HomeMy WebLinkAboutTimes Advocate, 1994-9-7, Page 4Page 4 Times -Advocate, September 7, 1994
Publisher: Jim Beckett
News Editor: Adrian Harte
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EDITORIAL
Childish and petty
Exeter is once again embroiled
in a dispute with County Council, or
more specifically, the planning depart-
ment.
At the heart of the issue are the "user
fees" the county wants to charge those
who make use of the planning depart-
ment. Several municipalities, Exeter
included, agree those fees are absurdly
high.
For example, a simple severance
would be billed to the property owner
at $735 A minor variance (to extend,
say, a patio deck near the property line)
would be billed at $510. Those fees are
"only" half of what the planning depart-
ment says it costs to process the appli-
cations. Observers have suggested a
planning consultant in the private sector
could do the same work for one quarter
or one fifth the price.
Exeter, Wingham, and Clinton have
all refused to approve bylaws allowing
those fees to be charged in their respec-
tive towns. Although the plan is to div-
vy up the fees between the county and
the municipality, depending on who
does the bulk of the work, they still
-argue the price is too high.
The fees are high. It is not clear
whether county planning is overstating
the amount of time needed to process
its paperwork, or whether they divided
up their yearly budget - meaning that
other planning operations are being
subsidized by the fee schedule: hardly
what "user pay" intends.
Other municipalities with less forti-
tude passed bylaws calling for reduced
fees, agreeing to pay the county their
original share and taking less of a cut
for themselves.
Exeter, on the other hand, has a histo-
ry of arguing with the planning depart-
ment - the most serious incident being a
dispute over an industrial park just out-
side the town's borders in the mid-
1980s. The town went its own way, put-
ting a professional planning officer of its
own on staff. An agreement in 1991
patched things up between the county
and the town somewhat. Since the town
was paying taxes to the county anyway,
the agreement specified what planning
matters Exeter could rely on them for,
and which ones the town could handle
on its own.
This agreement is Exeter's "get -out -of -
jail -free card" now that this user fee is-
sue is on the table. It clearly overrides
any attempt to make Exeter property
owners pay up for planning services, ac-
cording to town council. Trouble is,
county council has developed amnesia
over the agreement, and wants to re-
interpret it as not applying in this case.
Since Exeter (and Wingham and Clin-
ton) won't play ball with the county,
they now want to take away the whole
playground. Ye , e county has the le-
gal power to depriv the town of its abil-
ity to administer and approve its own lot
severances, but to do so is a childish and
petty response to the situation. It needs
to be resolved sensibly, recognizing the
rights of the municipalities involved,
and considering the possibility that the
planning user fees, might actually and
truly be exorbitantly high.
Yes, the town may get involved in an
expensive legal battle, but this is one
that deserves to be fought. The user fees
are too high, an agreement is already in
place, and the county should not be re-
sponding with threats of taking away
planning controls that have been proper-
ly used for years.
A.D.H.
What's on your mind?
The Times -Advocate continues to welcome letters to the editor as a
forum for open discussion of local issues, concerns, complaints
and kudos. The Times -Advocate reserves the right to edit letters for brevity.
Please send your letters to P.O. Box 850 Exeter, Ontario, NOM 1S6. Sign your
letter with both name and address. Anonymous letters will not be published.
A View From Queen's Park
Ontarians are in no mood to go on bended
knee trying to persuade Quebec to stay in Cana-
da and this has been seized on happily by those
who want to break up the country.
Parti Quebecois leader Jacques Parizeau has
chuckled at what he calls 'unity fatigue' in On-
tario, a condition that Ontarians will have no
difficulty recognizing all around them.
The dominant questions most of them have
asked in the past 30 years of fairly continuous
constitutional debate have been: What does
Quebec want? What do other Canadians have
to do to make Quebec happy?
But most are now saying in conversations,
open -line radio and TV shows and letters to
newspapers that they no longer have much in-
terest in accommodating Quebec.
Many of their comments are even hostile:
"Quebeckers get more than they deserve from
Canada already."
By Eric Dowd
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Published Each Wednesday Morning at 424 Main St.,
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Hold that thought...
A couple of years ago at a
trade show, I watched a guy
take another fellow's driver's li-
cense photo, scan it into his
computer, and then begin to re-
move the fellow's beard, mak-
ing him clean shaven.
It looked like fun, but I
couldn't see much use for it in
the newspaper office.
The trouble is, some people
are finding digital image manip-
ulation very useful indeed.
There are the obvious special
effects photographs that end up
on the covers of the supermar-
ket tabloids. We've seen the
devil's face in the smoke cloud
above Waco, Texas, and this
week we've got a 59 -year old
Elvis speaking out about his
daughter's marriage. Yeah,
right.
But there are much more sub-
tle uses of the technology to .
stretch the bounds of what we
see as "real", or what we think
is ethical.
Nature photographers are in a
real fuss these days. A digital
scan can remove the highlight
from electronic flash in an owl's
eye, or superimpose a bald ea-
gle flying over a mountain peak
in a picture that looks very, very
real, but is actually something
concocted from two separate
images.
Since nature photographers
pursue the ideal of capturing
images of real wildlife in real
By Adrian Harte
Almost real
settings, is it ethical to alter the
photo even the tiniest bit? Na-
tional Geographic even got em-
broiled in the controversy when
it "moved" a pyramid to get all
three to fit on the front cover.
With computer technology
getting cheaper and more effec-
tive, you don't have to be a huge
national magazine with a three-
month deadline to fall prey to
manipulation. The other day, I
was sent an offer for a CD-
ROM from which we could eas-
ily download all kinds of photo-
graphs to accompany our arti-
cles - rather than take our own.
Better yet, we could use these
great "stock" photos, and then
put your heads on them.
We could even get the Pope,
Jean Chretien, and Bill Clinton
playing volleybait in front of
the Exeter Town Hall. It could
be done.
Last week, we were looking at
a good photo of the Zurich Bean
Festival, except in the back-
ground was a woman blowing
her nose or something. Rather
than leave it as is, we simply
trimmed off the side of the pic-
ture, along with her and her
nose - that was our only option
using our current chemical pho-
to process.
But two of our other papers
have already made the leap to
digital, and their computers
could have conceivably erased
her from the complete image,
creating a new piece of back-
ground where she stood. Who
would know? Who could tell?
But would it,be right?
These are questions all of us
have to face, not just those of us
in the news and truth business.
Photographic evidence is al- •
ready highly suspect in the
courts. The clumsy attempt to
splice Lee Harvey Oswald's
head on a photo of a guy hold-
ing a rifle would be truly perfect
if done today.
I once paid a visit to the Vic-
toria and Albert Museum in
London, England to view their
collection of art forgeries.
Among them were a few works
by Alceo Dossena, whose abili-
ty to mimic the styles of Renais-
sance sculptors was so good, a
few may be on display in other
museums around the world, still
thought to be genuine.
What a surprising turn of
events, that in the late 20th cen-
tury, when we believed science
and forensics could tell us what
was real and unreal, our ability
to fake reality may be going
well beyond what Dossena
could pull off.
So far the tabloids have resist-
ed it, but how easy it would be.
to have a sinister looking O.J.
standing with a knife in front of
Nicole's house. The trouble is,
could you prove it wasn't real?
'People have had enough of all these conces-
sions being made to franco nes'. 'Quebeck-
ers are holding Canada to rat om to get more
out of this country.'
'Quebeckers are always yelling. They are
never satisfied. They would be crazy to separ-
ate, because they would only hurt themselves -
but if they want to go, let them get on with it.
We should not kiss their butt to try and get
them to stay.'
Ontarians are concerned that Quebec is rais-
ing the constitution again at a time when issues
they consider more urgent, notably the reces-
sion and unemployment, remain to be dealt
with and they worry that talking about the con-
stitution diverts attention.
Some are complaining that they already have
heard too much about the Quebec election and
the latest threat to separate, that news media are
devoting far too much space to it and that they
'Unity fatigue' strikes Ontario
find.it boring.
A few even are rejoicing in what they see as
benefits from separation, including the prospect
that some Quebeckers will move to Ontario and
this will be good for business.
A poll also has found that only one in five
Ontarians now feels Quebec should be offered
designation as a distinct society and only one in
20 believes it should be offered more powers or
areas of jurisdiction than it has.
Ontarians ironically were preparedoffer
both concessions in the Meech Lake and Char-
lottetown accords that failed.
Parizeau said this poll will not help those ad-
vocating in the election that Quebec should
stay in Canada.
He implied that Quebeckers who seek more
powers have no alternative but to vote for the
PQ and separation, because the biggest Eng-
lish-speaking province is now against offering
any.
Ontarians' new hard line against concessions
to Quebec may not be as rigid as it sounds,
however. Many feel blase about separation at
this time, believing that after many false alarms
it will never happen.
They feel reassured because, if the separatists
win, they have promised a referendum in which
recent polls suggest most Quebeckers would
vote against separating.
Ontarians also have been through a 30 years
war on the constitution. They were appalled by
the bullying attempting to push through the
Meech accord and endured more intense ago-
nizing before narrowly supporting the accord of
Charlottetown.
But Ontarians have been dutiful Confedera-
tion -builders and some time in the future they
will ask again what Quebec wants; -- they are
just fed up with the issue at this time.
J,
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