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

Volume 72, Number 42 GST Included $1.25 Wednesday November 4, 2009 Orono Town Hall Publications Mail Registration No. 09301 Agreement No. 40012366 Serving Kendal, Kirby, Leskard, Newcastle, Newtonville, Orono, Starkville and Tyrone since 1937 Sr. snow clearing program nears completion The revamped seniors' snow clearing program was still not up to a standard that councillors could support. Ever since they scrapped the seniors' snow clearing program last May due to budgetary constraints, councillors have been trying to find a way to bring the popular program back. With 724 participants, the program cost the municipality $89,000 in 2008. In October, council was ready to re-launch the progams through the initiation of a $75 registration fee for the 2009/2010 season. Staff were instructed to put the contract out for tender again, and this time they were successful in getting a bid for the entire municipality. Bird's Property Management of Hampton was the lowest responsible bidder for the contract with a bid of $64,000 for the upcoming winter season, November 2009 to April 2010. However, as the program as outlined by staff would only run from January to April 2010, councillors decided to reduce the fee from $75 for the year to $60 for the first half of the 2010 winter season. In the end, councillors tabled the report for another week, as they felt there was a conflict between the full season program they requested and the half season program staff came up with. Newcastle resident Gavin Galbraith had the chore of raking leaves on Mill Street on Sunday morning. Council disputes vote-counting method It appears not all councillors are satisfied with the decision they made last week to conduct the 2010 muncipal elction in the traditional manner. At last week's council meeting, the decision was made to return to a traditional style of voting similar to the system used by the federal and provincial governements, with a paper ballot cast at a voting station. In 2000, Clarington initiated a Vote-by-Mail system, with one ballot box at the town hall in Bowmanville for those who wanted to personally cast their ballot. In a report to council last week, munciipal clerk Patti Barrie outlined five voting methods available and recommended a combined ballot box system with internet voting for the 2010 municpal election. Barrie quoted a price of $198,000 to run a ballot and internet voting system next October. All of the voting methods outlined by Barrie included a cost for electronic vote tabulators, which ran from $63,000 to $86,000 depending on the voting method. Barrie said last week that she highly recommended the use of vote tabulators in the next election. "I highly recommend we do not go back to a manual count," Barrie said last week. Most municipalities use the ballot cast at the polling station method, and they use electronic vote tabulators to count the ballots, according to Barrie. As none of the quotes given by Barrie last week included the cost to run an election without vote tabulators, Councillor Adrian Foster asked for a report from the Clerk on how much a traditional style election would cost to run with a manual count. Barrie was recommending 20 to 24 vote tabulators for a traditional paper ballot election, one vote tabulator for every 3500 eligible voters. There are 61,000 eligible voters in Clarington. Without the use of electronic tabulation machines, the number of polls will have to increase. Prior to the latest update of the municipal elections act in 1996, voting stations were to VOTE see page 3 What's Inside See page 4