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2 - Orono Weekly Times Subscriptions $38.09 + $1.91 GST = $40.00 per year. No Refunds. Publishing 48 issues annually at the office of publication. "We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Publications Assistance Program (PAP) toward our mailing costs." Wednesday, March 17, 2010 ORONO WEEKLY TIMES - 5310 Main St., P.O. Box 209, Orono, ON L0B 1M0 E-mail: oronotimes@rogers.com or Phone/Fax: 905-983-5301 Publisher/Editor Margaret Zwart Production and Display Advertising - Roxanne Johnston Classified Advertising - Sue Weigand The Orono Weekly Times welcomes letters to the editor on subjects of interest to our readers. Opinions expressed to the editor and articles are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Orono Weekly times. Letters must be signed and contain the address and phone number of the writer. Any letter considered unsuitable will not be acknowledged or returned. We reserve the right to edit for length, libel and slander. If your retail or classified ad appears for the first time, please check carefully. Notice of an error must be given before the next issue goes to print. The Orono Weekly Times will not be responsible for the loss or damage of such items. C ou n c illo r s p ay s pr i n g s e t ern al It is that time of year again. The snow, what little of it we had, has melted, the sun is getting warmer, there have been some robin sightings, and municipalities are reporting how much their councillors were paid last year. It is hard to judge how much a municipal politician is worth, but the fact that there are candidates willing to put their name forward for the job, at election time, indicates the pay is not a deterrent. As Clarington councillors' pay increases are tied to that of their salaried staff, councillors received a three percent pay increase -$900 over the previous year. Remuneration paid to members of council differs depending on which boards and committees they serve on during their term. Councillor Charlie Trim was the highest paid Regional Councillor last year. As Chair of the Regional Works Committee, Trim had an extra $6,200 added to his base pay of $47,685. With $2,774 in mileage and $2,500 reimbursement for meetings and conventions, Trim received a $59,175 remuneration from the Region last year. Regional Chair Roger Anderson had a total pay package of $220,000 last year. This is the position former Clarington Mayor John Mutton is gunning for. He has declared himself a candidate for the position of Regional Chair. Regional councillors will vote for a chair at their first meeting following the October 25th municipal election. Of the Boards and Committees councillors are appointed to as elected representatives, none pay as well as the Veridian Board. Veridian is the electricity service provider formed in 1999 through the amalgamation of the Clarington, Ajax and Pickering public utilities commissions. The Municipality of Clarington is a 13-percent shareholder in the company, and has four members on its Board of Directors. The remuneration paid to these board members received quite a lot of attention last year, as their pay increased from $10,000 a year to $16,000 a year for attending six to seven scheduled annual meetings. This year it was reported that Clarington Councillor Mary Novak took home a salary of $14,500 for attending her seven Veridian Corporation Board meetings last year. She also received an additional $12,100 in miscellaneous expenses associated with her position as a Veridian board member. When we asked her last week what the expenses were for, she told us, as she started her term half way through the four-year mandate, she had to catch up with the board's work. This week, we asked Veridian for a breakdown of all the expenses paid to Clarington Board members, which totaled $17,583. Dave Clark, Executive Vice President of Veridian Corporation said he does not have the authorization to release specific expense information related to each director. He would however, bring the matter up at the next Board meeting, to be held on March 26th. He did say all the expenses were consistent with Veridian's policy for expense reimbursement. While the remuneration paid to Veridian Board Members in our opinion is extravagant, these expenses paid to Novak are obscene. When board appointments were made at the beginning of this term of council, Councillor Adrian Foster was nominated as Clarington's council appointment to the Veridian Board. (Jim Abernethy, as mayor, had an automatic appointment to the Veridian Board.) Before the appointment went to a vote, Novak asked to go 'in camera' to discuss the matter. As a result of the closed door discussion, it was decided that Foster would take the first half of the two-year term and Novak the second half. None of the board members were paid $12,000 in expenses to get them up to speed on board activity when they joined the board in 2007. Last January, when Mayor Abernethy introduced a motion to have Clarington council members who sit on the Veridian Board, turn their Veridian remuneration over to the Municipality, Novak immediately stood up to have that motion tabled to the next term of council. Novak's motion was adopted. In our opinion, Novak was in direct conflict of interest, introducing her tabling motion and voting on it, since she stood to gain financially from her motion. The Mayor's motion was a sound one, and had he introduced it to council members prior to putting it on the council floor, he might have had support for it. Veridian Board terms coincide with the term of council. It is not fair to the Board to have to bring a new member up to speed, half way through the term. If Novak wanted in on the action maybe she should have paid out of her own pocket to get up to speed. Letters to the Editor Wily coyotes' new agenda? To the Editor: Ministry of Natural Resources official John Pisapio suggested that the bounty system of population control for coyotes actually increases their numbers due to food availability. Since a tag system is basically a bounty system, I wondered if deer populations would increase too if we hunted them more? Also, I noticed he said that you cannot kill more coyotes than necessary to protect your property. In the MNR's own hunting regulations, I see no limit on coyotes taken yearround by a person with a Small Game license in areas where they are allowed to be hunted. I believe that habituated coyotes consider humans no longer a threat due to our lack of hunting and that is the real reason coyotes are moving into urban areas. If we are to believe that development harms the balance of nature, why are these populations on the rise? Is the Ministry, in denying these factors, slowly drifting toward an anti-hunting stance since we are now expected to accept the coyotes' presence in areas they were once driven out of? Recent events suggest that past safety concerns will prove valid while the Ministry, now governed by a new agenda, wants us to just live with it. Keith Linton Orono Tufts' time at the Times Re: "Who wrote that?" editorial, March 10th edition. Here, in its entirety, is the letter to the editor referred to in last week's editorial. Dear Editor: I am writing this to the editor but I am not sure exactly who that is. Is it Doug Firby, managing editor of Troy Media? Has the Orono Times been the victim of a media take-over? Once again we are seeing "editorials" from a faceless source. Troy Media, according to its web-site, is a Calgary-based organization "dedicated to fostering debate about issues shaping Canada and the world." Its articles are free to down-load and use. While I have no problem with Troy Media, I do have an issue with our editor taking material from this site and simply pasting it into our paper as an editorial. If you must use the articles as an editorial, at the very least write a comment demonstrating its relevance to our community. Better yet, write editorials that reflect the issues and concerns in our own community. The Orono Times is, after all, a community newspaper. Frances Tufts, Orono