Will classrooms sit empty when 'shifting' starts?
PARENTS FIGHT SCHOOL DISTRICT PLANS
The
.... Citizen 1
Friday, April 14,1978 Vol. 22; No. 73 Prince George, British Columbia
by JOHN POPE Citizen Staff Reporter
Nearby classrooms will sit empty while students are put on shift at Highland Elementary school, concerned parents claim.
Hmjg Quinn, spokesman for parents in the Highland Elementary School area, told a meeting with school board officials Thursday almost anything from bigger classes to busing is preferable to the shifts proposed for the school ir September.
Quinn says an investigation by his group shows there are from seven to 10 classrooms available at six schools within walking distance of the area.
“We are incapable of understanding how these classrooms go empty while children and parents are required to pay a heavy social cost,” said Quinn.
He spoke at a meeting attended by school district administrators and about 90 parents in the Highland area.
"The cost is borne out in the disruption of the family unit and in the inability of the children to obtain a full-rounded education.”
Quinn said a shift schedule, proposed for September by the
school district for Heritage North and Highland Elementary Students, could be avoided by a single shuttle bus that would cost $100 a day to operate.
About 75 elementary students need to be accommodated until the Heritage North Elementary School iscompletod. The school is supposed to be finished by December.
“Most of the kids are within walking distance whi le a shuttle bus could take the other Heritage North students to Highglen and Quinson," said Quinn.
“There will be at least two rooms available in September at Highglen “and two or possibly three at Quinson."
The brief suggests other alternatives to shift schedu Ies are :
• Leasing of portable units, at approximately 20 per cent of the cost of buying them, until the Heritage North school is completed.
• Increase the student-teacher ratio at Highglen, Highland and Heritage South Elementary Schools until Heritage North
is completed. About 75 additional students would bespread out in the three schools.
The Highland meeting was the last of a series the school district has been holding with parents in the Heritage-Highlands. College Heights, Springwood, and Lakewood areas. The meetings on proposed school accommodation changes for September attracted an average of 70 parents each.
Art Erasmus, school district co-ordinator of school operations. indicated busing might be a feasible alternative but questioned the use of portables or increasing the student-teacher ratio.
He said portable classrooms, even if leased, would still be counted as permanent accommodation for students by the provincial government and would limit construction of permanent classrooms for students in the district.
He said an Increase in the student-teacher ratio was not considered initially as an alternative since it conflicts with a major school board policy of reducing class size.
All alternatives to school district accommodation for September will be discussed at Tuesday’s meeting of the school board.
BCR closure
would hit city, says chamber
Prince George will "become the hub of a flat wheel” if the B.C. Railway’s Fort Nelson line is scrapped, says tne Prince George chamber’s president.
Fred Garnett, chamber of commerce president, says even grocery stores in Prince George will be affected by any closure of the 400-km line from fort St. John to Fort Nelson.
"It will affect everything in Prince George because people will stop coming through here to service northern communities like Watson Lake and Fort Nelson,” he said. He said all development in the area would stop if the line is closed.
The chamber sent a telex Wednesday to Premier Bill Bennett, requesting the line not be closed as recommended in an interim report by the B.C. Kailway Royal Commission. The commission said the line would cost taxpayers $60-70 million in the next five years and trucking could provide a cheaper alternative.
Garnett was only one of several local and other officials who spoke out Thursday against any closure of the line.
Garnett said the provincial government’s attitude against the development of northern B.C. would turn investors away from the province to Alberta.
Prince George mayor Harold Moffat says the recommendation to scrap the rail line is “terrible”, but he is optimistic the Socred government will not follow the commission’s advice.
“They (Social Credit party) can’t afford to let it (the closure) happen”. If they did, they would never elect anyone in the north.”
Quesnel doctor killed in blaze
QUESNEL (Staff) - Dr. William McIntyre, 38, died in a fire in his home on Six Mile Road here Thursday.
RCMP said the cause of the fire is not known, but it appeared to have begun in the kitchen-dining room area, at about 11:30 p.m.
Dr. McIntyre’s wife Stella, and his daughter, 10, are in hospital today for treatment of minor injuries sustained when they jumped from a second floor window.
The McIntyres two 14-year-old sons were unhurt. McIntyre was found dead in a second floor bedroom.
Police and fire officials are investigating.
The fire destroyed the house, police said.
Norm Farley, president of the Joint Council of Unions on the B.C. Railway, said closing down the line would be "a sellout not only of the people of the north but of all British Columbians.”
The joint council met in Prince George Thursday and called on the provincial government not to follow the recommendations of the royal commission.
Alf Nunweiler, a former Fort George MLA and former BCR director, said terminating the line would be like removing a
See HCR page 2
Taxation
holdback
threatened
by DON MORBERG
Citizen Staff Reporter
Prince George won't give out what it doesn’t have and the regional district directors are upset.
A letter from the city council has informed the Fraser-Fort George Regional District it will not meet its commitment to pay the district’s requisition for taxation money if the money is not in from taxpayers.
Similar letters are going out to school district 57. the regional hospital district and the B.C. Assessment Authority for which the city also collects taxes.
The city, according to the letter, intends to pay out an amount relative to the amount of taxes collected. The letter resulted from a city council resolution on March 6.
The reason, regional board director and city alderman Art Stauble explained, is because the provincial government is making the city pay the other governments’ claims on up to $70,000 that it can not collect.
Most of these taxes, he explained, were from mobile home units which had moved on when tax bills arrived. Council can’t collect the money, he said, but still has to pay a portion to the regional and school boards.
Because the city is a member of the regional board, it pays a proportional share of the cost. The city acts as the school district’s tax collector inside the city boundaries.
Stauble’s explanation, however, fell on unsympathetic ears, particularly those of
See MISSING page 2
WITH CONDITIONS
Wage 'controls' wrap up today
'Seeing' the world
CIUmd photo by Dave Milne
Rolfe Barge (front) leads the way for his blind friend Tore Naerland as they pedal through Prince George towards adventure on a 6,000-mile trip from Alaska to Florida. The 23-year-old blind Norweigian does not let his handicap prevent him from “seeing” the world. Last year he pedalled 3,000 miles across the U.S. with another friend. Story, page 3.
Suspect termed paranoid
VANCOUVER (CP) - The man charged with the slayings of four Fraser Valley teenagers last July, is a loner driven by paranoid thinking and delusions that he’s protected by a supernatural force, a British Columbia Supreme Court jury was told Thursday.
Dr. James Tyhurst, a
psychiatrist, told the court that Walter Murray Madsen’s mental problems can be traced to the violent, irrational behaviour of an older sister afflicted by severe schizophrenia.
Madsen, 24, of Chilliwack has pleaded not guilty to the rifle slayings last July 18 of
Evert den Hertog, 19, his brother Jan, 16, Bert Menger, 19, and Leola Guliker, 16.
Three other psychiatrists, testifying for the Crown, earlier said that Madsen was legally sane the night of the slayings.
The trial continues.
OTTAWA (CP) - The promised phasing out of wage and price controls begins tooay but most workers and companies will continue to be subject to the program until the end of 1978.
The gradual removal of the program means the federal anti-inflation board, now with a staff of 736, will live on without any substantial shrinkage for at least another year.
Despite 2Ms years ot the mandatory controls, inflation still is at high levels. Last month, the cost of living soared by 1.1 per cent, largest one-month increase since July, 1975, three months before controls were implemented.
The 12-month inflation rate in March was 8.8 per cent. That is as close to the inflation rate in October, 1975, when the program began, as it is to the government’s twice-revised inflation target for 1978 of seven per cent.
When controls were introduced, the government hoped to bring inflation down to four percent thisyear. But food and energy prices and the devaluation of the dollar wrecked that plan.
The 1978 target was first revised to six per cent, then again in the budget Monday to seven per cent.
Nevertheless, Prime Minister Trudeau calls the program a success. Higher prices now are caused by factors outside rather than by mismanagement inthedomesticeconomy, he says.
Trudeau said Thursday he is satisfied there will not be another burst of inflatX after controls end. But he hiM?d that if people seek to catch up with higher international prices, controls might have to return.
Despite that, controls will continue until the final three months of the year for about 2.4 million employees out of 3.8 million who had been under the program. That is about 62 per cent of the total.
About 2,500 of the 3,300 firms originally under the program will be kept under limits until the final quarter of the year. That is about 76 per cent of the total.
Anti-inflation board officials say that they expect to be processing company reports on their final year under controls until mid-1979, despite the expiry of the Anti-Inflation Act on Dec. 31, 1978.
OUR MAN IN VICTORIA
Legislature: McGeer's in, Magoo's out
by ELI SOPOW Citizen Staff Reporter
VICTORIA — Sitting two sword-lengths apart, legislators here can scream and yell at each other all they want, but can’t refer to their colleagues as fat boy, Mr. Magoo, s.o.b. liar or mewling and pukin.
It’s borderline to say “I would not want to call that member a liar because I would be out of order.” It’s forbidden to actually call him a liar, or ‘‘thick-headed, jack-booted or pipsqueak."
Those are just a few terms on a suggested list of forbidden words for the B.C. Legislature. The list is a recap of words ruled out of order by past Speakers in the House.
The Speaker and various chairmen of legislative committees have the responsibility to keep order in the House including ruling on unparliamentary language.
Although the decision on language doesn’t need a precedent, speakers are helped by an index of previous decisions.
That index includes words like “stupid,
two-bit phony, buffoon, gutless bully and hysterical maniac.
All this may suggest that the proceedings in the House are less than friendly at times.
B.C. has a reputation for some of the most cantankerous legislative antics in the country and a one-shot visitor to the gallery may well wonder why we are paying grown men and women to behave like spoiled school children.
Deputy House Speaker Stephen Rogers admits a first-time look into the legislature can evoke images of a zoom.
Legislators wildly thump on tables, shake their fists at one another and carry on an endless banter.
Rogers said the procedures which may look elumsyon the surface really work very well in protecting the rights and best financial interests of the province. “It’s awkward and cumbersome at times but it should also be remembered that it works,” he said.
Rogers points out that anyone who watches the proceedings for more than a week or two realizes there is a system involved and the system does work.
But like any stage performance there are stars and there are bit players.
The stars are those who can deftly sidestep the rules while hitting home with a cutting remark.
Long time observers see Opposition Leader Dave Barrett as a man quick to his feet with a deadly comeback.
Attorney General Garde Gardom is considered a master wordsmith and a man who can easily use language toget around House rules.
He and Barrett can be seen constantly engaged in friendly sparring across the floor as serious business is being carried on.
Another sharp wit is NDP MLA and former attorney-general Alex Macdonald who’s one of the brighter brains on the Opposition side.
It was he who tore shreds off Premier Bill Bennett for his handling of the Jack Davis affair. However, Bennett is also quick with a glib reply but his humor sometimes misses the mark.
Another NDP MLA with a rapier wit and generous share of Opposition brain power is former economic development minister Gary
Lauk. lauk’s only downfall at times is lack of adequate research.
On the Socred side, those with the quick tongues and sharp minds are Consumer and Corporate Affairs Minister Rafe Mair, Mines Minister Jim Chabot and the brainy Pat McGeer, minister of education.
The lonely back benchers also get their say in the house, usually once a year in reply to the Throne or budget speeches. At that time they introduce any friends in the visitors gallery and make explicly clear every problem in their riding.
Other members catch up on paper work, gossip to one another, or leave as the lowly back benchers continue to talk. A more serious function of back benchers is to provide relief to cabinet ministers under attack from the Opposition.
If the volley gets too strong, the MLA will stand up and offer some comment, thereby giving the minister a chance to regain composure.
It’s called the parliamentary system.
For some reason, it seems to work.
TODAY
our
WITV\
Thin wrek:
Killed:..................................I
Injured:.............................14
Arrested as impaired:....22 This year:
Killed:..................................5
Injured:...........................16.’)
To same date 1977
Killed:..................................5
Injured:...........................192
FEATURED INSIDE
J
China.
visit
Page 37.
• Both B.C. teams won Thursday, as the Western Canada intermediate hockey tournament opened at the Coliseum. Page 13.
• The New York Rangers surprised Buffalo Thursday to stay alive, but the other first round National Hockey League playoff series are completed. Page 14
Bridge................ ...............29 Kntertainment...... ......17-22
Business............ ............8-10 Family.................... .....42,43
Church.............. .........40,41 Horoscopes........... ...........53
City, B.C.*.......2.1 J, 22, :i7, 49 International......... .............5
Classified.......... ..........25-35
Comics................ ...............17 Sports..................... ......13-16
Crossword........ ...............27 Television............. .....18, 19
...........21
THE WEATHER
The forecast for Prince George today and Saturday is mainly sunny skies with strong winds. Sunday’s forecast is sunny skies with afternoon cloudy periods. Temperatures are expected to be cool today and during the weekend.
The forecast high today is 6, the low -6. The high Thursday was 7, the low -5, with no precipitation. On this date last year the high was 8, the low -5.
NOW HEAR THIS
a Many parents took an easier breath Thursday, but not school trustee Steve Sintich. During a discussion of a proposed shift schedule for children in the Highland Elementary School area, trustee Austen Howard-Gibbon blurted out that he was “dead against shifting.” But his fellow trustee Steve Sintich was a bit more vague when asked what his position was. "I assure you my decision will favor the best possible solution to your question,” said Sintich, when he was put on the spot. Sintich said he would decide what his position Tuesday, along with the other trustees.
• "Most meetings happen before people know about them,” a regional director complained at Thursday’s meeting. "How lucky can you be,” Harold Moffat replied
• A former resident now living in lnuvik, N.W.T. reports she visited the Reindeer Grill in Tuktoyaktuk and dined on the specialty, a Bambi-Burger.