Thursday, September 27, 2018 | Your community newspaper since 1916
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Council candidates Garth Frizzell, Frank Everitt and Dave Fuller posted signs wider than allowed under the city’s election signs bylaw along Austin Road East. Other candidates’ signs at the site were in compliance.
Candidates contravene sign bylaw Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca A handful of city council candidates have put themselves in contravention of a city bylaw by posting signs larger than allowed for the spots where they have been posted. Signs measuring four-feet high by eightfeet wide in support of Garth Frizzell, Frank Everitt and Dave Fuller have been posted along Austin Road East at Highway 97 – a spot where the width is limited to 1.5 metres or four feet under the city’s election and political signs bylaw. As well, although those posted on private property are limited to 16 square feet – ef-
fectively four-feet by four-feet – three signs measuring four-by-eight feet were up on residential properties in support of Brian Skakun, Kyle Sampson and Frizzell as of Wednesday. Reached for comment, Frizzell, Everrit, Skakun and Sampson said they will all make changes to put their campaigns back in accordance with the bylaw. “Everybody has to abide by the bylaw, so when I find out anything that’s off, I’m going to go and absolutely make sure that I abide by it,” Frizzell said. “When mistakes are made, you go and fix them.” Frizzell and Sampson followed up with phone calls Wednesday to say they were
in the process of taking the problem signs down. As incumbents, Frizzell, Everitt and Skakun were members of the city council that passed the bylaw in July 2017. It designates specific areas around the city where election signs can be posted in answer to concerns about unsightliness and safety. However the bylaw, as it applies to Austin Road, poses a wrinkle. It’s the only spot where the width is limited to 1.5 metres, while those for most of the other 13 spots where signs are allowed around the city range from two to as much as 20 metres. The lone exception is a 70-metre stretch along 15th Avenue, along the north side of the Exhibition Park soccer fields, where the
Reopening Quinn Street transfer station to be considered Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff City council will consider converting the Quinn Street recycling depot back into a full-blown transfer station as part of its battle against illegal dumping – but doing so could cost plenty of money. City council voted unanimously last week in favour of Coun. Brian Skakun’s motion to direct administration to work with the Fraser-Fort George Regional District to develop a strategy to reduce the practice. And in doing so, they agreed to an amendment from Coun. Frank Everitt directing staff to also look at the possibility of handling household garbage at the site once the FFGRD’s lease of the site concludes at the end of April next year. The idea is to give households within city limits that do not get pickup service an option other than going to the Foothills landfill to dispose of household garbage, Everitt said Wednesday. Prior to 2013, the Quinn Street site had been a transfer station where household garbage could be dropped off but was scaled back to a recycling depot and a drop-off point for yard waste when the FFGRD took over the site. Everitt’s proposal could clash with a plan to convert the site into a storage facility for road salt. In January, council backed away from a proposal put forward by Everitt and Skakun to reopen a sani dump
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at the site for that very reason. The material is currently being stored in piles at the 18th Avenue public works yard but the site is too small and falls short of meeting federal government environmental standards, council was told. “We do not have any containment for any of the leachate that comes off of those salt piles,” public works director Gina Layte Liston told council at the time. Constructing a proper facility at the adjacent Quinn Street property is preferred, according to staff, because of its close proximity and “an existing impermeable surface.” Moreover, other land in the surrounding area costs about $1 million per acre and there are few other sites that would work, council was also told. On Wednesday, Everitt said the city could at least make the site available for household garbage until work begins on a new storage facility. And he suggested giving his idea a closer look could be worth the effort. “A lot of times we end up making decisions because we think that we have to do something immediately and when you take a second look at it or maybe a third look at it, if you will, some of those things aren’t quite as drastic as they were first thought to be,” Everitt said.
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Omineca Arts Centre reopens at new location Omineca Arts Centre closed, but reopened a heartbeat later and never missed a beat of downtown rhythm. The OAC got started at the corner of Third Avenue and George Street in 2016 when Emily Carr University launched an arts outreach program called the The Neighbourhood Time Exchange in partnership with Downtown Prince George. When that initiative came to a close, the local artists who had been attracted to the space and its energy kept it alive on their own under the OAC banner. For a number of reasons, the space was not suitable to the dreams and realities of the OAC society members. They found a new home and the doors are now open at Third Avenue and Victoria Street only four blocks from their starting point. The organizers opened the
new room softly at 369 Victoria St. with some introductory concerts, some visual art displays, a housewarming party of sorts, and then the big agricultural block party last week, Farm Fest. The secret is out. The doors are open and so is a new chapter for the indie arts room where the public can have almost any kind of creative fun it wants. “We are thrilled with this place,” said Jennifer Pighin, a local artist and one of the OAC organizers. “It’s bigger, brighter, better. It really infused new life into what we do.” What they do most is provide a home for the community to make arts of all kinds. Pighin called it “a safe place for creativity to flourish” which is an homage to its name. The word Omineca is a term used for the whole region north and west and including Prince George, much like the word Cariboo applies regionally to the city’s south. — see ‘THE THEME, page 3
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limit is 0.5 metres. Candidates remain free and clear to put up signs along Highways 16 and 97 – which includes First Avenue – because they are under provincial jurisdiction. A Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure policy is much more wide open but does require that they not pose a traffic hazard, be posted on or obstruct a traffic control device and be further from the roadside than standard traffic signs. They are also prohibited from bridges, overpasses, tunnels or other highway structures. City spokesman Mike Kellett said the city’s bylaw services department, which enforces the bylaw on a complaint-driven basis, has been notified.
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