Close vote
marks a yes
to ski deal

TERRACE — After lengihy
debate Oct 13 school trustees
voted 4-3 to approve a plan by
Shames Mountain to offer learn-
to-ski packages to local school
children.

Individual schools will decide
whether or not they will partici-
pate, and each family will also
decide whether or not to partici-
pate,

The program is at no cost to the
school district. Students would be
charged anywhere from $25 for a
full-day ski package to $75 for a
package of four half-days.

The skiing is to take place dur-

ing regular classroom time, and
would be counted as physical ed-
ucation Class time.
. Terrace trustee Wayne Braid’s
motion to allow the company to
offer the package to the schools
got support from trustees Laurie
Mitchell and Larry Moore.

Opposed were Stew
Christensen, Kris Chapman and
-Mary Spooner.

With Terrace tstee John
Pousette abstaining because of a

conflict of interest — he’s a
Shames Mountain Ski Corpora-
‘tion shareholder — board

up ona ‘ski’ day, and no class.
time would be lost.

Part of Braid’s motion was that

the district this year carry out’a
survey of parents to determine
how they view such ski programs,
and use that in making similar de-
cisions in the 1993-94 school
year.

Principals of each school will

decide whether or not their
schools will participate in the ski
program.

Some trustees also said they

plan to review how the board
handles all such tips in which
students or their parents ate ex-
pected to foot the bill.

“I’s not just ski trips,’’ said

Mitchell. “It’s sports trips and
band trips et cetera. All trips that
parents are expected to pay for.”

kkekekk
Braid —- who said he had

originally been against the ski
program — is a shareholder in the
Shames Mountain Venture Capi-
tal Corporation,
Pousette, did not step away from
the table.

but unlike

“T feel I do not have a conflict

in any way,” said Braid. “I don’t

chairman Edna Cooper voted in have any influence on Shames

” “favour, breaking the 3-3 tie.

The three trustees opposed
worried that poor students would
feel pressured to go skiing even if
they couldn’t afford it.

““It would be embarrassing for
students to say they have a finan-
cial difficulty participating in ©
this,’? Chapman said. ;

That problem, said Christensen,

“would probably also put pressure
on the school principals to go
ahead with the program -— even
if they felt they shouldn’t — to
avoid being cast as a poor school.

Braid said an hour and a half of
debate. on the subject bebind

- gjosed doors had him more per-
' . guaded to vote against the plan.
“But he said subsequent phone

alls he received from about, six, ,,,;

parents who want the ski program
to go ahead prompted him to
“yeverse his stance at the board
meeting.

“Tt puts the children on the
spot,” said Cassie Hall French
immersion teacher Sue Trombley.

She says the ski program can
take away up to four half-days of
instruction from regular school-
ing and argued that’s too much.

Irs difficult to teach a class
when a third or half the students
are missing,’ she says. ‘What
happens is you Jose a day of in-
struction.”

If the ski program were put on
outside regular school hours, she
said, poorer students who
couldn’t afford the program
wouldn't be shamed by showing

Mountain at all.”’ ;

“T think in a lot of these things

there could be considered -—-
when you live in a small com-
munity — to be conflicts. But I
try to be very careful of that.”

Pousette said each trustee must

decide for himself in such situa-
tions.

“Tf you have shares in any

situation dealing with the school
board then that’s automatically a
conflict as far as I’m concemed,”’
he said of his own involvement
with Shames Mountain. Pousette
holds shares in Shames Mountain
Ski Corporation, which actually
runs the mountain, not the ven-
ture capital corporation.

Braid’s situation -—- holding

shares in a venture capital corpo”,
ration which’ in turn’ holds shares
in Shames — is ‘‘one step further
removed,”
don’t have a problem with that.”

Pousette said. ‘T

Harold Cox, president of the

Shames Mountain Venture Capi-
tal Corporation, said 50 investors
paid $5,000 each to provide capi-
tal to help the mountain get
started, and in return got a 30 per
cent tax writeoff on the invest-
ment

There is some possibility of get-
ting a further return on their in-

vesiment in the distant future,

said Cox, also the school dis-
trict's director of instruction.
But he said the vast majority of

the investors bought in for the tax
credit, not as a money-making in-
vestment.

-Town holds off
—on library loan

TERRACE — The city is going
ta pass on ils first opportunity to
borrow the money needed for the
library expansion project.

That opportunity through the

Municipal Finance Authority
éomes twice a year: — October
and April — but city administra-
tor Bob Hallsor said it won’t be
applying this month.
- Voters in the city and in the
regional district have approved
borrowing $1.2 million for the
project

“This is a decision made be-
tween ourselves and the library
board,”’ Hallsor said, explaining
jt would be premature to go to the
market while it was still not
known how much money, if any,
the provincial govtrnment will
contribute to the project.

' The amount sought in the
referenda assumed the provincial
government would come up with
one-third of the $1.75 million

project cost through the GO B.C,

grant program.

That program was cancelled
earlier this year and a replace-
ment won’t be announced until
the new provincial budget year
begins next March.

Hallsor said the problem right
now was the uncertainty over
provincial moncy. Jt means nei-
ther the city or the library board
can determine exactly what will
be constructed.

Without a grant the current plan

will have to altered and that could
mean not getting the kind of facil-
ity wanted, said Hallsor.

“7 don’t know how Jong it
would be before we decided what
we were going to do, We may
have to go to a _ further
referendum, who knows?’’ he
added.

Meanwhile the city would be
jocked in to repaying the bor-
rowed money.

Hallsor said the target remained
going to tender early next year
with construction to begin in
April or May, depending on
weather.

If the borrowing was arranged
next April, the money would like-
ly be available to the city in June
to mid-July, Hallsor said.

Given a May construction start,
““we would have maybe one
progress payment ta make and a
litde bit of interim financing in-
terest, that’s all,’’ he said,

As for borrowing and then just

giving the money back if the pro-
ject did not go ahead, Hallsor ex-
plained the moncy was raised
through a bond issue, ‘‘so you’re
locked in, it’s 20 years and
you’ve got to make your principal
and interest payments over 20
years,”’
- Although it might be possible to
pay it back early, the city would
still have to cover the interest that
would have accrued over the
remaining years of the 20 year
period,

TERRACE — A Kitimat sport-
ing goods store owner has been
convicted of pit-lamping.

Frederick Schooley was fined
$1,500 for night hunting with the
aid of a light and an additional
$100 for hunting big game with
rimfire ammunition.

Schooley was caught in a sting
operation run by conservation of-
ficers last fall. He shot at a me-
chanical deer decoy set up by the

Ladies’

Bagatelle .
BLACK SKIRTS

49°

Moose decoy bags a

conservation officers.

Judge Ed de Waile rejected the
testimony of Schooley and his
hunting partner — Dante Massari
——~ that Massari got out of the
vehicle walked up to the decoy
and came back.

Massari told the court he got
back in the truck and told

_ Schooley it was a fake.

Schooley said he then got out
and shot at the decoy,

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Terrace Standard, Wednesday, October 21, 1992 — Page A13

Conservation officers testified
the interior light of the truck only
came on once — when Schooley
got out to shoot.

When questioned by conserva-
tion officers on the | scene,

Schooley said it was ‘‘a stupid
thing to do”’ and said he had al-
ready gotten his moose,

De Walle decided the pair did
not know it was a decoy, at the

10 stores have been closed out.
due to recession.

‘Lambskin

SKI WEAR

hunter

time and found Schooley guilty
of night hunting.

Schooley was ordered to forfcit
his rifle and is prohibited from
hunting for five years.

Massari was acquitted on a
charge of being party to the of-
fence.

The incident took place late on
the evening of Nov. 11,1991 ona
logging road north of Kitimat.

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