THE WEDNESDAY
JULY 18, 2012
CANADIAN COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER AWARD 2012
TRI-CITY NEWS Riverview: The nurses
A Peak at The Voice
SEE PAGE 13
SEE ARTS, PAGE 22
www.tricitynews.com
INSIDE
Tom Fletcher/10 Letters/11 Community Calendar/20 Sports/26
Automatic raises hike politicians’ Metro pay
Birds of a feather build together in Port Moody
Questions raised over calculation of mayors’ pay By Jeff Nagel BLACK PRESS
Mayors and councillors who sit on Metro Vancouver’s board or its committees are enjoying a nearly 5% increase in the meeting fees they collect. Metro directors are now paid $346 for every meeting they attend, up from $330 in 2011 and $322 in 2010. The fees double if a meeting exceeds four hours. The 4.8% raise this spring came not through any vote of the
board but from an automatic recalculation performed each year by administrators, who use a formula that increases directors’ fees in proportion with any rise in the median of Metro Vancouver mayors’ salaries. Thus, if a few cities raise their mayors’ salaries, the regional median rises and Metro meeting fees climb again the following year as a result. According to Metro figures, Delta Mayor Lois Jackson’s pay rose more than any other mayor in the region this year — a 16.7% jump from $100,523 to $117,360. see METRO TO LOOK LOOK,, page 9
Would-be doc gets head-start on saving lives Family thankful to Coq. student By Gary McKenna THE TRI-CITY NEWS
STEVE SMITH PHOTO
This pair of osprey was recently spotted by local photographer Steve Smith as they were building their nest on a platform atop a piling in Burrard Inlet, near the Rocky Point pier in Port Moody. The osprey have been nesting at Rocky Point ever since volunteers from a number of Tri-City stewardship groups built nesting platforms for them in the mid-1990s (occasionally, however, Canada geese beat them to the platform and they have to use a less suitable site). The platforms were installed after similar structures were successful in attracting osprey to nest at Maplewood Flats in North Vancouver. Always found near water, many osprey spend their summers in British Columbia after migrating north from the Gulf of Mexico, California or Latin America.
When Igor Tatarnikov applies to medical school next year, he can count on at least one family to provide a glowing reference letter. The 20-year-old Coquitlam man was hanging out with friends at a beach house in Point Roberts for the Canada Day weekend when one
member of the group, James Richardson, suddenly collapsed. R i c h a r d s o n , wh o also lives in Coquitlam, suf fers from Wolf fParkinson-White syndrome, a disorder that can cause sudden cardiac death in a small percentage of sufferers. But Tatarnikov acted quickly and put into practice his CPR training to revive Richardson, who he met for the first time that weekend. see ‘WE DIDN’T’,, page 6