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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1985-11-06, Page 4PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1985. [640523 Ontario Inc.] Serving Brussels, Blyth, Auburn, Belgrave, Ethel, Londesborough, Walton and surrounding townships. P.O. Box 152, P.O. Box 429, Brussels, Ont. Blyth, Ont. NOG 1H0 NOM 1H0 523-4792 Subscription price: $15.00; $35.00 foreign. Advertising and newsdeadline: Monday 4 p.m. Editor and Publisher: Keith Roulston Advertising Manager: Beverley A. Brown Production and Office Manager: Jill Roulston Dave Smith L.E.A401N)C AND PI-ANItk_)G P10%.:EiZ Your garbage is costly Hullett township and the Village of Blyth, who share a sanitary landfill site (known as a dump before the bureaucrats came along) are currently in the process of buying more land as a buffer around the site after having spent a good deal just last year to acquire land for dump expansion. Down in Seaforth they've spent nearly $200,000 already just on tests to try to find a suitable dump site for the town and Tuckersmith township and still haven't found one that has the proper soil composition to stop waste water from mixing with the regular water table underground. Just about every area municipality has had its- battles with the Ministry of the Environment over dumps in the last few years. Local politicians may sometimes feel the Environment officials are over-zealous but we would be upset if these people didn't do their job to try to make sure our environment was contaminated. The truth is our society of disposable-everything is getting too expensive to support. It may be cheap to produce those plastic bottles and styrofoam trays but it isn't cheap to get rid of them. Those bulging Saturday newspapers may cost more to get rid of than they cost to print. We throw out enough food to keep starving villages fed in many parts of the world. That food, when it decays, causes problems in dumps. Many toxic chemicals, the remains of household cleaners, etc. also make there way into our dumps and endanger our environment. Perhaps it will only be the incredible cost of waste disposal that will make us look seriously at recycling and at the whole throw-away society we've built. Just as soaring gas prices made us question the need for block-long cars, maybe soaring taxes for waste disposal will make us think twice about creating so much waste in the first place. The high costs are already here, effecting you and me everyday. Every extra pound you throw out on garbage day means that much sooner your municipality will have to find a new dump. When the time comes, you may think your council is burying truckloads of $1000 bills, not garbage in that dump. Get bang for your bucks Everybody complains about taxes but few people seem to want to do much about them. Across our coverage area, a huge hunk of northern Huron County, most of the new councils have been put in office through acclamation. While there are some interesting municipal elections in some of the townships, most voters, if they are going to the polls at all, will be going only to choose school board representatives. That, given the interest in activities of the school board, means many will likely stay home. Yet at a local level, more money goes to education than any other single service. Education is about the biggest business in Huron County with a $40 million annual budget. While some people may feel that the board members have little control over spending anyway we still owe it to ourselves to have the best people we can have in charge of education. If you don't vote, don't complain when you aren't happy with education policies you get. A time to remember Canadians must surely live in the most peaceful nation in the world. Most of its citizens have never known a war. We can go for months, even years, without even seeing a soldier in uniform, let alone a tank or battleship. Only when one is in the vicinity of the few armed forces bases in the county and sees the military presence does one realize how strange it seems yet, for most in the world, seeing soldiers is part of everyday life. Many, too many, get to see real war first hand. It's hard for those who have only known peace to imagine what war is like, just as it is hard for those who have only known affluence to imagine being poor. Yet we must do our best to remember the sacrifice of those of our country who went to war. We must realize too the sacrifices made by those on the homefront during the wars. Only by knowing something of the price of war can we truly understand how important it is to prevent anew war. If we forget, if we get lazy in our efforts to realize how horrible war is, we're taking the first slippery step toward letting history repeat itself. We can't afford to forget. A ,3D There are people who will tell you that the important decisions in town are made down at the town hall. People in the know, however know that the real debates, the real wisdom reside down at Mabel's Grill where the greatest minds in the town (if not in the country) gather for morning coffee break, otherwise known as the Round Table Debating and Filibustering Society. Since notjust everyone can partake of these deliberations, we will report the activities from time to time. TUESDAY: Ward Black the grocer turned to Ward Black the politician today. He showed up and started handing out business cards and saying he hoped everybody would give him their support in the election coming up. Hank Stokes says it's time people took a look at how much they're paying town councillors these days if Ward is ready to part with his money like this. Those cards must have cost at least $50. Julia Flint says elections were one of the reasons she moved up here. She used to live near the city in one of those regional govern- ment areas and she says when she saw every Tom, Dick and Harry running for council with profes- sionally-printed lawn signs, she knew she couldn't afford to support local government so she moved. WEDNESDAY: Somebody, brought up one of the subjects guaranteed to get things going this morning: teachers. Now the pro- blem with the subject is you can't get a real argument going because an argument has two sides. You can't get anybody to take the teachers' side on this one. Now things might be different if teachers could take time off to come downtown from the school for coffee breaks. Billy Bean starts it off all the time with some tidbit of other off the news about teachers wanting more money. Billy always gets rankled about how much money teachers make and "their damned two- month holiday". He immediately finds support from everybody else, even Mabel who hardly says anything. One guy who doesn't say much is Tim O'Grady. Tim's got plenty of nerve but even Tim hasn't got enough nerve to say teachers earn too much and open up the subject of how high the fees are at his law office. Normally Hank Stokes would be the kind to jump into the discussion with both feet. He's always ready to point out how tough things are on the farm and how everybody else gets a better deal, but Hank's got what you might call a conflict of interest. He knows damned well he'd never be farming today if his wife hadn't worked as a teacher for the last 15 years. THURSDAY: Somebody asked Mabel today when she's going to drop the tax on her meals now that the provincial government is drop- ping some of the tax on restaurant meals. Her answer was something like when hell freezes over. It was when you can find a meal for under a dollar. Hank Stokes says he's still getting the same thing for his pound of hamburger that he got when you could still buy a THE EDITOR: Presently I am sitting on the Huron County Library Board as a non-elected representative. I have been reading with great interest the articles regarding county council's request to Lily Munro, Minister of Citizenship and Cul- ture seeking legislation to change the board to that of a closed committee. Your readers will be interested to know that this request flys in the face of a historical background of open public boards, accountable to the citizens of Ontario and the proposed change will also go against the new Public Library Act of 1984. Some reeves have already been acclaimed to office and without the input of the taxpayer, these persons may feel that their opin- ions are the only standard of their community. I am hoping that many library users will call their reeve- elect and ask him or her how he/she stand on the issue of closed committees vs. public boards, then, in turn, share their personal opinion with these people, who are after all, our political representa- tives. - We should be communicating to all and anyone concerned, Lily Munro, Jack Riddell, the County Warden, The Library Board, that we do not want to risk losing a centuries old freedom of access to a Public Library Board and in its place be given a committee whose decisions will only be known to a few. Also your readers may not hamburger for under a buck. Billy Bean razzed Mabel that maybe this would be an incentive for her to go back to good old-fashioned prices. Mabel said she'd go back to an 89 cent hamburger when he starts getting three bucks an hour to fix her car. Tim O'Grady didn't say a thing. FRIDAY: Somebody brought up that a candidate for mayor in one of the cities thinks they shouldn't allow these non-serious candidates to run for office. He figures there are too many people running just for a laugh. Julia Flint says she wishes more would run just for a laugh and less for the money. realize that this issue has not been brought up before the board. We have not discussed the issue or voted on our dissolution. So in fact, our chairman Mr. Grant Stirling, was never authorized by the board to speak on our behalf on this subject. I am assuming that he was offering his own opinion, some- thing he did not make very clear. Please, call your reeve and send a letter to the Library - Board (Waterloo St., Goderich, Ontario) giving us your views on this most important change in library policy. Better yet, if you are able, come to our next board meeting on Tues., Nov. 12 at 1:30 p.m. in the Huron County Council Chambers, 2nd floor Courthouse, Goderich. Your presence and your letters will tell so much. JANIS BISBACK HENSALL. Likes The Citizen The Editor: I was quite interested in the article which appeared on Page 6 of the recent copy of the Citizen, re: the beginning of the town of Brussels. My grandfather, who was the third settler in Grey Township, was a friend of Wm. Ainley. I was wondering if N. H. Kerr was the first editor of the "Brussels Post". We had subscribed to that paper as long as I could recall. I was also wondering who is your correspondent for the Ethel area. Cecil Bateman Ethel, Ontario. Ed. Note: We wish we knew. We're looking for an Ethel correspon- dent. Anyone interested? The world view from Mabel's Grill Writer warns of decision