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TUESDAY, APRIL 15, 2014 • MERRITT NEWSPAPERS
Faded signs along hwys coming down By Emily Wessel THE HERALD
newsroom@merrittherald.com
TOMATO, TOMAHTO From left: Collettville Grade 7 students Brianne Lidster and Mandy Lockie and Grade 6 students Miya Kandola and Felize Omori help Soup Bowl co-organizer Ernie Whittaker load up over 100 cans of tomatoes on a dolly to bring into the Anglican Church Hall on April 8. The school’s leadership class organized a drive for canned tomatoes after choosing the Soup Bowl as the local cause they’d help as part of their participation in the Free the Children charity. Each year, the school chooses one local cause to benefit and one global cause. Whittaker said the tomatoes will go a long way to serving up soup, bread and coffee to anybody who wants it every Tuesday from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Emily Wessel/Herald
The three Walk of Stars sings on wooden teepee structures along highways leading into Merritt will be removed this summer. City council approved a motion at its regular meeting on April 8 to remove the signs and see what kind of shape the “Welcome to Merritt” signs underneath are in. If those signs are in rough shape too, then just the wooden teepee structures holding the signs will be left up. Whether new signs designed to fit with the city’s new destination branding will go up on the same teepee structures or entirely new structures remains to be seen. “We can’t leave those signs up as they are for another year. We just simply can’t,” Coun. Mike Goetz said at the council meeting. “It’s an embarrassment. Alan Jackson is a white blob, for God’s sake.” Goetz made the motion as council went over eight recommendations from the city’s Directional Signage Committee. Removing those signs will be a short-term solution until council figures out long-term plans for the signs — the biggest of which will be whether to repair or replace those signs and the teepee structures they stand on. Committee member Coun. Kurt Christopherson said the purpose of the recommendations is to give council more information, rather than have them choose right away whether to repair or replace the signs. Coun. Harry Kroeker said he couldn’t support repairing the signs and was in favour of replacing them. Council passed Kroeker’s motion that staff get quotes on options for design and associated costs, with
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Coun. Neil Menard’s amendment of a 30-day deadline. “I don’t have a problem with [Kroeker’s] motion, but the intent of seeing if they could be repaired is for this summer for the tourist traffic,” Christopherson told council. “So now, if we’re going the long route to redesign and everything else, what’s going to happen with the signs this year and perhaps for the next couple years? Are we going to be stuck with the same ill-looking stuff that’s out there already? “I don’t want to see the signs out on the highway the same way they’ve been in the last five years — a deplorable state,” he said. Acting Chief Administrative Officer Larry Plotnikoff said repairing the signs would buy council some time if it chose to go ahead with a potentially lengthy redesign and replacement process. “If we’re looking at replacing the signs, that’s a little bit more of a process because you’d be looking at different designs. Council would have to consider that as well as the cost and what materials would be utilized, and how it would be portrayed,” Plotnikoff told council. “That could be a fairly lengthy process given the size of those signs, as well.” If new structures or signs do eventually go up, they must stay within the cement pad that the current ones rest on. Plotnikoff told council the Ministry of Highways stipulates that the signs must stay on the concrete pad of the original signs or the city risks losing the land they stand on. Another recommendation put forward by the committee was to repaint the lettering of “Country music capital of Canada” on the archway on Voght Street.
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