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6- The Oakville Beaver, Wednesday March 28, 2007 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: The Oakville Beaver is a division of IAN OLIVER Group Publisher NEIL OLIVER Publisher JILL DAVIS Editor in Chief ROD JERRED Managing Editor Media Group Ltd. DANIEL BAIRD Advertising Director RIZIERO VERTOLLI Photography Director TERI CASAS Business Manager MANUEL GARCIA Production Manager CHARLENE HALL Director of Distribution ALEXANDRIA CALHOUN Circ. Manager We apologize We were wrong. It's not often you will read that in a newspaper and it's not often that you should, but when we make a mistake we owe it to our readers to admit it. In the Friday, March 23 edition of The Oakville Beaver we ran an editorial Why the secrecy? It questioned why Mayor Rob Burton had formed a citizens' advisory committee to work, allegedly, in secret towards a compromise solution to the contentious tree bylaw. Our editorial did not suggest the committee was a bad idea, nor did it cast aspersion on the committee's findings. As previously stated, we think getting representatives from opposing sides to negotiate a compromise is a good idea. We did, however, suggest that the committee had been sworn to secrecy by the mayor -- and that was plain wrong. Our editorial was based on a statement provided by a reporter, which was not corroborated. As a result, we jumped to a conclusion and printed an editorial that was wrong. We owe the members of the private tree bylaw advisory group an apology. We also owe an apology to Mayor Rob Burton. He did not -- as our editorial stated -- swear the committee to secrecy. Any suggestions we made to lead people into thinking this committee operated behind closed doors were improper. Since that was our main objection to the group, we have to give Mayor Burton credit for forming the committee in the first place and its subsequent recommendations. Finally, we apologize to our readers. As a newspaper, it is our duty to act as a watchdog for our community. It is a duty we take seriously and work hard to fulfill. But in order to do so we cannot make false assumptions or jump to conclusions as we did in this instance. We dropped the ball and we let you, our readers, down. For that, we apologize. 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. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Nothing secretive about Private Tree Bylaw advisory group Re: Why All the Secrecy? The editorial in the Oakville Beaver, Friday, March 23 is based on a false premise and I would like to set the record straight. I was asked by the mayor to chair a small advisory group as a means to find a workable solution to the tree protection issue. As such, I was the person to whom he gave directions and was fully aware of what he said and when it was said. Five times in your editorial, you stated that our group worked in secret. The word "clandestine" was used. Two times you stated that we were "sworn to secrecy." None of those statements is correct. The objective of our advisory group was to bring together individuals with opposing points of view and review the issues related to tree protection before providing advice to the mayor on possible solutions (if any) that could be accepted by reasonable people on both sides. Then, if he thought he had something workable, he could use it as input to the processes that usually lead to laws in this town, including advice from staff, participation by council and full public discussion. The mayor was not involved in the BY STEVE NEASE snease@haltonsearch.com group's discussions and his direction to me was to report back when we had something to report. He never asked us to work in secret and we were certainly not "sworn to secrecy", as you have stated. As far as I am aware, none of us kept the group's existence or its deliberations quiet. We all consulted with many people. We fanned out and interviewed a number of Town staff. They all seemed to know of our existence. I personally know that several councillors were well aware of what we were doing and I have no doubt that they all knew about our group. Most of us consulted with others in town as we were pulling our thoughts together. This was never a secret process. Our meetings were held in the small committee rooms at Town Hall. Because we had members who worked during the day, we met in the evenings ­ no doubt, some will say we met "under the cloak of darkness." The fact that we met as a small group allowed for discussions that were very frank, open, and at times quite pointed. But we were able to do our homework, air our views, and reach a Pud See Group's page 8 The Oakville Beaver is a member of the Ontario Press Council.The council is located at 80 Gould St., Suite 206,Toronto, Ont., M5B 2M7. Phone 416-340-1981. 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