CANFOR: Rustad mill now permanently closed A3 Wednesday, December 7, 2011
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■ Grow Ops
I Affirm
‘Play the game pay the price.’ Judge O’Byrne
DeLynda PILON/Fre e Pre s s
Judge Ron Tindale swears in Mayor Shari Green at the inaugural meeting of city council Monday evening.
Utility rate hike OK’d ■ CITY COUNCIL
Incumbents vote for increase, new councillors vote against DeLynda Pilon newsroom@pgfreepress.com
One of the first official pieces of city business taken on by new mayor Shari Green and council included a rate hike of five per cent every year for five years on water and sewer utility bills. A review of the water utility by financial services and operations included projections of needs from 2012 through to 2016 in revenue, expenditures and capital. The water utility is set up so it is paid for by users, however, it was unsustainable through current rates. Kathleen Soltis, director of corporate
Kelly Road school brings Robin Hood to the stage A17
services, explained there is an infrastructure deficit in the city. “It’s crucial to put aside money and not have the gap grow,” she said. Superintendent of operations Bill Gall said one of the issues with the current infrastructure is the plastic lines that were installed in the 80s and 90s. “In the mid-80s the city put in plastic pipes. They began to fail and when that happens it’s hard to detect,” he said. Repairing these lines as they fail will go on for the foreseeable future, according to a report supplied to council. When they fail, they saturate the surrounding ground. Copper connections, when they fail,
make a considerable amount of noise. The city currently uses copper pipe. The raise in user fees is a more conservative increase than options presented at the committee as a whole meeting in October and, though they don’t achieve full sustainability, they do contribute to the capital each year and maintain an operating surplus of 25 per cent per year. The vote to approve the increases was carried by the new mayor and incumbent councillors, with the newly elected councillors, Frank Everitt, Albert Koehler and Lyn Hall, opposed to the option.
Watch your wallet this holiday season Prince George RCMP have received reports of the theft of purses and wallets while in retail stores. On December 3 and 4, two members of the public had their wallet or purse stolen while shopping at area retail stores. In the first case, the victim had placed her purse in a hand basket and set the basket down for a moment, while retrieving an item from the shelf. Upon return, the victim found her purse was gone. In the
second report, a wallet was removed from a shopping cart at a different retailer. The victim realized her wallet was gone when she went to the checkout. In both cases, the suspect was not seen. The Prince George RCMP would like to remind the public not to leave personal items in shopping carts or baskets. It is always a good idea to keep cash, credit cards and identification on your person and away from store provided baskets.
If you’re going to get into the drug business, be prepared to spend time behind bars. That was the message from Judge D. J. O’Byrne in sentencing Phuc Van Vo last month. Vo pleaded guilty to producing a controlled substance after police busted up a marijuana grow operation on rural property near Hixon. When police raided the property, they discovered 1,264 marijuana plants in a multistage growing operation. The value of the marijuana, depending on it how was packaged and sold, could be anywhere between $474,000 and $1 million, O’Byrne wrote in his reasons for judgment. While the Crown argued for 18 months in jail for Vo, his defence counsel argued for a conditional sentence given the fact that the accused had no criminal record, pleaded guilty, that there were no firearms involved and there was no risk of fire at the operation. “(Defence counsel) says that Mr. Vo is terrified as to what the outcome of this will be,” wrote O’Byrne. “Well, he was not so terrified that he did not embark on it. He embarked on this for pure financial gain. You play the game; you pay the price.” O’Bryne sentenced Vo to 14 months in jail. Vo was charged along with Dao Quoc Lam and O’Byrne seemed a little incredulous that the pair embarked on this misadventure and stressed a strong message must be sent. “I guess it does not occur to people when they come out of the Lower Mainland that two Vietnamese gentlemen at an outbuilding near Hixon might draw attention to themselves because they would stand out like a palm tree in the middle of the prairies,” the judge wrote. “Notwithstanding that, it appears they want to come forward and do grow operations. “In my mind, the most important principle to sentencing is specific deterrence. “Unless we stop people from coming up to the Cariboo Chilcotin and north, they are going to keep coming, and in that view, jail is the only way to do it. “There is no consideration in my mind whatsoever of a conditional sentence.”