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The Citizen, 2010-05-13, Page 4PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MAY 13, 2010.Editorials Opinions Publisher: Keith Roulston Acting Editor: Shawn Loughlin • Reporter: Denny ScottAdvertising Sales: Ken Warwick & Lori Patterson The CitizenP.O. Box 429,BLYTH, Ont.N0M 1H0 Phone 523-4792 FAX 523-9140 P.O. Box 152,BRUSSELS, Ont.N0G 1H0 Phone 887-9114 E-mail norhuron@scsinternet.com Website www.northhuron.on.ca Looking Back Through the Years CCNA Member Member of the Ontario Press Council The Citizen is published 50 times a year in Brussels,Ontario by North Huron Publishing Company Inc.Subscriptions are payable in advance at a rate of $34.00/year ($32.38 + $1.62 G.S.T.) in Canada; $105.00/year in U.S.A.and $175/year in other foreign countries.Advertising is accepted on the condition that in the event of a typographical error,only that portion of the advertisement will be credited. Advertising Deadlines: Monday, 2 p.m. - Brussels; Monday, 4 p.m. - Blyth. PUBLICATIONS MAIL AGREEMENT NO. 40050141 PAP REGISTRATION NO. 09244 RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO CIRCULATION DEPT. PO BOX 152 BRUSSELS ON N0G 1H0 email: norhuron@scsinternet.com May 19, 1948 The schedule for girls’ softball was announced for the year, kicking off on May 25 with Blyth playing in Walton. The schedule ran through to August, with Brussels, Auburn and Seaforth participating, in addition to Blyth and Walton. The Blyth Lions voted to back the purchase of new floodlights for the park to the tune of $300. The club voted to donate $100 to the project at the time and the remaining $200 to be donated at a later date. The Blyth Masons held an evening to honour Rt. Wor. Bro. John A. McKinnon, District Deputy Grand Master of North Huron, when he made his official visit to the Blyth branch of the Masons. Hugh Hill, Liberal candidate for Huron-Bruce in the upcoming election advertised himself as a rural representative for a rural riding, saying that he supported the Liberals and vowed to defeat Toryism. May 16, 1968 Brussels village council slashed the grant to the Brussels Fall Fair in half at one of its meetings, marking the first time the budget had ever been cut that significantly. The Brussels Post claimed that the move was so bold that it had never been considered at similar councils in Huron and Perth Counties. When it came to establishing the grant budget for 1968, council decided to cut its contribution to the Brussels Fair Board from $100 for the year, down to $50. At the same time, however, council increased the village’s recreation committee’s budget from $150 for the year up to $500. “Clerk William King explained the move of council, saying it considered the recreation committee does more for Brussels than the fall fair board,” it was reported in The Brussels Post. After the move by Brussels council, other councils were contacted, including Tavistock, whose reeve, William Ducklow, said that if his council considered something like that, it would be with disastrous consequences. If anything, he said, his council was looking into increasing the grant it allocated to the fair board every year. “Mr. Ducklow said these fairs must be kept going because it is the only chance the rural people have to show their produce personally to the urban people and it also gives them the chance to talk about such things as what keeps their community together,” the article went on to say. Brussels Public School won four top awards at the two-day music festival of the Brussels, Blyth and Belgrave Public Schools. May 9, 1990 Trustees on the Huron County Board of Education approved a 13.4 per cent education tax increase for the year. According to board administration staff, the budget was “bare bones” despite the large increase. For the average home assessment, which was $44,000, the education taxes were set to increase $58.65 over and above the previous year’s rates. Superintendent of Operations Paul Carroll said that in terms of gross expenditures, which includes compulsory additions that were mandated by Ontario, the real increase was actually closer to just three per cent. “It is a no-growth budget,” he said. The budget was sent back by trustees in hopes that cuts would be made in order to get the increase down to a more manageable 10 per cent. This came at the request of Blyth-Hullett trustee John Jewitt and Howick trustee Norm Wilson, who said that impact on the ratepayer with such a budget would be far too great. Brussels village council voted to raise its annual taxes by 5.4 per cent. May 15, 2008 A revitalization study had begun in Brussels, which was spearheaded by Paul Nichol of the Huron Business Development Corporation. The first third of the study had just been completed, with the surveys having been mailed out to any main street property owner in the village of Brussels. Huron County council approved a 4.3 per cent budget increase, finalizing a total budget of just under $32 million. Daniel Fritz of Brussels had been making the rounds, speaking about his Make A Wish Foundation trip to Disney World in Florida. His story was being featured on the foundation’s website, turning the local boy into a spokesperson. At the time, he had made presentations to the Brussels Optimists and then eventually to different chapters of the organization throughout southwestern Ontario. The community welcomed Perry Chuipka, pastor of the Parish of New Beginnings, to the area, after he served for 11 years in the Thunder Bay area. One of the summer’s biggest blockbusters,Iron Man, was playing at the Park Theatre in Goderich. Then Grey Central Public School principal Rob Snell was ordered to kiss a pig after his students kept up their end of the bargain, reading for a collective 71,000 minutes during the school’s read-a-thon, which kicked off Education Week. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Publications Assistance Program (PAP) toward our mailing costs. We are not responsible for unsolicited newsscripts or photographs. Contents of The Citizen are © Copyright Adjusting perceptions Congratulations to all those Hullett residents who took the time to attend a meeting in Londesborough Monday night to express their concerns about fire coverage. If nothing else, it was a good geography lesson for Central Huron councillors. The prospect of reduced fire protection was enough to make northern Hullett residents turn out in such numbers the Londesborough Hall couldn’t hold everybody. It should bring home to Central Huron councillors that their plan to cover all of Hullett Ward from the Clinton fire station is putting a lot of people at risk and costing them more in insurance premiums because fire response times are too long to meet insurance company guidelines. Sitting in their regular council chambers in Clinton, that plan probably made sense because, try as they might, councillors couldn’t put themselves in the place of people who were close to the Blyth fire station but miles from Clinton. The issue reinforces the reality that geography matters. Amalgamated municipalities are not communities — they contain communities and sometimes communities are split by rigid boundaries. There’s a community in Londesborough which is all within Central Huron but the community of Auburn is split between Central Huron, North Huron and Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh. Many people in both Londesborough and Auburn feel they are also part of the Blyth community for things like fire protection and recreation, even though Blyth is now part of North Huron. Councillors have a tough job in amalgamated municipalities putting themselves in the shoes of people living in all the communities within their sprawling municipal boundaries. Sometimes, as in the case of North Huron, they can put those communities in jeopardy through looking solely at the self-interest of their own municipality. In some amalgamated municipalities there have been people who urged the discontinuation of the ward system, arguing that since it’s all one municipality, everyone deserves to be able to vote for all council positions, not just some. But this dispute between North Huron and Central Huron shows how easily it is for people on the edges of municipalities (but not of communities) to be overlooked. The people of Hullett reminded councillors their special location matters. That needs to happen in all municipalities now and then. — KR Disaster by proxy In the environmental catastrophe caused by the blowout of an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, it’s easy to point fingers of blame at British Petroleum, which was drilling the oil well. If we’re honest, however, we all need to look in the mirror and recognize our part in the disaster. Oil wells are being drilled because we all are using more petroleum in our lives, from gasoline in our cars to furnace oil to heat our homes to jet fuel to take us on our vacations to plastic in nearly everything we use these days. If we’re not paying for these products, companies won’t be risking capital to drill new wells. Because society’s thirst for oil keeps increasing and the supply of relatively safe oil from wells drilled on land is running short, oil companies are taking more risks to meet the demand. Currently a company is drilling the deepest-even offshore oil well off Canada’s east coast. Alberta’s tar sands are heavily criticized as an on-land environmental disaster, but if we didn’t want its expensive oil, it wouldn’t have been developed. Critics said British Petroleum took undue risks because it didn’t use a back-up safety-valve system that would have cost $500,000. That may have been due to corporate greed but what’s so different than our own desire to have cheap prices at the gas pumps. If we’d had a vote about whether to pay a little more for our gas in order to afford the extra safety feature, how many of us would have opted for the cheap gas? Until enough of us are ready to alter our lifestyles to lessen our need for oil, the kind of environmental Russian-roulette taking place in the Gulf of Mexico will continue. We share the blame with the companies who actually do our dirty work. — KR & Letters Policy The Citizen welcomes letters to the editor. Letters must be signed and should include a daytime telephone number for the purpose of verification only. Letters that are not signed will not be printed. Submissions may be edited for length, clarity and content, using fair comment as our guideline. The Citizen reserves the right to refuse any letter on the basis of unfair bias, prejudice or inaccurate information. As well, letters can only be printed as space allows. Please keep your letters brief and concise.