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6 -- PORT PERRY STAR -- Tuesday, May 9, 1989 The 2ovf Perey Hla 235 QUEEN STREET - PORT PERRY, ONTARIO PHONE 985-7383 FAX 985-3708 The Port Perry Star is authorized as second dass mail by the Post Office Department, Ottawa, for cash payment of postage. Second Class Mail Registration Number 0265 Subscription Rate: In Canada $29.00 per year Elsewhere $60.00 per year. Single Copy 50¢ EDITORIAL Publisher - J. Peter Hvidsten Editor - John B. McClelland News/Features - Cathy Olliffe News Reporter - Rob Streich PRODUCTION Annabell Harrison Trudy Empringham Darlene Hlozan BUSINESS OFFICE Office Manager - Accounting - Judy Ashby ADVERTISING Gayle Stapley Billing Department - Anna Gouldburn Retail Sales - Kathy Dudley, Linda Ruhl Advertising Co-ordinator - Valerie Ellis Advertising Sales Representatives Pat Webster, Lisa Hutchings PE GC CNA i | EY Member of the Canadian Community Newspaper Association Ontario Community Newspaper Association Published every Tuesday by the Pon Perry Star Co. Ltd. Port Perry, Ontario Editorial Comment OH, PROSPERITY If you are a ratepayer in Durham Region, you'd better get ready for a jolt when you get your tax notice for 1989. Property taxes will be going up, and not just at the rate of inflation. Double-digit tax hikes are in store this year, as the school boards and the two levels of municipal government are asking average citizens io continue to dig deeper and deeper to pay for services. Durham Region, for example, struck its 1989 budget last week, a budget that will drag about $49 from the aver- age property across the Region. Scugog homeowners get off a bit better. The average hike here is just $42 on the Regional portion of the tax bill, thanks to something known as equalization factors. That $49 translates into an average tax hike of 19 per cent. Gross spending at the Regional level is jumping 16 per cent this year. But here's the real cruncher. The net Regional levy (that's the amount taken directly from taxes) is soaring a mind-boggling 26.3 per cent. The reason the actual impact is 19 per cent, rather than 26 per cent, is due to a projected growth rate of 7.3 per cent in assessment from new development this year. At the local level, the Scugog Township budget this year will nick the average homeowner about ten per cent more ($40) and the Durham Board of Education hike is believed to be in the 14 per cent range (net) When Regional council last week voted in favour of its budget last week, there were a lot of glum faces around the council chambers, as members no doubt si- lently contemplated how they would explain a 19 per cent tax hike to dis-gruntied ratepayers back home. The people who prepare the Regional budget goes to great lengths to explain the increase. Running down the endiess lists of numbers and charts, one sees a consis- tent theme: virtually every department is getting more money. Police and Social Services take big jumps in terms of actual dollars. Social services, for example, will move from $10.2 million to $13 million, a 27 per cent hike; the Police dept. will move from $30.4 million to $34.7 mil- lion, a 14 per cent hike. These departments offer services for people, and clearly reflect what has happened in Durham Region over the past decade. It's been boom city with new subdivi- sions spring up like mushrooms in the"corrdior" along Highway 401 from Newcastle to Pickering and to a lesser extent in Scugog and Uxbridge Townships. Durham Region is humming with the sounds of con- struction as houses, shopping malls, new factories and of- fice buildings go up before our eyes. But can we afford the price of all this prosperity? Can the average tax payer afford 19 per cent hikes to pay for the increased demand for services, when pay cheques are going up at five per cent and pensions by even less? We are not suggesting that new development pay for itself totally, but if the projected growth rate is just 7.3 per cent, how come it is costing Durham in excess of 20 per cent to provide the services? Cynics may suggest that 1989 is the year after an election year. It's politically more comfortable to bring down a hefty tax hike this year than in 1991, for example, when councillors have to go to the polls. But councils used to bring in ten per cent budgets in non-slection years. Now the figure is 19 per cent. Several councillors last week pointed to one particular budget item in an attempt to show why the bite is so high. That is the un-conditional grants from the provincial gov- ernment. The grant went from $13.8 million last year to $14.1 million this year, or 1.9 per cent. (Turn to page 8) Michael Wilson DEBT COUNSELLING Chatterbox by CATHY OLLIFFE i --_--_. FLIGHT FROM THE KNIFE Okay, so you're sick, right? The good doc says you gotta have your hibbertysplat removed. Well, you don't gotta, he clarifies, | mean no one is forcing you. It's up to you whether you want to have the chunk of flesh removed peacefully now, or ripped out in some emergency room or morgue later on. Well gee whiz, you hem and haw and worry about taking time off from work and who's go- ing to feed the family while you're gone and how much it's going to hurt and do you have your OHIP premiums paid up and such. But you finally figure out, hey, / wanna live a few more years, | want to see the government get out of the red, | want to hang around long enough to cash in on the old age pension. | really do want people to buy me stupid cards with [causes of dogs in hospital gowns with their backsides exposed. So you book a room at the Hospital Hilton. Like my Dad recently did. You wait a few months because your life-saving operation is considered (what does a politician with a her- nia have?) elective surgery. Like Dad did. You tell your boss you'll be off for six weeks, you arrange for sick pay, you pack up your suitcase, you make sure your will is up to date, you go to the hospital and you get the gosh darn operation over with. This is what you do. This is what my Dad did. He recently checked into Centenary Hos- pital in Scarberia to have a bunch of stuff tak- en out. He didn't necessarily want to have a bunch of stuff taken out, but he is smart and he is brave, and now he is recuperating with the help of many pretty nurses, many more stupid cards, a selection of dying plants and an incredible assortment of tubes stuck into various parts of his anatomy (he's going to kill me when he reads this). | always assumed everyone was like my fa- ther. Once you check into the hospital, you get the hibbertysplat removed. That is why you go to the hospital. There are some people, however, who don't know this. There are some people who check into the hospital because, well, who knows? . Like this one guy who checked in the same time as Dad. They registered together, they . followed each other around for an hour wait- ing for their rooms, they chatted about their ailments. Then Dad settled in and went to the elevators in search of the smoking area. The guy was at the elevators, coat, suitcase and hat in hand. "Changed my mind," he said gruffly, stepped into the downward car and disap- peared. A couple of days after Dad's operation, when he was feeling his worst, with tubes all over his body, groaning and such, my father acquired a new room mate. A guy who was in for a gallbladder yanking, a guy who did noth- ing but complain fromthe minute he stepped into the hospital. At dinner time, when my father was eating nothing more exciting than a gourmet 1.V., this goon picked through a roast beef dinner and whined about how lousy the food was. The whole time he was whining, he kept stealing lances at Dad, who was semi-comatose rom healthy doses of demerol, and whose stomach tube was buzzing like a hive of bees. Halfway through dinner he jumped up and roclaimed, "That's IT! I'm outta here!" And he eft grumbling something about how his gall- bladder never hurt much anyways. And then there was a lady on the same floor who lasted right up until the morning of her operation. This woman waited until she got her "happy shot" before saying "| feel fun- ny. | want to go home." Which she did. Hib- bertysplat intact. Geez Dad, you're surrounded by loonies. Get well soon, okay? | understand lunacy is contagious.