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Volume 58 No. 27
Walking tall on history Cameron Orr Should the town be considering extending the walkway system to go through Coghlin Park at the viewpoint? The Kitimat Heritage Group posed that question when they joined councillors for a tour of some of the town’s walkways last week during a Committee of the Whole meeting. The full council, some staff and the committee members embarked on an unusual outdoors meeting for part of the evening on June 24 to see walkways which may need work, some which have almost completely disappeared underneath growth. But before anyone took off on the tour, the two sides gathered to find out their concerns. Among those was from Heritage Committee member Walter Thorne, who emphasized the importance of the system to the community. “We would like, as a group, to suggest that that walkway would be very much in keeping with the original plan and the original intent of how things were seen,” he said. Those plans, he hopes, would be to see a Coghlin Park extension on the walkway. “The crowing of our sidewalk system would be to connect the existing Haisla Hill one somehow, to one that would go by Coghlin Park...preferably on the water side,” he said. Director of Engineering Tim Gleig said that a Coghlin Park system hasn’t been officially discussed in some years, but a report was made once on the prospect by the Leisure Services department, which pegged it at a $750,000 price tag. Speaking after the walking tour, Heritage Group member Peter Ponter said the purpose of the walk was to give councillors a better understanding of the walkway system. “When I first came to Kitimat it was one of the things that I was impressed with, the walkway system,” he said. “It’s unusual that there are places that might be quicker to walk to than drive. The heritage component is also crucially important. “[Kitimat] was built as a garden city, and there are other examples of places like this, but most of them are just part of a town, or part of a city, not the whole town.” He added, “It seems like we have a readymade opportunity to help people exercise. You could call our walkways an investment in health care.” Mayor Joanne Monaghan says maintaining the town’s walkways are a priority for her as the demographics keep shifting to an older community. Continued on page 2
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Sentinel
Northern
www.northernsentinel.com
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
1.30 INCLUDES TAX
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KUTE employees Adrien Goffinet, Josh O’Neill, and John Davidson demonstrate just how backed up the depot is - in this instance on office paper - but the same goes for cardboard, electronics, and other materials.
A $30K boost will keep KUTE running Kitimat Understanding the Environment (KUTE) is still struggling against a touch recycling economy and competition for employees from other industries. KUTE President Barb Hall and Director Ken Maitland presented their financial needs to councillors at the June 24 Committee of the Whole meeting, where they wanted another increase in their funding for the year in order to recruit a strong depot manager. Hall said that the depot is having trouble retaining long term managers due to so much activity in Kitimat as of late. “Not having a mature, long-term and experienced manager creates the situation we find ourselves in,” she said. Mismanagement has lead to a huge backlog of recyclables at their depot, which is taking away precious space and creating workplace safety issues, she said. “The back log of unsorted paper has been the result of many poor decisions when materials arrive in large quantities. This is limiting flow of materials and forcing the workers to handle these materials many times,” she said. She wants to be able to hire a manager at a rate of $18 an hour. Having a long-term, qualified manager will mean they can begin making progress on their intense back log. She said in a letter written to Council that in June they hired a new manager for the fourth time in seven months. KUTE has been participating in a program called Odyssey,
which gives people who need work experience the chance to do jobs to put on their resumes, but the work, while making progress, won’t get them to where they need to be by the time the program ends. At the committee of the whole meeting, it was moved that KUTE be given an extension to their $2,500 a month boost, first given in March. Now they’ll receive that extra, emergency funding to the end of the year, plus will receive an additional $850 per month to hire a new manager, and council also agreed to provide a $10,000 one-time booster for tasks relating to clearing their material backlog, including forklift training and other expenses. In total the extra funding to KUTE from the District of Kitimat adds up to $30,100. Councillors were unanimous in passing the motion. The mover, Mario Feldhoff, felt it was a worthwhile investment. “This money, in my mind, won’t cripple us,” he said, noting that they’ll look again at the funding the society needs once the 2014 budget process begins. In late March of this year, Hall explained the situation in the recyclables market. At the time they were facing a cardboard price of $50 a tonne, which has now dropped at least another $10 in value. Meanwhile office paper tumbled from $125 to $60 a tonne in March. Continued on page 7
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Firetruck off to Peru ... page 7