The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

6- The Oakville Beaver, Wednesday September 27, 2006 www.oakvillebeaver.com OPINION & LETTERS The Oakville Beaver 467 Speers Rd., Oakville Ont. L6K 3S4 (905) 845-3824 Fax: 337-5567 Classified Advertising: 845-3824, ext. 224 Circulation: 845-9742 Editorial and advertising content of the Oakville Beaver is protected by copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited. THE OAKVILLE BEAVER IS PROUD OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR FOR: IAN OLIVER Group Publisher NEIL OLIVER Publisher JILL DAVIS Editor in Chief ROD JERRED Managing Editor KELLY MONTAGUE Advertising Director DANIEL BAIRD Advertising Manager TERI CASAS Business Manager MANUEL GARCIA Production Manager RIZIERO VERTOLLI Photography Director CHARLENE HALL Director of Distribution ALEXANDRIA CALHOUN Circ. Manager Metroland Printing, Publishing & Distributing Ltd., includes: Ajax/Pickering News Advertiser, Alliston Herald/Courier, Arthur Enterprise News, Barrie Advance, Brampton Guardian, Burlington Post, Burlington Shopping News, Caledon Enterprise, City Parent, Collingwood/Wasaga Connection, East York Mirror, Erin Advocate/Country Routes, Etobicoke Guardian, Flamborough Review, Georgetown Independent/Acton Free Press, Harriston Review, Huronia Business Times, Lindsay This Week, Markham Economist & Sun, Midland/Penetanguishine Mirror, Milton Canadian Champion, Milton Shopping News, Mississauga Business Times, Mississauga News, Napanee Guide, Newmarket/Aurora Era-Banner, Northumberland News, North York Mirror, Oakville Beaver, Oakville Shopping News, Oldtimers Hockey News, Orillia Today, Oshawa/Whitby/Clarington Port Perry This Week, Owen Sound Tribune, Palmerston Observer, Peterborough This Week, Picton County Guide, Richmond Hill/Thornhill/Vaughan Liberal, Scarborough Mirror, Stouffville/Uxbridge Tribune, Forever Young, City of York Guardian Raising the stakes We don't envy the position Halton District School Board trustees will find themselves in next week. At an Oct. 4 meeting of the board, these elected officials face recommendations to increase trustee honorariums by an eye-popping 163 per cent starting Dec. 1, give each current trustee one year's retroactive pay of $8,153 and pay current trustees an additional $1,882 for the three-month period ending Nov. 30. The recommendations come from a citizens' advisory committee that was convened to re-visit trustee remuneration after the Ministry of Education decided to allow trustee raises for the first time in a decade. Now, less than six weeks before a municipal election, these elected officials are facing a damned-if-they-do, damned-if-they-don't proposition. If they approve an increase of the base trustee stipend from $5,000 to $13,159 and/or approve the other two recommendations -- effectively paying themselves an additional $10,000 each for the period of Sept. 1, 2005 to Nov. 30, 2006 -- there could be political hell to pay from anyone who believes education spending belongs in the classroom. If trustees don't pass the recommendations, they come off as heroes to ratepayers' groups, but find themselves stuck with the same pay trustees earned back in 1997. Further complicating matters is a ministry-imposed deadline of Oct. 31 for school boards to approve new pay scales. This leaves Halton's public school trustees squirming over establishing a pay raise within weeks of their re-election bids. At a recent school board meeting more than one trustee voiced some discomfort at the very idea of voting themselves a raise. It is important to note that this is a board that has frequently cried poor and serenaded the Ministry of Education with the underfunded blues. It doesn't matter if trustee raises come directly out of the local tax base or from the ministry's coffers. Either way, taxpayers will foot the bill. Board chair Paul Tate is fooling himself if he believes parents and taxpayers won't mind an additional $77,000 a year added to the board's $380-million operating budget. The proposed raises could purchase a significant amount of pencils, paper or textbooks for Halton students. Still, a counter argument can be made that "you get what you pay for." In the last 10 years, the annual stipend for Ontario's school trustees has been a pittance. At $5,000 a year, it's no wonder residents aren't lining up to contest trustee positions in this November's municipal election. As of Tuesday morning, three of the four Oakville trustee positions would be filled by acclamations, and on the Catholic board all four trustees would be acclaimed. If we place any value on the work school board trustees do for education, perhaps it's time their remuneration started to reflect it. It was the Mike Harris-led Tories that slammed the brakes on escalating trustee salaries in the province when trustees at some GTA school boards got greedy. It could be argued that in the ensuing 10 years, the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction, making a school trustee position not worth the effort, financially. While it would be difficult for us to oppose an annual increase to trustees' pay after such a long freeze, a leap of 163 per cent in one year is too much, too soon. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR The Oakville Beaver welcomes letters from its readers. Letters will be edited for clarity, length, legal considerations and grammar. In order to be published all letters must contain the name, address and phone number of the author. Letters should be addressed to The Editor, Oakville Beaver, 467 Speers Rd., Oakville, ON, L6K 3S4, or via e-mail to editor@oakvillebeaver.com. The Beaver reserves the right to refuse to publish a letter. Anti-pesticide movement harmful Re: When will politicians take up the cause against pesticides, Oakville Beaver, Sept. 22. Haven't we travelled this route before? The anti-pesticide movement has become so partisan in its ideology and actions that it is no longer capable of a systematic examination of the facts. It has something of the Foucaultian (Foucault, Michel) concept of truth regimes about it in that it attempts to overlay legitimate honest discourse and science with dramatic unprovable claims. In the past week we have seen a denouement of this group's past propaganda that worked to ban the use of DDT. Since Rachel Carson published Silent Spring and convinced the world that DDT caused cancer without any evidence to support this claim -- millions of young children died unnecessarily from malaria epidemics in Africa and Asia. Now, with sanity and truth restored, the World Health Organization (WHO) is urging that DDT be permitted for use in people's homes. The pernicious influence, the partisan ideology and actions that flowed from Silent Spring has done far more damage than DDT ever did. With the growth of "bed bug" infections in Canada and other western countries (due to greater international travel), we may yet see DDT introduced again in Canada to combat this growing scourge. I have always said that the vast majority of Oakville residents, when they are aware, are exemplary in being able to see through, and deny, much of this foolish partisan ideology that pervades our airways, media and Town Council. It was clearly shown in the 2003 referendum when a majority shot down an attempt to ban legitimate (government approved) pesticide use on private property. IVOR DAVIES Pud BY STEVE NEASE snease@haltonsearch.com