PRINCE GEORGE High today: 3 Low tonight:-5 Details page 20 WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17,1999 Serving the Central Interior since 1916 80 CENTS (HOME DELIVERED: 50 CENTS A DAY) TODAY COMMUNITY PAGE 13 City teens chosen for Honours Band SPORTS ■ After a disaster in Brandon Sunday, the Prince George Cougars defence turned it up a notch and helped the Cats get back on the winning track in Saskatoon./8 CANADA ■ Ralph Klein made a promises in the Alberta throne speech every Alberta hopes he can keep. The premier pledged to keep Alberta’s taxes the lowest in the country. /15 BUI HEALTH fl ■ Heart specialist Dr. Michael DeBakey, known as the Texas Tornado, has teamed up with NASA to develop a tiny pump that has been surgically implanted in the hearts of six patients who would otherwise die waiting for heart transplants. /16 Cornered by Baldwin ‘I’d like to take it for a test drive.” E-Mail address: Vivian auu/croo. pgcnews@prg.southam.ca Q ) Our web site: mES] httpV/www. princegeorgecitizen.com INDEX Ann Landers..... .......30 Bridge.......... .......20 Business ........ ... .22-24 City, B.C........ ....3,5,13 Classified ....... ... .18-21 Comics ......... .......28 Crossword ...... .......28 Entertainment .. ... .28,29 Horoscope...... .......20 Lifestyles........ .......30 Movies.......... .......29 Nation.......... ... .6,7,15 Sports ......... .....8-12 Television....... .......29 World .......... .......14 V(&&ffada.com Start Your Search From Home. 58307 00100 School spending OK’d Running District 57 will cost $116.7 million this year School District 57 trustees adopted the 1998/99 budget at a board meeting Tuesday night. The total budget is for $116,725,475 which includes almost $49 million in salaries for regular instruction and classroom support. The costs related to instruction will total more than $87 million and costs for district and school board administration are estimated at $9.3 million. Operating and maintenance costs will be $14.7 million. Transportation and housing costs were about $4 million. For more on the district’s budget see Thursday’s Citizen. MPs say budget offers little help by GORDON HOEKSTRA Citizen staff There’s absolutely zero for the average Canadian taxpayer in the federal Liberals’ latest budget released Wednesday, says local Reform MP Dick Harris. “Taxpayers are going to continue to pay more and get less,” he said from Ottawa following the release of the budget by Finance Minister Paul Martin. The Liberals announced they would restore $11.5 billion during the next five years to the ailing health care system and offered modest tax cuts, but Harris called it a shell game. When you add in bracket creep (people moving into a higher tax bracket), the offset of other tax increases in the budget and tax increases in previous budgets, there are no savings to taxpayers, said Harris (Prince George-Bulkley Valley). For example, since the Liberals took power in 1993, federal taxes have increased by $2,000 per person and savings have-dropped by $3,700, he said. Take-home pay has dropped by $2,100 and household income has gone down by $4,000, added Harris. The health care money announced in the budget Wednesday will simply restore spending to the 1995 level, he said. What was necessary was broad-sweeping tax relief and a bigger effort to pay down the debt, not increased spending, added Reform MP Jay Hill, who noted that annual interest payments on the debt are still more than $40 billion a year. “Martin had some clear choices and chose the Liberal way, which is all these programs, instead of offering the tax relief Canadians were asking for and which they deserved,” said Hill. The Prince George-Peace River MP also said it’s time the Liberals started being truthful about the annual surplus. He said they play SEE ALSO PAGES 6 & 7 Highlights of the federal budget presented Tliesday: ■ During the next five years, provinces will get $11.5 billion more for health care, beginning with a $2-billion payment in the 1999-2000 fiscal year. ■ The typical taxpayer gets a modest tax decrease of $1.13 a day in 1999 as taxes are cut by $1.5 billion in 1999-2000. ■ A middle-income family of four with two incomes totalling $50,000 will receive a $373 decrease in taxes in this fiscal year. ■ Tax cuts include the elimination of the 3%^urtax July 1 on all those makihg more than $50,000. ■ The Canada Child Tax Benefit for low-income families will be increased by a further $350 a child in two stages — July 1,1999 and July 1,2000. ■ The budget will be balanced for the second consecutive year, which hasn’t happened since 1951-52, and it forecasts balanced budgets or better for the next two years. ■ The public debt, the accumulated total of all government borrowing, stands at $579.7 billion in 1999-2000. ■ More than $1.8 billion will be spent on youth employment, research, developing the information highway and helping companies turn ideas into products and services. with the figures because taxpayers would put too much pressure on the government for more tax cuts, if the true picture was known. Mayor Colin Kinsley said there was nothing specifically in the budget that would help Prince George, but added the modest tax relief was good news, giving people some more disposable income. Kinsley had been hoping the federal government would establish a 50/50 cost sharing municipal infrastructure program to help build things like roads and sewers. Starting to pay down the debt — even though a token amount — was also a good move, said Kinsley. Meanwhile, regional health board chairperson Lorraine Grant says the $11.5-billion in health-care spending for the next five years announced in the 1999-2000 budget is a “step in the right direction.” But Grant noted it would simply restore funding to 1995 levels before federal cuts to health care spending. “Obviously we’re all going to have to work hard at spending the dollars in the most appropriate manner because we’re still dealing with a population that is aging,” she said. How exactly the federal funding infusion will impact this region is hard to tell until the details and provincial decisions unfold, added Grant. Prince George Regional Hospital has had problems with funding in the past decade, but recently the provincial government committed to funding increased service levels, which could be $5 million a year. The Northern Interior Regional Health Board is responsible for hospitals, nursing homes, mental health, public health and community care in an area that stretched from Burns Lake to Valemount and north to Mackenzie. It’s annual operating budget is about $100 million. citizen photo by Brent Braaten SNOW SCULPTING — Renald Lavoie gets ready to stamp some snow into a round form in front of the Civic Centre on Tuesday. Lavoie will be sculpting snow all day today in preparation for the Winter Cities conference that starts tonight. For more about the conference, please turn to pages 26-27. Casting call set for movie extras by KEN BERNSOHN Citizen staff If you want to be an extra in the big-budget Hollywood film Reindeer Games — to be shot in]Prince George next month — you should go to this weekend’s casting call at the Ramada Hotel. When Double Jeopardy filmed here last summer, more than 1,200 people applied to become extras. Reindeer Games has a much longer shooting schedule in the city. “There’s a lot of buzz in the community (about this film shoot),” said Sara Shaak, manager of the Prince George Film Commission. “People are excited about the cast, and the variety of locations in town. People are asked to bring a photograph and their measurements to the Ramada (on George Street) from noon to 7 p.m. Saturday or from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Filming here will run from March 15-April 5. People 17-100 years old, especially First Nations, Afro Canadians, people with tattoos, prison guards or people with prison experience are being sought, according to Reindeer Pictures. People who can’t make the casting call or who are under 17 years old are asked to send a photo to Extras Casting Department, Reindeer Pictures, 585 Queensway, Prince George, B.C. V2L 5M3. Peter Stellga was Mr. Mardi Gras 1998. Who’s it going to be this year? For details about this year’s Mardi Gras, please turn to page 25. City teen found guilty of manslaughter A 17-year-old city youth was found guilty of manslaughter Tliesday in connection with the stabbing death of 16-year-old Tyrell Regan near College Heights secondary school in September of 1997. Judge R. Bruce Macfarlane announced his verdict in youth court here Tliesday after a six-day trial wrapped up Sept. 25, 1998. The accused, 15 at the time of the offence, had originally been charged with second-degree murder. His name cannot be published. Macfarlane did not give his reasons in court. They were provided in a 17-page written decision. The youth returns to court March 22 for a hearing. A date for sentencing has not been set. Macfarlane had planned to announce his deci- sion this on Jan. 20, but he did not receive written arguments from the defence lawyer in the case until Jan. 19. As a result, the judge reserved his decision until Tliesday. On Sept. 25, 1997, Regan — he had recently moved here with his family from Kelowna — attended a party in College Heights where there were as many as 100 youths, Macfarlane said in the written decision. “What was to have been an evening of socializing, hanging out and partying on the evening of Sept. 25 and the early morning hours of Sept. 26, 1997, for the students of College Heights Secondary School, turned into a tragedy of immense proportions,” he said. Regan died of stab wounds inflicted while he was walking away through a ball field near CHSS. “In assessing the testimony of those persons who were at the pit party and ball diamond, care must be taken because many of them had con-sumed a quantity of alcohol, some to excess,” Macfarlane said in the written document. “I have a reasonable doubt that the accused had the capacity to form the requisite intent to commit second-degree murder,” the judge said. “I am satisfied that the Crown has proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt; however, because of the voluntary consumption of alcohol, he did not have the capacity to form the necessary intent. He is, nevertheless, guilty of manslaughter.” The trial for a co-accused, Wade Tbrnbull, 20, is set to start April 19 in B.C. Supreme Court. 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