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The Citizen, 1991-09-18, Page 4PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 1991. Editorials Time to step forward With municipal elections now only once every three years, it's important that those who think they have something to contribute to their communities be prepared. Between now and Oct. 11, those seeking election to local councils or school boards must register with their returning officer. It's a difficult step to take. That three-year term has discouraged many people from running in the past but it does have its advantages. For a candidate with a program he or she would like to see put into place, the three-year term is a good length in which to make things happen. New councillors need most of a year to learn the ropes, then in the second year can fashion the changes they'd like to see and in the third can see what kinks have to be ironed out. It's more important than ever that municipalities have the best possible representatives on their councils. These are hard times, both on the farm and in the communities that depend on the farm economy. We'll need the best leadership possible to keep our municipalities strong. Likewise the years ahead will see many changes in education that will require the best leadership we can muster. Tightened purse strings by senior levels of government will require good management skills to try to get the most for the students, who are, after all, what the system is all about. If you have something to offer, now is the time to step forward. Municipal politics has been an excellent field for women over the years. Close to home, it allows women who are concerned about their families to contribute to the community without the problems of time and distance that provincial or federal politics bring. While women have taken on a much bigger role in local politics in the last decade, we're still a long way from 50 per cent representation for women in local government. The challenges are there. Good men and women are needed. Now is the time to act. Getting nasty One thousand farmers gathered in Lucknow last week to protest farm prices that, in the case of wheat, are lower than they were in 1902, let it be known they want action, not sympathy from politicians. The farmers said that if the federal and provincial governments don't take action by Oct. 1, they plan a unique strike of their own: they plan not to pay any bills anymore. The "Line in the dirt" meeting showed solidarity among farmers and drew media attention but it remains to be seen if farmers are finally desperate enough to stand together. Lord knows they have reason. The strike by federal civil servants who don't want to see their salaries frozen for a year looks a little ridiculous when you realize that farmers’ incomes have been dropping steadily for most of a decade. The job security worries of postal workers seem pretty flimsy when you see the devastation up and down concession roads since 1980. But the civil servants and the postal workers and the TTC drivers in Toronto have a kind of solidarity that farmers have never been able to demonstrate. Farmers, living out on their farms, lead very individualistic lives. They are also "free enterprisers" who stubbornly remain one of the few groups in the world that really do have an open market. If farmers ever could get together, they have the most powerful weapon in the world. You think people in Toronto miss their buses and subways? Imagine if they faced the kind of empty supermarket shelves that we see in pictures from Russia. If farmers ever could work together long enough to endanger the food supply, they could quickly get the kind of incomes that other professionals take for granted. They might, al least, make people see how much they have come to take food for granted in Canada. We are a people which has never faced starvation. Our idea of doing without is not having the right kind of cheese spread in the rcfrigerator.We're a spoiled land where the majority eat like kings while ignoring the plight of the people who produce the food that lets them live so well. Farmers have been good guys for many years and been ignored while the bad boys of organized labour or big business did well. Maybe it's the lime for farmers not to be nice guys anymore. For many, it may be the last chance. Ready for the show Farm income is all relatives Dear Editor, Pardon my not having a letter for you last week but I was busy getting off the beans. I'm not like every­ body else these days it seems you know the guys who can take time off for a strike no matter how busy they're supposed to be. The thing I can never figger is that they're trying to tell us how important they are so we should pay them more, then they quit work to try to force us to pay them to go back to work. Seems to me they're risking letting us see we’eafi get along quite nicely without them. And who ever called these guys Public Servants. Seems to me they got it backwards. I'm a public ser­ vant. 1 have to keep working just to pay them salaries that I couldn't dream of getting so they can go on strike and say how unfair it is they're getting their salaries frozen. I got news for.you guys: my income isn't frozen- it's melted. Like an ice cube left in the sun, there's about half as much of it as there was five years ago. Ah, but the union supporters tell me, it's all rela­ tive. All I can say is I wish I had some relatives that worked for the government: especially my wife. When I was growing up my father told me there was only one way of making money on the farm: marry a nurse or a teacher. Problem is, if I was giving advice to my son today about farming I’d have to encourage him to break the law. Today, I figger, the only way to make money on the farm would be to marry a teacher and a nurse, or two teachers, or two nurses. I mean at the same lime. I don't mean any of this cereal monogamy where you run from one woman to the next. That can get expen­ sive. You'd have to make sure one of the women was a lawyer. Your correspondent on the 12th Line. The Citizen P.O. Box 429, BLYTH, Ont. NOM 1H0 Phone 523-4792 FAX 523-9140 P.O. Box 152, BRUSSELS, Ont. NOG 1 HO Phone 887-9114 FAX 887-9021 The Citizen is published weekly in Brussels, Ontario by North Huron Publishing Company Inc. Subscriptions are payable in advance at a rate of $20.50/year ($19.16 plus $1.34 G.S.T.) for local; $19.16 + $1.66 for each month after March 31/92 ♦ G.S.T. for local letter carrier In Goderich, Hanover, Listowel, etc. and out-of-area (40 miles from Brussels); $60.00/year for U.S.A, and Foreign. 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