Recent comments

I want to respond to two points you made in your essay, Charles.

The first one concerns the possible or potential impact climate change may have on Canada. I have no idea how climate change may affect the prairies or the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. What bothers me is how climate change may affect the north.

I know from my days in the NWT and the Yukon that a heck of a lot of the country up there is perma-frost.

I have seen gullies, deep gullies, up to 10 feet deep, created by trucks running over unprotected (bare) ground in the early winter and disturbing the moss and other organic matter on the surface. That stuff acts as insulation and protects the frozen ground below it. The water content of some perma-frost (don't know how much of it) can be as high as 90%. With the insulating organic cover disturbed by trucks (seismic exploration), the ground was exposed to the sun in the spring and began to melt, and once that started it kept melting more and more every summer, and sometimes within as little as a decade what was once "solid" ground and where there used to be just a set of tire tracks there was now a deep gully. What will happen to all that perma-frost should the mean temperature rise to a point where the insulating value of the organic cover is no longer adequate to keep the ground below it frozen through the summer months? How much of the perma-frost has a 90-10 water to soil ratio? Some of it may be 50-50, I don't know. Fifty years goes by pretty fast, and it may well be within the life of my grandchildren that "The Great White North" will be known as "The Great Brown Mosquito Pond."

My second comment goes to your reference about First Nations not speaking with one voice. Really! What a strange people this First Nations people are. Why can't they be like all other distinguishable communities, like Whites, Blacks, Catholics, Mormons, Men, Women, Spaniards, and Canadians (excluding First Nations of course) and speak with one voice as they (we) all do? 

It's interesting when Mr. Carrell writes about the "harsh new reality" headed our way, courtesy of the crooked path we're all travelling as a society. The grievances First Nations people have (lack of control over their futures, environmental degredation, and intransigent social problems) are not unique to that segment of our society. First Nations people are simply feeling these issues more intensely and more early on due to their historically-oppressed condition. They are the canaries in our common coal mine.

But "harsh reality" is coming for Stephen Harper and the rest of us as well.

So-called democracy doesn't work for the average resident of the West Kootenay any more than it does for our native sisters and brothers; we're merely a step or two behind them as we squander the last of our mostly-misappropriated heritage; and we'll all feel the effects of our damaged environment in exactly the same manner soon enough.

So let's all listen to the warning signs Idle No More is emitting--and try to act before it's too late for all of us.

Amen, sister. 

But we have to pick one of the three....... 

Although I was extremely impressed with the people of Rossland.  I was at the same time disappointed by our lack of political thinking.  This school board has offered us one of three options that will allow them to meet the budget imposed on them by the provincial government.  Yet at the same time close one of our schools.   And we are convinced we have no OPTIONS.

It is absolutely absurd ,that with the numbers presented showing enrollment rising  to the point that RSS would be over populated in 10-15 years, that we give up any of our schools.  If the French School can afford to buy MacLean with our tax dollars, they can afford to lease MacLean with our tax dollars.  Or maybe share it with their english speaking counterparts. 

My fear is that animosity builds and we wind up even more fractured as a community.  RSS becomes over loaded, and our children are bused to Crowe anyway.  Might just be the plot anyhow... 

It is underfunding that is killing us, and it is the government that is causing it..   In other countries that have a fraction of the wealth we have, public systems provide free university education for their children..  Here we are closing down ours.....???????

The same government that formed HEALTH AUTHORITIES and crushed public input into health care, is now taking a run at education.  Trust me I lived thru it, as we all have.  We are on the verge of a similar event in the education system if the liberals stay in power.  They are looking to pass the buck off to private organizations that are unaccountable like IHA.   Its easy when there is someone else to blame. 

The most important message of the night was missed by 90% of the people,  because they had left.   It was disguised in the possible outcomes.  Naming dates for future meetings where decision votes would be made. 

In the end we were told that if no majority was met, the status quoe would carry on.  WE WOULD KEEP ALL OF OUR SCHOOLS. 

THIS IS STEP ONE. 

WE LOSE MACLEAN OR RSS AND EDUCATION IN ROSSLAND CAN NOT BE Kto12 IN 15 YEARS.....

We need to get political... 

This is c-gay for you, wow, just shows you how ignorant some people of castlegar are. The dog is likely to be how the owner is and what it teaches the dog.

I would definitely like to thank council for agreeing to have City staff meet with district staff to discuss how they can work together to form a partnership, so that we can keep K-12 in Rossland. Communities all over BC are forming partnerships with their school districts that are win/win, and it's great to see our council being so proactive!

The municipality in trouble was the City of Dawson, and the government looking for an SOB was not the province, it was the Yukon Territorial government.

It is one thing to dispute the points made in an article, something else to make up false "facts" in an attempt to discredit the author, as BCRonnie has done. I happen to have been running a paper when Andre Carrel was hired as Rossland's CAO in 1985, and regularly covered Council meetings. This was the Gordon Jenks council, which included hard-working individuals seriously devoted to to managing municipal affairs in a responsible way. Among those who particular stood out were Bill Micklethwaite, Jackie Drysdale, and Laurie Charlton. Carrel made some notable improvements in the management of the municipality in those years; specifically computerizing City Hall (a time when there were not ten computers in town)  and doing an analysis that showed that it would be less expensive to buy or lease new snowclearing equipment that could have streets cleared in a timely fashion than to continue buying worn-out used equipment that spent half its time in the shop and  often resulted in streets being blocked for days after a big storm. 

Flash forward 15 years or so. Carrel was still there, by then having executed, at Council's direction,  a 10-year plan to pave all Rossland's streets without going into debt to do it. (Note: only the final year of the paving plan was not implemented, due to Council's decision to use those funds to purchase a building to be used as a teen centre.)  Carrel worked out a payment plan whereby developers at Red Mountain would pay every cent of the cost of that development that was not covered by federal or provincial grants, rather than have those costs devolve onto all Rossland taxpayers.  And, of course, he drafted the Referendum Bylaw which put Rossland on the national stage as being (temporarily) the most democratic municipality in Canada. (Said bylaw was used by citizens ten times, thrice to deny Council a stipend raise.)

Does Carrel deserve sole credit for all of the above? Absolutely not, for two very clear reasons. First, in those days there was no Bylaw 2473 that would have given the CAO the power to make such decisions. Second, those mayors and their councils worked hard and did their homework, thus had the ability to evaluate CAO actions and either approve them or not--a power they responsibly exercised. I recall then-counsellor Dave Butler telling me at the time that he spent no less than 50 hours a month on city business.  He was not an exception--not on the Profili council.

For a time the Carrel-Profili council team were as dynamic as any Rossland has ever fielded, putting that Referendum Bylaw in place, developing an outstanding Official Community Plan, creating Centinnal Trail, and--oh yes, keeping City Hall costs down to a fraction what they are now.  Carrel, at the end of his 17-year tenure, earned half what a recent council opted to give Victor Kumar as a starting salary. Council members earned far less than what they do now. Under the Profili council and CAO Carrel, here was no high-salaried Deputy CAO nor any planning department nor all those other employees now deemed necessary to run a town that has not grown at all. 

Carrel played a key role in all of the things accomplished when Bill Profili was mayor, but he most definitely did not cast the deciding vote. Hell, he did not even have a vote!  Mayor Profili was a high-energy, hard-working, seriously-involved mayor, and most of those elected to his councils were, too. That the CAO was not running things at City Hall in those days was apparent by the fact that when, for reasons never disclosed to the public, a decision was taken to let Carrel go, Council just did it.  Whatever its reason, corruption in high places was not it, or was Carrel's work ethic or his moral ethics, all of which outshown subsequent CAOs by miles.

A short time after Carrel ceased to be CAO in Rossland, he was hired by the province to do an audit on a municipal government that  had run through millions of dollars and bankrupted the town. When it decided that an outside auditor had to be brought in to find out where the money went, so the story goes, somebody said, "What we need is a person who is smart, incorruptible, and a real SOB." Whereupon somebody else at the meeting called out, "Andre Carrel!"

Soon after his auditing gig and barely a year after leaving Rossland, Carrel wrote a book titled, CITIZENS' HALL: MAKING LOCAL DEMOCRACY WORK, which is now required reading for many college-level municipal government classes across the country.

One final note, BCRonnie, regarding your totally unfounded claim that Carrel's tenure "led to tens of thousands in legal fees." I well remember three of those law suits. One was launched by a woman who, in holding attempting catch a ball in the Nickleplate park, broke a finger. Another was launched by a woman who parked next to a sign on Spokane that said no parking because snow removal was in process. She ran into the dry cleaners and when she saw the snowplow headed toward her car, rushed back out, scrambled over the snowbank, fell and broke her ankle. And then there was the painter who, entering the Miners' Hall to attend an event being run by her own art club, slipped on a puddle of water her fellow artists had tracked in--and sued the City. With each of these citizen-initiated lawsuits, Carrel's involvement amounted to handing them over to the the City's insurance company, as instructed by City Council and required by its insurance company.

Were there other lawsuits, iniated by the City? I do not recall any, but if there were, one thing I am absolutely certain of: Carrel did not do them on his own initiative. He could not have, simply because in those days the CAO did not have that kind of power. He would have acted on, and only on, explicit directions from City Council. THAT was how things worked back in the olden days (ten or fifteen years ago.)

... is where I go when I am at a loss for words:

"It is because the rat knows what he does at night that he doesn't go out during the day." (Haiti)

"Two buttocks cannot avoid friction." (Zambia)

If the road maintenance contractor had experienced drivers and were willing to put out some sand or salt, this wouldn't be required, its because they are for profit, not service!

I don't know what councillor you are referring to, ACitizen, but I think you should have named him/her. At the same time, I will say that that person was not the only councillor who knew, or at least had been alerted, to the "shady" nature of some City Hall staff.  When my husband and I heard that Victor Kumar was being considered for CAO, this the same Victor Kumar who already had a reputation for corruption all over the Kootenays, we raised our concerns with then Councillor Laurie Charlton, who was on the hiring committee. Kumar was hired anyway.

Six months later, when we learned about Bylaw 2473 giving CAO Kumar unprecedented (indeed, near total) power to hire, fire, spend large sums of money, and approve building applications without prior Council approval--powers granted to him in the first month of his tenure by a 6:1 vote (only Charlton opposed), we spoke to three other councillors: Stradling, Moore, and Smith. No motion was put forward to claw back some of the power Council had granted to him under Bylaw 2473. This, Moore told me later, was because "We didn't have the votes."  In other words, Council knew what it had done and a majority chose not to undo it. Thus the present CAO has every bit as much power as Kumar had.

Bear in mind that it was not Kumar, with his extraordinary power to hire, fire, and grant extreme salary increases, who hired Jason Ward. Ward was hired by the previous CAO, Ron Campbell, despite the questions you allude to about Ward's "shady" history. Not to mention what should have been questions about his qualifications to be a building inspector. What Kumar did was promote Jason Ward and give him a $9000+ raise. Not unlike Kumar's promotion of Tracy Butler and giving her even more astounding raises. 

Meanwhile, contracts were being let on the arena without going to tender.  Senior staff, most particularly Butler who worked directly under Kumar, would have known what procedures were not being followed, as she would have handled much of the paperwork related to contracts. The silence from her and other staff on this entire issue has been as deafening as the silence of councillors who learned various things over the course of time. With the exception of Counsellor Moore, they chose not to address the issues--or to address them in camera so that at least the public wouldn't know what was going on.

Now we too know, at least the broad outlines of how things evolved and even some of the specifics. So back to my original question: who doesn't know?  Or maybe it should be, now that everyone knows that bad things happened at City Hall and haven't yet been fixed, what is to be done? Not just by Council but by citizens who will, of course, pay for it all.