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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTimes Advocate, 1995-02-08, Page 4Page 4 Times -Advocate, February 8, 1995 Publisher Jim Beckett The Exeter Times Advocate is a member of a family of community newspapers "''ol�" `o"" ,, Editor: Adrian Harte ►�� providing news, advertising and information leadership Business Manager: Don Smith i Composition Manager: Deb Lord '��eii wi+a `.�` / • Advertising; Barb Consitt News; Fred Groves, Heather Vincent, Ross Haugh Production; Aima Ballantyne, Mary McMurray, Barb Robertson Robert Nicol, Brenda Hern, Joyce Weber, Laurel Miner, Marg Flynn Transportation: Al Flynn, Al Hodgert Front Office & Accounting; Norma Jones, Elaine Pinder, Ruthanne Negrijn, Anita McDonald, Cassie Dalrymple • inion Publications Mall Registration Number 0386 SUBSCRIPTION RATES: CANADA Within 40 miles (85 km.) addressed to non letter carrier addresses 833.00 plus 82.31 G.S.T. Outside 40 miles (65 km.) or any letter carder address $33.00 plus 830.00 (total 63.00) + 4.31 0.8.T. Outside Canada 899.00 plus 86.93 GST (Includes S88.40 postage) Published Each Wednesday Morning at 424 Main St., Exeter, Ontario, NOM 1S6 by J.W. Eady Publications Ltd. Telephone 1.519 235.1331 • Fax: 519-23507Se e.S.T.1R10iZloelli 1..1)1'1•OI&1.11, Bang for the buck either side is entirely right about the issue of town budgets. But neither side is entirely wrong either. The question of efficiency of the town's various departments has been brought up more than once by some of the newer members on Exeter's town council. They want to see some hard figures that provide some kind of . benchmark as to how well a department is running - the recreation centre is fre- quently brought,up as an example, but the principle applies equally to snow plowing, laying sidewalks, whatever. The traditional way of setting up the recreation centre's budget (again as an example) is to estimate what the expect- ed revenues will be for the year, figure out the costs involved in keeping the doors open, and what is left over is the deficit. Such an approach does inspire belt tightening, as each budget line is pared down to a minimum in order to minimize that deficit. The revenues are usually determined by 0hat the market will bear. The argument from the critics is that this doesn't give a real picture of how well the recreation centre, or any other department, is doing its job. Although they are having a hard time explaining their position to the other councillors, what they are basically asking is how much does it cost the town to provide a hundred hours of ice time, how much to plow 10 kilometres of road, how much to keep the pool open for a day - taking into account each and every cost in- volved along the way, right down to the last light bulb. Such numbers won't pave the way to user -pay programs. Providing ice time to hockey teams will still cost the town money. The registrations for swimming lessons won't cover the cost of keeping the pool open, and the roads will have to be plowed no matter what the cost. Still, those numbers are benchmarks that can measure how well things improve, or de- cline over time. The farmer of a century ago could only produce enough food to sustain a few people aside from his own family, but today's farmer produces enough for hun- dreds - this much we know. What did it cost to provide a hundred hours of ice time a decade ago? Have computers really made administration more effi- cient? Are energy-saving measures working? Those are all questions that can be answered in roundabout ways by most depa,tments, but perhaps not by a direct service/cost equation. Of course, once such figures were in hand, they could be compared against those of other municipalities who might be running their departments better or worse than our own. There is then an opportunity to learn or to teach. To do more with less. If municipal computer programs are unable to boil down the budget figures into such usable facts, then perhaps those programs need to be re -written. Councils can be expected to make deci- sions no better informed than the infor- mation on which they are based. For all we know, Exeter's department budgets may be among the finest in the province. But with no yardstick to measure them against, aside from defi- cits and tax bills, how can we really be sure they truly measure up? ;• ,i. ecialty Channels we Coluld dQ without. What's on your mind? The Times -Advocate continues to welcome letters to the editor as a forum for open discusslon of local issues, concerns, complaints and kudos. The Times Advocate reserves the right to edit letters for brevity. lease send your letters to P.0. Box 850 Exeter, Ontario, NOM 1S6.. Sign your letteri+itt both name and address. Anonymous letters will not be published. View From Queen's Park Prime Minister Jean Chretien is due for a fall and Premier Bob Rae is aiming to be the first to benefit. The New Democrat premier has launched a series of attacks designed to link the.Ontario Liberal leader Lyn McLeod, firmly in the pub- lic mind to the Liberal prime minister. Rae complained that McLeod had asked Chretien to campaign with her in the Ontario election within months and boasted of the 'wonderful Liberals' in Ottawa. He said she clearly hopes to ride the prime minister's coat- tails to victory. Rae suggested McLeod should be seen as part of the Liberal package and ,if she wants to take credit from her connection to the federal Liber- als when they are far ahead in the polls, she should be prepared to take blame when they make mistakes. McLeod retorted that Rae is desperate for an issue. The NDP premier might seem at first to be on By Eric Dowd ...and anyway By Adrian Harte Not so fast, future boy Given a collection of science fiction short stories at Christ= mas, I've been devouring a story or two every couple of days. Maybe this isn't such a good idea. I don't really need a gloomy outlook at a rather gloomy time of year. Considered the best of the genre over the last 50 years of so, a unifying theme in these stories is that the future would be much different from when 'they were written. We would I either have swashbuckling spacegoing adventures, or we would all fall under a crushingly oppressive regime of comput- ers...or some such nonsense. It's quite amusing to find that by 1978, cities would be huge cubes joined by glass tubes car- rying trains. Or by the '80s we would all travel by personal hel- icopter -cars, or robots would be at our beckon call in every home. No such luck. I think it amazing that few, if any of the science fiction writers all those years ago truly realized that many of the buildings lining their own streets would still be there by the end of the 20th cen- tury. We would still be using the very same worn-out door- knobs to open creaky hinges. Maybe there's a bit of new dry- wall inside. It's not surprising this town's forefathers had no qualms about ripping down some of the best architecture Exeter ever had. They were no doubt reassured the future would bring bigger and better buildings than their creations of mere brick and wood. Today we cling to their old Victorian homes and are renovating the century -old Town Hall - because no one will build anything of their kind again. Some new technologies have come along to re -write the ways we live our lives. We have VCRs and televisions, but they're no more than improve- ments on technologies they al- ready had back then. Our cars are just quicker and quieter ver- sions of the science fiction writ- ers' cars of the '30s and '40s They don't fly, or hover, or speed down roads on autopilot at 200 kilometres an hour. They crash into potholes just like they always did. Not once during Monday's snowstorm did I see an atomic - powered plow vaporizing the snow off Exeter's streets. So much of our lives is sur- prisingly the same, just with the addition of a few microchips to make things run better. The fact that I can decide my evening dinner menu at the last minute by defrosting something in the microwave, would no doubt have been considered an impossible luxury in the earlier days of this century. But no ro- bot butler cooks it for me. Where are my self-cleaning carpets; the hover car that glides over snow drifts; the soft- spoken computer that guides me through my day? The future may be a bit differ- ent than what we know today. But chances are, it won't be what we think it will be. the wrong track trying to tie McLeod further to Chrctien, who has been enormously popular in polls since the 1993 election in which he ren- dered the Progressive Conservatives and NDP almost extinct in the Commons. Chretien had 63 percent support in a recent Gallup poll, the highest for a federal govern- ment in more than half -a -century. His public approval ratings are rivalled normally only in one-party states. Enthusiasm for Chretien already is one factor that has helped keep the Ontario Liberals in front in polls, usually with well over 50 per- cent, and it might be thought the Ontario NDP and Tories would feel the less attention drawn to McLeod's connection to Chretien the better. But there are a lot of indications the honey- moon between the public and Chretien is about to start losing some passion, possibly in time to affect an Ontario election. The federal Liberals have a long list of prob- Chretien's support: asset or liability? lems they are under some compulsion to start tackling in their budget in February, particular- ly a 440 billion annual deficit that has become a crippling burden. To reduce it adequately, they will need both to cut programs and increase taxes. Federal spokesmen have talked of reducing funds given to provinces for education, health and welfare. They have floated the possibilities of raising the age at which people can collect old age se- curity, restricting opportunities to save in regis- tered retirement plans, cutting the public ser- vice, making unemployment insurance more difficult to collect and ending some subsidies tp business. Some taxes are bound to increase, on to 4 higher interest rates already making mortgages more costly. Chretien may get some credit for tackling longstanding concerns and he would be criti- cized if he did nothing or little. He will be able to stem some of the slide in his popularity if the federalists win the Quebec referendum on separation and probably can rely on continuing to be helped by the continued distrust of the federal Tories, the party of for- mer prime minister Brian Mulroney, and the NPD. But if his government does only one-tenth of what it has hinted at, Chretien in the next few months will annoy many more than he pleases. McLeod already has recognized the danger of Chretien antagonizing voters in Ontario and tried to distance herself from some of her feder- al leader's possible actions. McLeod said that Ontarians are 'up against a tax wall' and she will not support the federal budget blindly, but only where it helps Ontario, and accused Rae of 'cheap political attacks.' But she has no influence over federal Liberal policy and Ontario parties have been hurt be- fore by their federal comrades in elections -- Rae is doing his best to make it happen again.