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09 | 22 | 2016 VOLUME 21 | ISSUE 37
TYLER PASHER MAKES MSL DEBUT IN KANSAS CITY
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Latest work at century-old Elmira church provided a real honey of an issue for work crews
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WHITNEY NEILSON
ELMIRA’S ST. JAMES EVANGELICAL Lutheran Church has been under construction for weeks, but that restoration which just finished is only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to the congregation’s overall revitalization efforts for the downtown church. The church marked its 100th birthday last year and they’ve been busy renovating and working on opening the church to the wider public. In July of 2015 they hosted a concert by Liona Boyd, which was the beginning of this push to make St. James Lutheran a community church. “That was a part of our new initiative to try to make St. James a sustainable congregation in Elmira and we also as a congregation decided to look at ways of being sustainable while retaining our heritage building in downtown Elmira,” congregation member Linda Snyder said. She and husband Paul Snyder explain what changes have taken place and what the plans for the future look like right now. So far they’ve replaced the church’s heating system, floor and ceiling tiles
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and repaired external brick and concrete. They repaired the masonry in the towers and the capstones. “We had a little delay over that too because the first capstones that we had put up were too big. It did not look true to the architecture of the original building, so we changed to smaller ones,” Linda explained. They also discovered a large, active bee hive in one of the towers, which had to be removed. They called Ken Muschik from London, otherwise known as Ken the Bee Man, to remove and relocate the bees. It took him three days to remove the hive, which housed roughly 10,000 bees. A regular hive has anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 bees. “It had quite an area to grow into because there’s a double ceiling in the church. So there was probably a foot and a half gap between the two ceilings. They entered under the eaves and then formed their hives between these two ceilings,” Paul said. Muschik extracted the bees by cutting a hole from the inside of the roof and then accessing the hive from the inside. He re-
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ry a s r e iv Ann WE’RE CELEBRATING ! e l IN STYLE! a S
STEVE KANNON
Elmira’s St. James Evangelical Lutheran Church recently underwent renovations, including removing a large bee hive, which was located in one of the towers and has since been located to a nearby farm. This is just part of the church’s revitalization efforts, which also includes opening the church to community events and concerts.
WOOLWICH HAS CHANGED THE process for both how it resurfaces tar-and-chip roads and monitors contractors doing the work in response to substandard work. Conestogo resident Gerry Bucking has been riding township staff hard since a poor job was done resurfacing his street, Grandview Drive, in 2013. Though the contractor eventually redid the job in 2015, he remains unsatisfied with the process, particularly township’s response to his complaints. He also sees as a waste of tax dollars some $16,000 extra paid to the contractor, Cornell Construction, for upgraded emulsion and gravel chips used in redoing the work. Although councillors appeared satisfied a lesson had been learned, Bucking’s frustration boiled over at times as he made a presentation to them Tuesday night. “Why am I, as a taxpayer, paying them $16,000?” he asked of the upgrades, arguing the materials were what should have been used in keeping with the original tender for the job. “I’m really disgusted with this. The taxpayers have been ripped off.” Dan Kennaley, the township’s director of engineering and planning, disagreed with Bucking the ROAD WORK | 4
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