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

Wednesday, November 2, 2011 Orono Weekly Times - 11 BOARDOFTRADE Continued from pg 9 - it is important that the CBOT has the resources to grow. "Now is the time for Clarington to invest in our future," Hall stated. "We are dancing in the right circles now; we don't want to lose that." On October 17, the matter was tabled for two weeks to the October 31st committee meeting, where councillor Ron Hooper made the motion that the $115,000 increase the CBOT was seeking for 2012 be phased in over two years -$61,000 in 2012 and $54,000 in 2013. Hooper moved to delete the 2.5 percent annual cost of living adjustment sought by the Board. Hooper's motion was adopted, but not before Councillor Neal attempted to attach some kind of benchmark to the funding request. "It makes sense to me," stated Neal, "We are going to hand over money to people; we want to see benchmarks we can achieve." Neal said for him it was an issue of having CBOT accountable to councillors. "We are negotiating as partners on behalf of the taxpayer," Neal stated, "Let's measure results and manage according to results." Neal suggested a measurement tool could be an increase in the non-residential portion of the tax base from 10 percent to maybe 15 percent. According to municipal treasurer Nancy Taylor, the split in the tax base has been fairly close to the 90 percent residential and 10 percent non-residential for the past 10 years since the CBOT was formed. Taylor explained there have been small fluctuations in the ratio over the years, from 9.3 to 9.6 to 10 percent non-residential. Mayor Foster, a past president of the CBOT, said it must be recognized that Clarington has gone through a period of huge residential growth and has managed to maintain the 90/10 residential/commercial tax base through an economic downturn. Neal also wanted to include a termination clause into the contract. "If we don't feel we are getting value for the money we are spending, we are not obliged to run the contract out to the five years," Neal stated. According to Neal, the existing agreement between the municipality and the CBOT has clauses that state the municipality can terminate the contract at any time. Councillor Corinna Traill attempted to shorten the length of the contract to four years, consistent with the term of council. Traill said she didn't think this council should bind future councils to a contract they did not sign. Neal and Traill did not get any support for their amendments to Hooper's motion for approval. Councillors will make their final decision on the CBOT budget at next week's council meeting. Homemade goodness: (from left to right) Marilyn Bromley, Helen Simpson and Vickey Gray set out their baked goods for the bake table at St. George's Anglican Church's Fall Bazaar at the church hall in Newcastle on Saturday. Do you think you have a drinking problem? We can help! ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS www.aaoshawa.org 905-728-1020