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.

Two golden opportunities to rescue democracy in Kamloops

We have two remarkable opportunities to rescue the democratic process in Kamloops.

One of them will come this afternoon; the other between now and election day Nov. 19.

The official results of the parkade counter petition — collected signatures minus those ruled invalid — are to be announced at today’s City council meeting.

Park the Lorne Street parkade and look for long-term solutions.

Mayor Peter Milobar has said that, assuming the counter-petition succeeds — and there’s every reason to expect it will — he will not support the City taking the parkade issue to a full referendum.

This is wise. For one thing, forcing the issue to a vote at a cost of around $90,000 wouldn’t do much for a politician’s popularity.

For another, this project is so divisive that no responsible mayor would want to prolong such a painful public debate.

Instead, he says, he would prefer a task force of City council to look into alternative sites.

He and council can do even better than that. Without community members, such a task force can’t be considered inclusive or consultative. Instead, they can set one up that goes beyond members of council and includes stakeholders.

A good balance might be three councilors, one representative of the Kamloops Voters Society (as the sponsor of the counter petition), one from the Kamloops Central Business Association, one from an environmental group and one citizen at large.

The terms of reference should go beyond parkade sites to include a holistic strategy for reducing the need for cars in the downtown core.

But here’s the key — rescind the Lorne Street borrowing bylaw and direct that the task force be set up as the first orders of business today; then and only then have the report on the counter-petition results read. After all, at this point the numbers are a technicality; the undeniable fact is that this is an unpopular project.

Wouldn’t that be a fine piece of leadership?

The second opportunity is up to the voters of Kamloops. There have been many negative comments about some of the mayoral candidates since nominations closed last Friday.

In my own initial response, I suggested that Brian Alexander might not be a particularly appealing candidate for mayor, and that Gordon Chow isn’t a serious contender.

I’ve also heard it said that the lineup for councillor seats isn’t inspiring, either.

It’s true that the past records of candidates are an important part of the consideration when people vote. It’s of note what they’ve accomplished, what they’ve done and what they’ve said a year ago, three months ago, and last week.

But we also need to listen to what they’ve got to tell us between now and Nov. 19. They’ve come forward because they feel they have something to offer our community, to assure that we have a choice.

I’ve always believed that the “characters” who sometimes run for office are an affirmation that we are a true democracy, that anyone can grow up to be prime minister, or premier or mayor.

A small part of me forgot that when I was putting together my thoughts for Saturday’s column. If we give the candidates, all of them, a fair chance to be heard, minus snap judgments, we respect the system and do justice to our city and to ourselves.

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.

Mourning the loss of Oliver’s SO High

Fire consumes Frank Venables Auditorium and South Okanagan secondary school. (Globe and Mail photo)

If it’s possible to mourn for a building, I’m in mourning today.

Early this morning, fire destroyed South Okanagan High School in Oliver. It was my high school. There are a lot of memories associated with that place. I spent six years there, from Grade 7 through to Grade 12. Each week, we attended assembly in the auditorium. My grad class, 80 strong, held its ceremonies in the gymnasium.

It was in that school that I went through the pain of my teenage years, suffering and celebrating in equal amounts. It was in the hallway of that school I once got in a scuffle with one of my friends and, in retribution, was slapped in the face by the principal, Ed Reid.

It was there I excelled in History and Literature, and struggled mightily with Math and Biology. And, of course, it was there I fell in and out of love, several times.

For those of you who are from Kamloops, you can get a good idea of what this school looks like simply by picturing South Kamloops secondary — the two schools were built from the same blueprints in the early 1950s.

The picture you see, of Frank Venables Auditorium, is from the same angle as you would view the Sagebrush Theatre from 9th Avenue. The only difference is that Frank Venables Auditorium (named for a respected Oliver resident) was being restored in its original form.

Though I haven’t been back there in many years, I’ll miss it greatly. In tribute, I offer the school song, though I have no idea why I remember the words almost 50 years since I left the place.

Throughout the years, may this our song,

bring memories of happy days of old.

Loud be the cheers, sung loud and long,

that echo through where e’re our flag unfolds.

For we are the students of the SO High,

of the best school in the land,

where brave deeds together with the Golden Rule,

Go always hand in hand.

So stand up and cheer, for our comrades dear,

our victory flag must fly,

One two three, rah rah rah

Who are we, rah rah rah?

We’re the SO High!

Well-intended laws can cause bad behaviour

By MEL ROTHENBURGER/ The Armchair Mayor

Listening to the two sides of the Dallas fence issue present their cases to City council this week, one would think they were living in different cities, if not universes.

According to Curtis Schlosser, backed up by neighbour Randy Durante, the public riverfront access at the end of Urban Road is a magnet for drug dealers, thieves, dirt bikers and rowdies.

Meghan Watson, left and Mary Lee Potestio with the offending fence. (Daily News photo)

Not so, insisted resident Mary Lee Potestio — she’s never had to call police in the 35 years she’s lived there. It’s a quiet neighbourhood with few problems.

The issue is a fence and gate erected by Schlosser to keep people from the beach at night — an illegal barrier that council had earlier ruled must be removed.

The stories told by Schlosser and Potestio were so wildly at odds that one is tempted to think somebody was guilding the truth. More likely, the truth — as is often the case — lies somewhere in between. (Part of that truth amounts to eight police reports in a 12-month period.)

The looks on the faces of council members as they listened to the two combatants ranged from deadpan to bemused.

But aside from the curious entertainment value of watching Schlosser — a well-spoken fellow who sounded genuinely aggrieved — and Postestio — a feisty sort who professed to being “insulted” and “angry” at the claims of Schlosser — duke it out, verbally at least, this seemed to be a case in which a well-intended law has resulted in some bad behaviour.

By provincial statute, a lane must be reserved every 200 meters, in urban areas, by which the public can get to the water. In rural areas, it’s every 400 meters.

The provision is aimed at preventing precious waterfront from becoming the preserve of those well-enough off to build their houses fronting the water.

According to development and engineering services director David Trawin, these accesses aren’t marked, some have been taken over by neighbouring property owners for lawn, and some are even unsafe.

In Dallas, there are five of them; in all of Kamloops, there are about a hundred. Many were carved out of subdivision plans and quite a few are simply impractical for public use.

They’re usually about 20 metres wide and are designated as roadway. The City uses some for storm sewers.

Trawin says they get more public use in Westsyde, less in Brocklehurst; Dallas is tough because of the steep drop to the river.

If council was of a mind, it could just close them all off, as it could have done with the one at Urban Road, then nobody would get into arguments over them. The alternative is to inventory them, protect the good ones and close the bad ones.

Trawin says in the years he’s been in Kamloops, disputes over access have arisen with only three of them despite their often impractical placement.

Meanwhile, despite council’s decision this week, the issue remains unresolved, at least to the unanimous satisfaction of the antagonists. The City has on the books a mediation process for resolving such neighbourhood disputes, but it’s seldom used.

So it’s now Trawin’s job to wade in — Solomon-like — and try to work something out that will bring at least some sense of peace to all concerned.

Games ceremonies showed originality but needed more energy

I’ve been collecting comments on Friday night’s opening ceremonies for the Western Canada Summer Games, and the consensus is that they deserve good marks for effort, and not-so-good for sustainability — that is, they were too much of the same.

The First Nations theme, a popular one for such events locally, was carried off in a creative treatment using shadow dancers and graphics on a large sheet, and it was entertaining but overly long, largely repeating itself after each speech from a dignitary. And, depending on where you were sitting, the curtains blocked your view of the action on stage.

The plus was that it broke up the speeches, which can easily become tedious if followed one after another.

Disappointment of the evening was young singer Kate Morgan, being hyped in these parts as the next big thing. But she was off-key and her band mercifully drowned her out for much of her rendition of her Games song We Were Made For This. It would probably be much better in a different venue.

But the Interior Savings Centre proved no challenge for Peter Collins, who delivered the national anthem with stirring power. Such a voice that man has.

Highlight of the evening? The energy and enthusiasm of the athletes as they paraded into the arena.

Advice, again by consensus: Don’t try so hard to emulate Olympics ceremonies for these events with a grand theme. Instead, put together a high-energy variety show that aims to entertain the athletes and audience

Michael Akins of Team Manitoba shows his pride to spectators as his teammates take their seats at the opening ceremonies. (Murray Mitchell photo/ The Daily News)

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Remember ACC? It’s now Aboriginal Ankur Corp.

I mentioned some time back that Kim Sigurdson of Aboriginal Cogeneration Corp. — the Winnipeg company that tried to establish a cogeneration plant here to dispose of waste railway ties — was now heading up a company called Aboriginal Ankur Corp.

To clarify, the new company is now marketing a different gasification technology in partnership with a company from India called Ankur Scientific Energy Technologies.

According to a press release earlier this year, the partnership will involve the transfer and sharing of technologies from both India and Canada “on advanced biomass gasification systems and innovative energy related products and services,” plus the manufacturing of gasifier components and sales and marketing of Ankur gasifiers.

Image from Aboriginal Ankur press release.

Ankur Scientific, founded in 1986, has been developing and manufacturing biomass gasifiers of its own, selling all over the world, says the release.

As for Sigurdson’s newly named company, “AAC’s professionals have decades of experience in project management, engineering, sales and marketing. . . . The gasifiers we offer are proven, simple and generate extremely clean gas at reasonable price. They run on an assortment of different feedstocks that provide the customer with a reliable source of ‘green’ energy.”

It makes no mention of the gasifier technology developed at the University of North Dakota, the one ACC was going to build here.

Who cares what Jack Layton was wearing?

It would seem that some New Democrats are disappointed I described what people were wearing when Jack Layton came to town last week rather than writing about what he had to say. I should be writing about policies and issues, they said.

I write a lot about policies and issues, but when I attend the same event as one of our reporters, I prefer to write about my impressions of the event rather than the message.

Jack Layton, dressed for comfort, speaks in Kamloops. Daily News photo.

The City’s public hearing on affordable housing is an example. There was no use in me repeating what our reporter wrote, so I got into the whys and wherefores of what was being said, attempting to go beyond the news story. In the case of the Layton town hall, I was interested in why he is the only leader to come to Kamloops this election, at least so far.

I actually think it’s admirable when a leader shows up in Kamloops even when his candidate is not a favourite. What Layton had to say was pretty much what he’d been saying for the past few days, so readers didn’t miss out on anything from the fact I left it to our reporter to replay his words.

I also wanted to put the visit into the context of expectations for how things will play out in Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo. While I did make reference to the casual dress of those in the room — including Layton — it was simply one more way of putting the meeting into visual terms.

Forgive a slight digression from the dreariness of political rhetoric.

Some day, everyone will have a home

Kamloops got together to talk about homelessness last night. We’ve been talking about it since 1895.

HAP — the Homelessness Action Plan — held a forum at the Alliance Church, a sort of status report on where we’re at on this most fundamental of social issues.

HAP has the ambitious goal of ending homelessness by 2015, which coincidentally would be 120 years since the city’s first social-housing project.

Two years after Kamloops incorporated as a city in 1893, the Provincial Home for Old Men was built.

Unfortunately, what began with the best of intentions and widespread community support deteriorated over time into a place avoided by “regular” people.

City council was involved in the issue early on. Elisabeth Duckworth at the museum tells me the story of a mother thrown out of her home by her son early in the 1900s. Council created a pension for her.

In 1922, a homeless man named Thomas Hornby left a note, then drowned himself in the Thompson River. He wouldn’t be the last to die.

Jump ahead roughly a century to the past dozen years, when we started talking seriously about the issue of homelessness in a context that was broader than just finding a place to store people.

We started forming committees and community coalitions like Kamloops Active Support Against Poverty, the Kamloops Steering Committee on Homelessness, The Kamloops Community Action Team, and, more recently, The Changing Face of Poverty and HAP.

As we turned the corner on Y2K, the Victory Inn taught us that social housing has to fit with the aspirations of neighbourhoods to be successful — a lesson repeated on Cowan Street just last week.

Then the Liberals came into power and it was an era of cutbacks. Street services weren’t exempt. Nor was welfare.

“We have to focus on the core things — health and education,” said MLA Kevin Krueger.

So homelessness became a municipal issue as well as a provincial and federal one. Somebody, after all, had to fill the gap.

In the spring of 2005, a makeshift shelter down at the river caught fire and a homeless man died.

Tent cities on the river shore became a regular part of summers in Kamloops. Sometimes, for “fun,” teens would get together and go down to the river to “beat up a bum.”

So we put up fences — literally — and in 2006 City council started tearing down the tent cities. Businesses built barricades to stop the homeless from sleeping in their doorways. As always, shoppers complained about panhandlers.

In January 2008, Henry Leland — known as “a good guy” —  froze to death in a snowbank. The former Whistler Inn is now a social-housing apartment block named after him.

Politicians began talking about “social issues such as homelessness, drug addiction, prostitution, panhandling, mental health and crime.”

Was this recognition that there are sometimes connections, or a suspicion that homeless people are all drug-addicted crazy criminals?

Persuaded by the B.C. Supreme Court, we allowed the homeless to pitch their tents in parks between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. As long as they didn’t try to use the public washrooms.

At 7 each morning they were rousted out of bed by police and bylaws officers.

Slowly, we’ve made progress, a lot of it. We’ve had failures like Blueberry Lodge, but many more successes. Services are much better. The community and government are, at last, edging toward the effective partnership that has proved so elusive.

Some day, maybe by that targeted year of 2015, somebody will stand at a forum and mention that we once had homelessness in Kamloops.

Wouldn’t that be a fine thing?

 This column is based on a speech to the HAP forum by Daily News editor Mel Rothenburger.