Tuesday November 19, 2013 (Vol. 38 No.. 93)
V O I C E
O F
W H I T E
R O C K
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S O U T H
S U R R E Y
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They mean business: Semiahmoo House Society was among recipients of the 2013 Business Excellence Awards presented by the Surrey Board of Trade last week. i see page 15
White Rock eyes $155 more
Blogger battles cancer
City braces for tax bump
Every inch the fighter Sarah Massah Staff Reporter
Tracy Holmes Staff Reporter
The average White Rock homeowner will be paying an extra $155 in property taxes next year, if council agrees with an increase city staff have proposed for 2014. According to a report that was to be considered Monday evening by council members meeting as the finance and audit committee, the increase – 5.25 per cent, compared to 3.28 per cent that had been projected – is needed to address “major changes in expected operations of the city and resources required.” Financial services director Sandra Kurylo names the possible purchase of the city’s water utility and related infrastructure improvements as the most significant new initiative behind the revamped figure. “While these anticipated expenditures are not yet in the financial plan, it is important to consider this potential transaction and be prudent…” Kurylo writes. The city also needs to boost its focus on building up its reserves “in order for the city to continue to be sustainable in the next 20, 30 or 50 years.” i see page 2
Michelle Murray photos
Serena Bonneville, 16, is blogging about her battle with leukemia, after her diagnosis last month.
When describing what leukemia is and what it does to her body, Serena Bonneville sounds as though she is reciting the plot from a favourite television show. There’s mutation, rogue blood cells and a hell of a lot of fighting. In the South Surrey teenager’s blog – chronicling the days following her diagnosis on Oct. 10 of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) – she writes that she pictures the type of cells that have taken over her body as “mindless zombies like from The Walking Dead.” “Their sole purpose is to kill and infect the living as they senselessly wander about unaware that their fate is threatened by the strength of courageous fighters,” she writes Oct. 16. “I, like Rick Grimes, intend on wiping out each and every walker that dared to threaten the human spirit.” The 16-year-old may not look like the small-town sheriff/main protagonist from the hit AMC show but – like Grimes – she’s every inch the fighter. Sitting in her home, where she has been resting after four full days of steroid treatment, Bonneville recalls when symptoms first began. After a bout of walking pneumonia, followed by the removal of all four of her wisdom teeth, the avid soccer and field hockey player expected a bit of a hit to her fitness. i see page 11
Stinging rebuke issued over environmental-impact assessment for Fraser Surrey Docks
Coal-threat report full of holes: health officers Jeff Nagel Black Press
The Lower Mainland’s chief medical health officers say a draft environmental impact assessment (EIA) fails to answer key questions about potential human health risks from a proposed new coal export terminal at Fraser Surrey Docks.
The EIA report – ordered by Port Metro Vancouver in August in response to public concern about coal dust and other impacts – was released Monday. After an early review, Fraser Health chief medical health officer Dr. Paul Van Buynder and his Vancouver Coastal counterpart, Dr. Patricia Daly, issued a joint eight-page sting-
Watch for our
Christmas Flyer Corner of 192nd St. & 48th Ave., Surrey
in today’s paper
ing rebuke of its shortcomings. “The report does not meet even the most basic requirements of a health-impact assessment,” their Nov. 13 letter said. They said the draft EIA falls “well short of adequately addressing the human health impacts” and leaves them “no closer” to telling the public and local governments
whether increased coal shipments will harm residents. Daly and Van Buynder urged the port to try again, repeating an earlier offer to help design a proper assessment. The health officers had pressed for months for a comprehensive health-impact assessi see page 5
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