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Back to HomeLetters - April 7, 2011Letters: April 7

Bonna Jobba, Rosemarie Bowick

Central Frontenac spending, Michael Wise

Re: April Fool's Issue, John McDougall

Federal Election 2011: Seniors’ Issues, Sylvia Powers

Make fences safer for wildlife, Katie Luffman

Re: To Spank or not to Spank, Clinton Hammond

Re: Unhappy Electorate, Ina Hunt-Turner

Bonna Jobba

We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Railway Museum team and all who worked to make the Italian Dinner Night a great success!  Food, atmosphere & music magnifico!

Rosemarie Bowick - the Sharbot Lake Italian Connection

Central Frontenac spending

Why is it not enough for this council that the taxpayers of Central Frontenac are facing a bill of over $95,000 due the township’s failure to properly manage its gravel acquisition operations? Why have they now added to our financial burden by creating the position of public works coordinator, at an annual cost of about $60,000 plus benefits, on the pretext that it is necessary to avoid such mistakes in the future? Council should do what the private sector has to – if someone cannot do the job, they replace them with someone who can. They don’t just add another position - that only creates the illusion of progress while, in reality, it creates bureaucracy, confusion and increasing costs.

And this is happening as council prepares the 2011 budget – a budget recently projected to include a 13.7% increase. Who can afford such increases? Council needs to understand that many of the citizens of Central Frontenac are on fixed incomes or government pensions that increase only a couple of percents a year. And that those citizens are facing rapidly increasing energy costs and, in the not too distant future, escalating food prices.

Further, with federal and provincial elections looming on the horizon, and given the sizes of our government debts, does anyone seriously expect income taxes not to increase when the dust settles?

Property taxes in Central Frontenac have been increasing much faster than the general cost of living in recent years. Allowing this to continue will work against the economic and social development of the community. Not only will it increase operating costs for local businesses, it will also discourage the influx of people necessary to maintain and enhance their customer bases. Further, if we discourage, rather than encourage, the growth of our population, how can we realistically expect senior levels of government to provide enhanced local services?

It will simply not be good enough for councilors to say that they need to increase taxes because costs are increasing and grants from senior levels of government are declining. They must do what we as responsible private individuals do - we adjust our spending to suit our incomes, there are no bottomless money pits we can draw on to fill our wish lists.

This year’s budget is the first for our new council. It is their opportunity to show us that we made the right decision last fall. Will they take it?

Michael Wise

Re: April Fools Issue

Well, Jeff, thanks a lot!sue

My phone has been ringing and I have been accosted on the main street Verona over my dumb decision to even discuss changing Verona's name. Has Council nothing better to do with its time?

I must admit you “got me good”. I was about to craft a scathing letter to the county about having a meeting without me (and inviting Mayor Gutowski), when I came to the part that indicated that I had been at the meeting. I then figured it out.

Way to go. That was great fun.

Come to think of it, Lemmington has a nice ring to it.

John McDougall

P.S. Please submit my name for the Turtle Crossing Guard position

Federal Election 2011: Seniors’ Issues

There are many voters who are seniors in the riding. Our government needs to make sure that no senior lives at or barely above the poverty line (most are widowed or divorced older women who live alone) by increasing the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS), ensuring affordable and accessible health services, supporting caregivers and building age-friendly communities. But seniors are concerned about many issues besides those directly affecting us. We also care deeply about the next generation. We will support a government that will effectively address environmental issues so that there will be a future for the next generation and our planet. We want our government to dramatically reduce the inexcusable high rates of child and working-family poverty in our wealthy country. We need affordable post-secondary education for our grandchildren.

We also care deeply about Canada’s role in international aid. The world today is a global community. We are affected by the plight of people living through natural and man-made disasters anywhere in the world. We are appalled at the millions of deaths through preventable diseases that can be treated with the medicines we have in Canada. Grandmothers across the country are particularly outraged at the partisan political games that delayed and ultimately killed Bill C-393 in the Senate.

Who will millions of Canadian grandparents be voting for in this election? They will choose the candidate and the party that makes a clear commitment to support families in need on both the domestic and international fronts. Anything less is a travesty of the democracy and humanitarian spirit that older Canadians treasure.

Sylvia Powers, Grandmothers by the Lake

Make fences safer for wildlife

My name is Katie Luffman. I am 11 years old and I think that chain link fences are dangerous to wildlife. Recently a muskrat was stuck in the chain link fence at Prince Charles Public School. Our custodian was able to cut it free from the fence but my point is that the holes in the fence were just big enough for it to get its head stuck in it.

This probably isn’t the first time this has happened but maybe we can make our fences safer. We could make the holes small so no wildlife can fit even its head through.

I love animals and I would be devastated if any animal, no matter how vicious it may be, were to get killed.

Sincerely, Animal Lover Katie Luffman

Re: To Spank or Not to Spank

In last week's Frontenac News, John Wallace wrote a well-reasoned, impassioned plea regarding the Federal Liberal Party of Canada’s alleged plan to ban spanking.

I must commend him on his logical, well thought-out, well-supported letter. Unfortunately, the basis of his argument is flawed. The Federal Liberal Party of Canada has no intention of banning spanking. I understand how Mr. Wallace could have been misled.

Scott Reid, in another of his partisan, taxpayer-supported newsletters, intimated that the Liberals would like to ban spanking and imprison parents who discipline their children this way. It is ironic that the prison-happy Conservatives actually found fault with a possible prison term, but I can assure Mr. Wallace that there is no such suggestion in the Liberal platform.

David Remington, the Liberal candidate for Lanark Frontenac Lennox-Addington in the upcoming election, can be reached at [email protected] or by phone at 1.866.293.1235 if Mr. Wallace would like to confirm the Liberal position on this issue.

Clinton Hammond

Re: Unhappy electorate

After reading Bob Taylor's letter (Unhappy Electorate, March 31, 2011) it occurred to me that there is another way to show your displeasure with the politicians and you will be killing two birds with one stone as it were, as no one will be getting any money. The thing to do is you go to the place where you vote, allow the scrutineer to check your name off, then when he or she hands you your ballot you simply say, "I decline my ballot" and hand it back. They will have to make a note of that and if enough people do this it should certainly send a message to our politicians.

Ina Hunt-Turner