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With two of her completed clay cats on display, Fort Langley Artists Group (FLAG) member Margo Harrison hand-built a feline sculpture from a lump of earthenware clay Oct. 5 at the Langley Centennial Museum. Find out more about Saturday artists demonstrations on page A17. Troy Landreville/Langley Advance
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How much should it cost to sit down downtown? by Heather Colpitts
hcolpitts@langleyadvance.com
Langley City will spend $30,000 on 14 new benches for the downtown. The funds will come from what Councillor Dave Hall calls the council “slush fund” or the Enterprise Fund, a $150,000 fund for council to spend. “In reality it’s slush fund,” and now that the end of the year is coming up, there’s a race to get it spent, Hall said. During the Oct. 7 council meeting he scoffed at the price tag of $1,785 per bench. “I’m a little gun shy,” he said. “We approved $9,000 for stick signs [as part of the City’s wayfinding strategy].” The benches cost $1,350 with the rest going to installation and a contingency. That had Hall questioning why installation would cost so much considering it’s work done by City staff. Administrator Francis Cheung explained that extra funds are
needed because the work is outside the normal staff duties. Hall was also critical of the City using Enterprise Fund money for benches but wouldn’t cover defibrillators for community facilities, which prompted point of order criticism from Coun. Gayle Martin. “I really take offense,” she said. Martin said Hall was implying that staff were spending a whim and trying to use up the money. The Enterprise Fund still has about $99,000 in it for this year. Hall said there was no prior notice that this spending decision was coming before council and should have been dealt with during budget deliberations. During the summer, council walked the downtown to see what should be fixed, refurbished or replaced. The 50 items on the ‘to do’ list included moss/weed growing behind sidewalks, missing bricks in sidewalks, new decorated bicycle racks, graffiti on streetlight standards, and unsightly areas. Fourteen benches were also put on the list and staff consider it more economical to replace them versus refurbishing them. Martin asked whether the
CRANBERRY FESTIVAL Saturday, Oct. 10 in Fort Langley
benches have additional pieces that prevent people from lying on them. Staff will look into options.
“Without any dividers on them, it probably looks very homey to someone,” she said.
Kwantlen Polytechnic University
School cheques faked Someone is using counterfeit cheques to rip off a Langley university campus. by Matthew Claxton mclaxton@langleyadvance.com
A local fraud artist has ripped off Kwantlen Polytechnic University for about $11,000 over the last two months. From August to September, someone has been cashing forged payroll cheques from the school at local cash stores and payday loan outlets. The forged cheques are of high quality, said Cpl. Holly Marks, a spokesperson for
the Langley RCMP. Passing bad cheques was once a much more common crime, but it has been overtaken by credit card fraud in recent Fraud suspect years. Wanted Police have a surveillance photo of the person who was cashing the cheques, but have been unable to identify the person thus far. Anyone with information is being asked to call the Langley RCMP at 604-532-3200, or to leave an anonymous tip, all CrimeStoppers at 1-800-2228477 (TIPS).
Check out all the activities at the annual celebration on page A18.