Letter — School spending qu

To the editor

Where are our School
District #88 school
trustees really spending
the money that is allo-
cated to our children’s
education? A proposal
presented at the regular
meeting of the Terrace
school trustees on Oct.
14, 1986, included spen-
ding $500 on supplemen-
tary materials for
Physical Education
11/12 at both Skeena
and Thornhill Secondary
Schools. To my know-

ledge neither of the
schools offers such a
course since both schools
enrol students to the
Grade Ten level, and we
can. only assume such
money will be spent
elsewhere.

-The same proposal in-
cluded spending an addi-
tional $14,000 on sup-
plementary materials for
‘Cother new programs’’,
As taxpayers - and
parents, we are entitled
to be informed as to

which other new pro-
grams are to receive ad-
ditional funding. Is such
money perhaps intended
to send a person to
Toronto to learn how to
attract ‘‘off-shore
students’? as was also
decided at the same
meeting?

Our children are in
need of such money to be
spent on resources they
can use now. I am sure
the provincial govern-
ment had such a direc-

estioned

tion in mind when the
funds were made avail-
able to the school
districts. To bring our
children’s educational
needs on line with those
that are in demand in the
labour market, money
must be invested in their
school system. We are
making the investment
through our taxes and
want such money spent
appropriately.

Patricia Loptson
Terrace, B.C.

Latter — Taxpayers deserve apology

To the editor,

Cedarvale parents,
whose request for school
bus service to Terrace
was turned down by the
Terrace School Board,
have asked for an
apology, now that the
board has ‘‘discovered”’
it had a half million
dollar budget surplus last
year,

It isn’t only Cedarvale
parents who deserve an
apology. Terrace and
Thornhill parents and
taxpayers deserve an
apology, too. In fact,
they deserve more than

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number. The editor
reserves the right to
condense and edit letters.
Opinions expressed are
not necessarily those of
the Terrace Review.

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Review

Established May 7, 1985

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an apology. They de-
serve a full disclosure of
the facts surrounding the
budget surplus and the
dismissal of former
secretary-treasurer Vern
Rozee.

I attended the school
board meeting on Oct.
14, to ask some ques-
tions. There were about
25 people present, many
of them parents and tax-
payers, and many of
them with questions to
ask about the budget
surplus,

Even to one like
myself, who has become
used to the attitude taken
by the Terrace School

Board towards citizens.

who have the temerity to
come to their meetings
and ask questions, this
meeting was exceptional,
in terms of the hostile,

Half-million

To the editor,

The trustees of the in-
cumbent Terrace School
Board can expect to have
a hot time of it if there is
a public all-candidates
meeting for Terrace
School Board this year,

Deservedly so. The
public will want to be
told how more than half

Efforts
appreciated

To the editor,

The Terrace Fire Depart-
ment, Thornhill Fire Depart-
ment and McDonald’s
would like to thank you for
your support in our ‘‘Get
Out Alive” fire safety pro-

gram.

We would not have been
able to reach everyone
without your help and sup-
port. The extra effort that
you made to attend the
events is very much ap-
preciated,

Rachelle D’Silva, C.R.R.
Terrace, B.C.

overbearing, and even
intimidating manner in
which not only the
public, but also the press
were treated.

_I believe that the con-
tinuation of an atmos-
phere of this kind, at a
public meeting of an
elected board, is an of-
fense against the demo-
cratic process. People
are not going to be will-
ing to come and voice
their concerns if they are
not treated with elemen-
tary courtesy and
respect.

There are serious ques-
tions as yet unanswered
about the budget sur-
plus.

The receipt § of
$593,542 from the
Department of Indian
Affairs in July was
budgeted revenue for the

$ question

a million dollars in
public funds could be
overlooked in the finan-
cial statements.

The public will not
sympathize with the tim-
ing of this oversight in a
year that school taxes
were raised. The public
will want to know
whether the dismissed
secretary-treasurer was a
scapegoat to deflect
blame. Afver all, no one
gets rewarded for in-
competence... do they?
Was there incompe-
tence?

These are some of the.

questions one can hear
the public wondering
aloud about,

Perhaps the board has
an explanation, I am
wondering who is going
to have a say in how this
wayward half million is
going to be spent. Do the
school board trustees
have a plan?

Francis Sabine,
Terrace, B.C,

fiscal year 1985-86. Re-
cording this receipt in the
year it was budgeted for
should not, therefore,
have created a huge
surplus unless there were
other items of revenue or
underexpenditure that
have not yet been ade-
quately explained.

One such item was
referred to by Mr. Rozee
inl a newspaper article of
Oct. 3: $100,000 re-
sulting from a decision
not to hire additional
teachers in January. But
the whole story has cer-
tainly not come out, Nor
do we know at this point
if there was any good
reason for the 14.5. per-
cent residential property
tax increase this year.

If Mr. Rozee had been

fired for just cause, it
seems to me that there
would have been no re-
quirement to give him an
$88,000 ‘‘golden hand-
shake’’. Messrs. Danny
Sheridan and Dave
Parker have said this was
at their lawyers’ recom-
mendation. But the real
question may be, what
led their lawyers to make
such a recommendation?
What facts might have
come out, under sub-
peona, if Mr. Rozee had
taken the board to
court?
_ The board’s apparent
stonewalling will not
make these questions go
away. I went to the Oct.
14 meeting uncertain as
to whether I would again
run for a seat on the Ter-
race School Hoard. My
decision, made after that
meeting, was to run
again.

One thing I know I can
do is bring a little
courtesy and respect for
the public to board
meetings.

George Stanley,
Terrace, B.C,

Hubert
Beyer

Terrace Review
Victoria Correspondent

B.C.’s bet on casinos

worth the gamble?

VICTORIA — I hope Premier Vander Zalm saw the
recent U.S. Public Television production about
Atlantic City’s experience with gambling.

The program was a sobering account of how a city
lost its bet on what it hoped would be a bright
economic future.

Legalized gambling was to pull Adiantic City out of
its economic doldrums, but the only ones who hit the
jackpot were the casino operators.

The gambling fever failed to spread its benefits to
the city at large. The expected economic boom never
came,

But Vander Zalm seems convinced that British
Columbia can succeed where Atlantic City failed.
He’s taken the first step towards adding a floating
crap game to the province's economic diversification
program.

Starting next summer, two ships plying the waters
between Victoria and Seattle will have gambling
casinos — slot machines, roulette, blackjack and all.

One of the vessels is the Princess Marguerite which
has been a major economic factor in the Victoria
tourism industry, bringing thousands of visitors to
the capital city every year. She will be joined on the
Victoria-Seattle run by the B.C. Ferry Corp. vessel
Princess. of Vancouver, to be modified at a cost of
$3.5 million.

Both ships will have gambling casinos, and pro-
ceeds will go to the B.C, Steamship Corporation, the
Crown agency which operates the vessels.

Reaction to the floating casino gamble has been
mixed. Hotel operators are ecstatic because the sec-
ond vessel to be added to the run will dock in Victoria
overnight, leaving all those Yankee gamblers to look
for a place to stay.

Some merchants are afraid, however, that the
passengers will part with most of their disposable
tourist dollars in the casinos, before they even arrive
here. . _

But for better or worse, British Columbia’s first
two casinos will be open for business next summer.
And from all indicators, that’s only the start.

True to-the promise he made during the leadership
campaign, Premier Vander Zalm intends to take the
gamble a step further. You can expect casinos in a
number of locations during the next few years.

The first land-bound casino will probably be in the
resort town of Whistler, a hundred miles north of
Vancouver. Other towns will undoubtedly be in-
terested.

The prospect of having casinos all over the prov-
ince is not without danger, the greatest of which is
how to keep organized crime from getting control of
them..

Those in favor of legalized gambling usually point
to Monte Carlo as a good example of how casinos
should be operated. But there’s no assurance that
B.C. won’t follow the example of Las Vegas where
the mob is unquestionably in control.

The only way full-scale gambling can be kept
honest is for the government to run the casinos,
perhaps through a Crown corporation. A gaming
commission overseeing casinos operated by private
entrepreneurs won't do it.

If private enterprise is in control of casinos, the
profits will only serve to line the pockets of their
owners, and little of the loot will find its way into the
tax base of the communities,

And that’s where the rub will be. Totally commit-
ted to free enterprise, the Socreds will find it difficult
to go into the casino business. They will be tempted
into believing that they can confine their role to
overseeing and controlling casinos, rather than
operating them,

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