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The Holy Rollers
Filling a need turned into a path to a new life for an eightperson painting crew BY ALFIE LAU REPORTER alau@royalcityrecord.com
A
s Doug Fynn, Wayne Tugwood and Capt. Dave MacPherson sit in the downstairs activities room at the Salvation Army in uptown New Westminster, they can’t help but laugh at how beautiful the room looks. “It took our painters forever to get this room right,” said Tugwood. “It must have about eight coats of paint in some spots, but we had to show them how to do the job properly.” It wasn’t just painting, but hole filling, sanding, prepping and priming that the painters had to do to a room that was used for everything from floor hockey to meetings and buffet dinners. The painters are an eight-person crew called the Holy Rollers and the group was started earlier this year when MacPherson wanted to combine the army’s needs with its mandate to help the people it serves. “We deal with a lot of people looking for jobs or a chance to turn their lives around,” said MacPherson. “And we definitely needed a paint job.” So MacPherson put two and two together and was able to obtain approval in the
Jason Lang/THE RECORD
A new start in life: Capt. David MacPherson, Doug Fynn and Wayne Tugwood are pleased with the success of the Holy Rollers, a painting crew started up by the Salvation Army earlier this year.
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Auditor to oversee district’s budget process BY NIKI HOPE REPORTER
nhope@royalcityrecord.com
The New Westminster school district learned this month that the auditor general’s office will oversee the school district’s budget process and will also perform an audit of its controversial business company. The auditor general wrote to the district that his office would start a “financial statement oversight relationship” with the district, which means it won’t perform the
district’s budget audit for the 2010/11 fiscal year but would watch the process. “This oversight relationship is quite normal,” Bill Gilhooly, assistant auditor general, told The Record. “It’s not an audit, but it is part of the audit process.” The oversight process usually goes on for a three- to five-year period, he said. There are three levels of involvement that the auditor general takes with government organizations: high, where it performs the audit; moderate, where auditors other than the auditor general perform the
audit, though the auditor general oversees the process; and low involvement, where the auditor general has only limited involvement. “In some cases, we audit directly, and in some, we do an oversight relationship,” Gilhooly said. “We wouldn’t tell the board what to do, but we would get involved with the auditors.” Earlier this year, the New Westminster district parent advisory council, a districtwide parent group, sent a letter to the auditor general, requesting that John
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Doyle look into the school district’s finances and overall performance. Gilhooly said the auditor general’s involvement in the district is “not related to that request.” New Westminster school district’s number came up as a matter of routine, he said. The auditor general’s financial statement audit coverage plan for fiscal years 2010/11 through 2012/13, published last
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