S TANDARD TERRACE
1.30
$
$1.24 PLUS 6¢ GST
VOL. 27 NO. 37
www.terracestandard.com
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
City to pay for DNA
BENJAMIN DAVIDSON PHOTO
■■ Burning off the turkey fat VAUGHAN ROBINSON, also known as “Noodles,” pumped out over 75 squats with 195 pounds at the Squat Challenge Dec. 27 at the North Coast Health & Fitness Gym. The event is the first-known event of its type, where athletes did squats for ten straight minutes, lifting a barbell with their body weight. See page A12 for results.
Family to live in Costa Rica A LOCAL family is following their passion for a country by moving there to live for a year. Lana Garner, her husband Shawn Grier and their two children Maya, 13, and Ethan, 10, are spending 2016 in Costa Rica, after travelling there several times and falling in love with the Central American country. The couple, both of whom have lived here most of their lives, first went to Costa Rica about 17 years ago and dreamed of going back, living there or maybe even retiring there, said Garner. In January 2015, they took their children with them and had a similar, awesome experience, she said. “We loved what we saw and experienced and it started a conversation between us of ‘could we do this?’” said Garner. Garner had decided to quit her job at Northern Health a couple of years ago to devote more time to her family, and she has never regretted it, as putting her family first is most important. “I’ve been able to go to my kids’ Christmas concerts and not be rushed. I’ve been home for them after school, able to bake, get my social work degree,” she said. “The time that it’s given me with my family, it’s priceless so this is a continuance of that.” That includes making sacrifices this past year to save up enough money to go, she said, and to have enough money to survive without working because they did not get work visas.
Given their skill set – Garner is a reflexologist and her husband a carpenter – they want to see what they can build from their shared skills. They are thinking they can be part of the community in Costa Rica and trade skills with others. As for her children going to school there, she said from what she has learned from researching it, that it will be great for them. “The experience our kids will have is just awesome,” said Garner. They will be going to a bilingual school, taking their academic courses in English and other courses in Spanish so they should learn the language in a short time, she said. “Kids are so good that way. They’ll be teaching us,” she said. The school district here has been very supportive and said that travelling and taking your kids somewhere is a far bigger education than they can get from school classes. Garner has used the internet to research anything and everything she has wanted to know. “You can basically find whatever you want to research online, whatever question or concern, type it in and there is oodles of blogs and videos, all sorts of things to make these things possible to prepare you,” she said. Another thing she learned was that people can travel the world by housesitting for others. “There are ways in which you can go on a shoestring budget and live somewhere,” she said.
Cont’d Page A12
A RECENT rise in the price of providing a comanaged federal-provincial program to pay for DNA testing in law enforcement is being downloaded onto municipalities, and the City of Terrace doesn’t like it one bit. At a recent regular meeting, Terrace councillors received information outlining the reasons why the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) opposes this fee increase on behalf of municipalities affected. They also resolved to write their own letter about their displeasure with receiving a surprise new cost without consultation. The problem began this fall when a bill of $2,352 arrived, followed by the knowledge that total costs are expected to be $11,400 starting for the 2016/2017 year. “It wasn’t even asked of us, it was told. So it was a complete download. There is no negotiation, there is no discussion, so you can imagine Terrace, like other municipalities, is pretty upset about this. We will lobby through UBCM that this gets reversed,” said mayor Carol Leclerc. The fees are for what is called Biological Casework Analysis that is performed by the RCMP forensic identification team, National Police Services and local police detachments. The provincial and federal governments renegotiated the payment method shared between them, and the provincial government set a cap on what it would pay annually, with the rest being cost-shared with the local police units around the province who in turn bill municipalities for the total amount. “Police services has created a cost sharing model calculated on the total cost for DNA analysis in British Columbia, minus the provincial contribution, distributed proportionally based on your agency’s two year average usage compared to the usage of other law enforcement agencies in British Columbia,” said a letter to the Terrace RCMP detachment about the new program. Terrace’s contribution and thus usage of DNA crime forensics compared to neighbouring municipalities is average. By way of comparison, Prince Rupert will have to pay $26,361.17 for 2016/2017 and Kitimat $7,456.45. The total cost for BC in 2016/2017 will be $4.9 million, with $1.36 million coming from the province in a base sum and then $3.5 million cost shared with municipalities having 5,000 or more residents, who will pay $2.9 million collectively in total. The federal government pays for the remaining 46 per cent. Another letter from the North Central League of Governments Association (NCLGA) stated this is an instance of the province downloading costs from the province to municipalities balanced budget. The City of Terrace report states that the city did not authorize the Organized Crime Agency to invoice them for the service.
Last look
Crash and smash
Sum it up
Check out the happenings in the second half of 2015 \COMMUNITY A10
Man faces charges after driving truck into, and through, Skeena Mall \NEWS A3
Grab a final glance at the sports highlights from the second part of 2015 \SPORTS A17