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Saturday, June 1, 2019 | Your community newspaper since 1916

CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN

Splashing in the sun The Rotaract Spray Park in Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park was a popular location to cool down on Friday afternoon.

Brink to be named to Order of B.C. Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsnen@pgcitizen.ca

CITY OF PRINCE GEORGE HANDOUT PHOTO

City staff are attaching tracking tags to household garbage cans.

Tracking tags being attached to garbage carts Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff City workers have begun the process of attaching special tags to keep better track of household garbage carts via a radio frequency identification system. By July 15, more than 23,000 carts will have been outfitted with the items, each of which is about 10 cm long and are also used on airline luggage, tickets and retail goods. The technology, combined with the onboard cameras already installed on the collection trucks, will improve the city’s ability to keep an eye out for broken, overflowing or missing carts – issues that generate about 750 calls to city hall per year, city spokesperson Mike

Kellett said. “To give you an example, if a driver is going down the street and sees an overflowing garbage cart, which we can’t pick up, it will register that cart so that if that homeowner later calls and asks ‘why wasn’t my garbage picked up,’ that’ll enable us to cross reference using the radio frequency tags to say we have a photo of it, your garbage was overflowing, this is why it wasn’t picked up. “And that saves a lot of staff time and fuel because the driver won’t have to go back to that residence and investigate. He can just quickly reference it on the computer.” The collection system, with pickup scheduled according to the zone where

a household is located, will remain unchanged. Kellett said it will also help a crew plan before drivers go out on a route “because they can see where everything is and not have to double back. Generally, everything is more streamlined.” The tags and the cameras will also help keep recyclables out of landfills by allowing drivers to pinpoint households that are disposing of improper products, he added. Information collected through the tags will be stored on a secure server by the city with personal information like people or vehicles blurred out to protect privacy. The work costs about $10 per cart.

Man sentenced for break and enter Citizen staff A Quesnel man caught by a homeowner trying to break into a Valleyview house was sentenced Thursday to 378 days in jail. Clayton Michael Hohmann, 32, was also issued a lifetime firearms prohibition and ordered to provide a DNA sample for the Jan. 4, 2017 incident. When the homeowner came across

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him, Hohmann took off in a truck, police said at the time. With RCMP following but not chasing, Hohmann lost control, striking a postal box and driving into a ditch near the corner of Sloan and Shamrock roads. He tried to flee on foot but, with the help of a police service dog, he was found hiding in a nearby yard. Police said a loaded SKS semi-automatic rifle, stolen from a Hart-area home

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the previous month, was later found in the truck. Hohmann was issued the term on one count of breaking and entering to commit an indictable offence. He was also convicted of possessing a firearm without a licence or registration, fleeing police and a separate count of breaking and entering. Hohmann spent a total of 485 days in custody on the counts prior to sentencing.

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Prince George lumber manufacturer and philanthropist John Brink will be named to the Order of British Columbia. He is one of 15 upon who Lt. Gov. Janet Austin will bestow the honour at Government House in Victoria on June 28. Established 30 years ago, the OBC is the highest form of recognition the Province can extend to its citizens. Known as lumber industry leader and innovator, Brinks moved to Canada from the Netherlands in 1965 and, a decade later, started Brink Forest Products. Since then, he has grown the business into the largest secondary wood manufacturer in North America. Over that BRINK time, he pioneered finger-jointing in Canada, a process of gluing together shorter pieces of lumber, which were considered waste products. Unwilling to use glue that was potentially toxic, Brink created an environmentally conscious adhesive. Thirty years later, this glue survived a regulatory challenge and finger-jointing and lamination were solidified as an industry in North America. In the 1980s, Brink went to B.C. Supreme Court and successfully argued that lumber grading rules were not being applied fairly across North America. The fight came at a cost, as some of his raw material suppliers canceled supply contracts in light of the litigation. In the end, the court decision leveled the playing field across the continent. Brink is the longest serving director on the B.C. Council of Forest Industries. He was involved in all five of Canada’s softwood lumber disputes with the United States, representing the secondary re-manufacturing industry. In 2001, he was the founding president of the B.C. Council of Value Added Wood Processors, an organization that represented eight associations and up to 800 members. On the philanthropy side, Brink and the College of New Caledonia jointly purchased a building for a trades and technology program that, in 2002, officially opened as the John A. Brink Trades and Technology Centre. On Friday, Brink received an honorary doctorate of law degree from the University of Northern British Columbia in recognition of his more than 50 years of commerce, philanthropy and community involvement.

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