Trevor
Lautens

EN OF BIASES

By

GARD

WEST VANCOUVER
municipality has received a
stunning windfall of
$330,000 without even hay-
ing to tax it out of the hides
of its ratepayers.

Well may you wonder why |
haven’t commented on this.

It is because I have spent weeks
gleefully thinking of ways in
which ony council could spend the
money.

As every West Vancouverite
knows by now, the money was
awarded to the corporation by the
British Columbia Court of Ap-
peal.

The story began one day in
January 1990 when Constable Jim
Almas set up a radar device —
unkindly known to its victims as a
speed trap -—~ on Marine Drive, in
the 2800-block. .

Constable Almas stopped a
Ford Ranchero naughtily travel-
ling at 81 clicks an hour.

It turned out that this old °78

vehicle contained some fresh, new
improvements — $287,200 in un-
circulated U.S, $50 and $100 bills.

This obvionsly added quite a bit
to the value of the Ranchero.

The driver later was found dead
of a cocaine overdose.

The dough was in some kind of
legal limbo.

Early this month the appeal
court ruled that the money —
about $330,000 Canadian —
belonged to the municipality, not
the estate of the speeder.

That is a fairly large sum of
money, even today. How to spend
it?

Doubtless council will welcome
a few constructive suggestions, of
the type | provide free ini these
columns from time to time.

Some might strike you as
frivolous, but J think you'll agree
that most would be sound invest-
ments.

Here they are:
® Use the money to build giant
pumps to lift water from the inlet
up the slopes to every Jot in town,
so that we could all boast of hav-
ing waterfront property.
® Give it to the Dundarave
Hoedown -~ damn, I missed it
again last Friday — to make it
even classier than it is.

With that kind of budget, the
hoedown could easily attract Elvis
Presley (who, by the way, is
working in a West Van super-
market).

@ Hand the money over to Jim
Pattison, West Vancouver’s most
successful entrepreneur. Ask him
to triple it and send it back in two
years. He will.

@ Build a third crossing: a one-
way bridge to send undesirable
Vancouverites back to their city.
This should be briskly used, since
ali Vancouverites ‘are undesirable.
@ Set up a world-class facility to

Located on Hwy, 99 - 10 minutes north of Lions Bay.

a“

break smokers of their dreadful
habit, the Denny Boyd Clinic of
Tobacco Abstinence,

Denny — given the honor of
being chosen as the examplar of
our humble village in a just-
released book, Vancouver: Visions
ofa City, by Paul Grescoe — is
an expert on giving up smoking.

Like Mark Twain he finds it
easy, having done it hundreds of
times.

@ Use the money to create a
brand-new facility of higher
learning in West Van — Doug
Collins University.

J would trust Doug to crisply
work out the curriculum for DCU
on the back of an envelope.
® Erect a monument ta our
library. Frankly, I'd advise placing
it directly over the library.

@ Attract scholars from all over
Canada with the creation of Rafe
Mair School of Constitutional
Studies. ;

AS a repasitory of analysis of
last year’s Charlottetown Accord
referendum, and with Rafe as
dean, it would be unbeatable.

@ Buy a baseball team. I dunno.
1 just threw that in there because |
like baseball, or used to before the
salaries reached obscenity levels.

The problem would be an ap-
propriate name. The West Van-
couver Stickywickets? The Sunday
Sailors? The Snobs? The Big Fish?
The Sinkers? .

Um, maybe a basketball team
instead: the High Teas.

@ Use the big bucks to level the
community’s buildings and the de-
velopments that are real eyesores
and esthetic disasters. You know
who you are,

@ Hire News columnist fine
writer and grand fellow Robert
Hunter as environmental officer
and chief forester.

In no time at-all the

We're Open.

Come on up to the top of the

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cooking up in our wonderful restau-
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while you're here, take the
tour of our grand granite and
glass 33,000 square foot Clubhouse.

Golf Club Membership Information
689-0169

Pro Shop and Tee Times
922-9461 or 1-896-2216

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922-9576 or 1-896-2224

Real Estate Information
689-0189

FURRY CREEK
GE ang Concitry Club

municipality would be restored to
the pristine condition of 1792,

@ Last, but not feast, buy hun-
dreds more radar devices for the
West Van Police, Name another
investment that produced a
$330,000 paye ff.

No, honestly, | absolutely reject
the proposal of a 100-foot statue
of myself recciving the Civic
Medal of Merit from a 90-foot
statue of muscular Mayor Mark
Sager. You're too kind.
eee

Speaking of the library, changes
regarding access for the disabled
and the slope of the entrance are

AFTER HOURS

price,

th

ee

ARDAGH HUNTER TURNER

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so Nuid that my column last week
was slightly overtaken by devel-
apments, or at least plans.

It now seers all but certain that
a railing will be placed on the
slope toward the main entrance
for those who are unsteady on
their feet.

On Monday I ran into chief li-
brarian Jack Mounce checking the.
slope with a tape measure.

I salute Mr. Mounce for main-
taining his civility and remaining
accessible in the face of my critical
comments of the last few weeks.

Let's hope all is settled down by
the official opening Sept. 18.

SS RRNA

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986-9286