The Prince George
Citizen
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24,1991
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Aftermath of Chernobyl________5
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Phone:562-2441 Classified: 562-6666 Circulation: 562-3301
Industrial park under siege from vandals
by MARILYN STORIE Citizen Staff Small business owners in the Carter Light Industrial Subdivision are under attack, but the change in government is no threat — it’s break-and-enter artists.
“We’ve had two trucks broken into and it’s got to the point where they’re so brave I think they’re brave enough to come around to the front of the store,” Coast Testing accountant Marg Brown said Tuesday.
Fulfilling her prophecy, vandals broke into vehicles parked in front
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of Coast Testing at 1909 Ogilvie St. overnight. “The side window of my son’s truck was smashed and his girlfriend’s car, parked next to it, had its windows broken,” said Brown this morning.
Earlier this week Brown said an all-terrain vehicle was still missing.
“This was right after we had had a security fence put up,” she said. “You could see in the dirt the tracks where they had been playing around with the quad and then they loaded it back onto the
trailer and took them both. They cut the wire and rolled it right back.”
There was no insurance on the $6,500 ATV and the company will have to absorb the loss.
Wes Walker says the janitor business at 2119 Ogilvie St. he owns with his brother has been broken into six times in six weeks.
“It’s overnight and early morning. There’s never any property recovered and we’ve suffered
close to a $10,000 loss,” said Walker.
While a survey of larger businesses in the area indicated less concern about break and enters, they can also afford to be less concerned about the occasional break-in.
Walker, along with other small business people along the two commercial blocks of Ogilvie and Quinn streets, is finding it impossible to insure his losses.
Last Thursday night a two-way mobile radio valued at $1,000 was
smashed beyond repair by vandals who broke into a vehicle at Walker’s Acme Janitor Service business.
“We put up a security fence and got broken into,” he said. Walker, along with others in the area, has installed an alarm system.
Walker says he doesn’t think there’s much police can do.
“I feel it’s our own justice system,” he said. “What’s the use of bringing them in when they’re repeat offenders? They know the
system and how to play it so they get off.
“You can understand the police’s frustration — they spend a week to get the guy and then he’ll walk. But they’re still breaking into the yard,” he said. “And if I go farther with the security stuff then all I’m doing is shifting it (vandalism) to another business.
“It’s getting to a point where the merchants are going to have to do something on their own. We can’t afford to keep absorbing these losses.”
INDEX
2-income families are now the norm
by ERIC BEAUCHESNE Southam News
OTTAWA — The proportion of families with both spouses working outside the home continued to increase rapidly in the 1980s, reaching almost two-thirds by 1989, up from about 50 per cent in 1979 and only one-third in 1967, Statistics Canada said today.
“In other words, dual-earner families have now become the new norm,” the agency said.
And the proportion of wives earning more than their husbands in such families was almost 20 per cent in 1989, double the percentage of 1967. Still, 80 per cent of husbands earned more than their wives in 1989 and the average income of working wives was only 61 per cent of that of husbands.
In straight financial terms it paid to have both spouses working.
Dual-income families enjoyed higher incomes and faster after-inflation growth in their incomes, the agency noted. They also tended to have more labor-saving devices in their homes such as dishwashers and microwave ovens and playthings such as VCRs, home computers, and compact disc players.
“For the 1967-1989 period the average income of dual-earner families increased 59.4 per cent to $59,826; single-earner families showed a growth of 51.2 per cent to $48,124,” it said.
But it kept some from falling below the poverty line.
“Earnings of wives helped a number of dual-earner families to stay above the low income cutoff,” it said. “Without wives’ earnings, the incidence of low income among these families would have risen to 12.3 per cent from 3.2 per cent”
And in only one-tenth of dual-earner families did both spouses earn $30,000 or more in 1989, it said.
The agency also reported:
■ Alberta had the highest proportion of wives working outside the home at 71 per cent and Newfoundland the lowest at 60 per cent In Ontario the proportion was 68 per cent and in Quebec 62 per cent.
■ Dual-income families tended to be younger than single-eamer families and had higher levels of education.
■ Since dual-income families tended to be younger, the proportion that were mortgage-free was only 36 per cent, compared with 53 per cent of families in which only the husband worked and 32 per cent in which only the wife worked.______________________
Forest industry fares better here than at Coast
by KEN BERNSOHN Citizen Staff
B.C. now has two forest industries — one on the Coast and one in the Central Interior.
About 40 per cent of IWA members have been laid off on the Coast, but only about 10 per cent here, says Shiv Garcha, secretary-treasurer of Local 1-424. Three sawmills in the Central Interior have cut back to one shift a day while the rest run their normal two-shift schedule.
Canfor’s Polar Forest Industries mill in Bear Lake 100 kilometres north of Prince George and the Fletcher Challenge A and B mills in Mackenzie are running one shift a day. The Fletcher C mill, the two Finlay Forest Products Mills in Mackenzie, and sawmills in Prince George are operating normally.
This doesn’t mean times are good in the North.
Studs, the two-by-fours used to hold up walls in homes, are now offered to American wholesalers at $170 US for a thousand board feet, said Ivan Anderson of Sinclar Enterprises, the firm that sells lumber for four area sawmills. That’s down more than $65 US from what they were in the spring.
Anderson and Fletcher Challenge Canada say demand is soft.
“We’re piling up a lot more lumber than we used to, hoping to sell it after the first of the year,” Anderson said today.
The problem isn’t only in the
States, which is still officially in a recession. Anderson says the English market is soft as well.
“The guys have to look at the
situation every day” to see how
many shifts to schedule,” says Stu
Clugston, spokesman for Fletcher
^ Challenge Canada in Vancouver.
“And the impact of falling prices
for chips (for pulp mills) really
hasn’t been felt yet.”
\
The situation is better than on the Coast, where mill shutdowns have been announced almost every week for the past three months.
The mills’ uncertainty about lumber prices means some aren’t rushing to sign up logging contrac-. tors for the winter. Now, as loggers wait for freezeup, when soft ground becomes firm enough to log, is the traditional time for deals to be made between loggers and sawmills.
This year new legislation has made the process more complex. Written contracts are now required, providing loggers with more job security, up to five years in some cases, according to Frank Drougel, manager of the Central Interior Logging Association.
And, for the first time, written contracts are needed between mills and loggers on Timber Licences and for the season between contractors and equipment owner/operators.
opposing asphalt proposal
by DIANE BAILEY Citizen Staff
College Heights residents say they don’t want the smell, dust and noise of an asphalt plant in their part of the city.
But Ed Kovach, president of Kode Contracting, says their fears are unfounded.
At least 500 people have signed a petition asking city council to deny an application by Kode Contracting to allow the operation of an asphalt plant at its Lalonde Gravel pit, says Steve MacDonald a spokesman for the residents.
Several new homes and a condominium have been built in the area and the city has put a number of lots up for sale along Southridge Avenue, said MacDonald.
“This is an up and coming subdivision. We don’t want an asphalt plant there,” he said.
Because it is a growing part of
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the city, said MacDonald, property values are high. And homeowners are worried about the effect industrial expansion will have.
“A lot of people arc scared property values are going to drop,” he said.
The proximity of a planned new elementary school for Upper College Heights to the asphalt plant is also an issue that should be addressed, said MacDonald.
The official community plan sets out three possible locations for the school, the closest of which is at the comer of Southridge and St. Anne avenues. That would place the school about 500 metres from the plant.
It is not just people in the immediate area of the plant that would be affected, MacDonald said.
Prevailing winds could blow the dust and smell down the hill into Lower College Heights, where MacDonald lives.
“I want to keep my neighborhood separate from an industrial neighborhood,” he said.
Air quality research by the Environment Ministry shows the majority of winds in Prince George . are from the south.
But Kovach said wind is not an
issue because the smell, dust and noise will be within limits set by the provincial government.
He said the days of “old smokers and stinkers” used to make asphalt are over. Technology has improved as environmental standards have gotten tougher.
MacDonald argues that meeting environmental standards is “OK if you’re in the BCR site. When you’re surrounded by residences, it’s different.”
But Kovach counters that asphalt plants are operating in North Vancouver with no problems or complaints.
Kovach said a natural bank provides a barrier on the north side of the property along Lalonde Road. To the east he is building a berm to separate it from residential development in that direction.
Kovach also said the residents don’t understand his application. He said he has no plans to build a permanent plant, but to provide a site for mobile asphalt manufacturers bidding on local contracts to operate.
Kode’s application has passed second reading at council and will go to public hearing Monday night at city hall.
House starts in summer doubled over 1990
"I'm going to have the buffet. Do you have another one for my husband?”
by PAUL STRICKLAND Citizen StafT
Housing starts in Prince George more than doubled during the third quarter of this year compared to tfie same period in 1990, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation said Wednesday.
Work started on 129 houses in the city during July, August and September this year, more than twice the 57 homes started during the same three months in 1990.
“Anticipated positive impacts of the University of Northern B.C., lower interest rates and expected increases in rental demand and existing housing prices were the driving forces behind the climbing housing starts in Prince George,” senior CMHC market analyst Ali Manouchchri said in a Wednesday release.
Kempf hearing set
VANCOUVER (CP) — A preliminary hearing will be held March 16 for former cabinet minister Jack Kempf who is charged with breach of trust and theft over $1,000.
Kempf entered no plea to the charges during a brief appearance this morning in provincial court
It was his first court appearance since the charges, which involve the use of constituency association
funds, were laid shortly after the Oct 17 B.C. election was called.
“I have at this time absolutely no comment” Kempf said outside court.
Seven days have been set aside for the preliminary hearing.
Premier Rita Johnston ordered Kempf to withdraw as the Social Credit candidate for Bulkley Val-ley-Stikine when the charges were laid, but he refused and the party suspended his life membership.
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From Jan. 1 through Sept. 30, there were 275 housing starts in Prince George, up 27 per cent from 216 during the first nine months of 1990. There were only 137 housing starts in the city in the same period of 1989, and only 124 from January to September in 1988.
Housing start figures are likely to be high again next spring, CMHC market analyst Pip White said today.
“We expect a slowdown in the fourth quarter, if only because of the weather,” he said. “It’s hard to dig into frozen ground. But we’re expecting the market to remain reasonably strong.”
The result of the high number of housing starts this spring, summer and early fall will be a buildup of inventory, White said. This will help to meet the needs of home-buyers until the building season resumes in the spring.
“Our expectation is that ’92 will be a reasonably strong year, I think, as we recover from the recession, if interest rates stay low,” White said. “The prospect of a university will also have quite a positive effect.”
In northern B.C. as a whole, housing starts registered a 30-percent increase in the third quarter, compared to the same period in 1990, according to the CMHC.
It was the second consecutive rise in quarterly housing starts, the agency said. Housing starts in northern B.C. reached 188 units in the third quarter of 1991, the highest level recorded for this quarter in eight years.
Citizen photo by Chuck Nisbett
Icy road conditions caused a Chevrolet Tracker to lose control on Ice not nice the Massey Drive overpass and flip on its side shortly after 6 p.m.
Monday. The two occupants, who were wearing their seatbelts, escaped without injury.
College Heights residents
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