. Paul’s United Church of Christ, 428 Kilbourne St., on Friday, Nov. 15, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and 5:30-8 p.m. On Saturday, Nov. 16, the times are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Parents who signed up elsewhere for Christmas toys’ assistance, cannot also sign up with Toys For Tots. Parents must bring picture ID, income and residency verification, proof of expenses such as utility bills in their name, their children’s medical card(s) or other proof of guardianship. Those who do not have medical cards such as Careworks, WIC or Wellcare, must provide proof of children through custody papers (updated for 2012), or an updated Department of Human Services award letter with children listed, or this year’s school records. If parents are separated, the custodial parent is the only one eligible to sign up for assistance, not both. Grandparents must bring in proof of custody. At sign up, all parents will be given an appointment for Saturday, Dec. 14, to come and shop for their children’s toys.
Today: Partly sunny, with a high near 49. Southwest wind 11 to 14 mph. Tonight: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 37. South wind 6 to 8 mph. Saturday: Partly sunny, with a high near 55. South wind 7 to 14 mph. S aturday Night: Showers likely after 1am. Cloudy, with a low around 48. South wind 11 to 17 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible. Sunday: Showers likely. Cloudy, with a high near 62. Breezy. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible. Sunday Night: Showers likely. Cloudy, with a low around 45. Breezy. Chance of precipitation is 60%. Monday: A chance of rain and snow showers.
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Bellevue, Ohio
New center aims to find workers Manufacturers in four-county area have thousands of jobs open Becky Brooks Managing Editor
Bellevue Development Corporation director Steven Fuhr unveiled plans for the Regional Resource Center which will be housed in the same building as the BDC and the Bellevue Area Chamber of Commerce in the West 100 block of Main Street. “We’ve put together a team comprised of the four county area,” Fuhr told chamber members at the monthly luncheon Thursday held at the Willows at Bellevue clubhouse. The BCD official said for once having Bellevue located in corners of Erie, Huron, Sandusky, and Seneca counties played in the city’s favor. The new resource center will concentrate on increasing the availability of qualified workers for manufacturers in the four participating counties, he said. The new center will involve vocational schools, public schools, cities in four counties, the county governments and the economic development corporations from nearby cities and those four counties. “There is a fundamental lack of skilled employees,” Fuhr stated. Within a 200-mile radius of Bellevue there are 4,700 open
Becky Brooks | Gazette
Steven Fuhr, director for the Bellevue Development Corporation, talks to the local chamber of commerce on Thursday.
jobs, he reported to the chamber. “They can’t find people who can pass a drug test, have a good work ethic and have skills,” he reported, noting there are about 400 manufacturers in the four counties participating in the resource center. Fuhr reported a new Limited
Liability Corporation is being created to operate the Regional Resource Center in Bellevue and it will be renting office space from the BDC, which purchased its own office building over a year ago. The building is currently is being remodeled with the new renters slated to move in around Dec. 1, he said.
Charles Dharapak | AP
Policy cancellations: Obama will allow old plans Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Bowing to pressure, President Barack Obama on Thursday announced changes to his health care law to give insurance companies the option to keep offering consumers plans that would otherwise be canceled. The administrative changes are good for just one year, though senior administration officials said they could be extended if problems with the law persist. Obama announced the changes at the White House.
See CENTER | 2
Newest ‘Early Bird’ raffle winner named
President Barack Obama pauses Thursday while speaking about his signature health care law in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington.
DAVID ESPO, JULIE PACE
One of the goals of the resource center will be to update the public’s vision of manufacturing in the region from old antiquated plants to operations that are nearly “food-sterile” and clean, Fuhr said. He also commented that the center must work to change educators’ and parents’ misconceptions that working at a manufacturing plant is a second-rate option. “If you ever get a chance to go out and visit a manufacturing plant, take it,” he said. “In order to start changing things we have to start with educating not only the parents but the schools themselves,” he told business leaders in the room. He said recently economic development leaders arranged to take school counselors from Sandusky County on a bus tour of manufacturing plants to update their knowledge. Currently educators and parents see two paths for their youths - Path A to college and Path B to a job right after high school. Fuhr said working at a manufacturing plant is a career that in this four county region pays on average basic starting wage of $15 to 22 dollars an hour with
“This fix won’t solve every problem for every person, but it’s going to help a lot of people,” the president said. He acknowledged that “we fumbled the rollout of this health care law” and pledged to “just keep on chipping away at this until the job is done.” He also promised to work to regain the trust of the American people. “I think it’s legitimate for them to expect me to have to win back some credibility on this health care law in particular and on a whole range of these issues in general,” he said. Obama has been under
enormous pressure from congressional Democrats to give ground on the cancellation issue under the health care overhaul, a program likely to be at the center of next year’s midterm elections for control of the House and Senate. It’s unclear what the impact of Thursday’s changes will be for the millions of people who have already had their plans canceled. While officials said insurance companies will now be able to offer those people the option to renew their old plans, companies are See HEALTH | 2
BELLEVUE - The first “Early Bird” drawing was held for The Bellevue Hospital Foundation’s 2014 “Is Your Heart Set on a Vette” Corvette Raffle. The drawing was held on Nov. 14 and the winner of $750 was Cynthia Evans of Fremont. Early Bird winning tickets are returned to the drum after each drawing. Evans is the second winner in the current raffle, after Jerry Hoy of Wabash, Ind. won the “Loyalty Club” drawing of $750 on Oct. 1. Hoy’s name was drawn from all previous ticket holders who purchased a ticket during the month of September. Two more “Early Bird” drawings will be held on Dec. 14 ($500) and Jan. 14 ($250). The fourth annual “Is Your Heart Set on a Vette” Corvette Raffle is being sponsored by The Bellevue Hospital Foundation, in cooperation with Steinle
Chevrolet-Buick in Clyde. Grand prize in the raffle is a 2014 Stingray, or $50,053 in cash. The grand prize drawing will be held on Feb. 14, 2014, at the Clyde Steinle location on U.S. 20 West. As of Nov. 14, just 480 tickets remain to be sold at $100 each. You must be at least 18 years of age to purchase a ticket, tickets are nonrefundable, and winners are responsible for all federal, state and local taxes, licenses and fees. A complete set of rules is available upon request from TBHF, or online at www.VetteRaffle.com. A total of 1,553 tickets will be sold for the raffle, and last year’s event was sold out days prior to the drawing. The first ticket drawn in the raffle on Feb. 14, 2014 will be for the 2014 Stingray Corvette or $50,053 in cash. Four other cash drawings include $2,000 for second place, $1,500 for See WINNER | 2
U.S. U.S. Postal Postal Service Service use use only only
Mass burial held in Philippine city hit by typhoon KRISTEN GELINEAU, OLIVER TEVES Associated Press
T A C L O B A N , Philippines — The air was thick with the stench of decay as sweating workers lowered the plastic coffins one by one into a grave the size of an Olympic swimming pool. Scores of unidentified bodies were interred together Thursday in a hillside cemetery without any ritual — the first mass burial in this city shattered by last week’s Typhoon Haiyan. Six days after the disaster, some progress was being made in providing
food, water and medical aid to the half-million people displaced in the Philippines. Massive bottlenecks blocking the distribution of international assistance have begun to clear. Soldiers on trucks gave out rice and water, and chainsaw-wielding teams cut debris from blocked roads to clear the way for relief trucks in Tacloban, the capital of the hardesthit Leyte province. Thousands of people continued to swarm Tacloban’s damaged airport, desperate to leave or to get treatment at a makeshift medical center. “We know the gravity
of our countrymen’s suffering, and we know that, now more than ever, all of us are called on to do whatever we can to help alleviate our countrymen’s suffering,” President Benigno S. Aquino III said in a statement. Authorities say 2,357 people have been confirmed dead, a figure that is expected to rise, perhaps significantly, when information is collected from other areas of the disaster zone. With sweat rolling down their faces, John Cajipe, 31, and three See BURIALS | 2
Vincent Yu | AP
A young girl walks her brother Thursday to the Tacloban City Convention Center known as the Astrodome, where hundreds of displaced typhoon survivors have set up makeshift shelters throughout the complex’s once bustling shops and popular basketball court. For the thousands of people jamming the Tacloban City Astrodome, the great halls with a solid roof was a heaven-sent refuge when Typhoon Haiyan rammed eastern Philippines on Friday.