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Friday, January 18, 2019 | Your community newspaper since 1916

Tickets, tow put man at odds with city hall Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca

CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN

Sean Farrell, executive director of The Community Arts Council, talks about the 2019 Cultural Inventory Survey.

Arts council launching survey Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca Survey says... tell us all about the arts and culture of Prince George. The Community Arts Council (CAC) announced Thursday it is launching a citywide survey to get perhaps the best dataset ever assembled on the state of this area’s arts scene. “The CAC is conducting a survey in order to quantify the inventory of the arts and culture community of Prince George,” said the association’s executive director Sean Farrell. “This project is being conducted as part of the CAC’s 50th anniversary. The results of the survey will inform planning of the new artsbased community centre, and other efforts to incorporate arts and culture into municipal planning and development.” Farrell said the census is ready and waiting online at princegeorgeculture.com and there is hardly nobody who wouldn’t be eligible to answer, since almost everyone creates things

even as a hobby. The CAC hopes to hear from the professional artists of the city, the commercial-level creator, but also those who only use the arts as their personal recreation. People who garden are as much a part of that as the sketcher or those who keep journals or noodle around on an instrument in their private time. “We want to take the temperature of the arts and culture sector. We want to take an inventory,” he said. “Our goal with this project is to develop a comprehensive and detailed portrait of arts and culture in Prince George and demonstrate just how widespread it is. We’re really trying to be broad in how we characterize arts and cultural pursuits and we hope this will encourage residents to participate in the survey and enable us to capture what they do. We believe that almost everyone in Prince George could participate in this survey, not just those who are ‘professional’ or make their living as artists.” The survey is being funded by a grant from The City of Prince George. The municipal staff leader in closest touch

with the arts scene in the city is Doug Hofstede, city hall’s community services manager. He talked about how this survey is going to be helpful in his office as well as Farrell’s. “They have been our go-to partner more than you probably know,” he said appreciatively, adding that this census would be meaningful “to find out empirically what’s out there” in the number and kind of arts being practiced. Farrell said the CAC’s upcoming move from their current location to the downtown location picked by the City of Prince George (the corner of Quebec Street and Third Avenue) needed the best collection of information possible, so they know how to formulate the best construction/renovation designs. The survey’s results will also give the CAC and the City of Prince George together the best dialogue for talking about how the region’s arts scene should be developed in the future. The survey is free to fill out, takes less than 15 minutes, and all those who participate can enter to win some master-level pottery by local pottery star Karen Heathman.

City’s population grows by 739, says B.C. Stats Citizen staff The city’s population grew marginally over the course of 2018, according to a year-end estimate from B.C. Stats. It stood at 78,675, an increase of 739 people from 2017. B.C. Stats takes the most recent federal census figures, from 2016, and looks at various indicators – notably BC Hydro connections and B.C. health client registry numbers in the case of small population communities – to come up with estimates.

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For the Fraser-Fort George Regional District as a whole, the estimate stood at 100,359, up 880 people with 16,100 living in unincorporated areas, up 142. Community by community, Mackenzie was home to 3,858 people, down 25, Valemount stood at 1,076, up 22, and McBride stood at 640, up two. Looking at the Bulkley-Nechako Regional District, its count was 40,059, up 203, with 20,397 in the unincorporated areas, up 242. For Smithers, the count was 5,706, up

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45, for Vanderhoof, it was 4,644, up 39, for Houston it was 3,136, up six, for Burns Lake it was 1,185, down 15, for Fort St. James it was 1,613, down 52, for Telkwa, it was 1,404, up three, for Fraser Lake it was 1,015, down three, and for Granisle it was 309, down nine. The Cariboo Regional District’s population was 65,312, up 377, with 41,400 living in the unincorporated areas, up 257. For Williams Lake it was 11,359, up 67, for Quesnel it was 10,428, up 40, and for 100 Mile House it was 1,892, down three.

Construction permits hit high in 2018 LOCAL 2

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A new Prince George resident plans to fight city hall over $331 in parking fines and towing fees he ran up violating the city’s winter parking regulation. James Vanveen says he had been parking on Laurier Crescent to the west of 10th Avenue on a fairly consistent basis for a matter of weeks. But over the course of three days last week he was issued two tickets, each carrying a $50 fine, and then saw his car towed, forcing him to pay $231 to get it out of the compound. It was the latest setback in his search for a safe place to park during the day while he is at work in the area since moving to Prince George in October. He had been parking east of 10th where parking is limited to three hours per day, but after getting two tickets for exceeding the limit due to a lack of time to get out and move his car, he switched to the west side where there is no posted time limit. Vanveen had thought he had found the answer to his problem – until last week that is. Since then, he has learned that parking on residential streets is prohibited from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. from Oct. 15 to April 15 in the name of keeping the routes clear for the snow plows. But he is critical of the city’s efforts to make it known to the public. The reason printed on the tickets he received was limited “daytime winter parking 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.” “How does a person new to Prince George obtain this information?” Vanveen said. “There’s no street signage. How is a person supposed to know this?” Vanveen wasn’t the only one to find a ticket on his windshield or worse. Over the first two weeks of January, city bylaw enforcement officers had issued 371 tickets across the city for the infraction, 74 of them in the area where Vanveen was ticketed – namely Laurier Crescent, McBride Crescent and Alward Street to the west of 10th. As well, 91 vehicles were towed across the city with the vast majority for violating the winter parking rules. “It’s unfortunate but it’s the way it has to be to ensure that the streets are kept clear of ice and snow and safe for all users,” city bylaw services manager Fred Crittendon said. “And particularly when we get into residential areas it’s even more important.” — see PARKED, page 3

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