NATURE

Sea, land, river

PEOPLES

Community

For earlier materials see Table of Contents

January 27^th	Council Meeting
	Lots of presentations – show & tell

For earlier Universal Citizen presentations see my last year with links going back to 2002

I consider the most significant issue from meeting was presentation by local hoteliers on ‘unfair’ sewerage rates. Unlike metered water rates, sewerage is a flat annual fee-which is both higher than comparable cities but does not take into consideration low occupancy rates during off season

Mussallem countered that Sewers were a fixed cost so would have to transfer the hotels savings to another user group --- I will argue later that City has been using Utilities $$ to subsidize general revenues of years –avoiding >taxes etc

SPCA May have to close

In Terrace etc the function of SPCA provided by municipality --- Rupert has highest deficit and costs per animal in province -- Unlike other communities Rupert’s main problem is feral cats – not dogs --- and it is a community problem not one of occasional owners

But there will always be Cat lovers who feed etc the animals – a recurring issue see where one Citizen’s son allergic to cats and repercussions with links to others

Flat cut of 25% will put SPCA in jeopardy of closing

Before Doug Jay ‘left’ he was working on a Bylaw to control feral cat problem and earlier (more later)

	Cutting Costs
	OK so here may be a smart use of $$ -- buying computers (except Mussallem who does not use computers) presumably going paperless saves both paper/ staff time etc

	BUT --
	The ‘logic’ used to give all city employees free use of the gym facilities was that it would help save $$ on sick leaves etc --- (and not just save the RCMP having to pay income taxes of their freebie use of gym) I will give links to previous stories later)

RCMP free swimming etc

32 issued as of Feb 2008

freebie RCMP swimming here

NATURE

PEOPLES

For earlier materials see Table of Contents

Council Meeting