A6- Sunday News, December 20, 1981

West Vancouver School Board's dramatic bid to go it alone on school financing is the political equivalent of the two-by-four used, in the legendary story, to gain the mule's attention by hitting it on the head.

The board's resolution passed last week seeks to make West Van an independent school district, paying its own way entirely out of its own local taxes. It would ask nothing from Victoria — from which it presently gets nothing, anyhow. By the same token, it would cease to contribute huge sums to Victoria, over and above Wets Van's own school costs, for funding school districts in the Interior.

“This year, under the Education Ministry’s current financing formula, West Van tax- payers were forced fo subsidize schools in places like Kettle Valley and Vanderhoof to the tune of $400,000. Next year the board estimates that they may be panhandled for a horrifying $2 million or higher — and this from an aging community where only about 4,000 of its own 14,700 he:.zholds have school-age children.

For tax purposes Victoria regards West Van as a “wealthy” school district with a duty to help less well endowed Interior com- munities. In fact, however, the alleged wealth largely consists of wildly inflated real estate values which don’t add a cent to the quite modest incomes of many West Van homeowners and tenants — not far short of a third of them 60 years of age or more.

Their capacity to bleed financially in support of schools elsewhere is grossly overrated. Somehow, the mule in Victoria must be awakened to that truth — which is what the school board’s startling demand for independence aims to do.

Why bother?

The lost art of estimating building costs isn’t confined to political monuments like Vancouver's collapsed convention centre project. Just one of many examples here in North Van is the restoration of Emerald Park Lodge for which the City originally allocated

- $164,000. The price tag has already reached $231,618. So why estimate at all?

Just think of a number and double it -- with

fingers crossed!

sunday

news

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1139 Lonsdate Ave. North Vancouver, B.C. V7M 2H4

(604) 985-231

ADVERTISING NEWS 960-0511

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CLASSIFIED 986-6222 CIRCULATION 086-1337 Publisher Peter Speck

Associate Publisher Editorin-Chief

Advertising Oirector

Rober Graham Noe! Wright Enric Cardwell Managing Editor News Editor Andy Fraser Chris Lioyd General Manage Creative Administration Olrector Bern Hilhard Tem Francis

Photography Ellsworth Oickson

Accounting Supervisor Circulation Director Barbara Keen Bian A Enis

North Ghore News, tounded in 1969 as an INdependeant Community Nowapaper and qualified undor Schedute Ill Pant il Paragraph IM of the Exctse Tan Act tw published oach Wednesday and Sunday by North Shore Froo Preas Lid and distritnated to every dour aun the Nurth Shore Second Class Mal) Registranon Number 3465 Subecriptions SZO per year Entire contents “« 1961 North Shore Free Prees (id All rights reserved

Purchaser Faye McCrae

No reaponaibllity accoptod bor unoahi ted manuscripts and pictures wtupst shea be ae addrensed onvetope

ervanterr tent weve tee firey

Sompnrvecd try a nlarnagpoed

VERIFIED CIRCULATION 53.349 Wednesday 62 540 Sundey

Sn G

THIS PAPER IS RECYCLABLE

By ROGER WORTH Roger Worth is a feature writer for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce is against it. The Canadian Manufacturers Association is upset. The housebuilders and insurers are irritated, the unions are complaining. And the 63,000 members of the Canadian Federation of Independent business are so angry the organization is spending $250,000 to have it changed.

The “it” in question, that is rapidly bringing together so many separate groups of Canadians in all walks of life, is the federal budget. Its effects are already creating havoc in the business community, ensuring that even more people will be jobless in what is bound to be a winter of discontent.

Why is all this happening? How is it that even good Liberal party supporters and fund raisers are openly berating Finance Minister Allan MacEachen and the mandarins who developed the document?

The answer does not lie in any one of the 163 technical and complicated tax changes, many of them

supposedly designed to close loopholes

so-called and

JIM MILINA, the North Van freestyle ski star paralyzed from the neck down following an accident 10 weeks ago in Toronto while performing with the Labatt ski team, had an early Christmas gift’ Wednesday night. Argyle students who had turned out en masse at the airport last month to welcome back their popular former schoolmate on his stretcher held a dance for him which raised a $1,300, plus a further $100 from two of the girls who sold sand- wiches at a buck apiece The money is being placed in a trust fund for Jim at a Westiynn Mall bank Meanwhile, the good news from the GF = Strong Rehabilitation Centre where Jim is being treated ts that he can move his arms slightly

and that he'll be spending

Christmas at home tn North Van

oe e

Our

report last week on that netsy lady cyected recently from the Bank of Montreal at Sth and Lonsdale has brought a genticmanly) protest’ from manager Nefl Satheriand.

He says the standing ovation from staff members was not for the lady herself but for loans offt~;er Bob Forrest whe had the thankless yob of showing her the stroct

The didnt tath like one Ulp here from the States

apparcatty with ao yob and

lady

neoanscts she was seching o loan of ten grand to buy a car oand complaining that she do have tao hock her

create a more equitable system.

Instead, it's the overall impact of the tax reform measures that militate against risk taking, in- vestment, entrepreneurship, job creation and even the family operations that have been so crucial in the building of a nation.

Family business, including farms, fishing operations, independent retail outlets, and manufacturing plants, for example, cannot be passed from one generation to the next unless exhor- bitant taxes are paid. -

This measure alone will cost entrepreneurs millions of dollars and ensure tough retirement years for the hardworking people who produce our food, and those who build businesses that employ millions of Canadian.

The government has also decided to take a whack at the employee-employer relationship. Bosses will now find it extremely difficult to make short term loans of even a few hundred dollars to help workers through difficult periods. Records of such loans will now have to be maintained, with interest and tax charged on _ the transaction.

MacEachen= and his cohorts should go back to

Uni ed against a bad budget

the drawing board. Tax reforms. that take away incentive, and downgrade the middle class, the family unit, and healthy employer- employee relationships, are massive overkill.

sunday brunch

by Noel Wright

feminine favors to a bank official in order to get it. On learning the B of M loans department doesn't operate that way. she turned the volume up full blast, liberally lacing her protests with sexual expletives. By and large, it was a morning Messrs. Sutherland and Forrest prefer to forget

7 oe

While we're on the subject of decibels, incidentally, lend an car to John Beltz of

West Van who belicves many of our prolifcrating neurotic and = physical

ailments are duc cntirely to the noise onslaught of modern life Reader Beltz tells us a committee has now been formed to work for uniform

provincial noise abatement laws If that sounds like quict) com

monsc¢nse to you, call him at 922 5948 for details of how you can help

Semors may av longer be able to afford the luxury of letter writing after the postal rate is hiked to KW)" January | but at least they can wallow

in postal nostalgia at the West Van Senor Citizens Stamp Club which in flourtshing mightily a cording to Coordinator Les Rimes. He's also launched o stamp oclub lor anothers imped uUnkloun scgment of the population boys aged seven to 1O

For info phone lesat 9)) OH45

Prire of the yeas boos

bureaucratic logic goes to North Van City which recently blocked access to the Western Avenue driveways of Grace Nolan and Lorna Fedorowski with sidewalk kerbs because they'd walled off their garages A City) official informed Mrs Nolan that access to the dnveways could have been retained and (their cars could have contmued to be parked on them in the open, never using the garages as such, only the doors hadn't been boarded up The Mad Hatter would have loved it

oe

Bank of Montreal's Mastercard “Instabanks” are proving to be something a good deal less than instant, beefs reader John Peten of North Van. Recently, he reports, the cash dispensers at the B of Ms Georgia Street, Robson Strect and Gsranville Street branches

were all closed down tor

renovations at the same time, leaving the un suspecting customer

stranded after washiag time driving around to the three

of them tn turn Also he asks whatever happened to 24 bour banking”? Ia stabank: he says Dow works only a to hour day from 9 am oto dd pom sar how Whe yen pay for oa medoight paeea if vou ve ron oulof the ready Why Mt Peters demands cant they at least inform on consult with customers before turning off

the cash flows

Mayle

When a group of man- darins can attept to change a centuries old value system in one budget, the time has “come to complain, as so many Canadians are now doing.

because telling you costs money, Mr. Peters, and in the middie of the night they figure you've nowhere else to go anyway...

eee

HITHER AND YON: Author Jack Fairley is in- trigued by Personal Ads (“Attractive lady in her 50's seeks... etc.”) and is writing a book about them. He'd like to hear about the “in- teresting human adventures” that respondents to such ads have experienced anonymity guaranteed, of course. You can contact him at 684-6838... Local jazz fans will have a New Year's gift when trumpeter Dtegzy Gillespie appears Jan 25 for a six-night stand at the International Plaza New deputy transit czar for BC. is West Van Mayor Derrick Humphreys, named vice chairman of the Urban Transit Authority by Manictpal Affaires Minister BM Vander Zalm. He'll be Number Two to the new UTA boss, Ald. Fred Macklin of Kelowna. Congrats to Salmon House on the Hill's Plerre Barbey whose wife lanl Tucsday produced a nine pound brother for Veroniqae in LGH... The same again to North Van's Catharine Isobe on her $1,000 win tn the Vancouver Sentors Lot tery And don't forget the new location for tomorrow & vital blood donor clinic in

West Van 2 to 4 pm at the Ree Centre 22nd and Marine

WRIGHT OR WRONG:

To misquote Voltaire uf Christmas didnt cant i would be necessary to invent

it May this one be your best ever