Editorial Deficit is a shortfall in any language A Hawkesbury councillor is apparently the first to hear about complaints that the 911 dispatch service available to Prescott-Russell residents is not bilingual. The director of the counties emergency services says it is the first he has heard of this complaint and Hawkesbury’s Mayor, Jeanne Charlebois, agrees, saying it is the first complaint she has heard about in two years. A few years ago, you may recall, a similar complaint about the lack of bilingual services was raised at the counties when it was reviewing contract prices, comparing the OPP dispatch service with a similar dispatch service being offered by the Town of Hawkesbury. In 2005, then Hawkesbury Mayor Jacques Hétu pleaded with counties councillors from “the bottom of his heart” to explore their consciences and come up with a good decision. Although Hawkesbury’s bid at that time was $436,827, or $308,160 higher than the OPP’s offer of $128,658 for the three-year contract, Hétu asked how the mayors could possibly put a price on bilingualism? The mayors, managed, somehow, to vote 5 to 3 in favour of accepting the OPP contract. Now, four years, later, having just renewed the OPP contract for a further two-year contract which will expire only in July 2011, it seems the OPP dispatch service is under fire again. But then, so, too, is the Hawkesbury fire dispatch service, which, while currently servicing eight municipalities (not all in Prescott-Russell) and the Town of Hawkesbury, ended the year with an approximate $250,000 shortfall. The services it sells earn about $200,000 in revenue. As a service provided by the Town of Hawkesbury, councillors are not pleased about the feeling that Hawkesbury ratepayers are subsidizing the fire dispatch service for other municipalities. Revenues would have to be doubled for the service to break even. This means that the Hawkesbury fire dispatch has to find new customers to the tune of $200,000 or it has to increase what it charges its existing customers. Hawkesbury is in a tight spot. Faced with huge price increases, neighbouring municipalities might look elsewhere for a new service provider. But we’re just guessing. We’re also guessing that it will take some doing and a much higher call volume to get the Hawkesbury fire dispatch service costs in line with the $45,000 per year that the counties currently pays the OPP for a dispatch service that it is committed to providing service in both official languages. While the Hawkesbury fire dispatch price tag has come down somewhat in recent years (the high 2005 price was due to start-up costs, says Hawkesbury fire chief director Ghislain Pigeon), replacing the OPP service would still cost the counties an additional $121,000 per year, or almost three times as much as the existing OPP contract. There is too much history to squeeze into this space, but the important thing is that Hawkesbury councillors have a decision to make about the $200,000 per year town taxpayers are subsidizing in order to supply fire dispatch service to eight area municipalities. Hawkesbury’s dispatch service is either over-sized or under-utilized. Regardless, it should not be left to the fire chief to justify and argue to maintain the service. Second: councillors need to examine their own roles more closely and must consider municipal priorities carefully in order to make the best decision to benefit the greatest number of ratepayers. L.S.

 

Hunting for a world like ours

BY MATTHEW TALBOT

Someday, someone might look back on NASA’s Friday launch of the Kepler spacecraft and say this was the beginning of the end of humanity’s cosmic loneliness.

Perhaps the spacecraft, designed to seek out planets very similar to Earth, might deliver information that answers the question: are we alone? I’d really like that.

I still get excited when NASA announces a launch, doing all I can to be somewhere I can watch it.

The Kepler Mission, launched this weekend from Cape Canaveral, is searching for Earth-like planets.

The mission will last about three years and is a $590-million shared project between NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the NASA Ames Research Center in the San Francisco Bay Area.

That’s a lot of money, don’t you think?

It is a lot, especially when US President Barack Obama could take some criticism for a nearly $4-trillion budget.

Imagine that amount of money. Seems pretty hard.

To put things in perspective, current estimates put the number of stars in the Milky Way at somewhere between 100 and 400 billion.

The world population is around 6.7 billion.

One trillion dollar bills stacked one on top of the other would be 1,219 kilometers high – or the distance between Ottawa and Charlottetown, PEI.Four billion could take you across Canada. It’s an almost unfathomable amount of money, and when people in America (and in Canada) are going hungry and losing their jobs, we could argue that we have to start looking at our priorities.

Spending $590 million on a project that will yield information in five years when people are in need of assistance now is a controversial choice. Do I disagree with it?

No. That doesn’t make it any less controversial. I guess what you have to ask yourself is, do you think it is money well spent?

A man from Oregon believes it isn’t and he is probably not alone. He argued in the New York Times: “Our recent choices — two wars and expensive exoplanet astronomy — fail to feed my hungry neighbors.

Can we have both well-fed and healthy children and the Kepler spacecraft?” “I think not,” he concluded.
Perhaps not, but on the other hand, a man from San Francisco argued: “Given the sheer number of galaxies in the universe, it seems likely that there are many ‘pale blue dots’ throughout the cosmos where life as we understand it could exist.”

It’s a compelling argument, and one the law of averages says should be true. Infinite planets and only one with life?

Come on. I love the project, but I’m coming from a biased position.

As I write this, there are two large books about space and our solar system sitting on my coffee table.
I think the Kepler project is ambitious and audacious.

The search for replica Earths has such vast potential for fundamentally changing the way we view our planet and our place in the universe.

The project may locate planets nearby that could yield resources we desperately need, or identify planets ready for settlement.

It could provide knowledge we desperately need to continue here on Earth.

While we must not forget that our Earth is still a planet of rare majesty and is so far the only one with documented life, what if the unique and precious life on Earth isn’t unique?

What if there was another planet just like Earth? And what if there was another Matthew Talbot looking up at the stars right this moment. Is he a journalist too?

Or perhaps an architect, or perhaps he is homeless.

What if there were a million planets like ours?

The possibilities are endless.

Though it is going to take years before any information is returned to us, that hasn’t abated the absolute excitement I feel about the project.

Space is such a vast and mysterious part of our life, so difficult to wrap our heads around and so distant.

Projects like the Kepler mission take each of us one step closer to the stars.

What we leave behind

By Louise Sproule

The words I hate to hear the most are the words I hear the most often: This is a really important event and it is really important that we get people to attend but we have no budget to promote it.

I’m sure I am not alone among newspaper publishers and staff when it comes to being in a quandary when we hear those words.

When I’m tired and annoyed I think of going to my local grocery store and telling them I’m really hungry but I hadn’t budgeted any money for pork chops so could I have them for free? Or I really like that coat but have no coat budget so could the store-owner give it to me?

I am pleased that so many groups and organizations come to us for help and that we are able to support so many community events.

On the other hand, if we in the media could share just some of what we know so that all of you could more effectively promote what you do in various ways, that would be progress.

Having just made two presentations in the past week about organizing community events and coming up with the necessary funds to host an event and maybe end up with a profit, all of you working so hard in the communities we serve are very much on my mind.

No matter what you organize and no matter where it is, you have to find a way to get the word out.

The reality is that many communities have dozens of community organizations which are hosting events on various scales. It is one thing to organize a community breakfast for town residents and quite another to organize the Glengarry Highland Games.

Both events need advertising and promotion but it may be to different degrees. The other point which emerged again is how many of us regular citizens and business owners are taking on the responsibility of being creative, financial and organizational forces in our communities. I know dozens of people in various communities organizing studio tours, art shows, food events, large mural projects, festivals, bake-offs, markets, concerts, car rallies and more! Many of these events have as their goal to attract visitors to their communities.

Last week, as I spoke at a meeting organized by the Maxville Chamber of Commerce, I heard many of the same concerns I have heard right here in Vankleek Hill.

What events work for our town? How do we stay energetic and enthusiastic? What are the reasons we can give for inviting visitors here? Why is Main Street so quiet on weekends?

Last year’s strategic planning process which included discovering what Maxville needs and wants, identified the desire for modest growth. Great. But how do people in a small town make that happen? Are they capable of making that happen?

In the meantime, business people and property owners in small towns across this province look down their Main Streets and wonder about economic development. Bringing visitors to town is only one part of stimulating our local economies. Another aspect includes finding ways to occupy vacant storefronts, recruiting companies which will hire locally, retaining existing businesses and much more, of course. Is it realistic to expect average citizens to become economic development experts?

Is it realistic to take municipal or regional government staff and from one day to the next, re-name them as economic development directors? Civic-minded citizens will always be hard at work improving their communities, their schools and organizing events.

Your community newspapers also want to see prosperity on Main Street and in neighbouring towns. At a newspaper publishers conference I attended several years ago, we were told to get involved in our communities and that where there was decline, we should become the leaders by launching new events in our community.

At the time, I felt like I was already in enough events to keep me busy year round. But new ideas are always just a thought away. New projects keep us busy and in touch with each other and with what is going on in other communities.

If there is anything I would like to see happen in our region, beyond the annual “Mayors Breakfast” at which people from the region gather to share news and upcoming event dates, it would be a day-long symposium for event organizers and community leaders to give them the tools they need.

There could be workshops on how to run a committee effectively, a session about advertising and promotion, someone to advise on potential program funding, someone to talk about the creative process of coming up with an event that fits your community (instead of copying an idea from a neighbouring town) and tips on involving the community in your event.

It is clear that despite the many economic development staff at various levels in our region, we have to take on some of this important work ourselves.

On the heels of last week’s Review boot camp course I see the need for so much more. Perhaps after The Review’s women’s show is out of the way . . . maybe we could do something in the fall.

Email me if you have any suggestions. lsproule@thereview.on.ca