Thursday, February 23, 2017

Council to offer comments of support for a number of community initiatives

They'll be breaking out the thesaurus at City Hall this week as City Council prepares to provide a number of letters of support to a list of four Prince Rupert organizations.

Just prior to the start of Monday's very light Council Agenda, Council received word that a few more requests had been received, with Mayor Lee Brain adding them to the Agenda as the Council members prepared to consider them.

The original request from the published Agenda featured a request from the Northwest Community College Students Union for a letter of support to reinstate funding for Adult Basic Education and to abolish tuition fees. Once it has been written it will be forwarded to the Province's Advanced Education Minister.

Some background on the request can be found from our blog item of last Friday.

As part of the discussion on the topic, Councillor Thorkelson spoke for close to three minutes towards the importance of the motion and noted some of the local concerns that she has been made aware of to access more education and training for local residents.

Both Councillors Gurvinder Randhawa and Barry Cunningham echoed many of Councillor Thorkelson's comments on the theme, as they threw their support behind the NWCC student union's initiative.

Council approved the writing of the letter

The second request was from the Kaien Island Trail Enhancement Society, with the Mayor making note of the recent lease agreement that the city has signed with the Organization related to the the work they have planned to rehabilitate the Rushbrook Trail.

That work however was not the nature of their request.

As the Mayor would outline for Council, they had two requests for written support on the night, one was to help in their quest for funding for a race tracking system for the Mount Hays Quick Climb race and the other for their Kaien Island Trail Network Interpretive sign project.

Councillor Thorkelson offered up the observation that not many people may know what the tracking system consists of and how it may work.

Councillor Cunningham expressed his excitement over the prospect of more signage for local trails and how it would help to enhance the city.

The Mayor, also took advantage of the topic to note that with the city having done some design work on the downtown core, that work would be combined as one template for the entire area when they began their trail work planning within the city..

Council then voted to approve the letter.

The third request for a letter of support came from the North Coast Transition Society and their Housing First Coordinator James McNish, he is looking for a letter of support from the city to help create a new transitional shelter project in the Prince Rupert area.

With Council frequently discussing the issue of housing in the community, Councillor Cunningham was quick to express his support towards their plan to bring more housing resources to the community, with Council then voting to approve the writing of the letter of support.

The fourth request for a correspondence of support from the City came from the North Pacific Cannery Historical Society which is looking for a letter of support towards their funding requests for a number of projects at the Cannery Museum site

Included as part of their project list, is work on such areas as the boat lifts, a working dock, the main cannery building along with a number of other projects that they have plans for.

Councillor Cunningham noted for Council that the program that they have in place at North Pacific has proven helpful when it comes to building the workforce in the community, with many of those that have participated gaining their apprenticeships in the trades from the various work done at the Port Edward historical site.

Council approved the writing of the letter of support.

You can review the various notes related to each letter from the City's Video Archive, the letter writing approvals begin at just after the nineteen minute mark.



For more items related to Monday's City Council Session see our Council Timeline feature here.

Further background from developments through Prince Rupert City Council can be explored from our Council Discussion Archive page.

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