IT WOULD HAVE BEEN PASSING strange, we submit, if Orangeville Council done otherwise.

By the narrowest of margins (4-3) the councillors approved a new policy for development charges (alias lot levies) which maintains an exemption for new industries locating in the town.

The main issue raised during the debate was whether eliminating the exemption would have any impact on attempts to secure new industries. Support for both sides might be found in a report to council showing that that about 46,000 square metres of new industrial construction occurred between 2001 and 2008, as the result of which the town did not collect about $3.3 million in development charges.

But the same report added that the town has collected about $5.2 million in municipal taxes from those same new industries.

"It is not known," the report read, "if the exemption from development charges was a significant consideration in the decisionmaking process for the industries that built or expanded their facilities while the exemption was available."

Critics of the exemption suggest that its removal would have had little or no impact on any industry's decision for or against locating or expanding in Orangeville.

That may well be the case, but what is known, surely, is that new industries mean jobs, and in the midst of a recession it's more important than ever for towns like Orangeville and Shelburne to be seen as doing their best to attract them.

The sad truth of the matter is that, to the best of our knowledge, neither Orangeville nor Shelburne expects any new industry in the near future, despite having seen existing industries either close altogether or have large-scale layoffs.

And what evidence is there that new industries invariably require much in the way of municipal infrastructure, anyway?