The Good The Bad and The Ugly

I have tried and tried  to reproduce a Christmas Greeting received from  Aurora Arboretum. The photo is spectacularly beautiful.

A creek flows through snow-covered  banks with blonde reeds on either side, stuck together here and there with cotton balls of snow ,

Frozen scrub trees lean over to form a higgledy-piggledy sentinel   as the  creek twists and  meanders and narrows  out of sight.

The water is so precisely edged with snow,  it hardly seems natural..

I know it is because June Yates is the photographer. 

June is the editor of the Arboretum News. Husband  Tom and herself are also  members of the Seniors Club . Photography is a passion and Tom always credits June as the best of the two.

My grand-daughter Stephanie,  tried without success  this morning to reproduce the photo.

It really does  need to be shared. 

Anna ,if you are reading this post , maybe you could make contact with June and  ask if you can share this and other beautiful photographs regularly presented in the Arboretum News. 

There would surely  be sufficient to create an annual  calender  of breathtakingly beautiful spots in Aurora. Enough calenders for the next  twenty years.  

There's another  reason for wanting to share the greeting .. It bears  the names of the  Arboretum members,

There are thirteen. All  familiar. All well- meaning volunteers with  passion for creating  something spectacular  in  the Lambert Wilson  ravine that stretches from St. John Sideroad to John West Parkway. It ends at the Senior Centre. Precisely where Petch House has been  re-located and is near completion.

The town has  provided half a million dollars already to the group .

Last year's grant was $50,000. Every year before  $100,000. I believe this year  is the sixth year. 

I supported the grant initially.  I thought it was a good use of  interest from the hydro reserve fund. 

For various reasons, I changed my mind. Not the least of them  careless, thoughtless disregard for increasing taxes.

The funds are derived from taxation. 

Added to those  handed over to the autonomous Historical Society which hasn't provided a  museum service since 2002. 

Added to half a million dollars annually to another autonomous board  that sells culture out of a rent-free building.

The funds are no less than 3 points of the annual the tax rate increase. 
It's money filched from tax-payers pockets to be  handed out , given away freely, to non-elected, non-accountable bodies to spend at their pleasure and publicly supported in statements made by an  appointed official of the municipality. Like he knows no better.   

With the best intentions in the world, I don't believe any self-respecting elected body, charged  with responsibility for stewardship of public resources can  tolerate  such flagrant excess.and such disrespect for the electorate who gave us  their trust.

Good fiscal management it is not.