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The Era Oet We THE ERA Serving York County Sine DAVID R HASKELL TERRY CARTER LOU J ALLAN MARTIN Phone Newmarket Charles St Phone Aurora Small group leads Wellington hysteria A cell of perhaps a half dozen people has bulldozed and browbeaten member of Aurora Council and number of the towns residents into opposing the proposed reconstruction of Wellington St This group has used every means at the hands of People Power these days protest marches signs threats shouts and a new one rudeness Evidence of this rudeness was presented at I last weeks public meeting held to discuss the redesigning of Wellington St At one point in the meeting Auroras engineer Jack answered a question from a by saying I think you are being rude Mr Reld is hired by the town and in this case York Region to give his professional opinion on engineering matters concerning Aurora He is not politician- he is an engineer and he presents his opinions to politicians who in turn make a decision At another point in the meeting Mayor Evelyn Buck recounted how her son came home from a park crying as a result of being teased and tormented by playmates because of his mothers stand on the Wellington St redesigning This tragic story from a mother was greeted I with taunts and jeers This meeting and the council meeting held the following night was orchestrated by a few Sprinkled throughout the crowd at the public meeting were members of the small group which Is leading the fight against the Wellington St widening They fed questions to other members of the audience and led the chorus of hoots and Jeers The same group was in evidence at the council meeting this time feeding questions and comments to councillors sympathetic to their One member of the In the audience at the public meeting challenged that they were not representative of the residents of Aurora And neither are the half dozen or so who are leading the hysteria The reconstruction of Wellington St as it is presently proposed has some good points and some bad points We fee the good outweighs the bad and hope the project will proceed Get together on Pickering Recent statements from the Ministers of Transport of both Canada and Ontario about the start of the Pickering airport have left the Region of York in limbo The federal minister says work will start on it immediately The provincial minister says work wont start on it until the fall and even if it does Ontario wont pay for the necessary services for it Even though the Pickering site is located outside the region the project will have tremendous impact on York Such services as roads sewers and water mains will have to be constructed and long range planning steps must be taken Nothing can be done now as long as he two levels of government are at each others throats Wee THE Readers ERA Road waste our money lie expressed objection of The saga ofRetties resignation lit Mil I Ill I I I anyway Hut this lax hill arrived just snry for the future ejfurlliltliclteBioiiii if York ally got going is not all due lo of these is tile widening of St iiflii ililie would do themselves Again in regit staff liny iirt planning the Whose future arc they pi i if iixes iilinui In rise I is rale will little Most civil servants develop an occupational paranoia towards politicians Their bosses The people who hire them for expert advice and then proceed to ignore it 90 per cent of the time At least that is the civil servants view and in this sense Jack wasnt much different from the rest But during his 30 years as an appointed public servant Mr Rettle learned to live with the real and imagined peculiarities of politicians and he learned to accept most of the frustrations and he learned the difficult art of diplomacy Because of what he learned and because he cared almost obsessively about what he was doing Mr came to be regarded as the brightest and best of the appointed staff in York County and later York Region He commands the highest respect from his colleagues both elected and appointed at various government Jack can be Insufferably arbitrary at times and no one as strongminded as he is could go through 30 years in government without making his share of enemies Many of them are people who simply resent his competence they see in him what they could never be and they dislike him for it from tlvfvui Mr Rettie is a hard taskmaster a man who sets the same high standards for his staff as he does for himself He also was able to survive repeated doses of frustration by not taking himself too seriously developing the knack of rebounding from defeat and setting oft again with renewed dedication He was abte to survive that is until last week when he quit his year Job as Chief Administrative Officer for the Region of York The announcement of his resignation may have surprised some but the seeds of his departure were sown many months ago and had been growing like a sore ever since After 25 years as an engineer for York County Mr Reltie became the new regions CAO in and he was excited about guiding York Region through its infancy In many ways he was the father of regional government in York he could have been Its first chairman but he felt that was a job for a politician and though Jack is many things he is not a politician The region brought many mindbending frustrations in its first few years but the glow was there the challenge of embracing a new government concept and making it work And after one regional council term it showed signs of progress perhaps because the elected of ficials shared the excitement of the challenge But after two terms a malaise had set in Regional government In York was treading water The councillors political parochialism natural in he early stages became more firmly entrenched instead of fading with the regions maturity Councillors were long on rhetoric and short on decisiveness They repeatedly sidestepped significant challenges fearing that a decision on behalf of regional interests might be or appear to be a blow to local interests And it is at the local level of course that regional politicians are elected In short the politicians either have been unable or unwilling to embrace regional government with the same dedication and for titude that Mr Rettie displayed Some coun cillors openly acknowledge that they would welcome the destruction of regional govern ment Mr had a hard time understanding why they wanted to be elected to regional council in the first place And he may have taken such an attitude as a personal affront because In many respects Jack WAS the York Regional Government Mr Hetties job his responsibility his salary put him in a goldfish bowl He resented seeing the annual council war over his salary bandied about in the press It was embarrassing to him and to his family and he felt it was unfair to have the personal matter of his subjected to public scrutiny In his most ob jective moments however he knew the reason he was employed by the public The The public may have had the right to know what they were paying Mr Rettie ljut few citizens could ever hope to appreciate what they got for their money And few could understand why Mr Rettie felt so humiliated last March when council cut in half the pay raises he proposed for himself and his department heads Because council had no set procedure for establishing or negotiating salaries for depart ment heads and nonunion staff Mr was in the unenviable position of having to present the recommended pay levels himself Council had granted its unionized employees midyear costofliving raises using those settlements as an implied council policy Mr Rettie proposed the same July hike for nonunion staff As usual it turned out that council had no policy After a bitter controversy it ruled that nonunion staff would not get the midyear in crease And it chopped In half the Keltic proposals for department heads salary in Mr got a per cent increase less in dollars and percentage hart some regional employees much further down the ladder It can be argued of course that the highpriced help should not get big raises But that In Mr Keltics view was not the issue The issue as he saw it was that council had subjected its toplevel staff to public humiliation and treated one set of employees differently from another The councillors had not played fairly he reasoned Mr can accept defeat in a fair fight this one was both dirty in tactics land unfair in conduct he fell north it anymore He tried to dig In and rekindle the dedication that drove him through countless other battles but he couldnt Doing the job became more of a chore because now he was fighting himself as well as the wiles and whims of politician Something inside told him it wasnt worth it anymore So week he turned the other check for the last time He got off the tightrope As one who knows Jack and as one who also believes in regional government I think he made the right decision He will he happier his family will be happier even at age frl ills contacts and experience will enable iiim to write his own ticket elsewhere Ive never known a person who is irreplaceable in his job but I firmly believe Jack falls into that category Few of us could give what he gave to a job perhaps even fewer would have the good sense to get out when the time came And yes Jack know youll be embarrassed by this column and youll give me lnil for making you seem like such a prince You can in a cantankerous character and as unreasonable as anyone Ive ever met bul I dont know anyone who has done so much so well will as much integrity and taken more abuse for So for all those reasons Im both glad ami sorry youve quit Mostly glad though A person has lo enjoy his own company a in spile of spent tor So where is walkway to Mall the None was written before need for one is built a walk amply rated Ill IT Council Mall IUIIlil of Mrliis King arena board head replies charge sharing board decisions nothing I eneliwiiif denied use of a letter lo Mayor bill there Is a charge for Itritndl as will using jus there is is a i skiing ilnt and wis published and Hie eluh lixully last As the iron centre in improved and discuss the boards relationship with ihe township It there was a Nik titbiriryafiu In the article il P i should he elected nlrcwisj it in newspapers Die 1 Is ill Mrs l an tiiH- the situation males vole tor lull in IuUos e should or rape il pi Ihi IK ply ImieJ Stale political Simps and Hit it- the child itullii J on WILLIAM days but should will pass up mis education Dm After confounding trivia players Roy gives quiz answers By ROY GREEN At the time of this writing I have received no replies to my column of last week where I offered stupendous prises for answering a series of trivial questions Ihe answers and call an end to the contest In the words of spiralling Spiro Nolo Answer to question one Mary Tyler Moore was the lovely lady who exposed only her In the Richard Diamond TV series Answer to question two Junes Ames known as Matt Dillon portrayed the tag in the movie of the same name Asstwer to question three The horses of Mix Tony Cassidy Topper Ion four The acton in the The MagoUkent Seven alter Steve BrymMT wen Robert Vaughan Charles Bronson James Horst Buckholz and forget the one Answer to question five Captain Marvel whenever he wanted to become Captain Marvel merely stated his name backwards Levram Answer to question six Tom and Warner Anderson played the lead roles in the TV show The Lineup Answer to question seven The Shadows partner was his girlfriend Margo Lane Wild Bill sidekick was Jingles while Cato was the Green Hornets man The Cisco Kid could hardly have gotten along without his old friend Pancho and good old Frank Smith portrayed by Ben Alexander aided Sgt Joe Friday on Dragnet Answer to question eight Hun Silent Run Deep was the name of the movie where Don Ricklaa first met Clark Gable n Harry lima was the name of dead man and friend of Orson Welles in the movie The Third Man Answer to question ten Ozzie Nelson in Ozzie and Harriet did not have a job He just hung around the house all the time Although as mentioned earlier no one sent in formal replies in the trivia contest I did receive some suggestions as to the second part of the quiz Youll recall that was where I asked for the most novel answer to the following question What telephone number did mildmannered Clark Kent dial when he slipped into a phone booth to become Superman Some of my colleagues friends com patriots associates and confidantes being unable to write did suggest a few novel Ideas Id like to pass on a few of the printable ones a He was phoning laundry telling them where they could pick up his suit Making an obscene call Pluming his mother telling her that hed gotten his cape caught in his zipper With like those and the ones I couldnt repent Im glad that they didnt decide to enter the contest The Great Trivia Contest which Im now calling the great Nolo is officially over No winners no losers and no one left on sec that York Council is facing a dilemma in deciding which way he region should grow Last week councillors saw a technical report which outlined various alternatives facing the future of York 1 hope the planners of York have also taken Into consideration a few items which I noticed in last weeks Bra For instance doing something about Tin Can Alley outside the Newmarket Provincial Court Judge Clare Morrison says hell slap a contempt charge on the town if something isnt done about noisy garbage trucks outside his court Will the be able to reroute the now famous Newmarket garbage route without running afoul of garbage historians collectors of antiques and stray cats A big question for York Can the planners of our future bultd a big enough moat around Sharon Castle Queen Gladys of Gwilllmbury would like to Ihe heads of ho scribes and prophets who would shout to the citizenry the workings of the royal court Further shed also like to behead It seems low members I the for hobnobbing with aforesaid scribe ami prophets A largo shacktilled around the East count il ihambera would be step in