WHITBY FREE PRESS WRTDNRSDAY. OCTOBER 22. 1986. PAGE 5 "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." - Thomas Jefferson Advise and Dissent Last Wednesday, I attended a special meeting of the Town's administrative committee in connection with the Secondary Plan for the core area of Whitby. Two hot issues which were not even on the agenda, boarding houses and traffic, were brought up repeatedly by the residents and merchants who were present. There were specific complaints about the number, the condition and the supervision of boarding houses. There was general acceptance that many of these were group homes of one form or another for psychiatric out-patients or handicapped individuals and that such facilities are essential; however, there was considerable doubt as to whether these homes were being operated in the best interests of their disadvantaged tenants, let alone their neighbours. One resident complained that the home next door to him housed 18 patients with minimal supervision. Another resident of the area referred to a recent stab- bing. To me, this issue is not so much the houses themselves as the policing of them. Governments would like us to believe that they are powerless to control such homes, but on paper, they are already heavily regulated. (Have you ever known a government not to.regulate something if it had a chance?) However, enfor- cement is another matter. Whitby controls rooming houses through its zoning bylaw. The bylaw gives quite detailed requirements for both boarding houses and group homes, defining in detail such things as the size of the living units and/or bedrooms. A "boarding or lodging house" must contain "not more than 10 guest rooms" each of which must have a minimum area of 300 sq. ft. The restrictions for "group bousing" are sufficiently stringent that I doubt that any of the buildings so used in Whitby qualifies. For starters the lot must have a 110 ft. frontage. Do the homes that are being complained about meet these standards? How many of these houses have ever been inspected by the bylaw enforcement officer? Does the Town even have a list of where these houses are? If the Town were to ap- prove Gerry Enn's interim holding bylaw, would the Town enforce it any bet- ter than their existing bylaws? Group homes for patients are also regulated by the Ministry of Health and/or the Ministry of Community and Social Services. You may rest assured that these ministries have detailed guidelines for the licensing of these facilities. Do these ministries condone housing 18 patients in an average sized house? I rather doubt it. Somebody is ripping off the government at the expense of the patients, their neighbors and the taxpayers. In the case of rooming houses, many of the residents are living on some form of social assistance. The purse strings could be used to promote a healthier lifestyle for these people, but instead, the money is going into the pockets of un- scrupulous operators who have as little regard for their tenants as they have for their neighbors. The other issue which reared its head at the meeting was the routing of traffic through residential areas. Councillor Edwards complained about the trucks which come along Mary St. and turn south on Euclid St. past his house in spite of the fact that signs are posted for "No Heavy Trucks". I live just down the street from Edwards, so they pass my house too. When Council approved the posting of those signs back in January of this year, I attended the operations committee meeting which considered the matter. I asked two specific questions - "Is there a definition of a heavy truck?" - "Yes, anything over five tons." "Is the restriction enforceable?"- "Certainlyl" So why are there still heavy trucks on Mary and Euclid Sts.? Councillor Ed- wards suggests that people aren't complaining enough. Hooeyl One resident was told to write down the licence numbers of the trucks and give them to the Town so the Town could write to the truckers to tell them that they were being naughty. In other words, the residents could do all the legwork, and even then the bylaw would not be enforced. It is a sad feature.of our democracy that politicians ail too frequently buy off their constituents by passing laws that they know will never be enforced. Another example: the "No Stopping" signs across from Henry Street High School discouraged the traffic jams there for a couple of weeks but are now completely ignored. A similar problem at E.A. Fairman School resulted in a "No Stopping" bylaw last fall. Enforcement has consisted of an occasional visit by a police officer who tells people to move on but I have yet to hear of anyone being ticketed. Needless to say, the signs are ignored and cars even park right in the middle of the school crossing so that the crossing guard has to direct the students around and between parked cars. One can easily blame the problern on the thoughtless Neanderthals who ignore the rules, but there's nothing like a little enforcement to make them see the error of their ways. Laws by their nature impose restrictions on individuals to ensure that the day-to-day affairs of our civilization are conducted in an orderly fashion for the mutual benefit of ail. In order for the system to work, penalties are imposed to provide an incentive to obey the laws. But when the laws are not enforced and the penalties are not imposed, a material advantage is received by the law- breaker (e.g. the person who double parks doesn't have to walk nearly as far as the person who finds a legal parking spot a block away). If the law-breaker gets away with it, then others will follow his lead and also break the law. Enfor- cement of the law is as much a cornerstone of a democracy as is the legislative process itself. If you are aware of other examples where authorities are turning a blind eye to infractions of any laws or regulations, or even if you only suspect it, please jot it down and drop it into The Free Press so we can get a measure of the full ex- tent of the problem. Our councillors and parliamentarians would better serve their constituents by ensuring that existing laws and regulations are enforced before they create more laws which they know from long experience will not be enforced either. WITH OUR FEET UP By Bill Swan Thirty years ago, as a teenager, I prepared myself for the future by reading science fiction. Back in those days - long before the genre began to take on cloaks of respectability - we learned about any number of possible and many more im- possible futures. Robots? Isaac Asimov wrote the book (or rather books) along with the laws of robotics. Computers? Long before I had seen one I had an understanding of their potential. In the early sixties I wrote an (forever unpublished) s-f novel in which all money transactions were done with specially coded cards. That is, you could pay for purchases, make withdrawals, have payments made directly: the whole economic system was on-line (in today's terms) and there remained no need for cash money at all. On the basis of that I don't claim to have invented instant card banking. Just that my teenage reading of fiction had prepared me for the concept - rather accurately, I might add. But now I'm beginning to feel as though my foun- dations are beginning to crumble. Lasers and computers are about to become Buck Rogers ray guns, or Captain Kirk's phasers, take your pick. We can transplant sorne key organs, and we can see the day when it will be technically possible to grow spare parts with individually cloning (a horrid thought dealt with in fiction 20 years ago.) And late last week the John Howard Society in- sisted they would never take part in an experiment requiring paroled prisoners to wear a locator- bracelet. The idea behind that is simple: someone on parole must wear the bracelet. (It sounds an alarm if removed by force.) The device emits a signal, so that police, or a parole officer, or whoever, could get an instant reading of the location of the in- dividual at any time. Sounds super, eh? Anyone who would like to turn the idea into a stupendous popular novel, with terrific motion pic- ture potential, I provide the following, free of charge: A society of the future abolishes prisons. Instead, each criminal has this device implanted to record his whereabouts. The implant also stimulates por- tions of the brain. At the turn of a switch, the prisoner can be turned on, turned off, enraged, becalmed, energized, filled with lethargy. I'm offering this - devoid of plot, of course - because my store of possible futures (built up, as I said, as a teenager) is running short. The following science fiction plots are offered as loss leaders in the first-of-a-kind garage sale of s-f plots. A few examples: •A planet, populated by happy, stone-age natives is finally discovered by a dying, enervated old society. Scientists from this old society attempt to study the natives without interfering with their idyllic life. But... •After the bomb, human beings can live only by running 26 miles or more each day. In a few generations a fleet, happy herd of people gambol across grassy meadows. Until the dolphin people train them to do backflips for chicken fingers dip- ped in a plum sauce. *The ultirnate anti-gravity device is harnessed to power roller skates, bicycles, long-distance runners and eventually cars, planes and the Space Shuttle. It also makes a terrific ray gun which can be focused in a beam which will cut dead a motorcycle engine at 500 metres. @A faster-than-light spaceship reaches an un- discovered planet and finds a native people on an Earth-like planet gamboling across meadows. After several adventures, the hero finds the native word for man is Adam and for woman is Eve. These are just a few of the ideas left over from my formative years. And remember: the future is being built today. That teenager who spent 42 hours this weekend watching Videos on Pay-tv is preparing for the future, too. Frightening, isn't it?