The Chilliwack
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Y O U R C O M M U N I T Y N E W S PA P E R • F O U N D E D I N 1 8 9 1 • W W W. T H E P R O G R E S S . C O M • T H U R S D AY, S E P T E M B E R 1 9 , 2 0 1 3
Ministry says byelection must be held
■ P ADDLING T OGETHER
Katie Bartel The Progress Despite an election just 14 months away, Chilliwack Board of Education has been ordered it must call a byelection to replace outgoing trustee Louise Piper. The board had hoped the ministry of education would approve a “special circumstances” request to overrule the school act and allow the board to continue with six trustees instead of seven for the remainder of the term. However, section 36 of the school act states a byelection must be held to fill a vacancy on a board if a trustee resigns prior to Jan. 1 of an election year. And because of the word “must” used in the directive, the ministry of education told the board Tuesday it would not be fulfilling its request. “I am very disappointed,” said board chair Walt Krahn. “This will take a fair amount of focus away from the work we do here, and we will also have to incur the expense of the election on our own.” For regular elections, the school district partners with the City of Chilliwack and shares the costs. However, secretary-treasurer Gerry Slykhuis estimated the cost of the byelection to be around $50,000, of which the school district will solely be responsible for. “In some ways [the expense accrued from a byelection] is worse because we are not sharing the cost with the City,” said Slykhuis. “It’s almost as costly as a full election.” The expense will mostly cover the costs of staffing voting stations and hiring a chief elections officer and deputy elections officer. The nomination period is from Oct. 15-25. The byelection is Nov. 30. Louise Piper took medical leave in January of this year. The district stopped paying her a salary in April, at her request. On Aug. 23, she resigned. Piper had been a trustee for four years and was in her second term on the board.
JENNA HAUCK/ PROGRESS
Chance to negotiate new recycling deal welcomed Jennifer Feinberg The Progress The extra time given to B.C. cities to decide how they’ll participate in the new product packing and printed paper recycling program is much appreciated in the Fraser Valley, said FVRD Chair Sharon Gaetz. “We’re pleased they have extended the deadline, but there are still a number of outstanding issues and concerns that need to be addressed,” Gaetz said yesterday.
The provincial program from Multi Material BC is geared to making retailers, goods producers and newspapers that generate waste packaging and printed paper ultimately responsible for the collection and recycling of it. There are still a range sticking points for local governments, such as impacts to air quality in the Fraser Valley, which is always a concern, Gaetz said. “MMBC would gain complete control of where the collected materials go after collection, leaving our municipalities with
no say whatsoever,” she said. “If they decide to bring the collected recyclables to an incinerator for example, that would be totally unacceptable.” People are also accustomed to discarding glass along with any recyclables. “They removed that option so it’s a step backward for service levels in our region.” Multi Material BC is under fire from civic leaders who are protesting what they call unreasonable terms for their cities to act as curbside recycling col-
lectors when the new system launches next spring. Much criticism centred having cities either commit to a contract to be a collector for MMBC, let the agency contract out blue box pickup to other collectors or else keep running recycling services without compensation from MMBC. The initial deadline of Sept. 16 was only for cities seeking to become contractors when the rollout takes place in May of Continued: RECYCLE/ p16
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kbartel@theprogress.com twitter.com/schoolscribe33
Herb Joe (left) speaks during the Indian Residential School Day of Learning event at the Gathering Place at the Chilliwack campus on Wednesday. The replica of a 12-person canoe (seen here) was part of the day’s ‘Paddling Together’ theme. Twelve people circled the canoe — four were residential school survivors — in a ceremony which “showed a meaningful way to represent healing, understanding, facing the truth, and creating harmonic relationships,” said Eddie Gardner, UFV elder-in-residence.
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