Council Meeting Feb 13th 2007 - Recap

Today, Cam Fortems took Michelle Young's place at the media table. Michelle usually covers Council for the Kamloops Daily News. But, she had covered the budget meeting in the morning. And, likely as pertinent, her 9 year old son, Arden Rogers, wanted to come to Council to try to save an old beautiful fountain in Riverside Park. Could have been awkward for mother to report on her son.

Arden, a very earnest young chap, came to the podium at the start of the meeting (public inquiries section) and asked us to consider rehabilitating the Cunliffe Fountain - donated by a prominent citizen in 1962 and recently having stopped functioning.  I think all in the room were very impressed with Arden but agreed we probably won't have the budget to rehabilitate the fountain in this year's budget. Seemed also the consensus that the fountain should not be demolished.

We then went into a section of the agenda called "Chief Administration Officer Reports". In this section is usually a lot of building development related stuff, but also bylaw related issues and updates on important city initiatives and programs. First thing we did here today was vary a bylaw to allow for a sign at the new Lansdowne Village Mall downtown.

We then discussed the status of a much desired pedestrian and bike route from Valleyview into downtown. The problem is getting by the huge morass of highway on and off ramps that is the Valleyview interchange. City staff have been working on a number of different designs, and have run not only into huge cost escalation issues, but also the refusal of CP rail to approve of building over their track. So, now we have to try to revitalize an interim plan to route bicycles and pedestrians through the Gregson and Rivers Trails. City staff will consult with the bicycle advisory committee and other groups,  sharpen their pens in terms of cost, and come back to Council with a solid recommendation.

David Trawin, Development and Engineering Services Director, presented his department's 2006 report. I hope to post here or link to the report in the near future. We were updated on city hall efforts to deal with mountain pine beetle infestation and approved $200 000 in the budget to continue the curbside pickup program - about 80 homeowners have been served so far.

Jim Carroll and Fred Pain came to talk to us about water hauling to Knutsford, and about their contention the publics work consolidation of water standpipes into one location would be detrimental to their efforts to obtain water in a cost efficient and environmentally sensitive manner. Council asked staff to research the feasibility of creating a metred, regulated standpipe in the south west area of the city, closer to Knutsford.

We proclaimed Heritage Week and Scouting Baden-Powell week.

We approved the temporary closing of streets and restrictions of parking to accommodate the 2007 schedule of Kamloops' Farmers Markets.