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The Citizen, 1997-11-12, Page 4PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12,1997. C itizenTheNorthHuron j P.O. Box 429, BLYTH, Ont. NOM 1H0 Phone 523-4792 FAX 523-9140 P.O. Box 152, BRUSSELS, Ont. N0G1H0 Phone 887-9114 FAX 887-9021 E-mail norhuron@huron.net Publisher, Keith Roulston Editor, Bonnie Gropp Advertising Manager, Jeannette McNeil _f*10 The Citizen is published weekly in Brussels, Ontario by North Huron Publishing Company Inc. Subscriptions are payable in advance at a rate of $27.00/year ($25.24 + $1.76 G.S.T.) In Canada; $62.00/year in U.S.A, and $75.00/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. We are not responsible for unsolicited newscripts or photographs. Contents of The Citizen are © Copyright Publications Mall Registration No. 6966 Is cheap government good? Huron County councillors are asking themselves a question that all taxpayers should be asking themselves: is cheap government necessarily good government? E ditorial i i In a laudable effort to save money, Huron County council reorganized a few years ago. Committees were reorganized so that councillors weren't attending as many meetings. Since there’s a charge for every meeting councillors attend, it would save money. Councillors also decided to start earlier in the day, even though it made it hard for some councillors to get their work done at home and be in Goderich by 9 a.m. This eliminated the lunch break and the cost of lunch for councillors. Council also reduced its numbers by not having deputy-reeves attend council anymore. There’s no doubt the moves saved money. There are doubts, however, whether it has resulted in good government. Outgoing councillors Bill Vanstone and Bill Mickle urged council to take a serious look at reversing some of the reforms so that councillors have more information needed to make intelligent decisions. Hullett Reeve Tom Cunningham suggested if councillors don’t get any more information than they have now, they might as well meet less often and leave more decision making io the staff. Councillor Jack Coleman looked a little further. If amalgamations go ahead, reducing the number of municipalities and thus the number of county councillors, how will committees be able to give the kind of scrutiny that these councillors want, he wondered. And there’s the rub. Pushed by the provincial government, the move is on to reduce the number of elected officials involved in government and make governmental units larger. This supposes that the expense of government is the politicians. If so, reduce the number of politicians and you reduce expense. That’s easy to understand. But what is the cost if you reduce the cost of the people who are supposed to represent the voters, and thus increase the number of decisions that are made by civil servants? What is the cost of not having enough elected officials to look over the shoulders of the civil servants to keep them on their toes? Our system is set up as a series of checks and balances to try to keep government in control. By focusing on cost cutting at the municipal council level, that balance is being destroyed, turning more power over to non-elected employees at the expense of elected officials. In the long run, this can be a recipe for poor service and higher costs. — KR Photo by Janice Becker Stairway through heaven Wil Jk V .UK- 4WIi s Ajl W j ft 7 mi 1 1 B 1 B ' 1 ; B irk 1 he? * »f -I lb They got it wrong Economists, bankers, politicians — they all expressed surprise last week when the unemployment rate, instead of going down, as they expected, went up. Canada lost 27,000 full-time jobs in October and the unemployment rate edged up to 9.1 per cent instead of down, below 9 per cent as the “experts” confidently predicted. If the experts came out of their glass towers and travelled in the real world for a while they wouldn’t be so surprised. Down here, it’s easy to see that all this talk about the booming economy hasn’t affected the lives of real people much. People are still worried about their jobs. They haven’t had raises in years. They haven’t even noticed the tax cut the provincial government has bestowed on them. They, or their children, are still unemployed or under-employed. We've been promised for a couple of years now that things would be better once the fundamentals were right. They are — for the privileged few in society who have seen their incomes soar. For the majority, incomes have been frozen or gone down. For the unfortunate group, there’s no work at all — and little hope for any. Perhaps the “experts” are afraid to tell us the truth: that this is what we’re going to have to leam to live with. We’ve been sold a dream that we can have globalization and prosper. Despite those assembly-line jobs we’ve exported to Mexico or China, we were supposed to have even better jobs. There are jobs unfilled in Canada, but many are highly skilled jobs and laid-off assembly-line workers might never have the skills for them, no matter how much retraining they take. Meanwhile, Canada Post wants to reduce its workforce, Canada Packers wpnts workers to take huge pay cuts and the Ontario government wants to get rid of thousands of teachers. And the experts are surprised we’re not enjoying prosperity? — KR Letters THE EDITOR, On Oct. 31,1997 one of the most excruciating things happened to my family and myself. Since this transpired a couple members of our fire team have been contacted. The members contacted have been wonderful and have made sure this type of incident will never happen to anyone else's family. My grandfather who was 85-years-old had a very nasty fall onto a cement floor. When he was finally able to get my grandmother's attention, she went out to find him lying on the garage floor. Now take time to pic­ ture this for yourself; the man that you have loved for over 60 years lying in pain on a cold, cement garage floor. He was very much in pain and unable to move and there was nothing that she could do. Her first instinct (as everyone else's would be too) was to call the fire department, which is now dispatched through Seaforth. Blyth, in my opinion, has one of the best fire departments around. They are not only quick to react and well trained in these kinds of situations, but they have heart. They know everyone in town and they care what happens to them. The "person" who took the call decided (on her own I might add) NOT to dispatch the Blyth Fire Department. An 80-year-old woman hearing this didn't know what else to do but sit beside her cold, suffering husband with a blanket (she herself is still recovering from hip surgery) to wait a half hour to 45 minutes for an ambulance to come. I am not saying that there is any­ thing wrong with our ambulance system but had the firemen been dispatched it would have only taken them three minutes to respond. That is a very large margin. Afterwards a member of our family made contact with a mem­ ber of the Blyth Fire Department, whom in turn made contact with our fire chief. They have assured us that in an emergency of this kind our fire team will now always be dispatched to help those in need of help. But in closing I would like to ask the "person" that took the call from my crying, begging grandmother, "Why do you think we have a fire department in town if we can not access it for help?" Laurie Scott's loving granddaughter, Dawn Gross P.S. We laid Grandpa to rest on Nov. 7, 1997. "Thanks" for all your HELP!! THE EDITOR, The Ark Community Youth Centre is a non-profit organization dedicated to the children and youth in our area. I'm writing on behalf of our volunteer board to plead for your financial support - our bank account will be done by January. To stop the closing of the Ark we will run a silent auction on Nov. 22 at the Brussels United Church and lights will be sold in November and early December for our Tree of Hope. We need the community's support to help our work with youth as we continue to seek outside sources of revenue. The Ark is a registered charity and donations are always welcome - but we need your full support all year long and especially now at the silent auction and with the purchase of lights for the Tree of Hope. Please support our future citizens and come out Nov. 22. Sincerely, Sue Gowing President, Ark board of directors