rf 1c a i Ag On, : Aa didn’t make much of a stink, vs y | 2 | - | SEWHO — TOKICK AROUND i for Mas E a +) Oe kj Cus f Ways blame city council. ANYMORE ..... FROM HERE. ON TAS scstsns ay, OB wee te, heitietr Continued from page 1 victory. COPE is not in favor of “tampering’’ with any of the other matters written into the terms of reference by the mayor, he said, “There is no public demand for change on any of these matters.” There is a demand for a ward system, he said, and more, a ma- jority mandate for one. ‘‘No matter how one twists it,’’ he said, ‘‘we have a majority. Those who at- tempt to frustrate that majority are -actually opponents of democracy.” Yorke called on the commission to respect the majority decision of the plebiscite by passing a motion that it would only consider the details of implementing the ward system, and not the merits of a ward system itself, already approv- ed by the electorate. If the commis- sion took such an action, he said, the onus would revert back to the Council, parks BY ALD. HARRY’ RANKIN bie Parks board operating counci Must be submitted to city approval. That’s Parks board funds come general revenue raised by » Mainly through taxes- of ind or another. his year our NPA-dominated ci- Tou Council cut the parks board os some $450,000 to start 2, Policy hat’s in line with NPA That to cut services to people so t Money is available for conces- _ S to developers. The parks oe all it’s dominated by the NPA nerd doesn’t mind having an ex- to cut services to people. It can parks board budget by another $200,000. The response of the NPA parks board was to increase user-fees for public services and to cut grants to community centres. ae The people who use our public tennis courts free were faced with paying fees. They went to the parks board and raised hell, with the result that the parks board, sen- sitive to the votes of the tennis en- ‘thusiasts, decided not to impose a user-fee. The community centres haven’t been that successful in pressuring the parks board not to. cut grants. We have 21 community centres in Vancouver. They involve some 58,000 people in their programs. — Many of their services are provided >free of charge by yeiupices who put in thousands of hours of activi- ty without charge. Community centres help to create _ a better quality of life in their com- munities. But they do more than that. In helping to provide a healthy community climate, they help to keep down health, police and social service expenditures. They involve tens of thousands of people in- cluding those who need these ser- vices most—the young, the old and the less well off. I can see no justification for city council compelling the parks board to cut it budget by another -$200,000. After all this council just recently voted to give two private promoters at the PNE a business tax exemption of $250,000 a year as well as cutting the city business tax by over $1 million a year. board axe community centres There is even less justification for the parks board to pass on this cut by reducing grants to community centres. It’s an ill-advised, short- sighted policy. that will only cost us more in the long run. In an effort to salvage something from a bad situation I made a mo- tion in city council that we instruct the parks board to cut its budget by $100,000 instead of $200,000, fur- ‘ther that we instruct it not to cut grants to community centres. My motion went down to over- whelming defeat. The mayor and his NPA ‘gang of six’ voted against it, as well as Marguerite Ford of TEAM and Alderman Harcourt. The community centres would now. be well. advised to take their case direct to the parks board and to insist that there are no further cuts in grants to the centres. CP skeptical of Eckardt’s purpose politicians to frustrate the majority decision. Yorke reiterated COPE’s posi- tion that a full ward system should be based on the 13 areas served by the former community, resource boards. Thursday, the Greater Vancouver region of the Communist Party ad- ded its voice to the demand that the commission uphold the decision of the plebiscite. CP chairman Fred Wilson told the commissioners that the primary interest of the CP is the interests of working «people, but that their members and supporters. “tare highly skeptical that this com- mission has any intention of protec- ting or advancing these interests. “On the contrary, this commis- sion’s primary purpose is apparent- ly to stifle the democratic expres- sion of working people for reform in last fall’s plebiscite,” he said. In voting for wards, Ss people were voting for better ser- vices for their community from city hall, for enhanced possibilities of local residents and working people securing election and for more citizen control over elected officials generally between elections, he said. But instead the commission seems to be set. up to delay the ward system and to bring in other _ changes in civic government which would further restrict the ability of working people to shape political decisions, he added. The key matter for Communists, Wilson stressed, is the democratic representation of working people in civic government. The attempt by the NPA administration to ignore the majority demand for wards, is a continuation of ‘‘the rule of the ma- jority’’ of the middle and upper — classes in Vancouver based on the at large electoral system. ‘(Vote s. seen as ‘frantic gesture’ by Smit Continued from pg. 1 idle / Yet that was the reality of the ae in Rhodesia,’’ Ndlovu Mi “And that is why we Continue our struggle for real “oie for genuine majority wndlovu and Dr. Dzingai ‘tic umbuka, secretary for educa- N and culture in the Zimbabwe can National Union, spent ex days in Vancouver this week, Posing the fraudlent elections tad Meeting with church and © union leaders in an appeal °F solidarity. The tour and the meeting Tues- 4Y was sponsored by Canadian Cuvetsity Service Overseas eS)! land OXFAM in conjunc- 28 with the Southern African pion Coalition and the Cana- ~lan Labor Congress. Tésented in most eee ‘press as a step towards R Majority rule’? in Zimbabwe- e Odesia, the elections and the @ged victory of Bishop Abel Worewa, will only perpetuate ite minority rule the two "Presentatives emphasized.