A Hostile Comment

Robert The Bruce , a regular contributor has made a comment which purports to prove I am a person without character, integrity or intelligence. Robert regularly records his hostility to my presence on council. My age and experience are the usual factors. I am forced to conclude his own credentials are suspect.

Be that as it may, principles observed at the local level in the past have long gone by the board. They were never written anywhere. They passed from council to council. The way traditions have always been maintained.

I learned them at the County level. Adverse competition was rare and many County Councillors were farmers.

I was a brash newcomer. Ever ready with a critical comment.

Farmers tend to take their time about a response. I was reminded of my grandfather. He wasn't a farmer. He was a coal miner. He had the same measured approach. Farmers have a measured tread...as if they are measuring off the lie and length of the land.

Obviously, those I knew were from York County. They listened more than they talked. They seldom had anything to say unless it was something.

I sat with Stewart Burnett, Reeve of Whitchurch. I don't remember his words but the sense was plain.

When you hold elected office, people find it easy to criticise. We are all here for the same purpose. To serve. Criticising each other adds nothing to the public debate.

They weren't much given to citing points of order either yet his comment was entirely to the point.

It was made in private.

The question of contributing, as a tax-collecting body, to charities and other fundraisers came up.

The United Appeal sought a donation and was refused. I pondered the question later.

It was Stewart Rumble who gave me the answer. He too was a farmer and Reeve of the Township of Markham and Warden of the County.

More than one principle applied:

Elected bodies do not compete with the voluntary sector. They have an unfair advantage. They have power.

Money changing hands can be seen as no less a bribe, from an individual to a public body as from individual to individual. Happening in the public sector, makes it no less suspect.

Disposable dollars available for voluntary causes were substantially less in those days. That helped to keep things focused.

Fund-raisers solicited the private sector. People could give or not. It was a personal choice.

Soliciting an elected body as well for contributions meant taking more from people who had already given or who had made a conscious choice not to do so.

It was double- dipping... Picking people's pockets...nothing noble about it.

In those days, property-taxes were understood to be services to property.

The lines are no longer so clear. Nor the principles either.