BUSINESS
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OUTFIELDER Kyle Pearson continues to swing a hot bat for the Kelowna Falcons, hitting .423 in his first 15 games.
COLUMNIST Maxine DeHart may have found the person with the technology to correct the golf course green misreads when putting.
REGGAE SINGER Ezra Kwizera brings his Africabased singing soul to the Minstrel Cafe and Lille Gard Music and Arts Festival this weekend.
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THURSDAY June 28, 2012 The Central Okanagan’s Best-Read Newspaper www.kelownacapnews.com
▼ TEACHERS
Short shelf life for new contract offer Tentative two-year deal bolsters benefits, but misses resolution of wage issues and class size and composition issues until talks on the next contract start next March. Jennifer Smith STAFF REPORTER
Monday evening. He encourages people to report it when they see garbage being dumped along the service road.
▼ OUTDOORS
Hunters clean up after junk dumpers Judie Steeves STAFF REPORTER
More than 4,000 kilograms of junk was cleaned out of the forest along the Gillard Forest Service Road Monday evening by a dedicated group of local hunters who were appalled by what people had dumped there. The effort was coordinated by Kelowna outdoorsman Sean Richardson, who said he heads up
into that area with his family to do some biking along the KVR, hiking, geocaching, light a fire for the kids to roast hotdogs and for hunting in the fall. When he was up there on Father’s Day he was surprised by all the piles of garbage he saw. “It was the worst I’d ever seen,” he said. He saw everything from demolition materials and lumber apparently dumped by a contract-
or, to the remnants of an illegal marijuana growing operation, to household garbage and computers people had used for target practice, to yard waste which can be taken to the landfill for no charge. “How can people think it’s okay to dump their garbage like this in the bush?” he asked. And, as soon as one person dumps some grass clippings or a bag of trash, within days it seems
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to attract all sorts of other garbage, as other people join in, he noted. “It’s just not acceptable behaviour,” he stated. To combat what he saw growing in the wild, he began to phone around to see what kind of assistance he could get to clean it up. BFI agreed to deliver a 40yard bin to the area to be filled
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CONTRIBUTED
KELOWNA OUTDOORSMAN Sean Richardson (right) organized a volunteer clean up of junk dumped along the Gillard Forest Service Road
McCurdy Rd.
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The president of the Central Okanagan Teachers’ Association says she feels like a broken record in saying it takes two sides to bargain—again. But this is where Wednesday morning found Alice Rees as she fielded media queries about a tentative contract deal the province struck Tuesday evening with the B.C. Teachers’ Federation. “Bargaining is the art of the possible,” she said. “The executive committee of the BCTF clearly thinks that this is all that is possible at this time. “We were living under 1987 standards that were negotiated at the dawn of teacher negotiations,” she added. “…Generally, it’s an agreement that both parties are saying this is as much as we can do.” Alice Rees Rees explained that the extended medical benefit upgrades teachers receive under the agreement are the first since 1987. The class size and composition issues ignored in the agreement are no less of an issue today than they were at the beginning of the negotiation process, she added. All the same, early Wednesday morning Premier Christy Clark held a teleconference from West Kelowna telling media this would give parents piece of mind over the summer break. “This tentative agreement means parents and students can enjoy the summer break and know that when
+ Leathead Rd. Hwy 33w