The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Max Meikle, who came to the Kitchener/Waterloo area from Parry Sound this past November, said in a recent interview the problem with the Harris government‘s recent changes to welfare policies is that they are not allowing peoâ€" ple on welfare to make enough money to adequately underâ€" take job searches. A Kitchener/Waterloo man currently on welâ€" fare says the welfare policies adapted by the curâ€" rent provincial government are actually preventing people from getting back to work Meikle has been on and off . welfare for approximately the §%‘ last four years. Currently he is m ?éa%@,g renting a room in a downtown Kitchener hotel while trying to Max find a job in the Kitchener/Waterloo area. At preâ€" sent, he is making $520 a month on welfare. "You‘re making just enough money to pay your rent and that‘s it," Meikle said about the current amount of money he receives. "And the rest of the time you need to get around to look for work. And you have no phone or anything for an employer to contact vou after you‘ve talked to him." As late as 1996, Meikle said he was making as much as $660 a month on welfare, which enabled him to at least deal with his everyday expenses a little bit better. However not that long ago he was making only $493 a month. "There‘s a small minonty of people out there who don‘t want to do anything with their lives and you‘re not going to be able to change those people no matter what you do." Meikle said, ..747â€"2040 "Service: We Believe in It" The monthâ€"long meningitis immunization campaign is wrapping up this weekend with the last of the catchâ€"up clinics. Dr. Doug Sider, associate medical officer of health for Waterloo Region, said he‘s happy with the level of community panicipation. "The community has done a tremendous job," he said. "They understood the needs of the campaign and coâ€"operated with it." _ With phase three, the immunization of Cambridge and North Dumfries, now over, Sider said that preliminary figures show that the clinics exceeded expectations. The Waterloo Region comâ€" munity health department expected 80 per cent of students to take part in clinics. The figures indicate a participation rate of more than 90 per cent, with more than 110,000 vaccinations Sider said it will be well into next week before the department can call an end to the outbreak. it will be done in consultation with provincial health officials, if there are no new cases. But Sider was quick to caution people about a return to risky behavior "Don‘ give up on your behavioral practices," he said. "These aren‘t temporary measures, they need to be maintained." Welfare policies impede job searches, says recipieni immunization campaign to wrap up PAGK 3 Tim Gardner Chronicle Staff The real estate market did not mis« a beat as our festive season came to an end and 1998 bounced into action. Home sales in town are moving along briskly as it appears first time home buyers have returned in a big way. Of the over 100 sales this month in town only 5 are over the $200,000 range. This tells me that moveâ€"up buyers are soon to follow as their homex are sold. Interest rates are still at very attractive levels and The terrible unforgiving power of an ice storm has brought the bitter reality of winter to much of Eastern Canada. We certainly have little to complain ahout relative to our friends in the Montreal and Ottawa areas Max Meikle when asked what the government and welfare case workers should be doing to help people on welfare "But for the people who want to go to school, who want to work, who want to get their lives in order, they (case workers) should sit down with them and they should have some kind of subâ€" z4 â€" Sidy or community startâ€"up j §] â€" fund or whatever for them. 11 .;.:\; E1| should almost be like what “1 ' $ | â€" you‘re getuing under a student liew... l loan." c | Meikle also said the good eikle thing about this proposal |‘> that no ane on welfare would be allowed to be given a free ride by Ontario taxâ€" payers. As well, government officials and others would not be able to bludgeon welfare recipients by saying that they were being given a free ride by Ontario taxpayers because they would have to eventually pay the money they got back. "And there‘s nothing free or dignified about being desuitute, impoverished, broke," Meikle said about being on the present welfare system. "And you can make the transition from being an income recipient to being a taxpayer that much quicker than if they keep on giving you little stipends of money a little bit at a time. That‘s almost.like giving a junky a fix every time. The person‘s hooked and can‘t get off." As for the Harris government‘s idea that reducâ€" ing welfare payments to recipients will act as an (Continued on page 5) "Then you can get into a sitâ€" uation where you can get yourâ€" sell a decent place to live, you can get a phone and you can get some decent clothes to help you find a job," Meikle said. "And then you have to pay the money hack." WATERLOO REAL ESTATE UPDATE John McLean, a line foreman with one of the crews, said storm victims were just happy to see them, despite being without & power for days. m "They saw Waterloo on the trucks and they just kept thanking you," he said. "They hadn‘t seen hydro trucks for a while in some of the areas. "There were a lot of hugs and handshakes, and thank vous." Aaron Musselman, 7, took advantage of the cold weather last weekend to play a game of "shinny" at Lexington public school‘s outdoor rink last Saturday. Bob Vrbanac photo Two sleepy Waterloo North Hydro crews are back at work in town after helping out storm ravaged eastern Ontario. Based out of Winchester, a energ town just south of Ottawa, his crew worked on the area south > of a town called lroquois McLean said he was shocked by the devastation "I‘ve never seen anything like it," he said "Our lines are specified to accommodate half an inch of ice Down there. there was two inches of Ice there pole. repair or replace the line. and then restring the line "We took an area, or road, and did as many repairs as was needed to get as many people Local hydro crews return from ice storm aid mission At it was just Itke dominoes. In ane sectione~ were 70 poles down." eack stap his crew had to put up a new repair or replace the line. and then restring house prices have not moved significantly so hiyers are making good on the predictions for a «trong 1998 Thr proposal for a hotel and other forms of construction for the Seagrams site has a lot of support as it would certainly serve as a magnet to downtown. One can only hope it wil happen soon as the site is a very key location in Waterloo‘s future See you at the Rangers games. Ted Scharf, broker Bob Vrbanac Chronicle Staff 747 BACK ON HIS FEET "The people would come out and talk to you, and serve you coffee, and energize you." â€"Mclean there." Waterloo North Hydro sent up another crew on Sunday to replace the two returning crews The members of the crews coming in from the cold are: Randy Kirkwood, Gary Fletcher, Ken Dopp. Bill Miller, line foreman Jeff Polzin, Ken Stephens, Carmen Caiazzo, Rex Allen, and Rob Brown back on as we could," he said "Our number one priority was to get some of those community centres up and running because people were there eating and sleeping." It meant 16â€"hour days, starting at 5 a.m. and finishing at 10 p.m. By the time the crew "came down" from a long day, they averaged five hours of sleep a night McLean said that there‘s still a couple weeks work left to do until the area gets up and runâ€" ning, but the people are doing their best to get through it McLean said that the genâ€" erosity of the local commumiâ€" ties kept the crew going, even on days when the mercury dropped to â€"35 degrees. "H it hadn‘t been for some of the people down there, we‘d get discouraged by the amount of work in front of us," he said "The people would come out and talk to you, and serve you coffee, and energize you. If it wasn‘t for them there would be some pl'k‘ll)' N.ld [d\ es oul