•Nearly half of the drivers and motorcyclists involved in fatal car accidents on St. Patrick’s Day last year had an illegal blood alcohol content of .08 or above.
•63 percent of those impaired drivers and motorcyclists died in a crash.
•In 2010, more than 10,000 people were killed in traffic crashes involving at least one driver or motorcyclist who was drunk. Source: the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Impaired driving continues to be one of America’s most-often-committed and deadliest crimes and according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 44 percent of all traffic fatalities during St. Patrick’s Day involved a drunk driver. By comparison, 31 percent of fatal accidents involve drunk drivers each year as a whole.
“Drunk drivers share the road with you and your family,” says Allstate New York spokesperson Jaclyn Darrohn. “Even if you never drink and drive, you can help save lives by being a responsible party host, preventing friends and acquaintances from driving drunk and reporting suspicious drivers.”
To protect New York families from drunk drivers, here are some life-saving tips from Allstate:
•Don’t drink and drive. If you know you will be drinking alcohol, use a designated driver or public transportation.
•If you spot an impaired driver on the highway, maintain a safe following distance and don’t attempt to pass.
•Report a suspected drunk driver immediately to area law enforcement from your cell phone or a pay phone. Give police as much information (i.e., license plate number, make, model and color of vehicle, direction vehicle is traveling, physical description of driver) as possible.
•When entertaining guests, be responsible yourself. It will be much easier to determine whether or not a guest is able to drive if you’re sober yourself.
•If your guests drink too much, arrange a ride with a sober driver, call a cab or insist they sleep at your home.
•When hosting a party, offer plenty of non-alcoholic beverages and serve food to help slow the absorption of alcohol.
•Stop serving alcohol at least one hour before the party is over and never pressure others to drink or rush to refill their glasses when empty.

Marissa Giaquinti and Robert Bruno from Miss Gonzalez’s fifth grade class

On Feb. 28, Niagara-Wheatfield School District had a budget workshop meeting. It was painfully obvious of a few things that I thought the public should know.
1. The district is in a financial pit fall.
2. New York state promised aid only to not deliver.
3. Residents truly have no idea the impact that a few bad choices have made to our children and their future.
4. Change must occur or the bleeding will not stop.
It is scary to think that this once great and powerful nation is slowly being picked apart because of the greed. The school district is not that far from the same scenario. People are getting their way in a district that continually forgets about the most important piece to this equation – the students. They are the future of not only our community, but our nation as well. If we continue to pull apart the education our children receive, we will ultimately pull apart a great nation and just hand it over to our enemies. We don’t need to worry about being taken over by another country because we will destroy ourselves from within. …
What was painfully obvious at the meeting was the fact that so many parents can’t see the true impact that a few wrong choices have done to our children and their future. The impact is not only programs being eliminated but jobs as well. What does that do to this area and community? Larger class sizes mean less one-on-one help for students, frustration on the part of not only the teachers, but the students, and ultimately more dropouts. Eliminating programs that enhance our children means we are ultimately not preparing our children for their future and the workplace. Having a society of unprepared adults, and with less and less jobs in this area, we are just driving more and more people to have to rely on the government for help financially or moving out of the area to find jobs. It’s a vicious cycle and it needs to be broken.
It is my opinion that the personal emotions need to be taken out of this equation. Taxes need to be looked at and the teachers union needs to work with the board not against the board. I am not saying that negotiations are not happening and that there isn’t a collaboration that is being worked on to help solve the fiscal crisis. I am sure all parties are working to assure success. Comments were made that Niagara-Wheatfield taxes are the second lowest in the county. As an active parent, I believe we need to help be part of the solution instead of pointing fingers and playing the blame game. We are all painfully aware of the wrong choices made. Now how do we fix it? Do we raise taxes 30 percent so we save everyone’s jobs? Do we leverage the parent groups (sports and arts/music) to help with funding for the extras? Does the union help by being more open to pay freezes or co pays for health care? Do we come to a happy medium?
I think the school board needs to find a way to show the district what the impact can potentially be taxwise so that families can make an educated evaluation. Based off of what I saw at the meeting there are a lot of holes and “TBD” in the options. The way it was presented some parents saw the options as just that an either/or. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The options are not options, they are must-haves and even with those in place we are still in the hole financially. I certainly do not have all the answers. However, what I know for a fact is that the road that is being looked at to travel down to fix the situation is certainly going to affect my children and their future. I am not willing to accept that this is the right solution to solve this problem without looking at all options.
Our district is in the red by as much as $8 million. We are not going to get help from the New York state as it can’t even balance its own budget let alone bail out a school district. It is sad to see how little our government values education and our youth. Education is the key to success and without education we have nothing. I strongly urge any Niagara-Wheatfield resident, teacher, and student to attend the next board meeting on March 21 at 7 p.m. in the Adult Learning Center and the budget meeting on March 14 at 7 p.m. at Errick Road Elementary School in the wood gym. It’s the only way to be part of the solution.

Jeanne Beales
Niagara Falls

The new health reform law is expected to create 32 million more insured Americans, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The federal government plans to expand Medicaid to low-income adults and subsidize purchases on the health-insurance exchanges when it requires most Americans to carry insurance in 2014.
However, an insurance card will not mean much to patients without providers to care for them.
New York will have more than 1.2 million more insured residents because of reform, according to an Urban Institute analysis.
A primary-care physician is the first contact for people with undiagnosed illnesses. They include family physicians, pediatricians and internal-medicine doctors. Primary-care physicians’ share of the U.S. health-care dollar is only 7 cents. However, primary-care doctors control 80 cents of the health-care dollar by sending their patients to hospitals, referring them to specialists and handing out prescriptions.
The U.S. has the about the same number of physicians per capita as other industrialized nations. However, the U.S. has far fewer primary-care physicians than specialists. They make up about 50 percent of the physician workforce in most other developed nations, compared with 35 percent in the U.S.
The number of U.S. specialists per capita has risen dramatically since 1965, while the ratio of primary-care physicians has remained relatively constant, because they earn as much as three times more income. The outlook is for more of the same: greater scarcity of primary care and a growing supply of specialists.
Massachusetts reformed its state health-care system in 2006, giving the nation a glimpse of what is to come when access to health insurance is expanded without expanding the supply of primary care. The average wait for a non-urgent appointment with an internist rose from 17 days in 2005 to 48 days in 2011. Less than half of family physicians there are accepting new patients, compared with 70 percent four years ago.
Massachusetts has about 108 primary-care physicians for every 100,000 residents, compared with only about 92 per 100,000 in New York. This ultimately suggests an even longer wait locally.
The primary-care workload is expected to increase by nearly 30 percent between 2005 and 2025. A number of factors feed this demand, including a growing population, a flood of baby boomers becoming Medicare beneficiaries and acquiring medical conditions as they age, and the newly insured because of the reform law.
However, the supply of primary-care physicians is expected to rise by only 2 to 7 percent. Three out of four physicians say they already are at or over capacity. The math screams that there will be a crisis of health-care access in the next 15 years. Expect longer waits for appointments, shorter physician visits, greater use of non-physicians for routine care, and higher prices.
The U.S. trains about 16,000 doctors a year. The nation would have to increase that number by 6,000 to 8,000 annually for 20 years to meet expected demand.
Adding to the sense of urgency is the fact that about one out of four New York physicians is age 60 or older.
About 12 percent of New York residents currently live in federally designated primary-care shortage areas. Physicians tend to cluster in areas where supply is already high rather than where the need is greatest. About 80 percent of new physicians in the 1980s and 1990s did this. They like affluent areas with well-insured patients, high-tech hospitals and civic amenities that offer a better quality of life. These high-income enclaves are also home to the nation’s healthiest people.
Most do not want to recognize that health care is rationed. It is done so by lack of insurance. Health reform is expected to rectify that, but it will exacerbate a new form of rationing: the doctor is not in.
Steve Jacob is a veteran health-care journalist and author of the new book “Health Care in 2020: Where Uncertain Reform, Bad Habits, Too Few Doctors and Skyrocketing Costs Are Taking Us.” He can be reached at steve@unitedstatesofhealth.com.

For over a year, Center Street businesses have expressed an interest on having a voice on a number of different items. Issues include parking, the closing of Center Street and a number of ideas on how to improve the specialty retail business climate.
Early on, the village trustees suggested a joint committee meet and try to address some of the issues. Business owners were praised by trustees for organizing and coming up with different ideas. This was last fall. Since then joint committees have been disbanded, issues unresolved and to add insult to injury, trustees have not attended a number of scheduled meetings with organized business groups, as is the norm.
In looking into this administration’s “report card” since its inception, a lot seems to be desired. On a small scale the previous administration had professional landscapers design plantings in the stone planters at Center and Fourth streets. Plants were donated by local businesses and in turn volunteers maintained them and received accolades from individuals, including a professional who designed the Peace Garden.
One of this administration’s first acts was to tear out donated plants and reassign volunteers. The result is little maintenance and a winter scene that looks more like a bomb hit it.
From then on it has been all down hill. We were promised action on our landmark hotel; business groups want event issues addressed and the location of vendors at events to be more friendly to local businesses; suggestions to extend Christmas lighting to attract patrons in the off-season, and the list goes on regarding concerned issues.
This last year taxes were increased and the statement was made that we have cut to the bare bones and are forced to raise taxes. This leads to my questioning as to why we would we would buy a garbage truck for $180,000 or more dollars when Modern would have possibly refurbished ours from the bottom up for around $60,000.
We maintain a welcome center, which cost more than $350,000 initially, not counting upkeep and maintenance, it’s closed four months out of the year and the majority of us regard it as money wasted.
They have not officially addressed the issue of not for profits paying for all expenses occurred during festivals instead of taxpayers. I question the village’s giving thumbs up for charity street collections when articles I have read suggest a controversy on having tables on the sidewalks, using liability concerns as an excuse to remove them. I would think street collections would be more of a liability than patrons eating at a table on the sidewalk enjoying themselves and helping to create a positive business climate.
I do believe our officials do not have a plan. They should be focusing on the Frontier House; retail businesses need a combination of residential and retail to help Center Street retailers and restaurants.
Studies need to done on combining services with the county and the town. Subsidizing not-for-profits should be abolished unless all taxpayers benefit in some form. Find new ways in benefiting from large Artpark crowds and stepping out of the box to cut costs on traffic control instead of trying to find ways to deter patrons from coming to the village.
The recent Recreational Center debate proves my point. Two million dollars was lost, not because of area residents, but because village officials did not have a real plan on future costs and location etc., before bringing it to the public.
As a village resident I am envious of town residents. Some may disagree, but Lewiston town officials have a plan in place for their decisions, taxes are at bay, they try and help local retailers and residents as much as possible with an eye on the future. The ice rink proves they can step out of the box, which was a huge success with the taxpayer. In general they have an interest in improving the quality of life for all of the Town of Lewiston, instead of a chosen few getting anything they ask as is the practice in the village and the rest of us left to fend for ourselves.
In closing, the major difference between the town and the village is the town has its eye on the future. The village keeps looking at the way we were and doesn’t have a clue what it needs to progress or a clue on how to keep taxes at bay. We as village taxpayers have to make a decision. Do we stick as the way we were crowd or do we join the eye on the future crowd?
I have set up an email villagetaxpayer88@gmail.com for anyone having input on the above or visions of an eye on the future. All emails will be strictly confidential.

The writer is a village taxpayer and owner of Fine Antiques.

Remember your time as a musician in school? Perhaps you sang in your school’s chorus or glee club, performed on recorder, trumpet, trombone, clarinet or tuba in the band, or on violin or cello in the orchestra. You may have been featured on stage for concerts or performed in public countless number of times. Perhaps you were nominated to All-County, Area All-State, All-State or All-Eastern ensembles. Hopefully, you’ve continued performing into your adult life.
Throughout it all, NYSSMA was right there with you.
“Regardless of the current economic climate and the cuts to education that are happening, we celebrate music education and the benefits it gives 2.2 million students across New York state,” said Marc E. Greene, NYSSMA president. “Each year, NYSSMA serves over 100,000 students at spring adjudication festivals and advocates for our students in Albany during events such as Music In Our Schools Month. Additionally, approximately 900 students are chosen annually – through a rigorous selection process – for our All-State ensembles.”
Music was introduced to the curriculum of schools in New York City in 1829, Palmyra in 1831, Buffalo in 1837, Rochester in 1842, Duanesburg in 1842, Bolivar-Wirt in 1844, formally in Utica in 1845, Syracuse in 1852 and Oswego in 1866. In 1882, music was first offered on the college level in Syracuse and by 1928, music teachers were receiving four years of instruction before receiving their degree.
In 1932, the New York State School Band and Orchestra Association was created, but changed its name to the New York State School Music Association when choral studies were added to the music curriculum.
Since then, NYSSMA has undergone tremendous transformation in its structure and the types of services and programs it provided. It has spearheaded campaigns for teacher certification, advocacy – with programs like Music In Our Schools Month – and had five presidents named Eastern Division presidents of The National Association for Music Education.
“During these economic times, we must realize how important music education is to our students, (and to) communicate these values to our legislators,” Greene said. “Music education builds lifelong learners of the arts. Wonderful teachers, singers, actors, doctors, attorneys, scientists, mathematicians and more have come out of the music programs of schools throughout New York. We’re very proud.”