February 13, 2008 Vol. 33 No. 28

Editorial -

Voters missed an opportunity

It appears a wrong was almost righted in the Foothills School Division’s byelection that was held on Monday night.
After four months of controversy Jerry Muelaner, the former school board chair, won his Ward 1 seat for a second time. Muelaner defeated Beth Burk on Monday by 124 votes, 340 for Muelaner and 216 for Burk.
However, the wrong was not the fact Muelaner lost the Oct. 15 election on a recount, it was the fact so many of the ballots were tossed out.
After the Oct. 15 general municipal election it appeared Muelaner had retained his Ward 1 seat by a tight 703 votes to 689 margin over Burk. However, Burk requested a recount and after the recount approximately 375 votes, the vast majority from Muelaner’s hometown of Turner Valley were declared void because they had not been initialed by polling officials.
Not surprisingly, many voters voiced their concern over the results of the recount. However, their main concern after the fiasco in October was not who won the election, but that they felt disenfranchised because so many of their votes were cast aside.
The issue went to court and on Dec. 12 Justice Peter McIntyre agreed with Burk, Muelaner and the school division that the results of the Oct. 15 Ward 1 election and the Oct. 17 recount were invalid.
As a result, a byelection was scheduled for Monday and the electorate was given a second opportunity to ensure their voices were heard.
Their voices were a mere whisper on Monday.
It is always difficult to gauge the voter turnout for a byelection, but historically it is embarrassing and Monday was no different.
In October, 1,392 residents cast their vote in the Ward 1 election. On Monday that number dropped to 556 — almost one third of those who participated in the first election. Of that 556, a whopping 330 were from Turner Valley likely because the school division vote coincided with the Turner Valley byelection.
You demanded that your voices be heard, but unfortunately you chose to remain relatively silent.

Column -

Land trusts offer Albertans hope

BY SHEELAGH MATTHEWS
CONTRIBUTOR

?A 1944 chart-topping hit performed by Bing Crosby and the Andrew Sisters, Don’t Fence Me In, remains relevant today but for different reasons.
As we face ever-increasing subdivision and urbanization of range and agricultural lands, the cowboy’s lyrical lament, “Oh, give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above” is at risk of becoming an impossible dream.
But, it doesn’t have to be this way. Thanks to land trusts and conservation easements in Alberta, there’s hope to keep our land large and open. Land trusts, non-profit organizations that “bank” land for our greater good, including protecting wildlife habitat, have been around for about 100 years in North America. However, in Alberta, one of Canada’s most progressive provinces, the concept of land trusts has only been accepted for a little over a decade. Conservation easements, a forward-thinking approach to protecting land by limiting the number of uses it can have to better conserve ecological habitat or agricultural lands, are one of the tools that land trusts use.
In very general terms, easements give other people limited rights to someone else’s property, like a driveway or some other right of way. In the case of a conservation easement, you might give up your right to develop or build on an ecologically rich wetland habitat. If you gave up your rights in perpetuity, as is often done with conservation easements, neither you nor anyone else who bought your land in the future would have development rights on the designated land.
In any legal business transaction, you have to give something to get something. Fortunately, landowners can be handsomely compensated for the rights they give up with payback coming in the form of a cash windfall, an eco-gift tax receipt, pride in your land stewardship role for future generations, or even peace of mind. With all this at stake, it’s worth taking a closer look at the conservation easement conundrum.
When you buy land you also buy several rights with it, like the right to build a house, cut down trees, graze cattle, grow wheat, build roads, etc. Giving up any rights associated with your land is considered the same as devaluing it, so that’s why there’s a payback to compensate landowners for their loss.
As not all land qualifies for Environment Canada’s eco-gift tax receipt, it’s best to start early, about one year ahead of tax time, to figure this out. Also, a conservation easement management plan needs time to work out, especially if you want one that is custom-tailored to fit your needs and let’s you retain the rights you want, like access to watering holes for cattle, or permission to cut a cross-country ski trail through woodland property.
The trick to a good conservation easement agreement is knowing what you want, then finding a land trust that fits your values and needs to help you get it. Conserving Alberta’s western and wilderness heritage through undeveloped, unfenced land and lots of it – that’s in our best interest.

Letters to the Editor -

Labour peace does not address education problems

Arts centre will be re-opened After being closed for more than two years the Rotary Performing Arts Centre will be re-opened on March 1. Although this building is more than 100 years old, it is an integral piece of the community. Not only is it a historic building (one of the first United Churches in Canada), but the acoustics in the old building are second to none. To celebrate the re-opening the Town of Okotoks is hosting a community concert at the arts centre on March 1. Performers from around the foothills are invited to participate in the free concert. Singers, musicians, magicians, actors, comedians are all invited to contact The Station if they would like to be a part of the celebration. To commemorate the re-opening of the Rotary Performing Arts Centre the Western Wheel will be featuring a four-part series on the arts community in the Foothills region. The series, entitled State of the Arts, will kick-off next week. • • • • • Also next week we will be starting a special feature on local graduates who have gone on to do extraordinary things. The first in the series will be Capt. Reil Erickson who flies CF-18s for the Canadian Air Force. Erickson was raised in Millarville and graduated from Oilfields High School in Black Diamond. The feature will run every two weeks for the next few months and there have been some amazing people go through our local schools from politicians, scientists, Olympians to musicians. Don’t miss this special series. • • • • • Remember, Monday is Family Day so the deadlines at the Western Wheel will be moved back one day. The advertising deadline is Thursday noon so do not forget! • • • • • Congratulations to Black Diamond on the opening of the new outdoor ice rink. Saturday was a wonderful day and I am sure the rink will be popular.

Happy times ending

Last week the Pentagon asked Congress for the biggest defence budget since the Second World War: $515 billion, plus an additional $70 billion to cover the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for part of the coming year. The United States is proposing to spend more on the armed forces, quite apart from the running costs of Iraq and Afghanistan, than it did at the height of the Cold War against the Soviet Union — and yet almost all the commentary and analysis in the US media has focused on the spending on the two wars.
Even that is a lot of money. The US Congress has already approved $691 billion in spending on Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, and the total estimate for this year alone is $190 billion. Not only that, but some of the money in the regular defence budget can also be indirectly attributed to America’s wars in the Muslim world, like the expenditure on new equipment to replace the weapons that have been destroyed or worn out in the wars.
But there is a great deal more money in the current US defence budget — probably three times as much — that has nothing to do with the “war on terror.” Even if you accept the deeply suspect proposition that invading foreign countries is a useful way to fight terrorism, invading the target countries (which generally do not inhabit the higher reaches of the technological pecking order) does not require 11 aircraft carriers and fleets of stealth bombers.
So what is all the rest of the money for? According to Michael Klare, defence correspondent for The Nation, the answer is obvious.
“The US military posits its future on the China threat. That is the ultimate justification for a defence budget of $500 billion a year. There is no other plausible threat. If you look at the new budget which came out just this week, it calls for vast spending on new weapons systems that can only reasonably be justified by what they call a “peer competitor,” a future superpower that could threaten the United States, and only China conceivably can fill that bill. Not Iran, not Iraq, or some (other) rogue state. Only China fits that bill.”
It’s obvious, when you think about it. If the United States had no present or prospective “peer competitor,” how could the Pentagon justify spending huge amounts of money on next-generation weapons? For beating up on “rogue states,” last-generation-but-one weapons are more than adequate.
So there has to be a peer competitor, whether it understands its role in the scheme of things or not. And only China can fill that role.
So what is the alleged competition about? Energy, of course, and mostly oil.
Michael Klare again: “The Pentagon and US strategists talk openly about US-China competition for energy in Africa, in the Caspian Sea basin, and in the Persian Gulf, and they talk about the danger of a China-Russia strategic alliance that the US has to be able to counter. This is very much part of US concerns. They talk about the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a proto-military alliance that threatens America’s vital interests.
“Terrorist assaults and skirmishes with Iran or some other rogue state are more likely on the curve of probability, and the military is geared to fight these kind of regional skirmishes....But when they talk about the greatest threats that they might have to face, for which they have to allocate their largest sums and acquire their most potent weapons, it’s the China-Russia alliance that they’re preparing for and asking Congress to allocate the largest sums of money for.”
What the US military is not doing, for the moment, is telling the American public that China is why they want all that money. The amorphous, infinitely expandable “war on terror” can be used to cover all sorts of other expenditures as well. Nobody is required to prove that China really does pose a strategic threat to America’s oil supplies, or to demonstrate that a Chinese-Russian alliance is a political possibility.
But that happy time is probably coming to an end. As the “terrorist threat” gradually shrinks down towards its true, rather modest dimensions in the minds of American voters and even American politicians, the wisdom of spending so much money on a strategic confrontation with China that does not yet exist — and may never actually come to pass — is bound to come under question.
As for an enduring Chinese-Russian alliance, the notion is about as credible this time round as it was back in the early days of the Cold War.
Since China is the country that poses the greatest potential threat to Russia, it can be a good short-term strategy for Moscow to hug China close.
But the alliance lasted only 13 years last time (in the early years of the Cold War), and it would probably not survive even that long on a second occasion.
This year’s US defence budget will probably go through more or less uncut, because few members of Congress who face re-election in November will want to leave themselves open to accusations of being “soft on terror.” But next year will almost certainly be a different story. For the Pentagon, the good old days are coming to an end.

Letters to the Editor -

Crack down on speeders

Dear Editor,
I have lived in Okotoks for two-and-a-half years. I have been fairly annoyed with the constant speeders in mini-vans and SUVs in school zones. What will it take to get these people to slow down? I know that it is almost impossible to have an officer at each school during these school zone hours.
That is why I am giving a thumbs up to a municipal enforcement officer who was located outside Percy Pegler School this morning. Within three minutes of me noticing him, he had one SUV pulled over. I know it was only one, but that person may think twice the next time they speed through a school or playground zone. Please, let’s keep our children safe. And to our municipal enforcement officers and local RCMP for doing the best job they can — keep up the great work.
Karen Brace
Okotoks