Welcome to Your Kamloops!

Podcast: A Conversation with Dale Bass, Kamloops This Week

 

I sound pretty goofy in my intro to this podcast. Dale, by contrast, sounds ever her intelligent and engaging self.

An audio map:

01:21 - Creosote Tie Gasification Proposal

04:35 - Kudos to School District Public Engagement

07:27 - Journalist and/versus Community Member

09:00 - Kudos for Mayor Peter Milobar

09:14 - General Impressions at Start of 2010 Vancouver Olympics

Most Understandable Quote of the Week...already

The BC Liberals are really hurting themselves with their lack of process. The HST, cuts to arts groups, and now cuts to boards of education. I've seen this before when how the province handled the implementation of the Trade, Investment, and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) with Alberta - put a measure into place with little or no consultation, and then either defend or consult after the fact. 

This really puts people backs up. I spent 15 minutes chatting with one of the most right wing people I know and she was livid - LIVID - about the HST. She is a pretty well connected person in the BC Liberal world.

From the Board of Education meeting last night, here is the Kamloops Daily News quoting a very understandable sentiment from Trustee Gerry Watson (full disclosure: Gerry often acts as my business lawyer and sponsored me into Rotary in 2000). He is spot on with this comment:

Gerald Watson said requiring school districts to have balanced budgets and then pulling funds so they run a deficit shows “a disregard for the 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.

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

   

Reports on School District Re-Org Proposal....

• Kamloops This Week's Melissa Lampman (who is also tweeting and facebooking up a storm)
• Kamloops Daily News' Jason Hewlett
• CFJC

I've just downloaded the report,(pdf file) and need to read it before thinking about commenting.

Big Big School Board Meeting Tonight...

Superintendent Terry Sullivan will present options on major restructuring of our School District at the Board of Education meeting this evening. The details in the report have not been released, but Terry told Kamloops This Week:

"“The only thing I’ll say at this point is that it’s probably the most significant report we’ve had in the history of the school district."

From what I understand, the report tonight will be the start of the public process, not a decision point.

Here is the full article from Kamloops This Week.

Here is CFJC's story.

An Interview with Thompson Rivers VP Advancement, Christopher Seguin

TRU VP Christopher Seguin takes care of all external relations. Fundraising occupies most of his time, but his duties also include public, alumni, and government relations. We talked about a lot of interesting issues:

0:40 - What a VP Advancement does
1:00 - Current fundraising environment
1:45 - The mechanics of a 1.5 million dollar donation
3:45 - Chris' background
5:04 - Changes as TRU: New President Kathleen Scherf
5:30 - Changes: "alignment" complete review of TRU operations
5:37 - Big focus on student experience
6:01 - Enrollment up?
6:43 - Perfect time to train people
6:56 - TRU World and international student update
9:40 - New House of Learning
11:20 - Digital library resources
12:52 - Sustainability? Towards at 22nd century TRU
14:49 - New law school
16:33 - value of TRU degree
18:31 - TRU well positioned
20:47 - trades and academics, all about giving options and choices

An Incredible New Resource for Kamloops...the United Way Community Directory.

The City of Kamloops has helped the United Way create Access Kamloops, a new online and print directory of a multitude of different services and organizations in the community  -  I want to especially congratulate long time blog participant here and my friend Skylark Disraeli, who has been a driving force promoting the value of a consistently updated community directory, and who worked with the United Way folks to put Access Kamloops together.

Skylark emailed to say:

If anything is missing or in error, I would very much appreciate hearing about it so that I can correct/add it. This holds true ongoing, as the site will be updated weekly.

You can provide feedback on the directory here

Continued Observations from Globe 2006

I'm back from Globe 2006 conference. Frankly, looking back at the previous post, I wish I had taken the time to post my summaries at the end of each day, instead of just the first. I feel a little overwhelmed by the huge amount of information I heard and read.

What I would like to do here is to give a broad overview of what I think, at this point,  might be the broad takeaways for a possible environmental strategy for Kamloops. But first, here is the complete seminars I attended:

• Corporate Sustainablility Plenary: Leading the Sustainability Economy
• Balancing Regulation and Profit: Developers and the Planning Department
• Innovative Financing for Sustainable Infrastructure
• Green Procurement Policy: Settting Parameters for Change
• Energy and Environment Plenary: Transitioning to a Low Carbon Economy
• Municipal Governance in  Action: Making Daily Decisions with Sustainable Goals
• Partnering for Sustainable Economic Development: Lessons Learned
• From Green Buildings to Equitable Neighborhoods: The Space Between Buildings
• Sustainability Cities Breakfast
• Urban Plenary: Bridging to the World Urban Forum and the 2010 Olympics
• Creative Financing for Brownfield Development

Here's my broad level overview of possible takeaways:

The global business leaders who spoke at Globe 2006 - leaders of British Petroleum, Dow Chemicals, Swiss Re Insurance, and Honda - all echoed the point that climate change, global warming, and resource depletion are massive problems. And they all claim to be proactively working to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.

Cities, across the world, are also taking leadership roles in being part of the solution. As well as being environmentally sensitive, there is very likely strong money saving and, in fact, revenue generation opportunities for cities in being more green. Vancouver, for example, is creating a "sustainability precinct" that will be heated by sewer heat and that is actually forecasted to generate surplus energy that the city will be able to sell. Chicago has saved hundreds of thousands dollars by installing solar panels on city facilities. And Richmond has saved thousands by tunings its ice refrigeration systems in it's arenas.

The University of British Columbia is leading provincial efforts to show that green building techniques (also known in the "biz" as LEED certified) can be employed for the same or even for less cost as conventional building techniques. In the US, cities like Chicago have offered expedited building permit processing to green building projects.

Various cities are also working to decrease the environmental footprint of their own operations. Goals like zero waste and strong anti idling policies were mentioned. Vancouver has embarked on a extensive public education campaign to get Vancouverites to live more in concert with the planet - onedayvancouver.ca.

If you don't like the term "green", you can use a more an all encompassing "sustainability". If you don't like the term "sustainability", you might even use the even more all encompassing term "common sense". The Resort Municipality of Whistler has incorporated common sense principles into its whole philosophy - an example of which is the creation of affordable housing for those working in the resort, thus creating vibrant year round neighborhoods and less green house gas emissions from car travel.

I consider my thoughts very much a work in progress. If you have any thoughts, please email me or leave a comment below.

School Trustees Want More Police in Schools

One of the clear messages School Trustees wanted to convey to City Hall was that their dedicated RCMP officer in schools program is working. And they would like our help to get more RCMP officers in schools. I think Council and Administration, on the whole, is reluctant to provide dollars. I mentioned that we should think about putting the project on the supplementary budget items list (items that are not core, but are nice to do). But my suggestion did not seem to resonate with other City officials. The budget pressures for the next year do seem huge at this point, given reports of increasing inflation and given greater demand on Kamloops' roads, pipes, and parks.

What we did agree on is a joint lobbying effort to our MPs and MLAs to get funding from the provincial and federal governments.