Why must we put boundaries on human compassion?

Thirty or so people gathered in an Aberdeen home Thursday night to celebrate a seven-year relationship with a small town on the other side of the world.

To me, they represent the wisdom and the joy of doing good work outside our own country.

Some people insist it’s philosophically wrong to send money and resources across the ocean when there’s so much need right here.

TSUNAMI of 2004 destroyed many communities in Sri Lanka. A dedicated group of Kamloops heroes has been helping rebuild one of them every since.

They say the $4 billion sent from Canada to other countries every year would be better spent in our own backyard. They would have us believe giving to foreign countries only makes them dependent on our generosity.

Charity, they say, begins at home — let the rest look after themselves.

But only the myopic insist on hoarding our altruism. Anyone who thinks that way would have experienced a paradigm shift had they sat in the living room of Sherry and Nihal Maligaspe on Thursday and listened to the stories of our city’s enduring connection to the coastal town of Tangalle in Sri Lanka.

They would have seen the tears — tears of affection and gratitude — of those who turned a natural disaster into an international story of friendship.

And they would have admired the courage of the two Sri Lankan guests — Ruwan and Anil — and the spirit of giving and kinship of the local citizens who have worked with them steadfastly since early 2005 to rebuild that community.

People like Terry Shupe, revered by the children there for the toys he makes for them, who chairs the Kamloops-Tangalle Friendship Committee.

People like Wayne McRann, who first identified Tangalle as a place in need of this community’s help. And Raelene Shea, who came to love the people of Tangalle so much that she now lives and works there.

And Nandy Spolia, who tirelessly raises donations.

They’re among a core group of a dozen who refuse to abandon their commitment to a town of 15,000 that can only be reached via a 22-hour airline trip and a seven-hour drive.

They’ve built houses, worked on a skills-training centre, brought computers, developed education programs, and raised money for new municipal equipment.

When Kamloops reached out to Tangalle after the Tsunami that devastated the community along with much of southeast Asia on Boxing Day in 2004, the place was a mess. Many lives were taken, the fishing industry was virtually destroyed, homes and businesses lost.

It was a community with little in the way of amenities to begin with — a small library with few books, a public beach with no facilities. Its garbage-disposal system depended largely on the packs of three-legged dogs (who have a habit of getting run over because they sleep on the roads) that rummaged through the piles of waste left on the streets. Sewage ran in open ditches.

Tangalle remains in need, but it’s much changed since that horrific day when the ocean turned on its people. Long after the NGOs that flocked there after the tsunami have left, the heroic group on the Kamloops committee remains. Tangalle has little to offer in return but friendship, and that’s more than enough.

So, please, you who say our ability to love and to give somehow has limits, and that those limits should be our own borders, save it for your own beggarly ears.

New City Hall watchdog not popular with civic politicians

Cabinet minister Ida Chong got a rough reception on plan for municipal auditor general.

At 8:55 this morning, after a continental breakfast at the Vancouver Convention Centre and an address by opposition leader Adrian Dix, municipal politicians will tackle the thorny issue of a new provincial overseer.

They’ll have lots to chew on as they digest their Corn Flakes and toast — Premier Christy Clark’s government wants to legislate a new position to keep an eye on the books at City Halls throughout the province.

If an information session with Community Development Minister Ida Chong on Tuesday is any indication, the idea is in for a rough ride on the floor of today’s policy session at the Union of B.C. Municipalities annual convention.

Mayors and councillors lambasted the proposal which, by the way, has the support of the B.C. Chamber of Commerce, an organization that has long had misgivings about the level of municipal spending and taxation on business.

News reports quoted Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan as telling Chong the plan for a municipal auditor general is “a foolish waste of money.”

Coun. Marg Spina, who was there for the session with Chong, told me yesterday there are widespread suspicions among delegates that the Clark Liberals are engaging in “attention deflection,” and that details are thin on what an MAG’s office would cost, what it would do and who it would report to.

She expects to vote against the idea today unless she hears ”something compelling” in favour of it.

Today’s discussion will centre on a UBCM executive policy paper that raises questions about the need for such a position. It notes that the Province’s proposal is based on a “lack of (mandatory) performance auditing in the local government system” that has been citied as “a weakness in that system.”

But, says the paper, the “weakness” may be more perception that reality. It frets about the notion that the MAG might be charged with reviewing policy decisions of local government such as taxation or even services and programs.

Indeed, the B.C. Chamber, which encouraged the Liberals to bring in the MAG concept, states in its own policies that part of the office’s mandate should be “to ensure an independent review of municipal programs, spending, community plans and services.”

In between all the heckling on Tuesday, Chong tried to reassure delegates that the new watchdog wouldn’t be sticking his or her nose in where it doesn’t belong. She said the MAG would look at “values-for-money” issues and more efficient ways of delivering services, but its recommendations won’t be binding.

So why are civic leaders so worried? For one thing, it took decades for the provincial government to even recognize on paper that municipalities are a level of government rather than simple serfs to Victoria, and they don’t want to go backwards.

For another, the provincial government has a pretty lousy record when it comes to spending and to transparency, and has little to teach City councils on those matters.

As Burnaby’s Mayor Corrigan put it, “Municipalities are the most effective, most transparent of governments. We already have an annual audit, we’re required to have a balanced budget, most of us have internal auditing systems.”

Nevertheless, Clark is more likely than not to put the MAG in effect, no matter what the UBCM decides, because it will play well with a public that is sceptical of all government spending at any level.

Walsh’s decision leaves three, maybe four council seats available

DENIS WALSH (Daily News photo)

I haven’t talked to anyone who wasn’t surprised at Denis Walsh’s decision not to run for another term. In hindsight, maybe the signs were there.

When I talked to him several weeks ago about the possibility of him running for mayor, he was pretty clear that it wasn’t in the cards. But, beyond that, he was candid about the challenges facing his movie-rental business and the movie-rental business in general. While he wrote a letter to the editor recently saying independent video stories remain strong, clearly the future has been on his mind.

Still, everyone expected him to run again as a councillor and to be a sure thing. I think Denis would like to have stayed on City council, and when your heart says you should stay but your head tells you to go, it’s the toughest kind of decision. I’ve been there.

For the newbies hoping to crack the top eight come the November election, however, it’s great news. With no Denis, there will be only five incumbents on the ballot, meaning a better chance for newcomers or recycled candidates.

That means Nelly Dever, Arjun Singh and Peter Sharp all have an even shot at getting onto council. In the case of Singh and Sharp, who have previously served and been defeated, it could be comeback time. I’m also hearing more talk about Donovan Cavers based largely on the fact he has some name recognition from running in previous elections for the Greens.

There might even be room for all four of them because the five incumbents aren’t necessarily shoe-ins. Given the parkade controversy, some possible backlash over water meters, and other issues such as their avoidance of a position on Ajax mine, we might see the biggest turnover in City council since 1999.

UPDATE: While assembling my thoughts yesterday for today’s post, I didn’t contemplate the announcement by Ken Christian that he will run for council. His candidacy effectively returns the situation to the status quo of three seats being available, as he is likely to poll near the top. I really should have known better, as I revealed just after Labor Day that Ken would be running for council.

The letter P, and the scoop on Scoopz

What a difference the letter P can make.

Jim Thompson is not a fan of the Lorne Street parkade. Jim Thomson is a huge fan.

Neither of them seems to be a fan of the Armchair Mayor.

Jim Thomson, the parkade fan, told me in a personal email after the Council of Canadians public debate what he thought of our coverage. Since it was a personal email I won’t go into detail, but I’m sure he won’t mind me revealing that he found it odd our story left out the height of the parkade, for one thing.

He doesn’t like the way I’ve been writing about council’s handling of the situation, either. And he was miffed that we’ve run letters from Jim Thompson without pointing out he’s not the same guy as Jim Thomson. So now we’ve been doing that.

Jim Thompson, meanwhile, has his own bone to pick.

TOM GAGLARDI.

Monday, we published a letter from Jim Thompson saying it’s odd that an editor’s note to a letter from Brenda Klassen didn’t mention that Tom Gaglardi’s Northland Properties bought the property for his Sandman Signature Hotel from the City.

“Yes, odd you didn’t mention that fact,” he repeated in the letter, suggesting, perhaps, something nefarious.

Well, I figure if two people on opposite sides of the issue both think I’m on the wrong side of the issue, I must be doing something right. But I want to deal with the hotel property matter, again, because it’s an important chapter in the story of the parkade.

I didn’t include it in the editor’s note any more than I include the entire chronology of the issue every time I write about the parkade.

This newspaper has mentioned the sale of the Scoopz (also known as the Levesque) property on many occasions, beginning with the announcement of the hotel project in August 2008.

After that sale was announced, a Daily News editorial stated, “It’s troubling, for example, that the sale is not conditional on a minimum number of parking spots being reserved for public use at arena events… According to City Hall, it will work with Gaglardi to examine the parking issue, but clearly there are no guarantees.”

An Armchair Mayor column two days later said, “The plan was always to eventually sell it (the Scoopz/Levesque property) for a hotel, but to ensure that an adequate number of spaces was reserved for public parking as part of any development…. I’m assured that the parking issue will be raised with Gaglardi by and by.”

I wrote in another Armchair Mayor column Oct. 30 last year, “. . . Fact is the City once owned the land on which the Sandman will be built — and that land was acquired specifically for parking. Yet, when the City sold it to Tom Gaglardi, there were no strings with respect to public parking…. And now, we could well have parkades across the street from each other butting up against our number one park.”

So, no, The Daily News hasn’t ignored the matter of who sold the property to Gaglardi. And if the City ever explains why it allowed that sale without a provision for public parking, we’ll be happy to publish that, too.

Help! Somebody call the fashion cops!

I see GQ magazine has ranked Toronto as Canada’s best-dressed city. This, apparently, is of much concern to Montreal, which thinks of itself as this country’s big thing in fashion.

The same survey, done in partnership with MSN Travel magazine, put Ottawa among the 10 worst-dressed cities in the world. Too many boring navy suits and too much “matchy matchy.”

Poor Ottawa was lower than Pittsburg, but higher than Vancouver, which, according to GQ/MSN, has way too many yoga pants. (“Really, what gives with the whole wearing of bum hugging workout gear to every other place except the gym?”)

Vancouver may be the yoga-pants capital (above) but they've been spotted in Kamloops, too.

To my knowledge, Kamloops wasn’t included in the survey, but it would have been instructional to hear what the judges had to say about us.

Rather than matchy matchy, we are mishy mashy. The only things we try to match, in my opinion, are all those beige buildings decreed by City Hall.

Take our politicians, for example. With the possible exception of MP Cathy McLeod, their fashion sense is, well, a work in progress.

I once wrote that Chief Shane Gottfriedson shows up to every public event looking like he just came in from doing chores. However, I ran into him on Victoria Street yesterday and he looked uncharacteristically spiffy with a bright red shirt.

Mayor Peter Milobar once took to the podium for the official opening of a hotel wearing baggy blue jeans and a rumply shirt. Maybe he’d just gotten back in town from taking his kids to a swim tournament.

Terry Lake has improved, but still favours sports jackets and sensible shoes, while Kevin Krueger makes a statement — I’m just not sure what it is.

City councilors? Don’t get me started.

The one group that seems to have it together most of the time is our lawyers. Every lawyer needs a nice suit to go with his Audi. I’m told one local barrister bought five pairs of identical $450 wingtips so he could rotate through a different pair each day of the week.

There was a brief setback when he discovered they all squeaked. There’s nothing worse than walking into a courtroom with squeaky shoes, but the story goes he got them fixed and it’s all good.

For the average Joe or Josephine, however, everyday wear begins with a comfortable pair of sneakers, unless you’re a cowboy, in which case you opt for Ropers, jeans with plenty of stack, and a plaid shirt as you hop into your 4X4 pickup.

Fundraising-gala nights are a study in diversity. Women go for everything from long gowns with sparkles and low backs to show off the tattoos, to short skirts and plenty of cleavage, while the guys range from tuxedos to shirt sleeves, all at the same event.

Prize for the worst dressers in town, though, goes to the folks in the media. Raffelina Sirianni at TV7 has a pair of plastic shoes she’s especially fond of for summer, while NL’s Angelo Iacobucci is fond of Hawaiian shirts and sun glasses, even on the most overcast day. His idea of dressing up is to put on a ballcap.

We at The Daily News, of course, of impeccable dressers.

Kamloops might never make the GQ list, but whatever style we do have is all ours.

Labour negotiator Gerry Bell is going to be missed

Gerry Bell, right.

“We’re right where we should be.”

That’s what Gerry Bell always used to say when we were in the middle of bargaining with our union and we’d hit what seemed to be a rough patch.

Gerry did a lot of labour relations for this newspaper when he and his brother Dan were running Western Industrial Labour Relations. He was a cool customer at the bargaining table — he had to be.Bargaining can get pretty heated at times. Occasionally, things break down into a lot of “f—- you” talk, and sometimes there are walkouts. Gerry could play the game, but he always had things under control, never letting it get personal. He loved the dynamics of the bargaining table.

“What the hell was all that about?” we’d ask when we were sure things were going off the rails.

“We’re right where we should be,” Gerry would say with a smile.

Gerry Bell died Thursday at the age of 68. He’d had cancer for quite a few years.

He was a bit of a legend in B.C. labour relations circles. And when he wasn’t working on somebody’s labour contract, he was doing things in the community, such as serving as CEO of the Blazers up until a few years ago.

Gerry was a good guy. A lot of people are going to miss him.

Former Kamloops newsman writes of life as a war correspondent

BOOK REVIEW By MEL ROTHENBURGER

TITLE: Kings, Killers and Kinks in the Cosmos (paperback)

AUTHOR: Robert Egby

PUBLISHER: Three Mile Point Publishing

Author Bob Egby.

Have you ever known someone for years and then discovered there’s a whole bunch of stuff about that person’s life you had no idea about?

Long-time Kamloops residents — especially those with any connection to local media — will remember Bob Egby as a somewhat overweight, friendly and first-rate journalist.

They may well remember his political reporting — for example, his interviews with politicians like Pierre Trudeau — and his Sunday morning Eggers For Breakfast show on CHNL, not to mention his work in public relations for the Weycan pulp mill.

He was, as well, my predecessor at this newspaper.

What they might not know (I didn’t) is that Robert “Bob” Egby was a seasoned war correspondent before he landed in Kamloops. This seemingly easy-going small-town newspaper editor and radio host turns out to be a battle-tested veteran of international intrigue and conflict.

Indeed, Egby has led a fascinating life, before and since his time here in the 1970s.

His career took him from his birth place in England to Cyprus, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon and, later, Canada and the U.S. He came to know army generals, presidents, assassins, dictators and royalty, and had his share of scrapes with death. On one occasion, he barely escaped a rampaging mob in Nicosia; on another, he found himself running for his life from a helicopter gunship in the Lebanese desert.

This is fascinating stuff in anyone’s book.

After growing up to the sound of German bombs dropping near his home, and almost dying from a childhood ailment, Egby got involved in film and TV, meeting many of the industry’s top animaters.

Alas, what might have been a promising career was interrupted at the age of 18 by a stint with the RAF.

One day, he was told he was being posted to the Suez Canal, and his war zone experience led him into journalism, first in radio and then as a newspaper photographer and correspondent.

Egby is one of those fellows who knew nothing about journalism but brazened his way into it and learned on the job.

Egby interviews soon-to-be Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in late 1960s.

“There were no journalism classes available so I took to studying news story structure,” Egby recalls, and “grasped the story-telling ability of journalism.”

He was in Nicosia in the mid-1950s when Cypriot guerrillas launched their war of independence that eventually led to partition. That conflict became Egby’s bread and butter as a correspondent for several years, and it was risky work. One day, Egby bought a bow tie in a clothing store. A few minutes after leaving the store, the man he’d bought the tie from was assassinated in the street.

The pictures he took of that incident — and the bowtie — provide the cover for Egby’s book Kings, Killers and Kinks in the Cosmos, and his acquaintance with the shop owner’s killer is but one of many stories inside its pages.

This is no thin volume of quaint recollections written only for the interest of grandchildren. This is a serious, well-researched and well-told autobiography. At almost 400 pages, there’s a lot of stuff packed into it but, even then, Egby admits he had to pick and choose what to include.

“One of the things I found in writing an autobiography is there were so many things I should have included, but then I would have had to create volumes one, two, three etc.,” he told me.

Besides the adventure, there are stories of awards won, failed marriages and lost loved ones, and musings on the cause of the wanderlust that took him to so many different parts of the world.

The book is not without its annoyances, of course. It could have used the hand of a good copy editor in places. He uses one particular device so many times that one rapidly comes to expect him to end every sub-chapter with the line, “little did I know” or “While I was pondering this, there was a kink in the Cosmos that took me in another direction.”

Somewhere in the last third of the book, after Egby has moved on from Kamloops to Vancouver (where he handled public communications for ICBC and then SkyTrain), it starts getting a little weird.

Indeed, the reader might be tempted at this point to write Egby off as a total whack job who reads minds, talks to dead people and takes advice from spirits including a little Chinese guy named Chang who died in 1893. (“Suddenly, I felt a presence. It was Chang, dressed as usual in old Chinese. He never felt the cold.”)

Dismissing Egby as some kind of loon ball and setting aside the book, however, would be a mistake. His views on life and death add a surprising, even jolting, dimension to his story. As that story progresses, one comes to realize how much influence his pre-occupation with fate and spirits had — and still do — on his remarkable life, which continues today in his home in upper New York state.

As I said, sometimes people surprise you with what you didn’t know about them.

Kings, Killers and Kinks in the Cosmos is available through Amazon.ca or the publisher at www.threemilepointpublishing.com, and will soon be available as an Ebook from Smashwords.com. Price about $15. This is Robert Egby’s fourth book and he has two more on the go.

 

 

Quality time needed with premier on future of Royal Inland Hospital

Premier Clark announces another aspect of her jobs plan at TRU. (Daily News photo)

Either it’s a sudden case of media shyness, or Premier Christy Clark is being very careful with her message these days.

After about five questions from reporters on Tuesday at her “creating and protecting jobs” announcement at TRU, she was given the cue by handlers and off she went.

“Handlers” are those in charge of politicians at media or public events whose job it is to keep an eye on the clock or the situation, and move in when appropriate to provide the politician with an excuse to leave.

Typically, in the midst of an editorial board meeting, for example, a handler will make a show of pointing at his or her watch, then the politician will apologize and explain he or she is late for another engagement.

When Clark was going after the leadership of the B.C. Liberal party, she was available for individual sessions with the media, giving them lots of time for in-depth interviews.

Since becoming premier, her visits have become much more orchestrated. Attempts by this newspaper to arrange for an interview were unsuccessful. Requests from radio NL for an appearance on the Jim Harrison show — normally a must-do for visiting politicians in this town — also went unheeded.

To be fair, there’s a difference between running for a party leadership and being a serving premier in terms of demands on a politician’s time. But Clark’s predecessor, Gordon Campbell, was Mr. Accessibility in comparison — always ready to talk on radio (back in my days doing a talk show for CFJC, the ease with which one could communicate with his office or those of his ministers was a delight) or take time for an interview.

A local TV reporter remarked a couple of weeks ago that Clark seems surprised at the depth of questions coming from Kamloops media as opposed to other Interior media outlets.

Whatever, it’s too bad local media didn’t have some one-on-one time with the premier this week or, at least, a more productive scrum.

One of the issues requiring follow-up with Clark is the status of the Royal Inland Hospital master site plan. Back in mid-July during her first visit here since being sworn in as premier, Clark was questioned by reporters about financing for the ambitious plan.

“We want to make sure Royal Inland Hospital is functioning as well as it can and Kamloops is getting the best service it possibly can,” she said.

But, she added, “Part of the issue we have with managing financial request is we don’t even know where our budget’s going to be at in a few months because if the HST fails, it will be a $3-billion bite out of the bottom line.”

In other words, Kamloops residents would be well advised to support the HST.

As we know, Kamloops and the rest of the province voted to turf the tax.

So the question now is, will Clark and her Liberals re-commit to improvements to our hospital, or is rejection of the HST going to be used as a rationale for letting the master site plan gather dust on the shelf?

Maybe the answer to that question is one of the reasons Clark isn’t anxious to be grilled on issues in Kamloops.

Kamloops council deserves a COLA, but does it deserve more?

When Kelowna council voted to put a freeze on its own salaries, it was natural to ask Kamloops council members what they thought of the idea. So we did.

And that was bound to begin a new discussion about whether our own councilors are paid too much, which it did.

Some of our council incumbents are of the mind that they haven’t had a pay increase recently, which they have.

How much are our civic politicians worth?

It’s human nature to fret about how much we pay our politicians, and sometimes it’s justified.

Since 2002, City council has received cost of living increases. Plagued by the annual curse of trying to determine how much it should pay itself (for municipal politicians are unhappily charged with determining how much their own compensation), the council of the day decided to go in a different direction.

First, it set up a committee that included lawyer and former councilor Ron Watson, businessman Ric Laidlaw, and veterinarian and former councilor Russ Gerard. The trio was asked to come up with a recommendation on what council should receive.

At the time, the mayor was paid $57,400 a year, councilors $16,800. There was a feeling among the councilors that they should get a third of the mayor’s paycheque.

But when the committee came back with a proposal that the mayor get $75,000 and councilors get a boost to $22,500, council thought it was too much and turned it down. It would have amounted to 30 per cent and 34 percent respectively.

Later on, the council implemented a cost-of-living increase, taking increases out of its own hands.

While some current councilors don’t consider a COLA to be a raise, that’s what it is — a modest increase designed for fairness. Meanwhile, of course, other B.C. councils have moved significantly ahead of what our Kamloops reps are paid.

So, what to do? The suggestion that Kamloops council should freeze its own salaries is unfair. It deserves to keep up to increases in the cost of everyday goods and services. Question is, should it be looking at what their colleagues get in other cities?

That, in turn, becomes a keeping up with the Jones issue. If the rates as established a few years ago at the start of the COLA era were fair, what has changed that makes them no longer adequate?

Other than the issue of what other councils and mayors make, nothing. Participation in local politics is, in good dose, volunteer work, but it’s too much to expect councilors to do as much as they do week in and week out. In the case of the mayor, it’s a full-time job and those who go into it give up their  normal source of income.

The only question that remains, therefore, is whether our own council is paid adequately for what it does. So let’s do some arithmetic.

Last week was a fairly average week for councilors, although public engagements tend to pick up steam as we get deeper into fall. Tuesday’s council meeting was fairly short, lasting a couple of hours. The in-camera meeting beforehand was probably about an hour. There was a public hearing in the evening that required another three hours.

Some councilors attended the public forum on the parkade, which took up another couple of hours. A good read of the weekly council agenda in preparation for the meeting usually takes a couple of hours.

Add, say another hour or two dealing with feedback and questions from residents. Events like the Terry Fox Run and the Battle of Britain are the sort of thing councilors often attend, so add a couple of more hours for that.

That gives us a relatively typical week of a dozen hours, since 10 to 15 hours a week is regarded as the normal range. Some councilors give much more of their time, some give the minimum.

At just over $24,000 a year, that comes to, say, $38 an hour. Whether you think that’s fair depends on your views on what is a reasonable wage, and what’s a reasonable wage for a politician.

Five of the nine members of council also serve on the regional district board and receive an additional $12,000 a year for attending once-a-month board meetings. For all of it, a third is tax free.

Plus, there’s travel to conferences and for lobbying, but currently there’s nothing way out of line there.

If the upcoming civic election is like others, the matter of pay will come up for debate. Bottom line: our mayor and council deserve something better than a freeze. The only question is whether it’s cost of living or something more.

Nobody has the corner on the ‘common good’

Councillors Tina Lange and Denis Walsh at parkade forum. (Daily News photo)

Enviro type Bronwen Scott unwittingly put her finger on a major disconnect in the parkade issue at last Thursday night’s forum.

The debate, she said, is about “the common good versus personal gain.”

Translation: “those who don’t want a parkade versus business owners who do.”

By slapping a simplistic label on the downtown business community as only in it for the money, Scott perpetuates one of the great myths driving the anti-parkade side.

One would think, from such a blatantly unfair comment, that businesses, including downtown shopkeepers, suck our city dry and give nothing back.

But let’s consider the hundreds of thousands of dollars these businesses contribute to local organizations and charities every year. It’s worth mentioning, too, that businesses pay a lot more tax than homeowners do. And that they create jobs and paycheques that pay for cars and houses and refrigerators and flat-screen TVs and weekends at the lake.

Let’s also understand that if the employees of those businesses lease stalls in the new parkade, Joe Public will reap the benefit of easier-to-find street parking in the shopping area.

So, please, can we divest ourselves of this notion that business owners take and never give? They give more than most. Business owners who support the parkade believe it will be good for business; in turn, that it will be good for Kamloops.

On the other hand, a lot of those same business people are missing, or maybe ignoring, what the opposition is all about. People like real estate manager Mona Murray, developer Jim Thompson, and realtor Vince Cavalier wasted their breaths Thursday night trying to convince people that more parking is needed in downtown Kamloops.

They are right — more parking is needed. As I wrote last week, we’ve designed a city around our dependence on the automobile and until we change our way of thinking we must accommodate the horseless carriage.

However, the key issue is not the need for a parkade, but location of the parkade. So statistics that prove a shortage of parking spaces don’t ace an argument based on a vision of what our city should look like.

And while those against something are often guilty of exaggeration, Thompson proved those who are for something can be equally as prone to over-statement. I heard him on the radio yesterday issuing a dire declaration that the downtown core is in danger of becoming a “ghetto” without the new parkade.

That kind of talk borders on irresponsible and does nothing to contribute to the conversation.

If there’s a resolution to this that considers both the practical needs of the downtown core and the desires of the community at large, it’s not going to be through recriminations.

Council, let’s face it, has screwed up. At a later date, I’ll demonstrate just how badly. But they aren’t involved in a massive conspiracy to achieve world domination or any of the wild intrigues supposed by some opponents of the parkade.

And those who would rather a parkade wasn’t built at that particular location aren’t all naysaying hicks blind to the imperatives of progress.

There are no bad guys; just people who disagree. They all seek “the common good.”