Ajax mine video won’t be an Oscar contender

Image from KGHM Ajax video.

A lot of people are saying the Ajax video produced by the company is totally useless.

I’m of a different view — it is not totally useless. It’s only mostly useless. Which means it’s a little bit useful.

Maybe it’s because I didn’t have my 3-D glasses on when I watched it — several times — but it looks a bit fuzzy to me. (They do claim it’s 3D, but it’s actually a combination of regular video, geo-mapping and somewhat primitive animation).

KGHM Mining Inc. – The Video isn’t going to be an Oscar contender.

Don’t think you’re going to watch this three-minute short and learn everything you need to know about the impact the project will have on Kamloops. My advice is to put it on pause and then advance slowly through it, frame by frame.

Pause, for example, at the disclaimer, where the viewer is alerted to the fact that “the information in this presentation is not a substitute for detailed investigation or analysis,” and that it contains “forward-looking statements” – in other words, statements that may or may not prove out over time.

The key part of the video is the illustration of sight lines from six points: Batchelor, Aberdeen elementary, Dufferin, Pineview, Coach Hills and Knutsford Hill Road.

Only Knutsford Hill Road reflects a significant visual impact, where the east dump of the mine will provide a looming, ugly contrast, forever, to what’s left of the grasslands.

What we need is more information on those parts of the city from which the mine will be visible, rather than a focus on places where it won’t.

In its defence, the video is better than nothing at all. Along with the narration about what a fine project it is (did you really expect anything else) it does give some scant indication of the size of this thing. But it falls down completely on providing a comparison of the mine’s foot print with that of the city. Neither does it indicate anything of the city’s growth — it attempts to show how the mine will expand over 23 years, but not how the city will expand towards it.

To sum up, the plot is weak, the dialogue uninspired, and the cinematography is rudimentary. No red carpet for this one.

The only thing that will satisfy people on the visual impact of this behemoth is a proper scale model. Such a model would do nothing to assure the public on environmental issues, but it would help people know what they’ll be looking at. In a forward-looking manner, of course.

On the first day of the video’s release, Norm Thompson was announced as the new community relations manager for the project, succeeding John Froese, who left the position a few months ago.

Thompson, a former finance director with B.C. Lottery Corp., spent part of his first couple of days fielding comments and questions about the video, though he says feedback was “light” and the tone was “mixed.”

Some people were pleased the video was made at all, others wanted it to show more perspectives.

An actual model is a possibility, said Thompson, but the company will have to ponder scale, size and how much land area to include in it.

“We’re expecting to hear more from people. What people want and what we can provide is what we have to try to do.”

Cut-and-run law needed for barbers? Probably not

My barber friend John DeCicco was telling me that some guy ripped him off for the price of a haircut this week. The guy claimed he had to go to the bank machine next door to the Continental Barbershop on Victoria Street to get some cash for payment, and never returned.

I suggested that maybe barbers need a version of the law that makes prepayment mandatory at gas stations to prevent gas-and-dash thieves. It could be called the cut-and-run law, or maybe DeCicco0′s law.

But then John acknowledged that, in all his time barbering, this is only the second time a customer has skipped out on him without paying.

Which isn’t bad, since John DeCicco will celebrate this 50th year as a barber in August.

Are North Shore parking meters key to new arts centre?

I was speaking to the Probus Club of Kamloops week before last on various civic matters, and the subject of a new performing arts centre naturally came up.

I was asked for my thoughts. I replied that, in my view, it should be the next priority in civic amenities. I also said it had a tough row to hoe — it’s been on the City’s agenda since shortly after the turn of the century and has yet to get past the talking stage.

There’s a significant body of opinion out there that translates to “not with my tax dollars, you don’t.”

Meaning there’s a good chance it would fail on the first referendum try, but it might succeed on a second. But it will never be approved unless the public has a clear vision in front of it as to what it will look like, what it will include, and where it will be built.

Another very interesting point was brought up at that meeting, one I’ve touched on before. The very existence of the Sagebrush Theatre is a barrier to a new centre.

One Probus member felt very strongly that we shouldn’t even be talking about a new Kamloops Centre for the Performing Arts. Rather, we should be thinking in terms of a new Kamloops Concert Hall.

That’s a valid point. Giving up on the concept of a joint drama-music venue would bring down the cost quite a bit.

So, let’s say it would cost $20 million instead of $30 million. Let’s be creative for a moment in figuring out the most painless way to pay for it.

Assume the Henry Grube property and its handsome acreage were gifted to the City in a partnership deal with the board of education. The existing building would, of course, be torn down.

Let’s say we’re now looking at $15 million left to be funded by taxpayers. Traditionally, such projects have been three-way partnerships between the City, the feds and the province.

Five million in local money doesn’t seem insurmountable. Further suppose an additional $1 million could be raised in corporate and private donations and naming rights.

Now we have $4 million. But, of course, the cost of borrowing is often as expensive as the principle.

If I’m reading City reports correctly, downtown parking brings in net revenues of around $200,000 a year through meters, tickets and permits after the cost of parking control is taken into consideration, Based on 800 meters, that’s about $250 a meter.

The business area around Tranquille Road has about 200 to 250 parking spots. If paid parking were to be imposed on the North Shore, the revenue per meter should be higher than downtown because there would be little additional cost for control.

If the City floated a bond at five per cent for $4 million through the Municipal Finance Authority, the cost of borrowing would amount to only about $200,000 a year amortized over 15 to 20 years. Not including the principle, of course.

That $200,000 could almost be paid for with North Shore parking revenues.

Mel, what have you been smoking? Well, prove me wrong on my arithmetic. Then prove me wrong in thinking there’s got to be a way to get a new performing arts… er, concert hall.

What if pride parade had marched on main street?

These old legs have carried me along as an observer on many a march, walk, protest, rally, parade, call them what you will. Anti-Vietnam war, pro-pot, anti-racism, give peace a chance, cure cancer — even, on one occasion, a rampaging window-smashing mob.

Some are good, some bad, some silent, some rowdy.

Thursday’s pride parade was different than any of them, though the basic elements were the same — people walking and talking for a cause.

Create a crowd with an axe to grind and, often as not, something ugly lies just under the surface. Not this one.

The university is a friendly environment for such things. As TRU president Alan Shaver told them, universities are about “diversity” and incubating “new knowledge and understanding.”

He didn’t mention the LGBTQIA word, but his message was clear and supportive.  And there were plenty of others there to declare that “we are here and we are beautiful,” and to demand that “our voice must be invited to the table.”

There were no goofy, intentionally provocative costumes or behaviour — no studded leather or nudity — that characterize many big-city pride parades intended to antagonize the phobes.

This was a T-shirt, blue jeans and ball cap crowd. They held rainbow banners and carried signs with slogans like “Hearts not parts,” “Love is never wrong,” and “Come out of the closet, make room for more shoes.”

It’s impossible to know how many were straight and how many something else, but it was a fine thing to see and know that this wasn’t just some protest group with vested interests — it was a community of people, albeit mostly the TRU community, expressing its unity and acceptance with joy and gusto.

Supt. Yves Lacasse and a half dozen cops and some firefighters were there, too, not to keep watch but rather to offer a friendly presence.

Kamloops South NDPer Tom Friedman walked along; he wasn’t sure if he was there as a TRU prof or as a candidate but he did know he was there to support the event. I saw his Kamloops North running mate Kathy Kendall, too, and there was Coun. Donovan Cavers leaping onto a dumpster to get a better picture as the 300 participants walked past.

He and Nelly Dever carried the colours, as it were, for the rest of City council, most of whom opted to attend a regional district board meeting instead. I suppose the wheels of government must roll uninterrupted, but it would have been nice to have someone there in a mayoral capacity from at least one of the towns in the region, which is why alternates are appointed for RD duties.

It would have been nice, as well, if the organizers had provided 15 seconds of microphone time for a council rep to bring best wishes from City Hall, since council proclaimed April 5 as Kamloops Pride Day.

Cavers made that offer to the organizers but wasn’t taken up on it.

No matter. A parade hasn’t been that much fun since Santa Claus last rode down Victoria Street on the back of a tractor-trailer.

I wonder if it would have been different had they marched on main street instead of University Avenue. I wonder if the bigots would have come out of the shadows and spoiled it. I hope not — maybe they couldn’t have found parking.

Talk about a slow news day; must be Good Friday

Talk about a slow news day. I used to tell my staff, “There’s no such thing as a slow news day, only slow reporters.”

Today I was proven wrong. Dead quiet in here with only a few newsies and a couple of others on the job. Not much going on around town. Phone not ringing. Nobody issuing press releases. ZZZZzzzz.

Walmart, on the other hand, was a different story. I had to take a run up there just after lunch to pick something up, and it was quite the experience. The parking lot was packed, the store was packed, the lineups at the cash registers were a mile long.

If we needed to get hold of anybody for a news story, all we’d have had to do was go look for them at Walmart.

Note to self — get your shopping done before the long weekend from now on.

Kamloops’ first pride parade attracts enthusiastic crowd

Ready to march.

The city’s first ever pride parade went off without a hitch today. Loud and proud but respectful and fun. Lots of good speeches, signs and banners, and a crowd of about 300 enthusiastic marchers enjoying a good day for a walk — rain threatened at the last minute but held off.

Few politicians there in support, though. The mayor was absent, attending to other business. Councillors Donovan Cavers and Nelly Dever, bless ‘em, did attend. NDP candidates Tom Friedman and Kathy Kendall also.

More on who was there and who wasn’t, and why not, in Saturday’s Armchair Mayor.

Shed no tears for those who worry about vote splitting

Call me cold, but I’m having a tough time getting teary eyed with sympathy over all this sniveling by mainstream political parties about splitting the vote.

Terry Lake is worried the upsurge in support for the upstart Conservative party (upstart in that they haven’t been a factor in B.C. politics since the 1940s) will translate into an NDP victory next year.

W.A.C. Bennett was once the enemy at the gate, and he was no socialist.

“If you want an NDP government, voting B.C. Conservative will certainly guarantee that,” Lake fretted this week.

Theory is that the free-enterprise vote will be divided between the Liberals and the Conservatives, allowing the socialist horde to storm the legislature once again. Oh, the calamity.

Out in the other end of the universe, Ottawa, the concern is not about keeping the lefties in the wilderness, but about getting the Harper Conservatives out of power. There, the talk is all about how the Liberals and NDP will have to link up to stop splitting the non-Conservative vote if they ever hope to unseat Harper.

Liberal strategist and columnist Warren Kinsella, who writes for this newspaper among others, is in mourning over it. The Grits and Dippers, as he calls them, who can’t see the imperatives of merging to get rid of Darth Harper, as he calls him, are “too goddamn stupid.”

You would think, to listen to them, that there is actually a chance the Liberals will win the next election in B.C., and that there is a similar chance the Tories will lose the next one in Ottawa.

For anyone within provincial Liberal ranks who hasn’t been paying attention, your problems started long before the latest public opinion survey, and long before John Van Dongen gave up on the government.

You would, no doubt, prefer a U.S.-style two-party system wherein voters have a choice only between right and left, while the other 100 or so parties are never heard from, but that’s not the way Canadians work.

As the federal scene illustrates, it’s not always about forming a coalition of the right to keep out the left, but when the right-moderate vote is divided there’s no guarantee the lefties will take power anyway.

During the 1940s, the B.C. Conservatives and the Liberals formed a two-party coalition and held on to power for a short time as the enemy milled around at the gate. But the real enemy wasn’t the then-CCF socialists; it was an ex-Conservative named W.A.C. Bennett and his adopted Social Credit party.

The Socreds beat the coalition and the CCF and ruled B.C. for 36 of the next 39 years. When the Socreds were finally defeated, it was because they were a tired old party with tired old blood and a heap of public resentment against them, not because of free-enterprise challengers. The NDP happened to be the only alternative.

And when the “Dippers” were done ravaging the B.C. economy, the Liberals were waiting.

So let us not waste much time and space for the crocodile tears of the B.C. Liberals, or those federal Liberals and NDP who proclaim the death of everything from free enterprise to free expression if we don’t reduce our political system to a one-or-the-other choice.

As Richard Armour (you might have to look him up; I did) used to say, “Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.”

Beauty pageant rules need to be fair

Jenna Talackova.

I have no trouble with a transgendered woman being allowed to enter the Miss Universe Canada competition. Vancouver-born Jenna Talackova should be able to compete without limitations as long she follows the rules and the rules are fair.

What I’m wondering about, though, is why boob jobs, tummy tucks and botox are considered fair in beauty pageants. Would there be anything so wrong in staging a pageant in which entrants were required to be all natural, right down to the roots of their hair?

Body building competitions (and most other sports, for that matter), don’t allow the use of steroids, because they give one competitor an advantage over another (not to mention, of course, that they’re dangerous).

Having different sets of rules for competition isn’t unusual. There are different events for men and for women. Different tournaments for athletes who are paid and those who aren’t.

Different sets of rules aren’t bad per se, just so long as they aren’t based on isms or phobias. The issue with Talackova is one of fairness more than sameness.

Kamloops council sticks to the two-per-cent solution

City council gathered for yet another budget session today and the focus was, once again, at least as much on numbers as on things. That is, “what can we keep” the percentage increase at, rather than “what does the city need.”

They began with a hypothetical increase of 5.6 per cent and ended the day with an increase of 1.92 per cent over last year. That will increase property taxes for the owner of an average home by $31.43. It was pretty predictable.

Roughly a year ago at this time I wrote about the two-per-cent fixation, in which various iterations of Kamloops council have become focused on keeping annual tax increases as close to two per cent as possible.

There’s no real rationale to this, other than that most years it’s pretty close to the rate of inflation. And, to be honest, two per cent sounds politically acceptable, since taxpayers/voters aren’t fond of receiving big tax bills. So today, they haggled over tenths of percentage points. Some wanted the increase to edge over the two-per-cent mark; others insisted taxpayers couldn’t afford it.

The two-per-cent/ rate-of-inflation approach to budgeting goes back 20 years, and there have been few exceptions — the 1998 council actually cut its budget by one per cent from the year before, and in 1999 kept the increase to zero.

For the three years ending in 1999, taxes went up an average of one per cent, while inflation rose an average of 1.6 per cent.

In 2000, 2001 and 2002, the council of which I was a member kept increases below two per cent. In 2003, a big year for offloading of costs from the provincial government, the increase was 3.6 per cent, but it settled down again, with some fluctuations, after that.

By the way, 2003 was also the year City council began basing its own pay on the annual inflation rate. And, the budget process itself began changing that year. Whereas in prior years, councils had studied the entire document line by line, the City had grown to the point where the document was so thick and complex it became impractical to do that.

So, they received instead a rough outline and a list of nice-to-do items that could be trimmed according to what council wanted for a bottom line.

While two per cent sounds like it’s not so bad, if you compound it, it starts to add up. For example, let’s go back a few years to when a two-per-cent budget hike cost the average homeowner $30, just about what this year’s increase is worth. I’m sure Sally Edwards in the City Hall finance department could calculate the exact amount in a jiffy, but without accounting for market fluctuations and such, you’ll actually be paying a couple of hundred dollars more per year than you were back then. And that doesn’t include utilities, which have a habit of going up as well.

Lots of things affect the City’s budget. Staff salaries, policing costs, insurance, roadwork, debt financing, the cost of supplies — it’s tough to keep a lid on it all.

You might think the council should cut staff and services if it needs to in order to keep the increase to zero or less, but if that happened, those services and facilities paid for from property taxes would constantly erode. Infrastructure expansion would not only stop, it would fall apart.

My main beef with the two-per-cent “magic” number is that it doesn’t pay much attention to vision. It looks only one year out.

Councils set their strategic plans for three years. Their budgets should be crafted around what each council wants to achieve during its three-year mandate, not around an artificial number.