Continued from page 1
cluding the right to appoint com-
mittees and departments heads, a
three year term of office and some
weighty financial deposits for can-
didates.

“The mayor’s submission was
all too  predictable,’’ COPE’s
Patricia Wilson rejoined Thurs-
day evening. ‘‘His anti-
democratic views on the results of
the ward plebiscite have been con-
sistently applied to the other mat-
ters before the commission.’’

Wilson’s presentation, focusing
on parks board issues and the
ward system, followed the Van-
couver Labor Council’s Paddy
Neale, and well more than a hun-
dred speakers who argued for a
full ward system. From the largest
of the hearings at Hastings Com-
munity Centre, where each and
every one of the speakers were for
wards, across town to the Ker-
risdale Community Centre, where
a substantial majority also
favored wards, the message was
clear. Matters other than the ward
\ System received only cursory at-

tention, mostly from academics
and specialists at the city hall
hearings.

But what was also significant
was what was not said: the almost
total lack of support for the at
large system, and the fact that the
overwhelming majority of people
rested their case with the plebiscite
vote and stayed home. With few
exceptions, attendance at the
hearings was minimal.

The low key, academic ap-
proach of the commission was
purposeful, COPE’s Libby
Davies, one of the last speakers
before the commission, added
Thursday. ‘‘Your- advertising
campaign was pitiful, to say the
least,’’ Davies chided the commis-
sioners. ‘‘One day in the Express
and community newspapers is
hardly getting the message across,
is at?” :

If the commission had been
serious about getting voter opi-
nion, it would have advertised ex-*
tensively, made approaches to
citizens’ groups and held hearings
in every part of the city, she said.

“But you didn’t, because getting a
maximum amount of citizen input
is not in the best interests of this
commission or its political
bosses.”’

The fact that such a great ma-
jority who did get to the hearings
supported the ward system likely
came as a surprise to the
organizers. It was due to an effec-
tive mobilization by COPE, but it
also reflected the tide of opinion

that was strengthened im-
measurably by the plebiscite vic-
tory.

Many close to the hearings are
convinced that, despite the
rhetoric to the contrary, not even
Volrich and the NPA expect to
hold back the tide. Their calcula-
tion is that the commission will
stall or delay change, and counter-
balance any move to wards by en-
trenching the mayor with more
powers and the NPA council with
longer terms of office.

There is good reason to believe
that Eckardt and his commis-
sioners are busy working at that
right now.

The Downtown Eastside
Residents Association and
- Kiwassa neighborhood residents
3 have declared their intention to pur-
: sue the needless death of three peo-
| ple in an east end fire last week with
ee representations before alderman
a Harry Rankin’s community services
committee this Thursday.

DERA’s Dave Lane, who lives
adjacent to the burnt building at
434 Glen Drive, told the Tribune
that the delegation to Rankin’s
committee will attempt to have the
city reconsider its policy. of non-
enforcement of fire bylaws in

smaller rooming houses and apart-
ments.

Bylaw enforcement demanded

DERA to challenge city over fire

Kiwassa NIP Committee chair-
man Don Berg who had written and
appeared before city council to at-
tempt to have 434 Glen Drive
brought up to fire safety standards
or closed down, said this week that
the landlord of the building, Men
Yip, had also been offered federal
RRAP funds on three occasions to
install fire alarms, fire escapes and
exterior access to the building. ‘‘He
just ignored us,’’ Berg said.

Landlords won’t take advantage
of available programs to upgrade
safety standards until the city starts
enforcing the law against them,
Rankin said this week.

The problem rests with city coun-

cil, he said, but the fire department
is also to blame for focusing its at-
tention on large high rises and
avoiding dealing with the smaller,

older buildings which are the main

fire hazards.

The fire department has only
four inspectors, fire prevention
chief George Birnie admitted this
week, and in over’a year they have
only been able to enforce three of
400 orders against landlords. The
snarl is a special review board estab-
lished last year by the NPA council
— ‘‘a sop to west end landlords,”’
Rankin calls it — which meets twice
a month to hear appeals from land-
lords.

A note this week from Harold Pritchettbrought
with it an intriguing clipping from an Oregon
newspaper which goes a Jong way towards countering
some of the stereotyped view of the U.S. presented by
Time, Newsweek and the like.

Interestingly enough, the item is from Vancouver,
Washington where a touring dance group from the
Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan had graciously agreed
to perform free for some 1, 200 students at Columbia
River High School.

The problem lay in the fact that the performance
was late in getting underway and only ten minutes-after
it had begun, the time for afternoon dismissal arrived.
Needless to say, the organizers of the concert, the
Oregon Council of American-Soviet Friendship, and
the staff were worried; as anybody who’s been to
school knows, when it comes time for dismissal,
there’s little that can stand in the way of students leav-
ing en masse.

But the Uzbek dance group,
Bakhor—‘‘Spring’’—did. And according to the arti-
cle, the students not only stayed, they gave the group a
standing ovation.

Perhaps more significantly, the article, by Columbia
River High School teacher Jesse Frost, ended on this
note:

“So what’s the significance of all this sweetness and

light? Superficially, not much. More deeply,though, —

one senses that it’s only through the building of ‘warm
feelings’—multiplied by the millions—that the arms
race and its consequent Armageddon can be averted.
“The Centre for Defense Information in
Washington calculated in 1974 that Soviet missiles
then contained 738,538 times the destructive power
that obliterated Hiroshima.
“Will they use it?
‘The answer to that question was dancing in “the
Columbia River High School gym on May Day, 1979.
* * ~

or her many friends in the student movement and
in Vancouver civic affairs, there is tragic news this

week of the death of Joyce Andres, killed recently in .

an automobile accident in Greece.
Although only 26, Joyce had a creditable record of

achievement behind her as a student activist at Simon

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JULY 6, 1979—Page 2

= PEOPLE AND ISSUES

Fraser University, and then as a field worker for both
the B.C. Federation of Students and the National
Union of Students.

After leaving the student movement in 1978, Joyce
worked for a period in the Downtown Eastside
Residents’ Association office where she devoted con-
siderable time assisting the organization of the
Citizens’ Lobby for Jobs, and in the fall took on her
largest and most important assignment as the cam-
paign manager for the Committee of Progressive Elec-
tors’ 1978 civic election campaign.

7“ * * *

here were a couple of letters that came in

the last two weeks, just as the press drive
was winding up. Too brief perhaps for Open Forum,
we include them here. The first is from Maria Dubois,
in Toronto, the author of several ‘‘Women in Action’”’
columns which appeared in our pages two years ago.
She writes: ‘‘Who said ‘A picture is worth a thousand
words?’ I’d like to give $1,000 for each of those
magnificent photos you featured on the page about
children’s actions for peace, for housing, for their
rights (Tribune, June 1, 1979). Here is $50 for the
Pacific Tribune in recognition of your splendid
recognition of children.”

The other is from Nels Dean in Nanaimo who
described himself in an earlier letter as ‘‘one of the few
remaining people around who still remembers hearing
Ginger Goodwin speak.’ He encloses $10 “‘to keep a
few papers on the road’’ and adds: ‘‘I want to wish
Harry Rankin good health to continue his column and
to (Adams striker) Al Valente on the picket

line.”’
* * *

W ith the hectic pace of the press drive behind him for
another year, Tribune business manager Pat
O’Connor will finally be able to get around to doing
something he’s been planning for some months—to
get married. And it has taken some planning since both
he and Wendy Dibblee lead active political lives—to
which Wendy adds her work as a shop steward for the
Hospital Employees Union—but they managed to find
some free time this week and they’ll be celebrating
their wedding Saturday.
Our best wishes to them both.

(Eckardt got clear message | Volrich, Marathot
usurp city power

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

The ‘Shah of Vancouver,’’
otherwise known as mayor Jack
Volrich, has come up with another
scheme to take the power of
decision-making away from city
council and into his;own hands.
This time it concerns the proposed
Trade and Convention Centre to be
built on the waterfront.

On March 6 of this year, city
council adopted a report of the city
manager outlining the steps to be
taken to get:the project underway as
part of a larger plan for the
development of the waterfront that
involves private developers and the
federal government.

Now in an in-camera meeting,
‘mayor Volrich told council that city
council’s decision were not accep-
table to ‘‘our partners’’ and pro-
posed that:

1A] Pie 7 B.C.” committee
should be set up composed of pro-
vincial cabinet minister Grace Mc-
Carthy, Fred Spoke of the Port of
Vancouver, Bob Dawson, mayor
Volrich and that the board have
“‘power to add’’ other people as it
sees fit.

2. This board would be ‘‘legally
autonomous’’, that is, it would not
be responsible to any public body,
not the federal government, not to
the provincial government, not to
city council. In other words it could
do as it damn well pleased.

To me this desire to be indepen-
dent of public control, even though
the public is putting up all the
money for the Trade and Conven-
tion Centre, means only one thing.
The board will be under the control
of the contractors and developers,
including Marathon Realty, the real
estate arm of the CPR.

3. Mayor Volrich wants the city
to put up its share of the Trade and

- Convention Centre—a total of

1

million—before Ottawa and
toria put up theirs ($10 millio!
each). In fact Ottawa hasn’t ev#
agreed to put up any money. %
the mayor wants us to turn this¥
million over to this board to do Wl)
as it sees fit.

The mayor also wants an
visory committee set up to hel
make decisions about the Trad
Convention Centre. And who d
he want on the committee? S0
aldermen perhaps, or repres
tatives of community organizatid
or the labour movement? N
your life. He wants, and he
them, Marathon Realty, The H
Association, The Board of T
and the Downtown Busifl
Association. These NPA supp'
will be the real decision makers: ©
that we’re-supposed to do is Py }
the money for them.

The mayor’s proposals were svt
an outrageous usurpation of #
rights and responsibilities of i!
council that even the staff at
hall came out against it. But @
didn’t deter our mayor. Obviow®
he is marching to someone ¢¥
tune, not that of city council.

City council deferred the ma’
proposals for further discussi0
Even some of the NPA’ers cou :
go along with them. But I have™
doubt that they’ll be whipped in!
line behind the scenes, and that ci
council will go along with ™
mayor when next it discusses th
issue.

_ This column was written on Jul .
19, 1979; the obvious has now haf
pened. The NPA council has vole)
for this outrageous proposal wil
myself, alderman Marzari, ald@
man Harcourt and Ford agai?
with alderman Boyce away %
holidays.

‘End school board subsidy }
to private schools’ —COPI

The Committee of Progressive
Electors last week called on Van-
couver School Board to end its sub-

sidy to private schools—a subsidy —

which the Board has ‘‘unknowing-
ly’? made over the last 25 years.

The demand was voiced by
COPE last week following reports
that the board had just discovered
that it was picking up the tab for
some $200,000 in health services to
private schools in addition to the
regular bill for services to public
schools.

The discovery was made when,
following a proposal to cut back the
board’s health budget, the executive
director of the Federation of In-
dependent Schools, Gerry Ensing,
wrote the health officer expressing
his fear of cutbacks in services to
private schools.

Although the present board ap-

parently knew nothing of it, an”
formal arrangement was made ‘
the 1950’s between the school boat
and the health officers whereby 0”
board would be billed for the com
of immunizations and other h
services delivered to both’ publ
and private schools.

The bill for the private schoo
alone is some $200,000—or 101
cent of last year’s health budget: |

“We are not opposed to hed
services being provided to chil
in independent schools but we
opposed to these services bel
funded by the Vancouver Sch
Board,’’ Wes Knapp, COPE ed
tion committee member told ©
board last week. ‘‘We believe tH
Vancouver taxpayers should #
have to pay additional funds
services provided to indepen
schools.’’

eee hee
+ AIRPORT+