CP Holiday Train arrives behind Sandman Centre today at 5 p.m. Festivities begin at 3:30 p.m. Please bring a food and/or cash donation for the Kamloops Food Bank
KAMLOOPS THIS WEEK THURSDAY
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DECEMBER 17, 2015 | Volume 28 No. 151
DID YOU FEEL THE QUAKE? A small earthquake was lightly felt by residents in Kamloops in the wee hours of yesterday morning. The federal Natural Resources Department’s website said the quake was 3.6 magnitude and occurred just before 2 a.m. Its epicentre was about 30 kilometres west of Kamloops. Reports of the quake were made from several areas of the Kamloops region, including the city’s North Shore and just west of Savona. Beverley Law said she and her husband were woken up by the tremor that felt like the vibration of a jackhammer. Law said the house was rattling, but it stopped about 30 to 45 seconds after they were roused. There have been no reports of damage and officials with Earthquakes Canada said there have been no further quake readings for the area. The earthquake shook more than a few homes in the area and residents took to social media to describe their experiences. Kamloops This Week has compiled a number of those recollections, which can be read online at kamlooopsthisweek.com/ kamloopsquake. Meanwhile, the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission confirmed yesterday that a 4.6-magnitude earthquake in northeast B.C. in August was caused by fracking, a process that involves pumping a mixture of water, sand and chemicals underground at high pressure to fracture rock and release trapped natural gas.
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Daily News building stays — for now ANDREA KLASSEN
STAFF REPORTER
andrea@kamloopsthisweek.com
The former Kamloops Daily News building will continue to stand on Seymour Street for at least one more year — but, in holding off the wrecking ball, council appears to have thwarted its plan to come up with a new use for the space. The issue lies with the way council put off the demolition, via a tabling motion. (In the U.S., to table a motion means to set it aside; in Canada and many other countries, it means the opposite, to bring forward a motion for debate. In this story, tabling refers to setting aside the motion, since that is how the phrase was used at council). According to corporate officer Cindy Kennedy, once a topic up for debate has been tabled, it can’t be brought back to chambers for debate until the time chosen by council has elapsed, in this case a year. The tabling motion from Coun. Denis Walsh was approved via a 5-4 vote, with councillors Tina Lange, Dieter Dudy, Arjun Singh and Donovan Cavers voting to preserve the building for now. Under the rules of order, once a tabling motion is up for a vote, debate must halt. But, following a recess after the vote, Mayor Peter Milobar told council its decision had effectively put the issue of the Daily News building on ice.
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Not only is council forbidden from debating the building’s future, he said, it also cannot direct staff to look at other options. “Staff are worried we’re going to see community groups coming in and we have no direction to save the building,” Milobar said. That set off a scramble to rescind the motion. But, under the same rules of order, council must have a two-thirds’ majority to undo a tabling motion. Instead, council split along the same 5-4 lines, with Milobar and councillors Marg Spina, Pat Wallace and Ken
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Christian voting to leave the tabling motion in place. Speaking to KTW following the meeting, Kennedy said she is not sure if council is permitted to make further attempts to reverse the tabling when it meets again in the new year. “I’ve never had a tabling motion that someone wants to bring back before the time is up,” she said. A visibly upset Walsh believes Milobar may have known he was making a mistake with his motion. During recess, Walsh told KTW he was hoping to propose a design charrette in the new year to collect ideas from the public. “There was a definite misunderstanding on the part of council,” Walsh said. “I obviously made a tactical error on tabling the motion and nobody else knew the clarity of what that meant, and we had the opportunity to clarify it and four councillors decided to basically sabotage that intention.” At that point, Milobar stepped into Walsh’s interview, calling his language “over the top.” Milobar said the mistake wasn’t sabotage, but came about due to a motion that wasn’t well thought out. “I can’t sit here as the chair and keep guessing what people’s intentions are over and above the motions they make,” Milobar said. See ISSUE, A6
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