Welcome to Your Kamloops!

A Little Digital Grassland Birdie Told Me....

After posting the video promoting the Kamloops Energy Fair below, a good and wise reader reminded me of the tomorrow's Grasslands Celebration Day...looks like a lot of fun activities. Unfortunately for me, I have a paper due for my MA studies tomorrow and can't attend :(

Why Not Come Down to the Kamloops Energy Fair?

Saturday, June 19th 2010 - Mac Island.

The below video is an amazing promo, starring some of the organizers (who it turns out are not that shy!) :

More information here...

Will City Council Survive and Thrive Today?

Had a quick peruse of the monster agenda for today's City Council meeting. After a couple of weeks break from meetings, with a long weekend and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities convention in between, Council is likely in for a long meeting today.

I have mixed feelings about these agendas. Hard to avoid piling a lot of things on after a break in meeting, but having been there, it is also very difficult to keep focus and energy together on so many important issues.

Really Hard to Believe the RCMP Did Not Consult...

After all the growing pains coordinated efforts have been through, it is really hard to believe the RCMP did not consult with social agencies after arresting sex trade workers this past weekend. I am hoping there is some piece of information that did not get included in the article in the newspaper this morning.

I've been very supportive of the proactive efforts of our local detachment. Simply put, they have done an amazing job reducing crime in Kamloops and have been working cooperatively with other community safety partners.

I gotta wonder what happened here. New officer in charge of the arrests? Liason people on holiday?

Interesting Tidbits from 2009 City Hall Corporate and Community Affairs Report...

 

City Hall's Community and Corporate Affairs Department manages a number of essential services: emergency and fire safety and response, crime prevention and education, bylaw enforcement, and governance support.

At the March 30th 2010 Council meeting, the department presented its 2009 annual report. The report is available in the meeting agenda package (pdf file). I found the following pieces of information especially interesting.

 - The City Hall receptionist is a very busy person, handling between 200 and 250 calls a day while also helping people face to face. Among other administrative tasks, this person is also in charge of coordinating neighbourhood bottle drives, preparing 113 packages in support of various charities in 2009.

- Community safety volunteer programs, such as speed watch and citizens on patrol, are now coordinated through City Hall and not through the RCMP detachment. There are a lot of different opportunities to volunteer to help make Kamloops a safer place.

- City parking enforcement is much more proactive / aggressive (choose your word). From 2008 to 2009, the number of parking tickets issued in Kamloops went from 17,528 to 23,097 and parking ticket revenue went from $232,163 to $324,961.

- Bylaw enforcement, generally speaking, was also more proactive in 2009, with a 14% increase in workload.

- Within the context of an overall impressive service, the Kamloops Fire Department fell short of its target of containing 75% of structure fires to the room of origin (2009 actual was 55%). This performance measure seems like it is often not in the fire department's control.

- RCMP detachment files went from a total of 41,270 in 2007 to 35,343 in 2009. In contrast, calls to the RCMP switchboard increased from 49,694 to 67,797 in the same period.

- Kamloops crime rate has gone from 168.4 per thousand population in 2005 to 126 per thousand population in 2009.

Four More Good Reasons to Be Hopeful About Kamloops' Future...

 

Following a March 2010 community meeting,  Tuula, Ann, Krystal, and Gisela are working on a web site and email newsletter that will help people find about different sustainability related initiatives in Kamloops. The web site should be ready soon, under the name the Thompson Environmental Network. And I will link to it when it is. Exciting stuff!

Kamloops Energy Fair, June 19th 2010 - Live Stream...

Live from the show floor at the 2010 Kamloops Energy Fair!!

Interviews, Demonstrations, and Much More....

Feed will be live on June 19th 2010...

Watch live streaming video from yourkamloops at livestream.com

Reflections on John O'Fee's Council Comment on Government Debt...

 

Councillor John O'Fee's latest column in the Kamloops Daily News deals with government debt. It's a pretty solid piece, in my opinion, explaining the benefits and costs of the practice.

A couple of things struck me.

This first is a bit of tangential point. John partly justifies government debt by saying "Like any enterprise, improvement requires investment." I personally would hate to think this is true. Sometime, improvement might mean cutting when budgets are getting too high or when programs are no longer working. John makes a similar point, seems to me, in the last sentence of his column in saying "It’s certainly not a problem we can afford to ignore."

Second, and this is more of a question, I'm wondering why John used TNRD (our regional district) aggregate figures rather than City of Kamloops figures. It would probably made the column a lot stronger if people had a better picture of what is happening locally.

Kudos and Constructive Criticism for Cathy...

Our MP Cathy McLeod has again asked for public input. This time the meeting focused on the reform of the federal pension system. I praised Cathy for holding public consultations on the federal budget, and I continue to be very impressed.

I hope Cathy will consider changing her mind on another issue, though. I was surprised to read that she did not support Canada's auditor general examining MP expenses. When I served on Kamloops City Council, it was sometimes scary to subject my own judgments on conference and travel spending to public scrutiny, but ultimately citizens need to know how their money is being spent. If everything can be justified, why should it not be examined and made public.

TRU Looking for Business Partnerships...

Do you have an idea for a great new product? Starting a business but don't have a lot of resources?

No, this is not an infomercial.

Yesterday, Dr Lincoln Smith who works at Thompson Rivers University spoke to my Rotary Club. Lincoln was promoting TRU as a partner for local businesses. They already do a lot of work with manufacturing and technology companies, but are open to talking to any business about possible opportunities. Lots of interesting opportunities!