- B16 ie Terrace Review — Wednesday, May 29; 1991

[Looking back... Cure for poverty justice,
oe =, not charity, advocate says

by Betty Barton

| W: to do with the pool expansion? It was a big question

facing city council this week in 1988. The cost of what —

Y started out as an expected $350,000 project was nearing the |
_ $1 million mark. |

In March 1987, the first professional estimate placed a $469,200 price
tag on the pool expansion. Five months later, a few niceties. were added,
upping the price to $501,160. In April 1988, more was added and the
price went up to $565,000. And this week in 1988 the only two tenders
recelved for the project were opened and the priced soared another 40
percent. Geisbrecht Developments of Burns Lake wanted $806,000 and
Terrace H&H Builders said they could do the job for only $836,000.

Would the pool expansion be scrapped?
[ 450 residents and found that 86 percent wanted a community

centre. This week in 1989, alderman Dave Hull asked city
‘administration to initiate a feasibility study for a community centre... It
would provide a place for large social gatherings and conventions.
Danny Sheridan suggested half jokingly, "We do have five million
dollars in borrowing power but..." But he was cut off by Hull: "We'd
certainly be remembered."

Other council issues in 1989 included an extreme dust control measure
suggested by 18 Hamer Ave. residents. They wanted a permanent
closure of Hughes St. between Hamer and Straume. The Advisory Parks
and Recreation Commission wanted council to look at recreational
facilities in Terrace south. They suggested a number of tennis courts
should be built. And the downtown parking problem might soon be
solved. According to city council, a part-time bylaw enforcement officer
might soon be on the job.

There was a new bear in town. It was this week in 1989 that the city
unveiled a donated Kermode that didn’t cost a cent but created quite a
stir. Deciding who should get to stuff the illegally killed bear proved to
be more difficult than saying "Yes" to the pool expansion project.

A year ago this week a couple of traffic concems were addressed.
Council decided to build a 100-foot long chain link fence in the
northeast corner of George Little Memorial Park where it borders Davis
Ave. This was to prevent children playing in that comer of the park
from running out on the street. The fence wouldn't go around the corner
{0 -provide the same protection on Kalum St., though. Even though
Kalum had a lot more traffic, council said it was further from the
playground and didn’t pose a hazard. - .

And it. was one year ago this week that a $35,000 tent fell out of an
in-camera Committee of the Whole report. It would be 20 feet high and.
cover a 60-by-80 foot section of ground, we were told, and the cost of
buying and maintaining the tent would be recovered through rental fees.
Why was it bought in secret? City aldermen were asked and Danny
Sheridan’s reply sounded something like this: It was an adjusted item
handled in an in-camera budget adjustment meeting that had to be

"in-camera because the adjusted figures on the adjustments hadn't been
adjusted yet and weren’t available. What could be more clear?

round the community in 1988, the Terrace Community Band
placed first in the B.C. Arts Festival for the second year in a
row and Terrace resident Liza Cote placed first in at the same
festival in Senior Speech Art. And the whole community was a winner
that year, too. We beat our neighbours in the Tri-City Fitness Challenge
by a handsome margin. We had 49.9 percent of our population take part
while Prince Rupert mustered only 42.6 percent and Kitimat failed
miserably with a 27.5 percent tumout, | ;
E.T. Kenney primary school was going to get a new adventure
playground. The old playground had fallen to rot, and thanks to some
hard-working teachers and students, and a little cooperation between the
city and schoo! board, the money necessary to build a replacement was
raised. In 1989, another school playground project was under way. This
time it was at Copper Mountain Elementary and the whole neighbour-

n 1988, a group of local residents conducted a random survey of

hood was involved. The $43,000 required came from the regional .

district, the school board and a provincial lottery grant. Much of the
labour came from community volunteers.

The Terrace Anti-poverty group

and the ‘Terrace Women’s
Resource Centre held a Poverty
and the Corporate Agenda confer-
ence May 23. The workshop
addressed a number of local and
provincial issues relating to pov-
erty.

Workshop guest speaker Pam
Flemming explained the corporate
agenda which, she believes, per-

' petuates poverty, "The corporate

agenda is to maximize profits
according to business standards.
This affects government policies
which protect the interests of cor-
porations over time rather than
people." |
Flemming has been a
spokesperson for ELP since 1988.
This is her fourth regional meeting
in B.C. this spring. The organiz-
ation represents 26 groups through-
out the province, including Ter-
race’s Anti-Poverty Group. The
Law Foundation funds ELP on a

A year ago this week, the Skeena Valley golf club announced they :

-would soon be building the back nine, the R.E.M. Lee Foundation held

. their second annual celebrity auction and roast, and the Terrace Art

__ Association asked the city for a little financial help. They needed $1,546

to top off a reduced Canada Manpower Challenge ‘90 grant that was to
pay for summer student labour at the Art Gallery.

In other news, it was 1988 when the licence for Sustut-Takla timber
was given to a consortium of Prince George companies. In 1989, Stege
Logging paid $325,000 for Westar’s Rim sawmill in Hazelton, the
proposed Park Ave. highways yard move. to North Coast Road
Maintenance property east of Thornhlil was bogged down in the
regional district office, and a derailment near Tyee dumped seven CNR
coal cars into the Skeena River.

A year ago this week the regional district was asking Municipal
Affairs permission for the conversion of the Shames Mountain debt into
shares in the company. And the regional board didn’t "dance on the
table” but they were pleased that the province was finally going to let
them in on the “best kept secret in the province"... The planning of the
Iskut gold road. For months the regional board’s requests for informa-
tion on the planning process had bcen denied, but a year ago this week

they were told they could have a seat on the Iskut road advisory

committee.

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part-time basis, to represents low
income people.

ELP is working together with the.

local groups on three specific
campaigns: to raise. welfare rates,
to raise minimum wage and to
eliminate forced employment of
single parents on Ministry of
Social Services and Housing assist-
ance, The organization is presently
supporting two plaintiffs taking the
provincial government to court
over the forced employment issue.

Some of the local issues ident-
ified during the workshop were
forced employment, lack of
affordable housing, child apprehen-
sion, greater subsidies to foster
parents than to natural parents, and
cross-cultural barriers to improving
one’s lot in life.

Flemming feels it is the role of
the organization to provide direc-
tion and lobby local governments
which, in tum, can lobby the prov-

-incial and federal governments to

change policies that affect the
impoverished.

‘The group linked poverty with
poor health, crime, low self-esteem
and low academic achievement,
the latter due to inattention caused
by hunger and malnutrition. .

The session concluded with a

commitment by both the Women’s
Centre and the Terrace
AntiPoverty group to begin at the
local level with a support system.
Women’s Centre administrator
Mira Nair explained that the first
step will be to get feedback from
low income residents to. determine
their real needs. The Women’s
Centre will donate the meeting
space; their first imeeting is
tentatively scheduled for June 12
to get interested people together

and determine a plan of action. -

Mira and Gerry King of the Ter-
race Anti-Poverty Group will
facilitate the meeting. .

Pam Flemming commended the
group. "This is good impetus to
keep going and to establish long-
term directives.”

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