P>AGE' 4, \VEIDNI-SI)AY. NOVENIBIR 1985 iJ~. WlI-IY ;rII whitbY Voice of the County Town Michael Ian Burgess, Publisher - Managing Editor The only Whitby newspaper independentli owned and operated by Whitby yesidents for Whitby residents. I>blile< eer -edluIa Er Sand ii>otograpîh I nc. Phlonle 66i8-11 Iie Free lPress Building, 131 Brock Street North,. PA). Box 206J, %Vthithy. Ont. MMANUEL HADZIPETROS Conmunity Editor VALERIE COWEN Advertlslng Manager Second class Mail Registrationi No 5351 Now dat the vote's in .... Everybody should work together for a better Whitby prpsdBoc t ttonwl rngadaai The dust has settled, the votes are counted. A new administration is in place. Another municipal election is over. We won't be asked to vote again until 1988. It was a hard fought campaign for virtually everybody. This year, only one candidate was ac- ottulgnews persnantUies BESTOB tl OTTAWA - The relations between the great massa of Canadians and their federal government by andP large continue to be abysmal. The Revenue Depar- tment, for example, continues to send computerized forms to taxpayers that do not, in anything ap- proximating the English or French languages, ex-f plain what they are. I got one the other day which was quite simply incomprehensible. I was annoyed by this because of my naive conviction that the pur- pose of government is to serve the citizens. The government's own view of this relationship, as expressed by my recent tax notice, however, is quite different. The government quite clearly feels it is under no obligation to be intelligible in its com- munications with me. The onus is on me to under- stand what my government is saying; if I don't un- derstand, it's my fault. This Olympian attitude makes citizens mere sup- plicants, humble petitioners for services they have bought and paid for. In short, government has become over-weeningly superior. Perrin Beatty, in his brief stint as Revenue Minister, did something to ensure that the dog wags the tail again, and not the other way around. He submitted legislation which will reverse the tax act's outrageous fundamental dictum that the citizen is guilty until he proves himself innocent. What this will mean, when the Senate gets off its duff, is that a taxpayer will no longer have to buy a departmental assessment before he can argue that the assessment is unjust. But the Revenue Department isn't the only one which operates on the assumption that the customer is always wrong. I got a telephone call recently from a woman whose family allowance was arbitrarily stopped. What happened was that her daughter had moved out to live with a relative. The relative had ap- plied for family allowance. The mother, in the mean- time, was continuing to pay $200 a month in support payments to her daughter. The daughter moved back with her mother after three months away, and the situation has still not been sorted out. What bothered my caller more than anything else about ail of this was that the first she knew of it was when she got a letter telling her that her family allowance had been stopped. "No one," she said, "had even asked me about it". She has been unable to find anyone in the government, either in the civil service or in our political hierarchy, who finds that remarkable. I said i found it remarkable, appalling in fact, and she thanked me for helping to shore up her sanity. She is welcome and the government is not. claimed -- West Ward Councillor Joe Bugelli. Compare this to 1982 when seven were chosen through acclamation, including the mayor, a ward councillor and the two regional representatives. As one exhausted candidate exclaimed at the height of this year's campaign: "This is one hell of an election!" This is as it should be. Democracy thrives in the heat of debate, of ideas and visions challenged nd forced through the crucible of public scrutiny and revision. Democracy shudders at a shoo-in. Bugelli will have to work even harder than his colleagues to prove himself worthy of his con- stituents' ultimate vote of confidence. At the same time, the electorai struggle is over. Let the winners savor victory for a moment. They've earned it. But the'sweet taste of success quickly turns sour. They must prove with action he promise of their words. And they must prove their statesmanship. Win- ners must extend the hand of fellowship to losers and the losers must hurry to grasp it. Defeat at the polis is no measure of a candidate's worthiness to serve. Whitby needs the commitment and talents of everybody who wants to contribute. Important issues that could change the identity of the town face the new administration. First and foremost are the problems of growth and development. Whitby is growing at a dizzying pace -- already the town has close to 45,000 residents. What kind of growth do we want? Is Whitby to be a bedroom satellite of Toronto or will we work to provide jobs for as many of our citizens who want to work close to home? The new administration must aIso plan for the extension of GO train services in 1988. The proposed Brock St. station will bring a dramatic increase in traffic. Anybody who has passed through the Pickering station has an idea of the magnitude of the problem. How will our public of- ficials cope with the expected surge of cars? There are local problems as well. Take the N'orth Ward. In the 1982 municipal elections, the largely rural district recorded an average voter turnout of 44 percent, with no single polI lower than 26 per- cent and six reporting over 50 percent. This is an electorate of 3,318. The Centre Ward, with 6,985 electors, averaged 30 percent while the East Ward, with 7,627, averaged 34 percent. The West Ward --where Councillor Bugelli was acclaimed -- clocked in at a lowly 19 percent of 8,827 electors. Even more significant are figures from in- dividual polls. The lowest recorded turnout in the 103 polis of the three large wards was 6 percent, in the East Ward. Furthermore, 37 of these polis recorded turnouts of 20 percent or less. But only two -- one each in .the Centre and East Wards -- passed the 50 percent mark. This is no mere numbers game. Voting requires a conscious decision, a motivation. A large tur- nout points to a desire for change. The voters in the sprawling North Ward are telling the rest of us something. Of ail Whitby's residents, they perhaps have the most to complain about: the lack of piped water and sewers and recreational space for their children and too many poorly maintained roads. Are Whitby's municipal and regional represen- tatives listening to this message coming in strong and clear from the polls? - ~ ~ ~ t t i t t t t t ý .1 1 1 itvi: %iii-itri)v PPUýq.c, :v