Welcome to Your Kamloops!

The True Spirit of YourKamloops...

If you haven't yet, might I recommend scrolling through the comments below. This site at its best. People other than me take the site over. People power.

About homelessness and poverty, there is a huge amount of insight offered by Mike, Skylark, and Mayor Quimby. And, I think for the first time, instead of pontificating myself, I linked to someone elses post - thanks again Jayney. There is a huge lesson in that for me. This site is called yourkamloops but too much of it is still Arjun's Kamloops.

I gotta link out more often. 

Thanks to all of you who have contributed thus far.

And invite everyone reading these words to join in the conversation below or to comment on any other post on the site. You totally don't need your own web site to help this one become better!

Healthy Lives, Not Clean Streets

Interesting thoughts at the Din on Inequity blog about the lens through many of us view homeless people in our community. In my view, we often get the prioirities "bass ackwards". I think if we assist the homeless get on their feet, it is not only a moral imperative, but also will "clean up the streets". But, if we talk of the poor and homeless as "abnormal users" for whom we should have "zero tolerance", this only serves to push people around our community and perhaps even makes them more desperate.

Kamloops This Week Coverage of City Issues...Some Thoughts...

I initially decided to write this post out of some frustration. A week or so ago, Markus Ermisch, Kamloops This Week (KTW) reporter and a fellow I like, called me about a comment I made here about how the city could save money and make money. He asked me if the comment I made about the city parks, rec and culture department meant that I had little confidence in department director Byron McCorkell. I didn't like the question. I said nothing was further than the trust.

Today, I regret my initial motivation to share thoughts on Kamloops This Week. I want today to share thoughts on KTW coverage from a more centred and balanced place. I fully support Markus in asking tough and prickly questions.

I sometimes say that we go through a whole council meeting, debating many different issues, asking a lot of different questions, making comments, etc. Then, we open up the papers, tune in the radio, turn on the tv - and find out what actually happened.

Reporters have a tough job. They have to sit through all the stuff I mention in the paragraph above, sift through it all, and decide what issues are relevant and important to convey to their readers. They have toask tough questions of others and of themselves. They have very limited time to write and limited space to display their stories.

An additional huge responsibility for city hall reporters: their stories have huge influence on how people feel about city hall activities. So, I think that their challenge is to offer as accurate portrayal as possible.

So, with those overall thoughts in mind, here are some specific thoughts on Kamloops This Week coverage of city issues.

• Markus is go getter. Some of his work educates me about city hall activities or issues I did not know about before. And I appreciate that.
• I wish Markus would do less of the easy, lowbrow stuff. An example: comments I made about outsourcing at a Council meeting were relayed to Jim Sinclair, president of the BC Federation of Labour. Of course, Sinclair slammed me. Not too surprising, but a front page story. And did it really help people understand the issue of outsourcing?
• From Markus' reporting, and from the commentary of KTW editor Chris Foulds, I would surmise they are coming more from the traditional right of centre perspective. This of course is balanced by Dale Bass' social issues commentary.
  

I could probably come up with more thoughts. But, lets keep it short, simple, and sharp as I can make it today. And this post is meant as a start of a conversation, not the end. I might update my thoughts from time to time.

Kamloops Daily News, Radio NL, and Broadcast Centre - now that I have commented on KTW, I guess I have to make this post the first in a 4 part series.

Happy Earth Day...

Happy Earth Day!

I spent some of Friday on radio (B100) and on tv (TV7)  - talking about the environment and what people can do to be better to our environment. Actually, being better to the environment is, in many ways, being better to humanity - this generation and generations to come.

I have taken the step of reducing my driving by about 75% (rough math). And actually, as well as being better to the environment, I have also been better to my pocketbook, my health, and my sense of community.

We do have to give up things to "go green". But we also get a lot in exchange.

Thanks Cheryl and Steve for inviting me on the show once again. And thanks Larry Read for inviting me on Midday.

To my friends at Kamloops This Week

Hey MarKus and Chris - thanks for reading the site. I will be very soon sharing some of my thoughts about your coverage of city issues in these pages. Stay tuned...

To the Comments on the Blog post directly below

Want to thank Mayor Quimby for commenting on my blog post below. Yes, we do have to do a lot of research before looking for new savings and new revenue.  I start from the premise that community programs that have broad based support should not be cut, and raising fees more than we already have set in motion should also not be considered. Parks and Rec does have programs to help low income people access rec programs.

I was thinking about more sponsorships and business marketing opportunities in city rec facilities. I was also thinking about perhaps turning parts of our parks into more natural areas - which might require less maintenance.

Marcus Ermisch, from Kamloops This Week, just called and said he thinks that I am criticizing city staff (again). I am doing no such thing. I am just starting a conversation. Maybe, there are not "huge revenue and savings opportunities" in the Parks and Rec and Culture (PRC) department, but lets at least have a conversation. Byron McCorkell, the PRC director is a consummate professional and a very approachable guy. I think we can have a good conversation.

Voting Yes to the City Budget

Despite reservations that I expressed here previously, I voted yes today to set the property tax rates increases for 2007, as follows:

• 1.98% overall
• 3% for residential tax payers

This was a unanimous vote of the 6 Councillors present. Mayor Lake and Councillors Lange and O'Fee were not at today's meeting.

Here is why I voted yes:

• City staff have done a very good job answering my questions about efficiency measures employed within city hall operations.
• Regarding a lot of my concerns about levels of service offered by the city and about city spending generally, I still have those concerns, but feel that there was little community concern about the proposed tax increases. I think most citizens feel a 3% tax increase is palatable. It does not mean that they would not like less, if it can be practically done...
• ...I am learning what it takes to actually meaningfully have a chance to influence the city budget and, for me, it needs to start a lot earlier than at the council budget meetings we start holding in December. I am going to start talking to senior city staff now about these issue - I think Byron McCorkell will probably be my first call because his parks, recreation, and culture department has huge revenue and savings opportunities for city hall.

A Month as Deputy Mayor...

All members of Council in Kamloops, month by month, rotate into the Deputy Mayor position. As Deputy Mayor, not only do we provide another person to attend the very large number of event to which the Mayor is invited, we also have to perform the functions of Mayor if the Mayor is not available. I just finished my second rotation as Deputy Mayor in March and I had the opportunity to chair a Council meeting, field quite an angry phone call and to sign a few legal documents on behalf of the community.

I got a chance to witness some pretty amazing events in March. The Soroptomist and the Business and Professional Women Association awards dinner, the Kamloops Cowboy Festival, the Canadian Cancer Society's new office opening on Daffodil Day, and the Triple A women's provincial hockey championship. I was asked to cut the ribbon at the Cancer Society office opening but asked the local president, Marion York, to join me. We are not the important folks at these events.

In Merritt, on my way to Vancouver for a quick spring break getaway, I fielded a call forwarded by the city hall switchboard. A lady was very irate, close to tears, over her car being towed. She was from out of town, and close to broke. I am not sure she acknowledged any wrong doing. She wanted the towing charges waived. I told her that if she was really desperate for the money to pay for the towing, I would try to arrange to get some money to her personally - not in any official capacity. She kept on saying how she would tell people about how unfriendly Kamloops was. Perhaps, in hindsight, I might have taken a different tact. I could go broke if I kept these offers up.  But, perhaps not. The lady seemed just to want to talk to someone who was a little sympathetic. I have more flexibility to be sympathetic, sometimes, than a city staffer. And she did not take me up on my offer. I guess if she really needed the money, and I could afford to help, well small price to pay.

Mayor Lake kind of sprung the news on me, in the morning, that he was asking me to step into the Mayor's chair for most of the March 27th meeting. I was a little nervous, but as I actually stepped into the chair, I actually relaxed and felt things went quite smoothly. Helps to have Councillors John O Fee and Pat Wallace to my left hand, helping me.

So, as the meeting ended, I was quite pleased. As I got home, though, I just felt exhausted. I didn't realize it as I was doing it, but chairing such important, complex community meetings is quite the effort. I only have, before,  ever felt that kind of tired after election forums.

The Deputy Mayor, Pesticides, Transit, and the Social Plan

Been an interesting couple of weeks. I did another turn as deputy mayor in March and will try to write something about that experience.

Today, Council voted against a pesticide restriction bylaw that would restrict licensed pesticide applicators from using pesticides. We did vote for an education campaign, and asked staff to bring us back a bylaw that I see as a little more permissive. I voted for the pesticide bylaw presented today, due to a great concern about the adverse health effects of pesticides, but am now supporting the process we follow from here.

Some interesting opinions expressed in Kamloops This Week, this past week. Editor Chris Foulds, writing about my spurned proposal to require a development of a new condo complex to offer a trial pack of transit passes said:

Transit works in those cities for the same reason it does not work so well here — population and amenities.

If the goal of Singh’s transit-pass proposal was to get people to ditch their cars in favour of the bus, it just won’t work for most people in this sprawling city.

I do think transit can work for a lot of people in Kamloops - maybe not most, but a lot. And city hall is working in cooperation with other partners to put together a transit marketing people to make the pitch to targeted user groups. I think we will have great results.

As well in KTW, a couple of letter panning the city's efforts to update the social plan. One writer says we should "give the homeless a healthy dose of tough love":

The thought of spending any more money on the homeless and street people makes me sick.

When we provide them with any free services at all, we only enable them to continue living as they do....

...Close the shelters, stop giving them free food and move the bottle depots and pawn shops outside of the city and away from any liquor stores.

Another opines:

Once again our city council has decided to waste more taxpayer money by conducting a $75,000 social-studies exercise....

...That $75,000 would buy a lot of one-way bus tickets to some other province, where the climate and living are not as easy as in British Columbia.

I hold an entirely different point of view. We are our brothers and sisters keepers. We have to assist people who have not had a great lot in life - helping them live productive and worthy lives is a difficult and complex endeavour but one that will bear fruit. Not only more contributing members of society, less crime, less unsightliness, less adverse effects on others.