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Teachers are frustrated After working a full school year without a contract, teachers are now preparing to take action to resolve outstanding issues at the bargaining table.

Teachers are frustrated

After working a full school year without a contract, teachers are now preparing to take action to resolve outstanding issues at the bargaining table. Teachers are frustrated at the lack of progress with the British Columbia Public Sector Employer’s Association (BCPSEA), the bargaining agent of the school board. BCPSEA is unable or unwilling to bargain any substantive issues with teachers, in particular, students’ learning conditions that were stripped from our previous collective agreement. Teachers in Howe Sound and across the province have seen a marked erosion in students’ learning conditions, with significantly larger classes and elimination of supports for special needs students. Ninety per cent of B.C.’s teachers have indicated that class size and supports for special needs students should be restored to our collective agreement.

Teachers will continue to work hard to reach a negotiated settlement and will do everything possible to avoid disruption. However, we are fully prepared to take whatever action is necessary to achieve our bargaining goals. We are concerned that an essential service designation by the Labour Relations Board will cause unnecessary disruption in our schools and are dismayed that B.C. is the only province in Canada that has designated education an "essential service." This was brought in by Gordon Campbell’s Liberal government in 2001, despite the fact that very few teachers strikes had occurred in the previous decade, and more instructional days were lost due to the weather than labour disputes.

In the coming weeks, it is critically important that the provincial government meet with teachers in a mutual effort to negotiate, problem solve and avoid disruption in the education system. Further, we urge our elected school board trustees, parents, and other stakeholder groups to encourage the government and BCPSEA to resolve this dispute through negotiation, not confrontation.

Carl E. Walker

President

Howe Sound Teachers’ Association

Ride on

This past Monday evening Whistler lost one of it’s special people. Ken Quon, 48 years young, the manager of Whistler’s IGA store. Ken was a broad-based community supporter. Through his position at IGA he helped many community groups host their functions. Ken’s profession demanded long hours on the job but when he relaxed it was snowboarding in the winter and riding his mountain bike in the spring, summer and fall. The WORCA Loonie races, volunteering at WORCA work parties made Thursday nights special for him. Those people who rode along side Ken during these events were always treated to his infectious enthusiasm for the sport.

A few years ago Ken was invited, because of his commitment to helping others to enjoy and to improve their mountain bike skills, to join the Wild Willies Bike Club Guides. It was while guiding a Monday evening "Come Ride With Us" that Ken took his last ride. Too few people ever really pass from this life doing exactly what they most enjoy. Ken did. He and his bike just stopped during a ride in lost Lake Park. There was no attributing crash. Medical authorities said, "he would not have even felt falling to the ground while still astride his bike."

A heartfelt thanks is extended to all of his fellow riders who applied their life saving skills on the trail, the paramedics who were on scene within minutes and to the doctors and nurses at Whistler’s Medical Clinic who tried to save Ken. They could not, he was already riding well ahead of the group. Much, much too soon.

Ken, you will "always be riding with us."

On Monday, September the 12 th , there will be a Remembrance Ride in honour of Ken starting at 6 p.m. at the regular meeting place at Wild Willies at Nesters. All friends and fellow riders are invited to attend.

Fellow friends and riders

Whistler

The centre of the Games

This letter was addressed to mayor and council. A copy was forwarded to Pique.

Re: The Olympic Sledge Hockey Rink

I hope I can bring to your debate the prospective of one of the founding directors of the 2010 Bidcorp Board. Like you I sat as a member of the Executive Committee throughout the life of the bid, in part advancing Whistler issues being a part-time resident in Whistler for 35 years.

Back in the early days of the bid, we had a vision of Whistler living the Olympic legacy for decades after the Games. To that end, I always envisaged an Olympic structure within the town centre that would stand for generations as a monument and memory of our participation in this wonderful world celebration. From world fairs to Olympic Games, after the event, host communities always offer tangible evidence to memorialize the event. It is over half a century since Helsinki's Olympics, yet in a recent visit I was toured through their Olympic stadium and adjoining Olympic museum and gift shop, with the Olympic rings adorning the buildings. What a wonderful legacy in celebration of events of 53 years ago!

As the 2010 Bidcorp Board conceptualized Whistler's involvement in the Games, the only proposed structure of any importance in the village centre that would offer Whistler that legacy was the Paralympic sledge hockey rink. All other major venue construction work is outside the village centre, with the most significant building miles away in the Callaghan Valley.

It is critical that VANOG and the municipality appreciate that we are not talking here about a Paralympic sledge hockey rink. This proposed building must be seen as Whistler's Olympic Centre, the focal point of the main Games and the Paralympics. During the main Games, the centre offers a glorious venue for medal ceremonies (saving money to construct the structure somewhere else), and provides a 3,500-seat venue for cultural celebrations. But equally of importance, the centre could allow the community and tourists to witness the Games on a large screen, with live music, and Olympic products sold at kiosks. Having been to the Sydney games, the organizers so effectively drew their community together, whether you could afford tickets to events or not, by constructing six or seven Olympic Centres where citizens could enjoy the sporting events in the company of others on large screens. Those that couldn’t afford tickets to the Games could still offer themselves and their kids "an Olympic experience." This so-called sledge hockey rink gives us the perfect opportunity to bring the community together to celebrate the Games in a weather-protected structure.

Hence the building must be seen as so much more than a sledge hockey facility. It will be a monument of the Games, and should serve the community in so many ways during the main and the Paralympic Games, not to mention well after the Games as a recreational facility and as a lasting memory of Whistler’s place in Olympic history.

Let us never lose sight that if your council chooses to abandon this project in the village centre, and it ends up down the highway, or in a neighbouring community, Whistler will have lost the opportunity to leave a tangible memory of its involvement in this incredible event. What a tragedy that would be.

I would ask for the opportunity to appear before the council with my thoughts.

Don Rosenbloom

Vancouver

Hard choices

The drama surrounding the Paralympic arena speaks volumes to what is currently ailing Whistler.

On one hand, I commend the members of council who possessed the courage to take a sober second look at this issue. On the other, I am greatly concerned with the institutional process that led council to formulate a secondary deal – behind closed doors – before they had fully proved out the viability of the first and discussed it with the community.

"Just trust us."

With all the skill sets and recourses our community has to offer, council did not trust us to participate in the process. This "going-it-alone" mentality illustrates how isolated and besieged council has become: Lack of effective leadership and an unclear governance model has created a dynamic where the town’s leadership routinely squanders opportunities.

Currently there are two other enormous opportunities that will affect us greatly if not handled properly. The first is the re-zoning of the tennis lands. The Holborn Group has been negotiating with the RMOW with the mistaken belief that they do not have any obligation to fulfill the amenity package their zoning was created for on the site in the first place. Additionally, they would like to change the zoning on the site from a hotel and spa to a Montebello-style townhouse project, make a lot of money and not offer any additional benefit to the community.

The compensation being offered to Whistler is absurdly low. Council seems oddly committed to letting Holborn plod down this course without demanding adequate compensation. When I do the math, the Holborn Group could make a generous donation to the library, Millennium Place or the sledge hockey arena (or new concept arena) and still receive an excellent return on their investment.

The Rainbow Lands are in equal peril. If we want to embrace, as a community, a more European style of building and construct products that will last the test of time, then we must invest more money into the buildings initially.

Here is the problem: The cost of construction and land will exceed what people are able to afford. I fear that to resolve this costing issue, the leadership will put forward a more cost-effective form of housing, i.e., townhouses. To move employees out of townhouses into single-family homes will only require a handful of extra market lots to offset the price difference. The conflict is these extra lots are restricted by the "Cap". We cannot have it both ways.

As a community, we will face many hard decisions in the future. Every decision will come with consequences. Time is not on our side. We are leaving the planning stage and moving into the implementation stage. The implementation stage is far more stressful than the planning, and with the current levels of frustration and angst, I am not certain that anyone will be up to the task. Council and staff need to be supported and a new operating methodology needs to be defined and implemented.

Tim Regan

Whistler

Olympic arena not viable

Re: Paralympic arena

I have to say that the mayor and council were 100 per cent correct in concluding that viable and affordable options for the Paralympic arena are not available to the Whistler community. It seems an almost bad trick that VANOC offers us a "free" $20 million to build a facility that will cost between $43 and $58 million if my numbers are correct. As presented at the Spruce Grove Open House on Aug. 27 th the full Olympic options will cost us between $2 and $3 million per year to pay down our portion of the debt and the ongoing losses. This would require a 5-10 per cent increase in our property taxes and all of us know, or should know that Whistler is also the most heavily taxed municipality in Canada. I for one am sick and tired of paying such usurious taxes for our gold plated municipal standards. I am strongly against undertaking more debt load to pay for a facility for one week of games played by other people.

I have personally visited every venue for the Olympic Winter Games since 1948’s St. Moritz and in most of these mountain towns there is an Olympic Legacy which is in fact a rusting, crumpling, ski jump, ice pavilion etc., which is still costing the citizens anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million to maintain in poor condition. The legacies in Nagano, Japan and Lillehammer, Norway are costing even more, while the ski jumps and Nordic centre at Holmenkollen in Oslo, Norway loses $1 million per year even though they do have rock concerts and World Cup Jumping Nordic events. The only thing that makes any money at any of these things I have seen is the small museum and souvenir stands selling Olympic logo wear.

The other thing that bothers me in this overall concept is that Whistler is the site for all of the snow based events and Vancouver is the site for the ice based competitions. Why then is our legacy a sheet of ice with 5,000 seats, which I might add could sit almost every adult resident in Whistler. Do you know that we are having a tremendous legacy in lifts, snowmaking, and safety on our mountains which totals nearly $25 million? These are facilities that we will use on a daily and annual basis to benefit our ski and snowboard racing, training and also our visitors from around the world.

It is my opinion that a second sheet of ice is not the highest priority in Whistler and therefore we should forego the arena concept altogether, take the $2 million from VANOC and perhaps build a modest non-gold plated museum on a portion of Lots 1/9 that will be a long term reminder that the Olympic Winter Games in 2010 are a part of Whistler’s history but that in fact we built Whistler without the Olympic Winter Games.

Paul Mathews

Whistler

The terminal wait

Re: The future of work of Whistler (Pique, Sept. 1)

At this point in my life, I have been irregularly reading about the staff accommodation problems in Whistler for somewhere around 12 years. I must have passed over hundreds of articles dealing with the various problems associated with the subject. My favorite one (I wish I had kept a copy) I read during my last year of residence in the valley was titled "Smaller is better." That was about that time I decided to catch the last train from the valley.

About a year ago I talked with a fellow I know from high school. He grew up in Whistler, lived there almost his entire life. Until he had a family that is, then he moved from town. I hope he will forgive me for quoting him on that chat but his situation is becoming more common for people around the resort that I will use it an example. He said to me on that occasion "It’s funny, I can barely afford to live in Squamish and I don’t even want to live in Squamish." These days he commutes to Whistler for work, his home for over 20 years, only because he has a good job there.

Now if there were a single thing I could change about the problem of housing in Whistler it would be the waiting list at the Whistler Housing Authority. To be blunt, I would like nothing more than to take the list and run it through a paper shredder, starting from scratch because it should be obvious to everyone that it is not working. If it were, I would not still be reading articles in the newspaper on the subject. For I believe that one of the most defining moments of Whistlers success will be when this problem has been solved.

To change the waiting list at the WHA I would develop a points system similar to the one they currently use in Banff. I am not overly familiar with the system but I do know that it is based on years of residence, employment and family within the community. The more years living in the valley or having family in the valley will score higher points and increase your chances for residency. The deciding factor on the opportunity to stay within the town would not be the day a person walks through the doors of the WHA because he or she have finally grown to the age of seriously considering the resort to be a home for their family, such as the system in place works now. In a points system, such as the one I have suggested, the deciding factors would be based on community values to ensure the survival of Whistler’s core community.

The families of Whistler, especially those that have multiple generations of family living in the resort, are not the backbone of the resort, they are its life’s blood. Nothing can survive without.

Bjorn Gimse

Victoria

Builders can help find solution

Re: Paralympic Sledge Hockey Arena

The "2010 Games Venue Agreement" between the RMOW and VANOC provides $20 million for the construction of a facility for the Paralympic Games to accommodate the sledge hockey events. This facility, to meet the International Paralympic Committee and VANOC spectator facility requirements, must seat, for the event only, 3,500-5,000 people and provide an international-sized ice sheet. The design and location are to be determined by the RMOW.

The key priorities outlined in the Whistler 2020 document provide the following guidelines for such a facility:

• Be able to host a variety of activities for everyone to enjoy;

• Provide a venue where visitors and residents can interact and share experiences;

• Provide for a range of year round recreational activities and opportunities for all ages and abilities;

• Be affordable;

• Should be attractive and reflect the community's character and natural environment;

• Provide for diverse and affordable opportunities for recreation, leisure, arts and culture.

Eldon Beck's proposal for Lots 1 & 9 would seem to satisfy all of the above. This would be comprised of an open-air facility with canopy-style roof. Added to this could be enclosed structures such as those proposed by Norbert Roche at each end which could house the museum, arts facilities or an educational campus. The facility could be designed with some permanent seating and some temporary seating. (I believe they set up somewhere in the neighbourhood of 50,000 seats in Vancouver for the Indy.)

The facility would provide for an ice sheet during the winter for both visitors and locals to share and could be converted into an amphitheater for summer use to house concerts and other covered outdoor recreational events. An open-air venue would blend into the surrounding environment and be able to provide diverse and affordable opportunities for recreation, leisure, art and culture. Examples of this type of structure can be found at Ontario Place and Canada's Wonderland.

It would seem given the projected costs for other facilities in the province, i.e. our library at $10 million, Vernon's Multiplex at $20 million in 2005 dollars and Squamish's proposal for the Sledge Hockey arena at $18 million that VANOC's $20 million would go a long way to pay for such a facility. It could not possibly cost anywhere near the proposed $58 million.

There is no doubt that there is a desire both in the community and from our visitors to have other recreational options. Can we seriously be contemplating giving up $20 million to achieve this?

If there is any way to have the decision on this facility extended to enable the community to consider other options, please do so. There is an option not yet considered that will provide both for the Paralympics and the community and to allow us to deliver on the commitment that was made in the 2010 Bid Document. We just need to find it! The Sea to Sky Chapter of the Canadian Home Builders Association has people and resources to help achieve a solution.

Bob Deeks

Vice President, Canadian Home Builders Association, Sea to Sky Chapter

Whistler

A problem area for years

In defense of the rescue worker who hit the pedestrian last week on Village Gate Boulevard: Speaking as a taxi driver for 16 years in Whistler, for years we have had to contend with people out in the wee hours of the morning having a gay old time (good onya) walking in front of our cars during bar rush. This is 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. This particular area where the young man was hit has been a problem for a long time. People cross the street coming from the Delta Suites-Garfinkel’s to get to the loop area for busses and generally have no regard for road safety or the cars. I have had people walk in front of me on purpose. During icy conditions it is even more hazardous.

I propose a fence is run along both sides of the street behind the bus stops running from the existing crosswalk and putting a second cross walk at the corner before the underpass, forcing pedestrians to walk around.

This area and others in the village have been problems for taxis as well as other motorists because the pedestrians do not follow protocol.

I extend heartfelt sympathy to the rescue worker, the young man who was injured and their families, with hopes that the issue is resolved without severe ramifications.

Hollie Davis

Pemberton

Enough from outside

I would like to say "enough" to all those letters from outside the Whistler area telling our council what to do and how to act. I have been reading letters from Port Moody urging council to not allow the Rainbow development. As an actual resident who has been saving with all my might to even dream of owning a home again after the financial disaster of owning a leaky condo, I say to the Port Moody resident, "mind your own business."

To those from Sechelt and Port Coquitlam who think all activity at city hall must stop until a lengthy comprehensive and punitive review has been completed, I ask, who are you? Are you part of this mysterious Citizens for Whistler? Why are you trying so hard to influence our city from afar? Please start identifying who you are and why you wish to direct our city contrary to the wishes of residents who live here.

Mark Cowie

Whistler

Simple and safe

Re: Share the road (Pique letters Sept. 1)

Dear D. Ebacher, I have two words for you: Valley Trail.

It's long, it's nice, it's safe and it has better views than the highway any day of the year. On the highway, there's already lots of traffic including a huge quantity of tourists who don't necessarily know where they're going. We're all trying to get from point A to point B. So let's do it the safest way possible for everybody: bikes on the Valley Trail and cars on the highway. Simple and safe.

E. Blouin

Whistler

What’s to like?

Re: Melamed confirms his mayoral musings (Pique Sept. 1)

It seems from Councillor Ken Melamed's comments that we should not consider him as someone who has never seen an idea that he likes, but rather he should be thought of as someone with a spectacular record in coming up with ideas that no one else seems to like. I do not find this to be much of a quality that I would look for in a leader. Stay on the sidelines Ken, I don't think you are suited to the leading role.

Ross Baillie

Vancouver/Whistler

Been there, done that

Last night I started planning my winter vacation for the first week of January. Since I've been going to Whistler the past five years I convinced the rest of the family to join me this time, instead of going to Vail or Utah again. I was very disappointed when I found out that Whistler would be the most expensive vacation. I compared apples with apples in terms of accommodations, those being The Pan Pacific and Westin Whistler with the same quality of hotels at Vail and The Canyons. Every head of our family would save $1,000 US (money that could be spend around Whistler Village) at either Vail or Utah. On top of that, Whistler is not the most accessible resort in terms of flying into, and of course the weather is unpredictable.

In terms of mountains they are not the same, but at Vail you have 5,000+ acres and Beaver Creek; same at the Canyons, Park City and a similar vertical considering that the real vertical at Whistler is from peak to Olympic station.

Both of those resorts (Vail, Canyons) are more family (kids) oriented and you can count on good weather.

I have spoken to many friends and have told me they aren’t going to Whistler this year. I will be going later in the season with some friends in a "guys" only trip but Whistler has turned into a "been there done that" resort, which is very sad to say considering it is the best.

J.C. Almodovar

Lake Nona, Florida