The Commerce news. (Commerce, Ga.) 1???-current, December 16, 2015, Image 4

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The Commerce news., December 16, 2015, Image 4

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Newspaper Page TextPAGE 4A THE BANKS COUNTY NEWS • THE COMMERCE NEWS WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2015 Editorial Views Maxwell still wheeling and still dealing Lame duck and disgraced Nich olson Mayor Ronnie Maxwell has made it clear he will not go gently into that good night. Last week Maxwell, backed by council allies Max Whitlock and Faye Seagraves (both of whom voted against a resolution that even Maxwell sup ported to repay the city’s SPLOST account for $23,595 in misappro priated funds), effectively thumbed his nose at Nicholson voters who on Nov. 3 signaled clearly that they were tired of Maxwell’s she nanigans. The mayor instigated a city council vote, supported by Faye Seagraves and Max Whitlock, to fire city attorney. Campbell’s sin? Charged with investigating the city’s use of SPLOST money and its financial matters in general, Campbell issued a scathing report of both — a report that appears to have been confirmed by the SPLOST 5 Citizens Review Com mittee and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Reports are also surfacing that Maxwell wants to spend city funds to landscape the former Cross roads School site, a project that would be done by a Maxwell crony without benefit of a bid process; and that he has asked the interim city attorney to review a host of city documents, a means of run ning up a hefty legal bill by Dec. 31. Fortunately, with less than three weeks until a new mayor and three new council members are installed, Maxwell’s efforts will not succeed. When they elected Jan Webster as mayor and Mike Bar- field, Lamar Watkins and Judy Kes- ler to the city council, Nicholson voters made it clear they want no more of Maxwell and his cronies. Come January, the Nicholson City Council is expected to reap point Campbell as city attorney, repay the city’s SPLOST fund for the $10,607 Maxwell spent to pave his mother’s driveway and call for a forensic audit of the city’s finan cial records. That move should resolve any suspicions about what has or has not been going on at City Hall for the past few years, giving a new government a clean slate and a fresh start. Maxwell has controlled virtually every aspect of city government for years, but his machinations over the last weeks of his term of office show he’s not the least bit repentant nor concerned about the welfare of the city he serves and that he plans to continue to play fast and loose with taxpayers’ money. Nicholson will begin a new era on Jan. 1, and hopefully the new administration will be able to restore trust in Nicholson’s gov ernment. Unless otherwise noted, all editorials are written by Mark Beardsley. He can be reached at mark@mainstreetnews. com. The Commerce News ESTABLISHED IN 1875 USPS 125-320 P.O. Box 908 Jefferson, GA 30549 MIKE BUFFINGTON CoPublisher SCOTT BUFFINGTON Co-Publisher Mark Beardsley. Editor THE COMMERCE NEWS is the legal or gan of the city of Commerce and is pub lished every Wednesday by MainStreet Newspapers Inc. Periodical postage paid at Jefferson. Georgia 30549. Subscription Rates Per Year: $25 POSTMASTER send address changes to THE COMMERCE NEWS, P.O. Box 908, Jefferson, GA 30549. A regrettable moment of silence Inasmuch as I’m prone to open my mouth when it should remain shut, I stand ashamed at keeping it closed when I should have spo ken up. Returning from Italy last Thursday where we’d gone to meet our new grandson, we arrived at the Toronto airport about two hours behind schedule, though confident that we would make the connecting flight to Atlanta, also on Air Canada, because there had originally been a three-hour layover. AC personnel directed us to a service counter with two lines to begin the process of getting on the next flight. After 15 minutes, they informed us that our connecting flight, now 40 minutes from takeoff had been “closed out,” meaning we were bumped. They directed us to a second line at the same counter. No one gave a reason why. Nor did anyone apologize. One of the counter persons happi ly approached us with new boarding passes and informed us that this flight was “free of charge” as if it was normal policy to charge us for both the flight we missed and the new flight. The second line had perhaps four people in front of us, including a young man anxious about missing his connecting flight. Soon the counter personnel quit waiting on people in our line, apparently tending to a problem with a customer in the line we’d been in previously. It's Gospel According To Mark By Mark Beardsley The young man tried several times to approach the counter, a logical move, since at any given point there were 4-11 Air Canada people behind the counter. If more than two were working on the other passenger’s issue, it was not apparent. The rest looked at mon itors and stared at keyboards and wandered around, ignoring a customer who had doubt lessly paid hundreds of dollars for a flight and was frantic to get on the plane. Finally, a woman emerged from behind the counter and berated the customer. She told him that he was being mde, that no one else was mde or impatient and that if he did not shut up he would not fly anywhere. While I was not mde, I can assure you that I was not patient. I’ll always regret not speaking up for the customer. Air Canada, not the would-be passenger, was the mde party and it was unconcerned about the needs of a customer from whom it had taken payment for service. Whether it was exhaustion from the hours in airplanes and airports or a fear that if I spoke up she would make sure I never flew, I don’t know. I said nothing. Not only should I have defended the young man, but I also should have made sure to get the name of the woman who, being in a position of power, abused it against a paying customer. Four hours later as we finally left Toronto, I overheard the two men seated in front of me complaining about Air Canada. “Should always stick with Delta,” said one. “That’s for sure,” the other agreed. “Amen,” was my unsolicited response. Anyone who flies expects delays caused by weather or mechanical issues. Those things happen, along with over-booked flights. They’re aggravating, but part of the process. Rude staff exacerbates matters. I’ve no idea why Air Canada was having a bad day, but the AC crew behind the desk at Toronto seemed intent on making it worse. Air Canada may be a fine airline, but its inept and mde service last Thursday night left at least five of us convinced otherwise and determined to avoid using that airline. Alas, I failed too. I should have lent moral support to the aggrieved passenger. He deserved that, at least. Mark Beardsley is the editor of The Com merce News. He lives in Commerce. Imps, angels, elves and gremlins The one predictable thing in life is the unpredictability of it all, and that is perhaps never more true than at Christmas. I learned last Friday that the Superhero capes I had ordered for my grandsons last month were lost in the mail, so I spent the morning online and on the phone with various postal representatives. I kept thinking, “I wish I were in Com merce. I always get the best help from our very own post office” (which I think is prob ably one of the best in the country). Sudden ly my cell phone rang, and it was Belinda, calling from our Commerce post office to say she knew of my plight. I could’ve cried, just hearing her voice. “Well, Belinda,” I sighed, “wouldn’t you know: the package that’s gone missing contained a special gift for my little grand sons!” And she said, “Oh, of course it did,” because that’s how life is: full of surprises; visited frequently by what Edgar Allan Poe called “the Imp of the Perverse.” The reason I wasn’t in Commerce — although I should be there by the time you read this — is that I had come to Long Island on a 10-day trip back in October, planning to spend time with my cousin, see my friend Bob, and drive upstate to visit my son Chad and his family. Instead (surprise!) I have been here two months, helping Bob under go a quadruple bypass, which he sailed through, and endure the ensuing recovery period, which has nearly driven us both crazy. As his cardiologist explained later, A Few Facts t A Lot of Gossip II By Susan Harper everyone thinks they’ll emerge from bypass surgery with a fragile heart. Not so. “The heart was fragile before the surgery,” he said. “Afterward, it’s like new. It’s the inci sions that are fragile.” So true. But nobody tells you that, going in. It’s just another of life’s surprises. For me even to be in this caregiving role is a cosmic joke of sorts. I am nobody’s idea of a nurse, believe me, and yet I ended up helping both of my parents, and then my brother, through their final illnesses. I still lie in bed at night and review it all in my mind, seeing ways I could have done better — yet now here I am, helping a fourth person through a health crisis, hoping this one can survive. I sneak into the kitchen to wring my hands and pray (yes, I know that’s a con tradiction, but I can’t help it), and I feel my mother’s strength upholding me, but also I seem to hear the angels laughing — not unkindly; laughing with me, perhaps — at the way life keeps presenting us with these hairpin turns, these ironies, these “learning experiences.” At Christmas, elves and Secret Santas enter the picture, helping the real Santa, and engineering the good surprises.But then, who’s to say that all surprises, ultimately, aren’t good? Our crises, large and small, cause us to cross paths with people we would otherwise never have met — people who change our lives and inform our future. Oddly enough, of all the seen and unseen “presences” in life, the ones I’ve found most baffling, confounding, and persistent are the gremlins that notoriously infest the publish ing process, causing “typos” and misprints, blotches, and other misfortunes. No one knows the origin of the word “gremlin,” I was surprised to learn, but during the two World Wars, gremlins were also blamed for mechanical failures on fighter planes. Most of our “presences” are benign, though, and many are quite visible. The Salvation Army bell-ringers are just one example. Harder to spot, perhaps, are the living, breathing elves and angels who find time to “go about doing good” in this busy season, when time can be hard to come by. They know that time can stretch, and that giving makes you richer: two of life’s sweet mysteries. Merry Christmas! Susan Harper is retired, lives in Commerce and volunteers with the Commerce Public Library and the Jackson County Literacy Program. Northridge makes the 'Top 10' While standing in the check out line at CVS or Walgreens, I’ll occasionally pick up a Peo ple Magazine (usually to read about People’s Sexiest Man or the latest ups and downs in the Kardashian world) or a Better Homes and Gardens. Georgia Trend magazine is not a regular read in my personal library of magazines. Since it is not in the local stands, I assume many of you do not read it either. Therefore, I want to share with you an article from the December 2015 Georgia Trend magazine. This magazine is well-known for its “Geor gia’s Top 40 Under 40” leaders in Georgia, so it is a well-respected magazine in the business world. Many companies use this magazine to stay abreast of news, events and changes within the state of Georgia. “Georgia’s Hidden Gems” is the title of the article in the Decem ber issue, and the feature article highlights Georgia’s best hospitals. The opening paragraph reminds the read ers that Georgians typically think of larger hospitals when they consider one of our state’s top hospitals. But as the article con tinues, we learn that “rural hospitals provide convenient close-to-home care for many Georgia residents and provide a sense of community and family that larger, busier hos pitals often can’t,” the article explains. Based upon data retrieved in July 2015 from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Northridge Medical Center has been declared a TOP 10 Hospital in the medium-size category. For the first time in our hospital history, Northridge Medical Center earned a TOP 10 ranking based on more than “40 quality-related indicators, including patient experience, outcomes of care, pro cess of care, and efficiency and value of the services rendered” explains the article. WOW! We have worked hard to continue bettering the patient experience. We have department managers who are ready and willing to do whatever necessary to continue to grow. We are ready to move forward with our new equipment, new physicians, and new services. We listen to those who have provided us with feedback. But, the most important area that we have achieved great ness is in the leadership of our CEO, Larry Ebert. He takes his responsibility of being the local healthcare provider for our community very seriously. He understands that our obli gation is to meet the challenges we face in the ever-changing world of healthcare. “We have evolved into a full-service com munity hospital driven by both integrity and innovation,” was his comment to me He is also very quick to say that being a TOP 10 hospital is a team effort. We are celebrating on Wednesday with a reception to honor our associates and phy sicians who have made this happen. We are honored to have been named a TOP 10 hos pital by Georgia Trend magazine and unwrap ping this article was a present we were happy to receive. Tricia Massey is marketing director for Northridge Medical Center. She lives in Com merce.