The Nerts Shore Mews is published by North |; Shore Free Press Ltd., Publisher Peter Speck, from 1139 Lerszale Avgane Werth Veacenver, B.C, ¥7M 214 $6215 (17) s q pet must indude your rane, full ress & telephone number. VIA Internet: trenshaw @ direct.ca - COMPUTER BBS - 990-8027 User [D-malibox « Password: letters _ i igual neacar ‘61.582 (average circulation, Wednesday, Friday & Sunday) © 1997 North Shore Free Press Lid. Alt rights reserved. LET'S SEE ... WE THOUGHT WE'D SPEND #24 BILLION MORE THAN WE HAD. TURNS OUT WELL OVER-SPEND BY MAYBE 716 BILLION . SO... TECHNICALLY ... WERE. #6 BILLION AHEAD! ITS PARTY JITIME FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY J AND HOW To AVOID iT. Jj news wewpoint a ananes tee aeeeneteeet anaengmrenteeeiesanetar dneahdaeemteameteimamntad retention ednametammm conned eematea eed Bury the car not take the bulk of Burrard Inlet traffic underground? The . word around town is that the province will give us a widened three-lane Lions Gate Bridge or a four-lane version of the crossing. * Either option would be sadly short-sighted. - Tunnel options have surfaced as we've “lurched through this lengthy and highly politicized process. Publicly they’ve been dis- _ missed as being too expensive. One of the proponents, the late Hans Bentzen, the man who built the Massey tun- nel, brought forward the notion of a simisr $1.2-billion structure to repiace the Lions Gate Bridge. ‘ Vancouver parks officials have shown some support for a tunnel option. Bury the cars . and reduce the destructive impact of traffic It would be false economy to simply go for the least expensive item on the list of Lions Gate Bridge options. Fiscal reality supports private-public part- nerships when arranging the funding of cap- ital-intensive infrastructure. The solution for the Lions Gate Bridge will entail such partnership. If this is the case, irrelevant. The Bentzen plan is visionary. It’s a big and somewhat audacious idea: cunstruct a tunnel to bypass Stanley Park, build an island in the harbor from the seabed used and sell the prime real estate to recover the cost of the tunnel. As for the bridge: don’t expand it, just make it safe. Now is the time to say we've Mad about the mill at Port Mellon Dear Editor: Re: Port Mellon Pulp and Paper Mill and your various publications on the subject. Mr. Terry Jacks is long overdue to be nominated and to receive the Order of Canada for his courageous work of protecting our envi- ronment. The application of the Port Melton mill ro increase its admissible output of deadly exhaust gases three times is just a strategical chutzpa to evade. the attor- ney gencral and the criminal courts. 8 . Last year we got repeat- edly long periods of wafts which enveloped us com- - pletely in a poisonous atmos-": phere so that we were afraid to be suffocated. 2h We could ‘not breathe in our home any more let:alone “[: stay outside on our sundeck. When we realized those onstaugkts, which appeared to put us right in the middle - of the chimney-opening of. that mill, it was too late for us to close our windows. It took hours until we got rid of these exhaust ~. gases; we did not even dare.’ to sleep in our beds immedi ately Se Don’t take those |. responsible. for this poi ‘}--ing of our environment to then the price tag of any project becomes the conference room to dis- :- cuss such nonsense, but find...” ways to make the people responsible for such criminal ’. behavior once and for all * answer to the public and, if necessary, accountable for’: the damage which they cause’: not only to the environment ut also to’ private pro; . Dr. AR. Rothe er pen West Vancouver: on Stanley Park.. ‘ONE sometimes has to wonder whether — in any truly sane country — Glen Clark and his foot-in-mouth colleagues wouldn’t by now find them- selves being firmly led away by men in white coats. We're talking, after all, about political power- grabbers so far out of touch with reali- ty that — in this media-alert age -— they still assumed they could get away with being elected by brazenly lying to the voters about a “balanced” budget. And who, the lis once exposed, have been thrashing around like beached whales in their frantic efforts to trim back a looming deficit of anywhere from $500 million up to $1 billion. First by trying to pinch hall a billion from the sacrosanct Forest Renewal Fund, until forced to backtrack before the howls of protest. Then they toyed with wide-open casino gam- bling as a revenue-carner and no-fault auto insurance as a money-saver, only to run into still more political storms — sume threatening caucus unity and thereby endangering their perilously slim legislature majority of three. the car, Striving to keep all caucus members on-side, our NDP geniuses next unfroze a few modest millions for school construction, confident no one would notice that all 11 school districts favored were in NDP ridings. The media, of course, promptly revealed the blatant patron- age — all the more scandalous because some schools most desperately in need of help were omitted, local parents having elected Liberals. You'd think even the Clark gang, after such an unbroken succession of public relations dis- asters, would finally begin to learn. But it seems unlikely, judging by their latest deficic- cutting brainwave. In order to save a paltry $4.7 million they will close a total of 14 community courthouses, lay off 125 court stenographers in favor of tape recorders and send the cost of probating a will skyrocketing by 133%. The courthouse closures will have by far the most serious effects. Cases removed from the community where the alleged offence took place deny that community's citizens the chance to observe at first hand the delivery of justice. To add insult to injury, said citizens will also be made to pay for the loss of their rights. Hundreds of thousands of dollars for police overtime and travel to distant courts will be added to municipal budgets and reflected in homeowner taxes. Costs for West Van, whose police now face a 40-minute round trip to given up enough real estate to accommodate. Nuthouse New Democrats still at it! North Van, will be bad enough: But the bills,” for example, for Chilliwack (whose cases go to ©. Hope or Abbotsford) and for Saltspring Istand --. (whose cases go to Vicroria) will be far stiffer... All in order, at very best, to shave under 1% * off the budget deficit — and possibly less than’... half of 1%. This is called sanity? This, along with all the Clark government’s other financial ... pratfalls, is a product of clear, logical, well-bal- anced thought processes? _ Or do the letters NDP actually stand for Nuthouse Democratic Party? And why does that scary old Greek proverb:keep coming to mind? 2 Whom the gods destroy they first mane mad. gOoO FORMER West Van mayor Derrick Humphreys says rumors that he is being sued for references in his autobiography, The Making Of A Grey Panther, to a prominent North Shore personality are completely unfounded. 000 WRIGHT OR WRONG (according to - Benjamin Disracli): Talk to people about them- - selves and they'll listen for hours. — The North Shore News believes strongly in’. Srecdom of speech and the right of all sides in a debate to be heard. The columnists published in the News present differing points of view, but 3 those views are not necessarily those of the newspa- ~ per itself. :