4 ~ Friday, November 26, Trevor Lauiens GARDEN OF BIASES WEST VANCOUVERITES huffed, And they puffed. And they kept the status » quo. In the face of high municipal debt, explosive taxes without any plan to reduce staff, and a few high-visibility bad calls — like the almost universally criticized library expansion, for.which nobody takes responsibility — West Van voters rapped scarcely a single knuckle in last Saturday’ ss elec- | tions. ; They ignored the odd wart on the face of the Community Beautiful and evidently ¢ agreed with, if they weren’t influenced by, whole-hog endorsement of the incumbent council by acclaimed mayor Mark Sager, by father- ‘ figure and former mayor Derrick “.! Humphreys, and by “‘a group of / very concerned homeowners.” Little need for concern. The . only losing incumbent was very hs nice, grandfatherly Don Griffi iths, : whose final week of campaigning ‘ was aborted by illness. And the school board, wracked by far more belligerent con- 5 : troversy and serious scandal in the +. +. dast couple of years, also survived po voter wrath more intact than “= Many expected. . '“-’.. Even with the deeply suspicious . delay of the release of an audit of the Sentinel school’s murky devel- THE TWO North | Shore Liberal MLAs have lost two top caucus: posts they held within. the B.C. Liberal Party. : West Vancouver-Capilano MLA Jeremy Dalton was replaced Nov. 17 as Liberal house leader by MLA Garry Farrell-Collins. North Vancouver-Seymour MLA Daniel Jarvis was replaced as Liberal caucus chairman by MLA Val Anderson. But neither Dalton nor Jarvis said they are bitter about losing the two senior caucus positions. “We were voted out of office. P'm ‘quite happy about it. 1 will now have more time to spend on my constituency and in my unof- } ficial) role as North Shore educa- tion critic,’’ said Dalton. Jarvis said he, too, was happy about being replaced as Liberal who agreed that reform of sense and voted vataha tare 1993 - North Shore News opment fund until after the elec- tion, as well as the still- sinouldering dispute over the sell-off of the Hillside school site — to say nothing of the curious case of who exactly got the phan- tom $5,272 worth of Vaacouver Canuck hockey tickets supposedly awarded to Sentinel stalf for out- standing performance — with all this staring them in the faee,: voters salt supported two of the three trustees seeking re-election, Only David Stevenson was dropped, Incumbents Barbara Howard and Jean Ferguson won new mandates, the latter topping the polls in an election witha dismaying 30% voter tuemout, To say that Greater Tiddlycave voters are a forgiving lot is an understatement. “Peter Cruikshank, the only can- didate up-front cnough to cam- paign on a clear platform of sav- ing the Hillside site — for the virtual certainty that the board will need it somie day in a growing community — and for reviewing the contract of board superin- tendent Doug Player, ran seventh and out of the money. Cruikshank was right behind Tim Slater, who fell about 200 votes short of success for the fifth seat on the board. Slater, a bright-faced 24, is almost a mentor of our youthful Mayor Sager, who began his still-rising political career when he was elected to the sume board at the precocious age of 19. Sager, by the way, on voting day spontaneously invited a cer- tain overweight newspaperman to a 90-minute tour of our com- munity, pointing out the con- troversial ‘£100-foot wall" (it’s hardly that) and numerous exam- ples of what he considers good developments (spacious fots, f gracious trees) and bad ones (huge houses for the vulgar nouveau » riche — those are my words, not his — that would be a disgrace in, um, other communities | won't name). That Sager took time on a busy day for such a Cook’s tour isa measure of his success as a politi- cian, and of the real enthusiasm ° ; Voters rap nary a knuckle in for his town that underlies it. No wonder nobody cauld be found to challenge him. But not alfis beer and skitdes. Sager gat five of “his" people re-elected to council, The sixth, however, will be che one to watch — the one with the stature and experience ta shake up council's clabbiness. That's Alan Williams. ‘Twice’ Sager's age, Williams was serving the community wheo Sager was in diapers, followed by distinguished service as British Columbia's at- tortiey general, Williams hits given the mayor his not-unimportant nod ii the past, but that was then, At an all-candidates meeting in | ALPEN. | COLUMBIA - | DESCENTE {COULIOUR | MOBIUS | ABSON | ONIELL 195 '94 IN oTock. No 3 15 5 See @.29 $B @-*9 | PRE 25.3 (his campaign, out sately-ac- chimed mayor stood up in the audience — a rare step — and challeaged Williams’ criticisat of tis council. Look out. Williams looks tike the silver fox in the well- ordered Sager chickenhouse, eee H's aantuising to take the harmless risk of colummizing about town elections, When [ relayed, in detail and at leneth, the criticisms of council by John Stackhouse and several othsts who had ralsed their own list of candidates, followed by a column that in-part made the case for the incumbents and the municipal administration, even 4 I ALPINA 7071 | 'RAICHLE 190 “as9*° a very seasoned old politician called the latter ‘a eetraction” of the first column, Well, no. | began writing cal- unins and otherwise mongering nay opinions as a broadcaster and $0 forth as recently as 1958, and E ve often given space ta contrary opi- nions, or simply drawn attention to the shades of grey dhat ja- evitably — and fortunately ~ col- or public discourse. The fact is that among our town's candidites | detected no total flaps, no obvious scoundrels, nO geniuses, and no one without merit, tn short, they were like most of u. including columnists SER ep-99 E Two local Liberals lose top party caucus posts THANK YOU to the 3,515 good citizens of West Vancouver SCHOOL BOARD made good “PETER CRUIKSHANK | ELAN RS omP ROS SALOMON & si99" caucus chairman. He said he will also have more time to spend on other issues. Dalton retains his job as Op- position critic for the “Attorney General’s Ministry, while Jarvis will Keep his role as Opposition critic for the Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources Ministry. But in an anonymous letter sent to the News by someone who described himself as a long-time Liberal member, the letter writer criticized the move to replace Dalton and Jarvis. The letter writer said the North Shore is continually under-represented by senior levels of government. “Clearly, the North Shore is being slighted by these important changes, which show that neither the NDP government, nor the Opposition Liberals, give a damn about North Shore issues,’’ said the letter writer. ELAN ULTRA SKI RAICHLE 790 BOOT