B10 Terrace Review —

Wednesday, January 17, 1990

GREIG HOULDEN: This year we're just setting out some
signposts. *

ACROSS.

|
Terrace
Interiors Ltd.

. Exterior and interior paints
Armstrong flooring * Harding carpets
Sunworthy wallpaper

“All the supplies you need”

4610 Lazelle Ave.
' 635-6600

THIS WEEKS

PUZZLE ANSWER 6 Fetl through,

' 4 Urgetoattack

2wds.

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4 Alder trea, Scat,
7. Take advantage of

vinI . 7 Contracted

10 Eng. festival. pl.

9 Femaie sheep

12 Flower extract, var.
13 Forihwith

14 Satisfied

16 Female rabbi!

17 "__. pronobis”
18 Brit. Prime Minister
20 Musical tone

23a Max _

11 Pot away

12 Cape Horn native
15 Shrew

19 Scot. river

20 Tea

21 Sharpan
22 Shrewd persons
23 Potitical union

24 Aspire
25 Bads
28 Cham. sulfix

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25 Sats
26 Blackbird
27 Certain

viz! Olmedo
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One, Sp.

30 Nothome

32 Fittul -

35 Additional

36 Tunes

a7 Theold | . bucket

38 Oursun, for
Instance

39 Worthless bit

40 Woman’snickname

41 Am. passarine bird, pl.

47 Comparalive suffix
48 Send amessage

1 2 3

31 Decade
33 Inlet
34 Barbs
35 Morning
2 Globe
ild plum
DOWN 39 Unit
t Pouch 40 Tree
2 Worldwide workers 42 Contend
graup 43 Belore
3 Century. abbr. 44 Ethioplantitte
4 Largecorp..inil. 45 Surnamed. Fr.
5 Route. abbr, 46 Clever

49 Finger part
50 Thing, law .
51 Observe ©
52 Enctosure

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After informing the School
District 88. board of trustees that
the Terrace district has ex-
perienced the -highest. rate of
local property tax increases in

the province over the: last six.

years, Greig Houlden urged the
trustees last week to have regard

for teachers’ working conditions’

and salaries. in preparing the
district budget for. the coming
year. _
Houlden, president. of the
Terrace District Teachers’
Association, warned the board
that the widely predicted short-
age of teachers in the near future
will make recruiting and keeping
good staff more difficult. Com-
petitive pay, good working con-
ditions, and job satisfaction will
be considerations for teachers

when they decide where to work,

he argued. a
Houlden called for a shorten-
ing Of the salary grid system, the

scale that determines how long it

takes for a teacher to reach max-
imum pay. Terrace has a 10-step
grid, meaning it takes 10 years
for a teacher here to reach the

maximum, He noted that other -

districts have considerably

shorter grid scales, and added, .

“If it took teachers 10 years to
reach maximum productivity, I
don’t think you’d regard us as
valued employees.”’

He also suggested - higher
overall salaries, increased
isolated allowances, subsidies
for moving expenses and con-
tinued provision of housing for
teachers in remote sub-locals as
ways of remaining competitive
with other districts. Better ma-
ternity benefits, higher pay for
teachers with special qualifica-
tions and a payment system for
teachers who take leave to up-
grade their qualifications were

. other suggestions.

Teachers are also concerned
about keeping class sizes in line
with their collective agreement
when the ungraded primary
system begins, Houlden said,

-The current pilot programs in

the district are being viewed as
split classes, which come under a
smaller class size provision, and
he said he hopes that interpre-
tation of the contract will con-
tinue.

He urged the board to con-
sider provision of an Employee

Assistance Program and several .

support services for students:
more Native education special-
ists, learning assistants and
counsellors. __

Houlden supplied no cost
estimates with the budget pres-
entation. He explained that last
year the TDTA included exten-
sive cost projections with its
presentation, notable for some

very large figures. “That created |

more tension and excitement
than. we intended,’’ he said.
“This year we're just setting out

_ some signposts.’’

He did - present. figures,
however, compiled by the
TDTA showing that while the

‘ local: district budget increases

since 1982 have been slightly

below the rate of inflation,
residential school taxes have
gone up 169 percent in the same
period. Gross receipts from non-

residential property taxes have,
gone down, and the percentage.

also declined, he said... ~.,
Houlden conchided’ by offer:

‘ing the. TDTA’s support in “the

efforts of the Board: and: the
communities in District 88 to ob-

tain adequate’ levels. of funding . -

of provincial grants as a source
of revenue forthe district has: ©

Computalk

by Ralner-Glannelia —
' Cerilfied Data Processor

. At this time of year, it is often customary | to attempt to predict
what’s in store for the. following year. So I'll try to recap trends
of the past year and give an idea of what's to come. | ;
Sadly I can’t report anything-as earth-shattering as ‘‘10 Psychic
Computer Gurus predict 1990 will see Alien microchips attack
and infect Roseanne Barr with a computer virus causing Sit-Coms

to invade all accounting programs in North America...”’. 3
-- Some events of the past:year stood out: the increased concern

over computer viruses and computer security, the long-awaited
unveiling of the NeXT which may be.an indicator of the com-
puter of the 1990’s, and the ever-increasing growth in the use of
computers world-wide. For the average user, the most important
event was not any single item: but the continued increases in com-
puter capability for a given price: At the lower end of the
market, the basic IBM-Compatible hard-drive XT machine came
down somewhat in price but not as much as in the previous *
years,

However, the higher level machines — the AT’s and 386’s | —
showed much steeper price drops mainly because they were more
expensive to begin with. Similarly, Laser printers came down =
substantially more then the lower cost dot matrix printers, .
especially in the past six months.

One trend that is disturbing for the budget-minded entry level

buyer is the phasing out of low-end products rather than con-

tinued price reduction, For example, a year ago a simple dot
matrix. printer with reasonably respectable output could be pur-
chased locally for $250-$350, depending on promotions and other
factors. These particular models with 10 more whistles and bells
which sell for — surprise! $250-$350. True, one gets more
‘‘value-added’’, but what if one would have preferred the simpler
model of last year?

Similarly, a lot of software seems to be coming close to “‘bot-
toming out” in price and the software publishers are competing

more on additional features. (Never mind that 95 percent of users .

will only use five percent of the features of the programs.)

So what will we see in 1990? You guessed it — more of the
same. Prices will still show some decline but the trend will be
more towards obtaining additional capacity for a given price
level. We can therefore anticipate a trend towards AT-level and

_ 386 machines in the business sector, with the XT’s becoming

secondary stations or migrating to “‘home-office’’ use. Low-range
laser printers will become increasingly popular. They are now
available in the $2000-$3000 range, and will likely show another
$500 to $1000 drop over the next year.

One interesting result of computer price-performance trends of
the past five years has been that one does not find much of a us-
ed computer market. Although most microcomputers haven pro-
ven to be quite robust, ofien running far beyond their warranty
period, a second-hand computer is rarely offered for sale, ©

This is largely because users are finding that these older
machines still have more utility value than resale value. For ex-
ample, a basic IBM-XT compatible that today sells new for
$1,500 would have sold two years ago for $2,500. A two-year,
second-hand machine would therefore fetch not much more than
$800. The original purchaser then finds it much more worthwhile
to keep the older machine to use in one capacily or another
rather than sell it for one-third it’s purchase price.

One trend in many companies that are now purchasing AT and
386 machines to replace their older XT’s is.to loan or even give
these to select employees who want to do some of their work at
home rather than go into the office every day. So rather than
come onto the resale markets, these older generation of machines
seem to ‘trickle’ their way into other uses.

from the. “provincial, govern.

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