MONDAY,AUGUST 25, 2014
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Making waves
Members of the B.C. synchronized swim team train at the Prince George Aquatic Centre on Saturday. For more images of this event, turn to page 4. For more on this story, turn to page 13.
Dementia conference set for September
Christine HINZMANN
Citizen staff
The Me in Dementia: Increasing Understanding Along the Dementia Journey is a conference taking place at the Ramada Hotel Sept. 16 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The day will offer guidance on brain health, Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, address issues like communication and behaviour along the journey, help with personal planning, and offer a dementia research update.
“September is World Alzheimer’s Awareness Month, so it’s fitting that we’re having the conference at this time,” said Leanne Jones, support and education coordinator, Alzheimer Society of BC for the Northern Interior.
“So these are all pared down versions of the bigger educational workshops that we provide.
A conference like this is to raise
awareness and let people know what we have to offer to the Prince George community.” Everyone is welcome to attend. The Heads Up for a Healthier Brain seminar is a way to introduce dementia to those who would like more information and also it’s a good way to offer ways to reduce the risk.
“It’s important to look at the factors that are in our control and what factors aren’t in our control,” said Jones.
“Age and genetics, we obviously have no control over that, but you can still take into consideration a bunch of factors that might possibly reduce your risk and are important for healthy aging anyway, like exercise for the brain and body.”
Knowing your blood pressure, glucose and cholesterol levels are also important because those are indicators of overall health.
— see ‘THIS, page 3
City staff wrangle with 3.5 per cent tax increase
Charelle EVELYN Citizen staff cevelyn@pgcitizen.ca
Limiting a tax levy increase in next year’s budget to 3.5 per cent would require a variety of measures including a hiring freeze and overtime ban, according to early budget figures staff have prepared for a city council committee.
This afternoon, the finance and audit committee will hear from corporate services director Kathleen Soltis on the different avenues staff can take while preparing the 2015 budget.
“The initial draft of the guideline prepared by administration resulted in a 6.5 per cent tax levy increase,” said Soltis’s report to the committee.
To trim that down to a more palatable 3.5 per cent increase
as a starting point for discussion, staff identified some areas to adjust.
These include cutting a planned $867,202 increase to the general infrastructure reinvestment levy, reducing the general operating contingency by $100,000, introducing a hiring freeze on six positions to save $554,531 and introducing a management overtime ban estimated at $40,000.
More cuts would have to be made in order to reach other scenarios.
For a 2.5 per cent levy increase, staff would reduce the general operating contingency further by $75,000 and reduce the general operating fund’s contribution to the capital reserve fund by $800,000.
— see EXTRA, page 3
Photographers look to make seniors complex picture perfect
Christine HINZMANN
Citizen staff
chinzmann@pgcitizen.ca
Riverside Place, a Vanderhoof non-profit seniors complex, got a spirit-lifting boost recently thanks to a change of scenery provided by the Nechako Valley Photography Club.
Anne Davidson visits her 96-year-old mother, Hilda Vil-lumsen, most day in the seniors complex.
Davidson is a member of the photography club and she and four other members wanted to learn how to do black and white photography.
“When I would visit with my mom, I noticed the pictures on the wall are sepia images from centuries ago,” said Davidson. “So residents are looking at these itty bitty pictures and they can’t see them.”
So the five club members who were interested in taking portraits went to Riverside Place at Easter and took photos of the residents in their Sunday best.
“And then we put the portraits
on the wall and they are fantastic,” said Davidson. “So that’s the new welcoming wall.”
Each portrait is about eight by ten inches in size.
After residents saw how cheerful the welcoming wall was, they asked the photography club if they could put more pictures up on the walls.
“So I gathered pictures from the photography club that could be enlarged,” said Davidson.
The sizes vary but most are 39 by 27 inches. Davidson wanted to please the residents by ensuring the focal point was one subject, so that from any distance and no matter whose eyes were looking, they could enjoy the photograph.
“So there’s one deer in the picture, one moose in the picture, one cow - so that anybody can tell what it is,” said Davidson. “So then after we came up with this really grandiose idea, it occurred to us that we had to come up with a way to finance this thing.”
Jerry Petersen, director of Area F for the Regional District of Bulk-ley Nechako, awarded the photography initiative $2,000 from the grant-in-aid funding allotted by
the government for community projects.
Davidson wanted the project to be a locally created effort so she called upon small business owners Earl and Margaret Giesbrecht from Sew Rite Designs to have the prints enlarged.
“As photographers we all have thousands of pictures on our computers but who are you going to show them to?” asked Davidson. “Most of us don’t want to display them publicly but we just want someone to really enjoy them, so what a perfect spot.”
Riverside Place has always been a friendly place but now when Davidson goes into the seniors complex she is often asked where the photos are hidden. Davidson not only displayed the photos in common areas but up and down the hallways and behind doors.
It’s resulted in an increase in mobility for a lot of the residents, she said. They go off to explore and more often than not, as Davidson visits her mother every day, she will overhear lively discussion about the sawmill in the picture or what kind of classic truck, flower, or bird is in the photo.
HANDOUTPHOTO
Friendly residents' faces graces the Welcome Wall at Riverside Place, a seniors housing complex in Vanderhoof. The wall was a project created by the Nechako Valley Photography Club.
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