The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

oh Cio Zw CoA " Rt ST 4 HG To "a, - J > LX A Zw Fm ORS ol Pla SA A - a SSP EN ~~ 4 Ambitious, But Expensive Project It has been a busy two weeks for Scugog Township council. : In a series of moves the seven men who sit on the council have made decisions that could have far- reaching implications for this community. The first, and most significant was the approval to buy immediately 2.4 acres of choice real estate on the Port Perry waterfront at a price of $155,000. The property is the former site of the Lake Scugog Lumber Company and is surrounded by park land already owned by the municipality. It is a lot of money for 2.4 acres. But at the same time it is the last remaining property along the waterfront not owned by the Township. Logically it could not be excluded from any long range strategy for ful) development of the Port Perry waterfront. Just what does the municipality intend to do with this piece of property? Well, although nothing has been formally approved at this stage, a pretty safe bet is that the present council will move in the not-too-distant future to build a new complex of municipal offices and library. After all, the land has been purchased, and the council has started the wheels in motion by asking for approval from the OMB to finance such a project through long or short term borrowing so that when a decision is made to go ahead with the building, the money will be available. The figure mentioned is $750,000, not including the price of the land already bought. Aside from recent sewer and water projects which were undertaken by Durham Region, this is the largest and most ambitious project undertaken in this municipality. If it goes ahead, the total bill will be in the neighbourhood of $250,000 more than the Scugog Arena. There are two questions to be answered. Does the Township at this time need a new municipal office building and public library? Can the Township afford it? The answer to the first is yes. The present Township offices are too small, cramped working conditions have contributed to inefficiencies and some friction among municipal employees. The council chambers are not functional, there is a lack of proper meeting and committee rooms, and there is not even a proper office for the mayor of the municipality. The present Scugog Library is suffering from similar conditions: lack of space. Plans are already underway to build an addition onto the Library building on Queen Street, but there is just not enough land to do a proper job and parking would be severely limited. The cost of the library addition has been estimated at $250,000. The answer to the second question as to whether Scugog Township can afford it, is a little more difficult. Guestimates from the council finance committee indicate that lot levy fees will amount to half a million dollars over the years 1980-85. A further $265,000 could be earned from the sale of several municipal properties including the site of the present Township offices. Provincial grants could be available to finance part of the cost of a new library if the project got that far. Numbers of course can be projected and juggled forever. On paper, it appears as if the Township can afford to proceed, even if it means the project has to be financed over a period of five or ten years. What it boils down to for this council between now and election time in November, 1980, is a decision on whether to take the big step or not. But let's keep in mind that the land has already been purchased, and $155,000 is just a little too expensive for a 2.4 acre park. Look Out, Albert A team of young mathematicians at Port Perry High School has accomplished a feat which can only be described as quite remarkable. In a junior math contest sponsored by the Univer- sity of Waterloo, the Port Perry High School team score ranked 8th out of 540 schools in Ontario. Not bad, nq} bad at all. Across Canada, 1060 high school teams wrote the same test, and Port Perry ranked 17th, a remarkable achievement. To the students involved, the math department and the High School, we extend our congratulations. wait for a nice day for installation. A bill smiley APRIL IS THE PITS "April is the cruellest month." So said T.S. Elliot, a transplanted American who spent most of his adult life working in a bank and writing poetry in England. As far as England goes, he was full of baloney. April in England is delightful. It rains only every second day, and the coun- tryside is green with grass and as colourful as a patchwork quilt with flowers. Now, if he'd been writing about Canada, I'd agree. April is no bargain in these parts. It's one of those nothing months, like November. You have staggéred through the last of the March blizzards. Barely. And suddenly, in theory. it's spring. In reality, it's the dirty bottom end of winter, and the weakest possible whisper of a hope for summer. April is mud, treacherous piercing winds that give you that racking cough you avoid- ed all winter, rusted fenders, changing snow tires, and surveying your property and all the detritus deposited on it and around it by the recent winter. Just checked mine today. On the side lawn there is a dirty brown hump that resembles something from the patheolithic age, eyeless, shapeless, but somehow menacing. It is made up of one part ice, two parts sand, and one part salt, all courtesy of the snowplowing department. This lump will have melted entirely by the fourth of July and will leave a 30 square foot patch of pure Sahara. . Scattered about the back porch are bits and pieces and whole shingles, removed, with charge, from the roof when the man was knocking off the ice at the end of January. Mingling with the shingles are portions of brick, knocked out of the wall by the man who removed some of the shingles while he was removing the ice. Lying on the back porch itself is a pile of glass, shattered from a storm window that didn't quite get put on last November, and was leaning carefully against the house to December wind caught that one. Leaning limply is the storm door, which will no longer close, because the ice got in around it, and it was forced shut so many times it lost its shape and all desire to keep out the weather, and the mosquitoes, a month from now, when it becomes a screen door. Leaning in the back yard, leaning on one elbow, is one of the great old cedar chairs, looking as though it had just been mugged in a back alley by a particularly vicious gang of punks. Beside it stands the picnic table, practically sway-backed from the load of snow and ice it carried all winter. But all is not drab. There's a nice touch of colour here and there. A green wine bottle tossed over the fence by some passing contributor. Here, frozen into the ice, a newspaper wrapped in yellow cellophane. Over there, another paper, wrapped in blue, emerges from its winter retreat. Both bear December dates. There's a frisky grey squirrel, scuttling up the dead vines on the house, looking for a soft spot to gnaw through and deposit her kids in the attic. Chasing her is a dog, probably the same one who left his calling cards all over the back yard during the winter, which are now melting nicely with the mud and the stench of dead earth coming back to life. And the clothes-line is sagging like an ancient stripper. The back stoop is just that. Stooped from the ice falling off ti =f onto it. All this is normal enough, a typical April scene, and I'm not complaining. But wouldn't it be nice if you got through one April without your tail-pipe and muffler suddenly starting to sound like a bull breaking wind? It's enough to break a man, were he not a sturdy Canadian, who has been through the same performance in the same arena year after year. But this April is going to be the one that broke many a man stronger than I. On top of all the usual crud of April, will be piled the even crudier crud of an election campaign. It won't be so bad for the kids, who don't mind April at all, as it gives them a chance to get soaked to the knees and covered in mud with some excuse. They don't care about politicians. - Nor will it be too tough for the elderly, who greet April with a kind of jaunty, trium- phant grin, because they've made it through another bone-buster of a winter. And they are perfectly aware that politicians are pernicious, whatever their outer colouring. But for the honest, decent, middle-aged Canadian, who sees no more difference between the parties and their promises than he does between his left hand and his right, it's just too much. April by itself is bad enough. But to go through 30 days of it huddling under a barrage of political poop is the utmost pits. I agree with the poet. This April will indeed be "the cruellest month." The Argyle Syndicate 1.1d wl - 4 L L 3 | X | * [ | LL | [ | 8 i ® « L w [)