December 2, 2009 THE VILLADOM TIMES IV • Page 17 Stronach recognized for contributions to life at CHCC Bertha Stronach, a resident of Heritage Manor Nursing Home at Christian Health Care Center in Wyckoff and former resident of Mahwah, was honored by the Health Care Association of New Jersey with the 2009 Resident Better Life Award. She accepted the award recently at a special awards luncheon at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. “Bertha is the most positive resident we’ve ever had here,” said Peter Peterson, LNHA, Heritage Manor Nursing Home and Southgate Vice President/Administrator. “She constantly initiates things to enhance the quality of life for our residents.” Ever since Stronach moved to Heritage Manor in late 2007, she has created programs and made suggestions for the benefit of residents and the organization. She started a weekly book club for residents and a discussion group for higher-functioning residents in Heritage Manor’s Dementia Care Unit. When 80 patients and residents moved when the Post-acute Care Unit relocated from Heritage Manor East to Heritage Manor West, Stronach wrote a program for a Welcome Social. “Bertha’s enthusiasm and energy are contagious. She serves as the president of the Heritage Manor Resident Council. She brings concerns and suggestions from other residents to meetings and addresses them with appropriate staff. She researches ideas for outside trips and guest speakers that she thinks will be of interest to residents,” said Alison Argott, Heritage Manor’s activities director. “Bertha also serves on the Neighborhood Project Team, a venture designed to give the nursing-home units a more neighborhood feel with a team approach to care. Because of Bertha’s advocacy efforts and positive attitude, the staff asked her to join the team.” The HCANJ is a non-profit trade association representing long-term care providers who believe that the individuals they serve are entitled to a supportive environment in which professional and compassionate care is delivered. The non-profit CHCC has been serving the community since 1911, providing a broad scope of mental-health and elder-care programs. Bertha Stronach accepting her award in Atlantic City. Arguments heard in siren case (continued from page 5) one’s health and a dangerous place for the plaintiffs to be, he failed to provide a remedy, and the judge required the plaintiffs to prove that the sirens add no value to emergency response, while Gormally claims the proper burden should have been on the township to demonstrate that they need the sirens to guarantee an appropriate response. “All the data suggests that you don’t need a siren at all,” Gormally said, “because when the township experimented with just the use of pagers there wasn’t one instance when they were unable to deal with an emergency.” He also argued that the evidence presented by the township during the trial was insufficient to show that anecdotal “dead zones” in the township have ever affected complete and timely response by way of pager notification alone. He further claimed that the testimony of the Mahwah police chief was sufficient to clearly demonstrate that sirens could be eliminated without unreasonable risk to residents, businesses, or firefighters. In addition, he argued that sirens are currently not audible throughout township and they have often been left inoperable for extended periods of time and yet the court ignored evidence that there was adequate firefighter response to emergency calls without the sirens during those periods of time. Bottinelli noted that the burden of proof in this matter is “clear and convincing” evidence and the issue for the court is whether the plaintiffs’ complaint was proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Bottinelli said he argued that Judge Contillo was right in dismissing the original case because the judge recognized the need for the sirens to effectively summon firefighters. According to Bottinelli, the plaintiffs did not provide any expert testimony at the trial to indicate that silencing the sirens was reasonable and there was no proof provided that the use of pagers or the Reverse 911 system were effective means of notifying firefighters. He also pointed out that the plaintiffs did not provide any proof of the need, or the lack of the need of sirens, in the fire company areas other than those where the plaintiffs live. Bottinelli said the panel seemed to be familiar with the issues in the case and they did not ask difficult questions. But he said he pointed out that the sirens do not sound very often, and he offered some data on the number of times the sirens have sounded over the past few years which indicated that they sounded once every four days during the nighttime in 2006 and once every two weeks at night in 2007 at Fire Company #3. His data for Fire Company #2 indicates the sirens sounded once a day and once every five nights in 2006 and less than once a day and once a week during the nighttime in 2007. Gormally disputed the value of this data, saying the numbers are not meaningful because some of the sirens were broken during those times. “The reality of it is they go off hundreds of times at all times of the day and night,” he said. “When you have a noise that is ear shattering, how many times is too much?” Bottinelli argued that the loss of the sirens would prevent a quick response by firefighters and the combination of the use of alarms, pagers, and sirens works well considering the township’s safety concerns and the dead zones in the township where pagers do not operate consistently. “The mayor is doing the right thing (using sirens) to address the safety of the firefighters and the public,” Bottinelli said in support of the township’s position that the sirens are needed. A decision by the Appellate Court is not expected for a couple of months, but the ruling will likely be issued in writing to the attorneys involved in the case. A big snow storm can be both inconvenient and dangerous to your health. We have a machine in stock to suit your needs, from electric shovels to powerful 10.0 HP models. Talk to us...We’ll sell you the right size for the job, at the right price. WHY TAKE CHANCES? Talk to your kids about how dangerous it can be. ��������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������������� ����������������������������������������������� ������������������ � Model # PR8ES27