‘WE ONLY PAY LIP SERVICE‘
City 'offers nothing' cultural, rec director claims
by TOM NIXON Citizen Stuff Reporter
Cultural arts programming is being virtually ignored in the city’s recreation programming, recreation director John Furlong charged Wednesday.
“In fact, we only pay lip service to culture," he told a joint meeting of city council and civic properties commissioners.
“We're a way behind (in leisure cultural programs)," Furlong said, ‘‘It’s a fact. We’re offering nothing."
Furlong was backed up by civic properties and recreation manager Bill Woycik.
"I'm sorry to say it, but Studio 2880 (the 15th Avenue arts centre) is not covering a great percentage of the population," he said.
"The things offered in the community now are at a very low level.”
20* Copy
Thursday, October 26,1978 Vol. 22; No. 208
Prince George, British Columbia
Woycik said Studio 2880’s arts clubs serve a lijnited clientele and other arts programs have limited novice approacE.
He said there’s nothing for a large number wanting a more expert level of programs.
Furlong said the recreation department is not setting up any
duplicate programs that compctc with activities of private clubs, the College of New Caledonia or the school board.
The recreation department hn« been criticized in the past by Alderman Monica Becott for trying to take over all leisure activity in the city.
Becott is a strong council supporter of Studio2880, which she helped to organize before becoming an alderman.
Studio 2880 manages the city’s arts buildings complex, formerly the Forestry Buildings which were turned over to the city in the 1975 amalgamation.
Furlong said a committee of representatives of all groups offering leisure activity programs ensures that programs are not duplicated.
He said the recreation department encourages others, such as the college or community associations to offer programs it hasn’t facilities for.
“There is no duplication of programs,” he said, “Nothing.
“The whole works of us (all groups) can’t keep up with the demand.”
Furlong has been saying for the past month that part of the proposed recreational master plan study would be a review of all leisure activity in the city to point out inadequacies.
DISOBEYING AN ACT OF PARLIAMENT
Leaders of postal union charged
TODAY
"Anything else you'd Ska me to straighten out if I get to Ottawa?"
FEATURED INSIDE
Sharing the wealth
, Every man, woman and child in Alaska could, share in the state’s rich future of energy development in an almost-radical scheme now being studied. Page 5.
Feeling
lucky?
* Check those Western Lottery tickets — you could be $100,000 ricker today. Page 2.
The square ring
' The Prince George Lions’ Boxing Club is back at work for another season and this time the coach is getting into the ring. Page 7.
Index
Bridge................... Family..................... ....34, 35
Business............... ......18, 19 Horoscopes............. ..........34
City, B.C........2, 3,13,17, 33 International.......... ............5
Classified............. Morberg column ...
Comics.................. National..................
Crossword........... ............22 Rolling Stone......... ..........37
Editorial............... ..............4 Sports...................... ......7-10
Entertainment..... .......36-41 Television............... ..........40
C
THE WEATHER
J
The Prince George forecast today calls for mainly sunny skies with some cloudy periods. Friday should have cloudy conditions with isolated snow flurries in the morning and sunny afternoon conditions.
The expected high both days is 6; today’s forecast low is -4. The high Wednesday was 7, the low -2 with a trace of precipitation.
On this date last year the high was 10, the low 2.
NOW HEAR THIS)
•Believe it or not: in the forest service job classification book there's this position: a wobbly-wheel roller driver. That’s not the operator of a truck with loose wheels — it’s the driver of a soils compactor.
• It could be the new pope, Karol Cardinal Kojtyla, isn’t quite a household word yet. During taping of Reach For the Top here Wednesday, panelists were asked who the person was. One contestant said "Carol Burnett.”
A local mother thought she was seeing a ghost when her normally black dog appeared as a skulking whit creature. The cuase of the transformation turned out to be her small daughter playing mother to the dog with a bottle of baby powder. The dog’s name? Dusty.
United Way
Target: $185,000 Today’s total: $82,718
Service 'normal' in city
Postal services in Prince' George are back to normal today.
Postmaster Warren Corrie said all inside workers have returned to work and mail is dispatched to all destinations, both domestic and foreign.
Incoming mail is also being delivered by letter carriers.
The inside workers, members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, returned to work after Postmaster General Gilles Lamontagne issued an ultimatum threatening to fire everybody who was not back atthe regular job by 12:01 a.m. today.
The CUPW had been on strike and was ordered back to work by a law passed by Parliament. This order was defied for several days until the ultimatum by the postmaster general.
Extra
flights
eyed
by JAN-UDO WENZEL Citizen Staff Reporter Pacific Western Airlines will try to quaddruple its number of daily flights from Prince George to Vancouver if CP Air pilots strike Nov. 4.
PWA Prince George manager Don Mitchell said today his airline has applied to Ottawa to increase the flights to Vancouver to four from one a day should the strike take place.
The Canadian Airlines Pilots Association announced Tuesday its 545 members employed by CP Air across Canada would walk off their jobs Nov. 4, if no contract is signed.
The pilots have been without contract for 11 months and have voted 83 per cent in favor of strike.
' But while PWA is making efforts to take up as much slack as possible, it will not be ableto handle the number of passengers on four flilghts, as CP Air has five daily return flights from Prince George.
CP Air Prince George manager Ralph Sharp said his airline has an average boarding of 9,000 passengers per month in Prince George.
Sharp said three of CP Air’s five flights continue on to northern points and return to Prince George on their way back to Vancouver.
A spokesman for the pilots said the main stumbling block in reaching an agreement was the airline’s arbitrary reduction of pilot pension entitlements.
Don Brown said the airline wants to put a ceiling of $40,000 a year on pension benefits.
Pilots currently can earn up to 70 per cent of their annual wage in pensions and some pilots are already receiving more than $40,000 a year after retirement.
Mitchell said since the announcement was made, PWA in Prince George has received numerous bookings.
Mitchell said the federal aviation authorities would not grant an increase in flights to Vancouver until the strike actually starts.
But Mitchell also said that should CP Air not be grounded because of a strike, he hopes that people will cancel their reservations with PWA if they do not intend to use the flight.
Recreation Week . . .
Citizen photo by Tim Swanky
Fred Bagg takes a check from his son, Graham, 9, at the father-and-son hockey game held Wednesday at Highland Elementary School. The game was part of the city’s Recreation Week activities which continue until Saturday.
HAMPERING BUSINESS
City's 'red tape' blasted
by ELI SOPOW Citizen Staff Reporter The Prince George Chamber of Commerce heard Wednesday that "red tape, abuse and misuse” by city officials is keeping business from growing here.
Steve Sintich, a chamber director, said if Prince George is going to service the northeast of B.C. then "we have to clean up our show here."
He told the luncheon meeting atthe Prince George Hotel that “industry doesn’t want to get hamstrung with red-tape.
“When business wants to expand here it’s met with abuse, misuse and red tape. We have to try and circumvent the red-tape in Prince George.” Sintich said in an interview
after the meeting that city aldermen should sit on committees dealing with technical, advisory and design planning.
He said the only time they get input from those committees is when they report to council, yet the committees can tie up business in bureaucracy for months.
The criticism of local bureaucracy came after chamber members took exception to a statement made in The Citizen by Frank Oberle, Conservative MP for Prince George — Peace River.
Oberle said in an interview about a month ago that city businessmen were complacent about reaching into the booming northeast for business.
The statement by Oberle
Most members return to work
OTTAWA (CP) — The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), its president and four other officers were formally charged in court today with violating an act of Parliament ordering an end to the inside postal workers strike.
President Jean-Claude Parrot, who ordered an end to the strike Wednesday night, was taken to Ontario Supreme Court in a paddy wagon.
Meanwhile, the post office announced that 93 per cent of CUPW members were back on the job. It said embargoes on international surface mail and air mail to the United States are lifted. The embargo on international air mail would last until Saturday. '
The union and its leaders were charged under a section of the Criminal Code making it an offence to disobey an act of Parliament, in this case the back-to-work legislation passed a week ago.
While the inside workers returned to their jobs, there was doubt about the amount of work they would do.
In Toronto where about half the country’s mail is processed, David Mitchell, Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) vice-president, said morale is not particularly good.
And Wayne Mundle, Atlantic region CUPW boss complained of a couple of incidents of what he termed management harassment of the returning workers.
But Alan O’Connor, Charlottetown postmaster said he had never seen the inside workers work so hard. He said they sorted twice as much mail as usual over the same time.
In Edmonton, S.M. Duffy, CUPW local president said he hopes the government and the post office recognize the sickness of the situation that exists in the post office. He said it shouldn’t be covered up but corrected so post office employees can provide proper service.
Said one worker: The government “has taken away all our rights—our right to negotiate, our right to strike and now our right to a job.”
echoed sentiments often expressed by Peace River businessmen, who say Alberta seems more anxious to do business with them than B.C.
Len Schuster, president of the chamber, said the criticism from the northeast has never been challenged and a "road show” should be put together to sell local business to the Peace River area.
“It’s a must for the Prince George business community to make its presence known,” However, Sintich said the reason why businesses can’t expand their service to other areas is because they’re being hampered by local red-tape.
The issue was referred to the chamber’s economic development committee.
Ultimatum delivered to BCR
The Joint Council of Railway Unions has given the B.C. Railway 48 hours to come up with a contract - "or else.”
This "or else’’ is believed by union members to mean that by Friday the council would implement its strike notice against the line and close down operations by having its 2,100 members walk off their jobs.
A union source in Prince George said today the ultimatum was given after the BCR came back with a counter offer to a union offer made earlier in the week in which several items which had been traditional for enginemen and trainmen had been deleted.
The joint council also has filed a unfair labor practice against the railway, charging the BCR did not bargain in good faith.
BCR spokesman Hugh Armstrong confirmed that there had been a meeting which lasted through the night.
But Armstrong said he does not know any details of the council’s ultimatum and the railway is operating normally.
“Meanwhile, we hope to be able to avoid a strike,” Armstrong said.
About 150 BCR employees in Prince George met Wednesday todiscuss the latest rounds of talks between the council and the company.
The employees decided not to stage any wildcat walkouts, but to wait for the decision of the council whether to implement the strike notice.
The men decided to go along with any decision made by the council.
Strike notice was given last week.
UIC fraud
crackdown
promised
OTTAWA (CP) - In the wake of a report citing $142 million in undetected unemployment insurance overpayments last year, the government plans new measures to crack down on error and fraud. i
Auditor-General J.J. Mac-dopell said in a report Wednesday that he estimates the government did not detect $142 million paid to claimants who were not entitled to unemployment insurance benefits.
In response, senior officials announced plans to examine company rolls and establish a country-wide hiring registration program in a new effort to deter and detect abuse, error and fraud.
In the annual report of the employment and immigration department, Macdonell said his $142 million over-payment estimate was based on reviewing a small sample of the 2.5 million persons who received about $3.9 billion in benefits •
CITY OUTDOOR RINK POLICY
Want to skate? Get out your shovel
Neighborhoods that want outdoor rinks this winter will have to get out the snow shovels!
City council and the civic properties and recreation commission tentatively agreed Wednesday to a policy to get neighborhoods more involved in rink maintenance and save the city some of the estimated $140,000 that outdoor rinks could cost this winter.
“Somewhere we have to get some involvement in these rinks,” Mayor Harold Moffat told a joint meeting of council and the commission.
Moffat said the CPRC should ad-
vertise a deadline for neighborhoods to apply for outdoor rinks in their areas. The city would flood the rinks.
After that it would be up to residents to clear the ice and the city would continue to flood the rinks during the winter season.
Outdoor rinks are an annual item of bitter debate at council. In 1977 the number of rinks was cut back and community recreation associations were encouraged to take responsibility for them.
The city paid up to $2,500 to associations for operating an outdoor rink. The city also maintained another 30 rinks itself, mainly in the bowl area.
anew, a regu-
Council is expected to ratify stricter outdoor rink policy at lar meeting soon.
Based on Wednesday’s discussions with the CPRC, the policy will stress maintenance of rinks by neighborhood, residents or community recreation associations.
Alderman Elmer Mercier said he thinks only the Carrie Jane Gray outdoor rinks should be city maintained, because, he said, they are used by most people in the city.
Others, he said, should be kept by the residents whose children use them.
Alderman Bob Martin, however, said the policy could result in inequities.
Lazy people who don’t maintain their own neighborhood rinks will just go to another neighborhood and use its rink, he said.
Alderman Art Stauble said perhaps the city should provide a limited number of rinks and then build more only if neighborhoods indicate they want more.
City engineer Ernie Obst said it costs about $3,000 to $5,000 for the city to flood and maintain each outdoor rink.
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