I G re a t s to re s t o y w O P E N24 H O U R S 7 Days A Week y o u in O a k v ille Blades eyeing I N$l> Miners for first place Ferrone Fitness Sports I business Every Friday a t 9 n t mu Cant l Mrm I on B A N I) 844-8703 w w w .o a k v ille b e a v e r.c o m T H E O A K V I L L E B E A V E R NORTH A M e t r o l a n d P u b lic i i t i o n A M E R I C A 'S V o l. 3 9 N o . MOST AWARDED COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER . Y2. I 'r \s 7r> ( a `I i t s (f> his as 11 F R ID A Y . J A M A K Y 11. _, (X )2 Volunteer helped former Eastern Bloc businesses achieve higher standards By Howard Mozel OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF Mayors want bite of fuel tax to fix transit woes By Dennis Smith SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER Milan Kosturik could have travelled to Russia and Romania as a tourist, but by volunteering to help businesses there meet international quality standards, his trips became full-fledged adventures. "It's entirely different. You see how real people live," said Kosturik, who was accompanied by his wife, Goldie, on both missions. "The people take you into their family. On tour you never see that." Kosturik - who retired in 1997 from Nortel as an assistant vice-president of customer service for North America - is a volunteer advisor for the Canadian Executive Service Organization (CESO), who spent time in Romania and Russia during the past two years helping a pair of completely different industries achieve ISO designations much as he did with Nortel's 101 plants. "They both needed help badly," he said. ISO is the name given to a series of generic international standards for qual ity assurance and management. They were developed by the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization and first published in 1987. Since that time, these standards have been adopted around the world by 90 countries and hundreds of thousands of organizations. Compliance to the requirements is verified through assess ments and audits by accredited third parties called registrars. Kosturik embarked on his first CESO assignment to Romania in the fall of 1999. Over seven weeks his task was to help Hydro Romania receive its ISO certification, as well as to improve Riziero Vertolli · Oakville Beaver Oakville's Milan Kosturik, a retired Nortel executive and volunteer advisor for the Canadian Executive Service Organization, spent time overseas during the past two years helping a pair of different industries achieve ISO designa tions. Here he displays some of the souvenirs he brought home from Russia, operating efficiency, its service and and, after his analyses, Kosturik characcompany morale. terized its system as "pitiful to disasWith no competition, the com pany, trous." With his assistance, however, had deteriorated, outages were common (S ee C E S O ' page 7) Local mayors are 'step ping on the gas' to improve transit service west of Toronto. Calls for integrated tran sit and sharing of fuel tax revenues wtfre made by leaders participating in Wednesday's transit caucus held in Burlington. "Transit systems in the | GTA (Greater Toronto Area) West-Hamilton have been working together for a num; ber of years to improve cross | boundary service and inte gration," noted Burlington Mayor Rob Maclsaac. "In today's session, we agreed to I focus on finding innovative, } strategic ways to work j together to provide a coordi! nated approach to transit j delivery, fares and financ ing." Besides,M aclsaac, may| ors joining a closed-door discussion included O ak ville's Ann Mulvale H amilton's Bob Wade, j Mississauga's Hazel McCalj lion, and Brampton's acting mayor. Councillor Susan DiMarco. Senior transit staff and j city managers also partici pated in discussions involv ing the five large municipal ities. Stakes include $1.25 bil lion offered over 10 years j for inter-regional transit j expansions. Funding will be provided on a competitive basis through the province's Golden Horseshoe Transit Investment Partnership pro- " The public is quite right to expect us to get our act in gear. We experience daily what the problem is" · Oakville Mayor A m Mulvale gram (GTIP). "We're com m itted to working together to secure new transit opportunities," said Maclsaac, at a press conference held following the closed-door meeting. "We think by acting in con cert, those types of funding applications can be advanced." He said there is much local transit system integra tion already and several inter-city services were cited. "What we saw today were efforts to raise the bar." The group plans to (See W e' page 3) INSIDE Editorials...................... 6 Real Estate..................13 Artscene...................... 18 Worship....................... 19 Sports.........................22 Business :...........25 Classifieds.................... 27 Full Delivery: A shleyF u rn itu re, L a -Z -B o y, C anadianT in ? ,D om aineA p p liances. Lobltm xSobeys, W a l-M a rt, F oodB a sics, Z ellers, ShoppersD rugM art O ffice Hoce, A&P, Dominion, Academy ofI tam ing, Sean, tittle Caesars Pizza. Radio Shack C a n a d ia nP u M c a b o m K MP ro d u c tA g n w m w *# 4 3 » -2 0 1