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WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 2014
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Hyack grant still in limbo BY THERESA MCMANUS REPORTER tmcmanus@royalcityrecord.com
It will be at least a couple of weeks before the city decides the funding fate of the Hyack Festival Association. Each year, the city gives out environmental, amateur sports, arts and culture, community, child care, heritage and partnership grants. This year, the city reduced funding for several of the grant programs and redirected $241,000 into a new festival grant. On Monday, city council approved festival grants for the Arts Council of New Westminster (Arts to Go programs); the Downtown New For Westminster Business more Improvement Area info, (Columbia StrEAT Food scan with truck festival and the Layar Key West Ford Show and Shine); Fraser River Discovery Centre Society (Riverfest); Royal City Pride Society (2014 Pride Festival); Sapperton Business Association (Sapperton Days Street Festival); and the West End Business Association (12th Street Music Festival). Council asked staff to consult with the downtown business area about the proposed $18,100 in-kind costs for the Show and Shine, as it thinks there may be an ◗Hyack Page 5
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On a roll: Gabriel Gagne enjoys the beautiful weather at Mercer Park skateboarding park. Gagne took his rollerblades to the city park on a sunny Saturday earlier this month.
Ruling means more budget uncertainty BY NIKI HOPE REPORTER
nhope@royalcityrecord.com
Monday’s court ruling on class size and composition will impact next year’s budget plans “significantly,” but it’s too soon to say exactly how, according to New Westminster school district’s board of education vice-chair. The decision will affect a proposal on how to resolve some of the district’s bud-
get issues, which Michael Ewen planned to present to the board of education on Tuesday (after press time). “I’ll tell you right now, one of the main things I was looking at was increasing class sizes, and at this point … I don’t know what that would look like,” Ewen said. The New Westminster school district is dealing with a $5-million shortfall it must pay back to the province and has had to
make a series of sweeping staff cuts to avoid going further into debt. Ewen said he’s not sure how the government will fund potential demands for staff as a result of the ruling. The court ruled that the province must retroactively restore class size and composition language that was removed from teachers’ contracts in 2002 and pay the B.C. Teachers’ Federation $2 million in damages.
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“I mean surely the government is not going to say, ‘OK, the 2002 contract is back in place, and we’re going to keep on our mandate … of zero per cent increase in funding for teachers.’ “But how those will play out, how those will evolve, I don’t know,” said Ewen, who is a teacher in Surrey. New Westminster Teachers’ Union president Grant Osborne agreed that it was too
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