CAVEAT EMPTOR, "Let the Buyer Beware," might be at least as vitally

important in the November 13 municipal elections as it would be in purchasing, say, a used car; perhaps more so, as you are buying the services of this year's crop of politicians for what amounts to a four-year contract.

You will be paying for those services in two ways: first, there's the council stipend plus allowances for such as other-than-council meetings; and secondly, you'll be paying for whatever measures the representatives take on your behalf between now and 2010. Never before have we had to entrust the municipality's affairs to the same people over such a long period of time.

Let us, therefore, consider what the politicians are selling about themselves and, more importantly, whether they are offering to do things over which they actually would have any control.

Last Saturday at Terra Nova, for example, most politicians said they would not go behind closed doors for anything, variously, other than personnel and legal issues.

This is unrealistic. There are many property matters that must be discussed in camera if the public interest is to be served.

There was talk of maintaining the status quo, while controlling growth (whatever such an oxymoron means).

This, it would seem, overlooks the role of the Ontario Municipal Board: to uphold good planning principles, more or less.

We are not singling out the Mulmur politicians.

At every all-candidate meeting in this election, you will hear the same kind of rhetoric. Remember the cosmetics ad? "Promise her anything, but give her Arpege?"

And then there's the constant bugbear about county restructuring. In the townships that don't want it, the politicians promise it won't happen.

Those politicians point to the results in large metropolitan areas as disastrous reasons why it should not happen here. They neglect to point out that Dufferin has more politicians per capita than it has doctors, or that the metropolitan areas were unwieldy even before their amalgamations.

Is there a valid reason why Dufferin should have eight municipalities, nine council bodies and 42 politicians for barely 50,000 people? This question arose with the Eric Hardy restructuring study 30 years ago, and has been plaguing the county ever since.

Dufferin and its politicians should be looking at Wellington, Grey and Bruce, where partial restructuring brought favourable results, rather than at the megalopolises where the results have been adverse.

We would like to hear aspiring councillors state themselves as willing to take positions that would represent the greater good, and to expend their energies toward that end, rather than to promise results they won't be in a position to deliver.