Housing: Fixed-income seniors niors fear rent hikes with subsidy loss. s. 3
Easter: Cities host annual egg hunts. 9
Community: Pitt recognizes top firefighter. 13 Friday, April 3, 2015 · mapleridgenews.com · est. 1978 · (office) 604-467-1122 · (del iver y) 6 0 4 - 4 6 6 - 6 3 9 7
No Bear Aware program this year City fails to submit bid for coordinator position B y T i m Fi t z g e r a l d newsroom@mapleridgenews.com
Tim Fitzgerald/THE NEWS
The school district added bus fees last year to help cope with a budget shortfall, and 100 students opted out.
School buses on chop block Trustees ask TransLink for more rural routes
students if the district, looking for $1.7 million in budget cuts, eliminates busing. School board chair Mike Murray interprets a response from TransLink to mean that it won’t have the resources to help unless the ongoing transportation plebiscite passes. In its last budget, the board added school bus fees, set at $215 for an individual student. This year it is again looking for cuts, and Murray said eliminating busing is one option being considered. It could save the district $700,000 per year. Murray noted the vast majority of students either walk to school
By Neil Corbett ncorbett@mapleridgenews.com
The Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows School District is considering eliminating regular busing and has asked TransLink to help service more rural routes. However, the regional transportation authority claims it can’t comply unless it gets more money. The school board send a letter to TransLink asking what level of transit service it could provide to
The
Hayes Team Matthew • Paul • Peter
604-467-0811 www.thehayesteam.ca
or get rides from their parents. Eliminating regular busing would impact 369 registered student riders. When the school bus fees were added last year, 100 riders stopped taking the bus, making the cost per student almost $1,900 per year. Murray Murray said the district has no legal obligation to provide bus service, but the board will not cut bus service for special needs students – four buses and a taxi serve 30 special needs students, at an annual cost of $250,000.
See Buses, 5
See Bears, 11
JOHN CASHIN JO
Balsam Creek
778.903.2274
CALL FOR DETAILS
john@johncashin.com johncashin.com
$
625,000 Independently owned and operated
He said the district has a moral obligation to these students, if nothing else. TransLink told the board that it is not allowed to provide exclusive school bus service. The Motor Vehicle Act states that school trips can be provided only if is not an exclusive school-specific service. “Any of our transit services must be a public route for use by all customers, not just students,” said the written response from Daniel Freeman, transit network manager.
Maple Ridge will be without a coordinator for its Bear Aware program this year after the city failed to apply for provincial funding. Dan Mikolay has served as the WildSafeBC program coordinator for the past two years. However, unless the city comes up with the funding itself, the program won’t run this year. According to Frank Ritcey, provincial coordinator for WildSafeBC, which oversees the Bear Aware program, any community applying for funding must commit at least $2,500 of its own. If accepted, he said, the communities are entitled to about $8,000 for wages. WildSafeBC also provides training and tool kits. Conservation officer Todd Hunter, who oversees the area from Coquitlam to Mission, made a pitch to council Monday in hopes the city can come up with the funds to keep the program going. “I don’t want to lose it,” he said. “Last year we had quite a low number of calls on incidents compared to other years. The less bears we have to relocate or destroy the better, so I’d like to keep on that trend and have that coordinator position in place.” He said Maple Ridge had to put down six bears in 2014, down from 12 in 2013. He said as many as 30 bears have had to be destroyed in the region due mostly to people leaving out garbage.
MLS# V1083539
Each office independently owned & operated
209,800 20 9,800
$
#202 12020 207A St Maple Ridge 880 sq ft, 2 bdrm, 2 bthrm Westbrooke, Rare, South Facing Corner Unit