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Prog Program lets students put meaning back in math. m
Downtown farmer’s market returns.
Soccer support for stricken teen.
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Mosquitoes ‘shouldn’t be as bad’ this year
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Jennifer Feinberg The Progress It’s spring freshet time in the Fraser Valley, which also means the start of mosquito season. But two months of extra dry weather in Chilliwack means less water seepage up into Fraser River side channels and tributaries where nuisance mosquitoes tend to hatch. “So we think it’s shaping up pretty well this season,” said Dirk Lewis of Morrow BioScience. “The dry weather has kind of helped us out.” The end of snowmelt freshet at Mission also signals the end of the preseason larvicide treatments with BTi which were underway by Morrow BioScience crews. “But unless there’s another peak in water levels, or extra rain, that’s it,” Lewis added. The resulting abundance of adult nuisance mosquitoes, meaning the ones that bite, is correlated strongly to Fraser water levels, said Lewis. So the higher the water goes, the more terrain and larvae get covered. The larvae then get hydrated and hatch. Flood water mosquitoes are the nasty ones because they tend to be buzzing around in bigger numbers, he said, and are more aggressive than some other types. But because there is not a lot of snow melt water rushing down from the upper Fraser River watersheds right now, it likely means it will turn out to be quite manageable. “It shouldn’t be as bad as some years,” he said. The years 2007 and 2012 were particularly challenging. But river levels in 2015 are not going to reach the peak levels of previous years, but rather are expected to be relatively normal. Continued: SEASON/ p12
Sonny Joe takes a close look at old cans of food during the 100th anniversary celebration of Overwaitea Food Group at Save-On Foods in downtown Chilliwack on Wednesday. Overwaitea got its name from its customers who, back in the old days, received 18 oz of tea for the price of 16 oz, so it was known as the “overweight tea” store. The first Overwaitea store in Chilliwack opened in 1963 at the corner of Victoria Avenue and Mill Street. JENNA HAUCK/ PROGRESS
Maahs presses for recorded school board meetings Jessica Peters The Progress School board meetings could soon be recorded and viewable online, if a motion on next Tuesday’s agenda is approved by the board. Trustee Heather Maahs will ask her cohorts to vote “ that the board instruct staff to implement the recording of board meetings at minimal cost, and post the recording on the school district’s website by the Friday immediately following the board meeting.” The issue has been discussed
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Savage for the information and moved on. But the issue came again at the May 19 meeting, when Maahs waived her allotted time for a trustee’s report to state that she would be bringing the motion forward on June 9. She has been pushing the board to record meetings for the last several months, in an effort to ensure the board is “transparent to the public,” while allowing more people to attend the meetings in a virtual setting. “Taxpayers and parents need to be able to see what the people Continued: BOARD/ p12
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board to accommodate the equipment, including new flooring to layover cables, for safety. One option that would not require a technician came in just under $18,000. The most expensive option was for a technicianoperated setup, at $26,766. A technician cost was estimated at double time for four hours per meeting, at the range of $250 to $300 per meeting. However, the presentation was immediately after a preview of next year’s budget, in which the district had to find $2.7 million. Instead of taking action at that time, the board thanked
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at length by the Chilliwack school trustees, and earlier this year they directed district staff to present a report on recording options. That report was presented by Director of Instruction Kirk Savage on April 28, following a previous motion also put forward by Maahs. The report included various options for trustees to mull over. They included the ability for different camera angles, and rates for technicians to operate the equipment in some cases. Installing microphones could mean small adjustments to the
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