- 6 ~ Sunday, April 11, 1999 - North Shore News

eter

ALL it a small meter of success

for the littl guy. North

Vancouver City council's deci-
sion to suspend the use of parking
meters on a busy commercial street is
good news for a public that is fed up
with being nickelled and dimed to
death.

The one-year parking meter exper-
iment, however, is just entering its
review stage.

Early findings indicate that the
meters along the 100-block of East
14th Street generated approximately
$600 per month.

Councillors in favour of installing
meters throughout North Vancouver
City stress the main purpose behind
the meters is to control traffic flow,
not to generate revenue.

The argument being that if people
know they must pay for parking they

north shore news

VIEWPOINT

:

jatters

will be more likely to use public tran-
sit.

So, following this unparallel park-
ing logic, a person living in Lynn
Valley will hop on a BC Transit bus
instead of driving to Central
Lonsdale to drop off dry-cleaning.

That argument could, perhaps, be
made in defending the use of parking
meters in downtown Vancouver.

But here on the North Shore the
idea of parking meters is anathema to
both those doing the parking and
those whose business depends on
those doing the parking.

If, however, the city’s bottom line
on parking is simply adding to its
bottom line, those who plug the
meters can be warmed by the
thought that their loose change will
help pay for the $733,000 overhaul
of city hall’s civic plaza.

STeP DOWN? ~~
HECK NO! | (NTEND
To LEAD BC INTO THE

MILLENNIUM Df

B onreicesi

you saici it

“Ambleside is not a park. A park is a place where swans
glide gracefully; where a issance painter can paint you
and your family having a picnic; and where Peter Black can
take a brace of haggis fr early morning exercise.”

West Vancouver Chamber of Commerce president John
Clark, on why an arts centre next to the Ambleside duckpond
might. work. (From an April 9 News story.)

“If the (bridge) roadway gives way, then we aren't going
to have a bri a and that would be 10 times worse than
what we are discussing now.”

North Vancouver City Mayor Jack Loucks, providing the lone ,

voice in favour of the Lions Gate Bridge upgrade during a public
meeting. (From an April 9 News story.)

“(What would happen if) at 6 a.m. I look out of my win-
dow and see a 32-foot section halfway between the water and
the bridge?”

Alistair Duncan, past-president of Swan Wooster Engineering,
on the impact on commuters ifevening Lious Gate Bridge repair
work is not completed on schedule. (From: an April 9 News story.)

“Our bylaw officers are committed but deadly, no onc
gets away with (illegal) parking and that’s gocd ... I don’t
think parking meters get people out of their cars (and onto
public transit), show me where that (meters) people out
of their cars and Tl meters all over the city.”

North Vancouver City Coun, John Braithwaite, arguing
against the use of parking meters in the city. (From an April 7
News story.)

“(Hired) consultants say what you want them to say, they
know where their salaries are.” th .
un. Stella Jo Dean, arguing against the use of a consultant
to sudy the meter issue in the city. (From the same April 7 News
story,

“The wafting of onions smells, and it’s greasy as well. If
London Drugs wants it that’s fine, maybe I won’t shop there

anymore.

North Vancouver City Coun. Stella Jo Dean, on food-selling
street vendors who might make the city smell bad. (From an
April 4 News story.)

‘north shore.

Nai Shore News, founced 1 1969 as ant
independent suburban newspaper and quasfied
under Schedule 111, Paragraph 111 of the
Excise Tax Act, és published each Viocnestay.

LOOKS LIKE WE
Just PINPOINTED
OuR Y2K BuG

Ignoring evil is to share in it

THE dominant fact to date in
the NATO attack on Serbia is
that in a week’s time there may
be virtually no ethnic Albanians
left in Kosovo to be

saved.

Milosevic’s ethnic
cleansing there will have
been completed, leaving
the world outside to
cope with one million-
plus refugees in desper-
ate physical need.

In just under a
month NATO will have
lost the first battle of the
war —~ the battle to pro-
tect Kosovo’s ethnic
Albanians.

That failure, say the armchair strate-
gists, was inevitable because all modern
history — from the Second World War's
blanket bombings of Britain and
Germany to those of Vietnam and
Baghdad — teaches that air power alone
cannot win a war, The sole exception
being Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Hence, the pundits argue, if you’re
not yet ready to nuke your enemy,
ground troops remain vital in the end.
But so far, NATO and Clinton have
recoiled from the spectre of battlefield
body bags.

So where do we go from here? There
are three basic options.

1. Call off the bombs, leave the Serbs
to their rebuilding, resettle the refugees
permanently in their host countries as
new immigrants and write it all off to
experience.

2. Continue and intensify the bomb-

ing of Belgrade and the Serb military in
Kosovo until Milosevic finally surrenders.
Meaning he must accept all the Allied
demands — the autonomy and security
of Kosovo, and the return of its refugees
to their homes there
under NATO protec-
tion.

3. Asa last resort, if he
delays for too long,
send in NATO ground
troops to liberate and
occupy Kosovo, and
open it up for the
rssetdement of its
ousted victims.

Despite NATO's initial
miscalculation about
Milosevic’s tenacity,
Option 1 is unthinkable.

It would be tantamount to the suicide
of NATO on its 50th birthday. It would
be a Vietnam-scale blow to the prestige
of the U.S. as leader of the free world.

It would further sideline the flounder-
ing United Nations and launch a new
open season for ruthless dictators every-
where to inflict suffering on millions
with impunity — horrors the Second
World War was supposed to banish forev-
cr.

Option 2 is the only right one for
now — as Milosevic’s lame Easter ~
“ceasefire” gesture shows, In this special
case, with no Allied invasion of Serbia
proper planned, the sheer weight and
accuracy of the bombing could yet prove
air power alone more effective than the
history pundits believe.

That the bombardment has rallied
Serbs behind Milosevic, whom otherwise
many of them detest, is irrelevant. Allied

and yon

bombs never weakened the loyalty of
many long-suffering Germans to Hitler.

NATO’s fight is not against the Serbs
but only with the murderous bully they
tolerate. If the Serbs cannot grasp that,
or overthrow their tyrant themselves, so
be it — however sadly.

Only if a berserk Milosevic toughs it
out regardless of the cost to his people,
does Option 3 finally become inescapable
— because the worst possible outcome of
the Kosovo tragedy would be for the
refugees never to be able to return
home.

It would mean Milosevic had won not
only the battles but the war itself. The
entire costly Allied effort would have
been wasted.

Ruthless evil — its resulcs seen nightly ©
on TV in the despairing faces of
Kosovo’s teeming victims — would have
triumphed.

And those who did nothing to fight
that evil would be forever part of it.

o0g
REMEMBERED by past and present
tenants of West Van’s Pink Palace on
Bellevue were Austrian-born John
Cardos and his French wife Rose, the
husband-and-wife managers who took
admirable care of the famed apartment
building and its occupants for 17 years
prior to retiring. Their many friends from
those years, including myself, were sad-
dened to learn of John’s death last week
at age 76. Our sincerest condolences to
Rose and their family.

. OgqgQ
WRIGHT OR WRONG: Nothing
ruins the truth like stretching it.

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