Welcome to Your Kamloops!

My Newest Project: The Lower Sahali Bulletin...

I've long been interested in how people in a neighbourhood build links with each other. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases, neighbours don't build very strong links. I think neighbourhood links, neighbourhood spirit is so very important.

I've spent the last month or so developing and creating a neighbourhood newsletter for Lower Sahali. I have also created a companion web site and a companion online residents only online forum. I've been inspired by efforts like Front Porch Forum, whose founder Michael Wood Lewis I was honoured to meet a couple of years ago at Personal Democracy Forum conference.

The inaugural issue of the Lower Sahali Bulletin is coming out next week, mailed to 1154 residences. I am proud of getting this off the ground. And I really hope the Bulletin will be thrive as a valuable resource. Here is how I describe my initial goals in the sponsorship sheet:

The Lower Sahali Bulletin is a new newsletter for the lower Sahali neighbourhood. The overall goals of the newsletter are to help build stronger community links in lower Sahali, to provide really useful information to residents, and to offer neighbourhood businesses the opportunity to build stronger relationships with nearby residents.

 

The newsletter is currently slated to come out twice a month, and will contain important and useful information for lower Sahali residents. Features will include information on neighbourhood events and amenities such as parks, upcoming road work and rezonings, commentary on important issues, a neighbour to neighbour free classifieds section, updates on nearby local businesses, home improvement tips, and much much more.

I have had pretty good response from neighbourhood businesses and residents so far. This is probably a model that could be replicated in other areas of the city. Would love to talk to anybody interested and share my experiences thus far.

Domtar Begins Consultation...

Domtar conducted a consulation on their air permit extension request yesterday. I could not make it. I understand that Domtar met with the Mayor and at least once member of Council separately.

Here is Domtar's website supporting their consultation process.

A Very Tricky Public Engagment and Consultation - SD73 Reconfiguration Process.

The proposed reconfiguration of facilities and programs in our School District has a lot of people interested, engaged, worried. Last night, the School Board set up a schedule of 27 meetings with different involved groups to inform, discuss, and hopefully to really listen.

This is going to be enormously tricky process to conduct effectively. People will be understandably emotional and untrusting. School District representatives will need to respect that to have any hope of overcoming the challenges, and getting as much buy in to the hard and necessary work ahead.    

I wonder if there are any school district staff trained in civic engagement / public engagement. This program at SFU is something well worth looking into.

About 3.5 million dollars in City of Kamloop Grants in 2008...

Clicking the image above will take you to a somewhat large image of a page from the 2008 City of Kamloops Annual Report. This page details the community organizations and programs that receive public subsidies from City Hall. Do the numbers match your priorities?

Jordan Nicholson's Very Good Canada Day 2009 Video Roundup...

This came across one of my YouTube search results...Check out more of Jordan's videos by checking out his YouTube channel...

Measuring the True Success of Coordinated Enforcement....

Local RCMP and Valleyview business owners have recently publicly talked about an increase in criminal and "undesirable" (still trying to understand this term) behaviour in Valleyview. They draw a pretty clear cause and effect between increased RCMP patrols downtown and on the North Shore and increases in activity in the east side of town.

I think its important to involve social agencies that can perhaps mitigate undesirable behaviour before it become criminal. And City Hall's coordinated enforcement task force now includes social agency people.

The other angle to this is to really throw the book at people who repeatedly offend, fully understand what they are doing, and don't stop. Part of the Kamloops RCMP's prolific offender strategy involves closer liason and more complete files for crown prosecutors.

I wonder if we are seeing prolific offenders in Valleyview or is this more a social agency intervention case.

Pushing crime around town just doesn't seem to make any sense in the mid to long term.

Congrats to the New Miss Kamloops and Princesses...

Our 2009 Miss Kamloops is Sam Carto. Congratulations to you Sam, and to 2009 Princesses Kiera Ayres and Jessica Cochran.  These young ladies should have the experience of their lifetimes so far. Do Kamloops proud!

Podcast - A Conversation with Thompson Rivers University President, Dr Kathleen Scherf

photo taken from Faces of TRU feature on university web site

I was honoured that Kathleen Scherf, TRU's new President, took the time to have this conversation with me about our amazing university. We talk about Kathleen's background, the nature of a TRU education, and also about her experiences managing a large, diverse, rapidly changing institution.

Here is a roadmap for the audio:

   01:08 - how did you get interested in teaching and academia 
   02:46 - How did you become a Frankenstein scholar 
   07:55 - How did you get  into university administration
   10:05 - Tribute to Roger Barnsley
   11:14 - Changing the Culture of TRU
   11:58 - How did you find about TRU President Opening and fall
              in love with TRU
   13:34 - breaking the mold of a University President a bit
   14:28 - the mom car, the parking ticket on the first day  
   16:43 - has been kind of unusual been a challenge, being who
              you are and trying to being a role model
   19:05 - what makes a TRU education special - your vision?
   21:23 - small classes and large classes
   23:13 - value of President teaching first year students
   25:54 - how do liberal arts students become financially
              independent?
  27:45 - a  comprehensive university preparing students well
  28:34 - Law School update
  33:54 - House of Learning update, other capital projects - Old
             Main repairs
  36:17 -  Managing a large, diverse, rapidly changing institution:
              collegial governance, transparent leadership,
              team concept

   

Do We Really Have Enough Water Supply?

Those for and against water meters in Kamloops typically agree that we have an abundant water supply. But do we?

Kelowna sits on a huge lake, and this article from the today's Province highlights an immediate water shortage issue for the City of Kelowna. Here is an excerpt:

Kelowna’s parks and sports fields are getting less water, as the city tries to conserve supplies in the face of summertime water shortages that could affect most of southern B.C.

City parks supervisor Ted Sophonow told The Province that his staff are cutting back on watering by 72 per cent in southeast Kelowna, where water levels are alarmingly low. And parks in the rest of the city are getting up to 20-per-cent less water.

and

Southeast Kelowna’s irrigation manager says it’s the sixth lowest inflow to Okanagan Lake on record.

Monitoring New York City Closely Today...

In 2007, I took quite a bit of flack for spending some of my city council travel budget traveling to the Personal Democracy Forum conference. Some media focused on the fact that I was traveling to New York City, "the Big Apple". Well, I still think the Personal Democracy Forum is a must for anyone interested in the intersection of technology, democracy, journalism, and politics.

Off Council now, I still think about the takeaways from my attending the conference all the time.

The 2009 conference is in it's second day and I am watching from my home office. I totally hope to attend next year. This year, I'm able to tune in through twitter in quite a meaningful way. Also reading other people's blog posts etc.      

Jill Miller Zimon is liveblogging the sessions she is taking in today.