Wednesday, Oetdber 7, 1992 mt” 3 5 inionPAGE Op OurViEWS Puppet strings? ne week into Castlegar’s () iv eiestion and already the lines are being drawn. Monday’s all-candidates’ forum proved to be an exercise in patience for Castlegar’s would-be politicians. Sadly, the issues of this campaign were sidelined by silly allegations about each candidates’ credibility. Doug Green was all but accused of being a walking, talking incarnation of the Coalition Unaccepting Rash Bureaucracy. Hogwash. Renee Read, meanwhile, was labeled as an outsider who would use her manager’s title at the local chamber of commerce to accomplish her own agenda. Rubbish. Dave Gairns, too, didn’t escape the relentless questioning, being forced to justify his role in the Price Waterhouse report as though he and only he authored the city’s failing grade. Cheap shot. Castlegar is fortunate to have three citizens that are willing to go the extra distance to seek this city council seat. The back-stabbing and nay-saying surrounding’ the credibility of these candidates is about.as productive as a swift kick in the butt. Citizens have every right to ask tough questions. But when those questions are reduced to American- style rumor-mongering, it is hardly conducive to the selection process. Accusations of puppet-string politicking belittles the candidates and belittles the community they wish to represent. a YAEICN INVE ST0R5 Cominco needs co-operation In the days before Bill beginning. It operated for Cosby became a TV megastar, he used to do stand-up comedy and one of his funnier routines was about Noah and the Ark. After an initial burst of energy, Noah’s enthusiasm for the ark begins to wane and he becomes frustrated. So he tells God he isn’t going to build the ark. God’s response? “How long can you tread water?” Comments from the Crossroads just four months (from December 1989 through March 1990) before it was mothballed. Hundreds of millions of dollars down the drain. And the prospect of hundreds of millions more to build another new smelter. All this while red ink is flooding the company’s balance sheet. The worry is that like Noah, Cominco can’t tread water indefinitely. Noah quickly begins hammering again. I was reminded of the Cosby routine this week when I read about Cominco’s continuing financial difficulties. Cominco’s problems began when it spent some $760 million modernizing its lead and zinc smelters. While the new zinc smelter quickly became a success, the new lead smelter was a different story. Touted as “state-of-the- art”, it never really worked from: the Something has to be done. Cominco says it doesn’t want charity. It just wants fair taxes. And it’s got a point. Cominco’s tax burden is enormous. . Cominco pays 75 per cent of the City of Trail’s taxes, to the tune of $4 million in 1991. The Kootenay Boundary Regional District gets another $4 million in property taxes and yet another $4 million goes to the please see NORMAN page 7 Street TALK Question: Who are you going to vote for in Castlegar’s byelection on Oct. 17? Allen Fietz Castlegar “] don’t even know who’s running.” Robert Clements Castlegar “I don’t know, but Green has more advertising.” Doug Rideout Castlegar “Doug Green, because I know him well.” June Hayes “I don’t know enough to vote.” Polly Tarasoff Thrums Thrums “Who is running?” @ Wednesday, October 7, 1992: Other VIEWS: Please address all letters to: Letters to the Editor Castlegar News P.O. Box 3007 Castlegar, B.C. V1N 3H4 or deliver them to 197 Columbia Ave. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and not longer than 300 words. Letters MUST be signed and include the writer's first and last names, address and a telephone number at which the writer can be reached between 9am. and5 p.m. The writer's name and city or town of residence only will be published. Only in exceptional cases will letters be published anonymously. Even in those cases, the name, address and phone number of the writer MUST be disclosed to the editor. The News reserves the right to edit letters for brevity, clarity, legality, grammar and taste. Letters toWHE EDITOR As a voter and taxpayer of this city, there are some things I do not understand regarding two of the people running for city council. Renee Read, the great person that I am sure she is, amazes me. Not even living in Castlegar (easy to raise taxes when you don’t have to pay them) or having been in this area for any length of time, she intends to broaden our economic tax base. How does she intend to do this, through the Castlegar and District Chamber of Commerce? I do not understand how she intends to manage the chamber of commerce and be on city council at the same time. When as chamber manager, she presents funding requirements to council, I wonder how she will vote? When council discusses the chamber “in camera”, where will she be? These questions can go on forever. Is this not your classic case of conflict of interest? On the other hand, we have Dave Gairns. He was the city administrator when the Price Waterhouse study was done and we all know what a glowing report card that was. Now he wants us to elect him to city council. He won’t even tell us what he plans to do. How gullible does he think the voting public is? Norman taking In the Oct. 3, issue of The News, Ron Norman in his Comments from the Crossroads reminds me of a statement by another famous, or as the case may be, infamous Ron, “Well, There you go again”. This is the second time that our illustrious writer once again reports what he calls the facts and not only attacks an organization that has been working for the good of the community but an individual as well. Should Norman want any information about how candidate Doug Green was chosen by the Coalition Unaccepting Rash Bureaucracy, all he had to do was pick up the telephone — that’s the little box that most of us have either sitting on a desk or hanging on the wall — and give me a call and ask what ever he wanted to know. Shots at CURB Now, Norman, I know that you know where I work and my home number is listed in the directory, so if you want to report facts, why don’t you just call. ‘You see, Norman, CURB is a volunteer organization and every time we hold a meeting and rent a hall and place ads in the paper it costs us money. When we do have a meeting, we try to get as much out of our time as possible. Furthermore, we explained to both The News and the other paper about our meeting and told both reporters that we would give them the results immediately after. Neither seemed to have no difficulty with that. Once again, Norman, if you want to know something, give me a call. Mike O'Connor President, CURB \ I would like to express my concerns about the need for secondary access to and from North Castlegar. In the event of a train derailment at the Columbia Avenue crossing near Safeway, emergency vehicles — like police cars — would be denied access to South Castlegar” within a reasonable period of time. Even worse, in the event of a serious fire, each firehall would be unable to attend the scene in the other half of the city, leaving only half a fire department available. As well, ambulances would not have access to City needs a secondary access the hospital or to ambulance calls in North Castlegar. Given the cost of a secondary access. road relative to such proposals as the new police station, I feel it should be given serious consideration. I realize construction of the new bridge would alleviate the problem somewhat, but access to and from North Castlegar would still be a serious problem should such a derailment occur. William Konkin Castlegar Castlegar electorate must go Green In my opinion, there is only one candidate that we can vote for. One who has no conflict of interest, has lived in this city for years and has openly stated his intentions if elected. My vote goes to Doug Green for council. Bill Strilaeff Castlegar eee Editor’s Note: According to the Municipal Act, a candidate running for civic office does not have to be a resident in the community which he/she chooses to run. B.C. forests belong to. the people I was under the mistaken impression that the people of B.C. owned the forests. In January 1992, Chief Forester John Cuthbert announced a 10 per cent reduction to MacMillan Bloedel’s Allowable Annual Cut in Tree Farm Licence No. 44. This reduced AAC was still higher than the company had cut in 1991. Angry that the Ministry of Forest exercised its power, MacBlo appealed the ruling to a government appointed appeal board. (The public have no such rights under the Forest Act.) Furthermore, MacBlo argued that MOF has no right to consider things like wildlife, tourism or recreation when setting the AAC. On Sept. 16, the panel ruled that the Chief Forester could not reduce MacBlo’s cut. To add insult to injury, on the same day, MacBlo laid off a further 275 people from Port Alberni. Why such impunity and arrogance? The NDP need to be told that the forests belong to the people. Write your MLA. Jim Pine Victoria Norman continued from page 6 the provincial government. That’s $16 million — just in property taxes. From 1977 to 1990, Cominco paid $150 million in property tax- es to the City of Trail, the regional district and the province. But that’s not all. It also paid $67 million in water license fees to Victoria. The company’s total operating profit during those same 14 years? A paltry $19 million — or an aver- age of $1.5 million a year. Cominco spokespersons have said in the past that a company of that size and number of employ- ees should be making a pre-tax operating profit of $120 million a year, which would translate into a 20 per cent return on asscts. But Cominco. hasn’t hit the $120 million mark in the last 15 years. The closest it came was in 1989 when it made $100 million. So when company president Bob Hallbauer says the problem is tax levels, it’s not just leverage to get cheaper taxes — he means it. Now, the $13 million that Hall- bauer would like in tax breaks from all levels of government won't turn around Cominco’s mis- fortunes, but it would go some way to help alleviate a very seri- ous situation. And believe me, Cominco’s problems are serious. The company cannot go on losing money as it has — $100 million in the last two years. We've already seen the effect on staffing levels: 500 or so perma- nent jobs lost. And now some em- ployees, concerned that their jobs wouldn't be around at year-end, are looking elsewhere for open- 8. Which brings us to Ken Geor- getti and his remarks about Com- inco “wasting” taxpayers money. The B.C. Federation of Labor President has a point: Cominco has squandered $134 million of taxpayers’ money (when the feder- al and provincial governments purchased shares, ensuring the lead modernization could pro- ceed). And I wouldn’t recommend spending any more taxpayers’ money on the company. But pro- viding the company with tax breaks is not the same as invest- ing more funds. It could even be tied to Cominco’s financial perfor- mance. One thing is clear: it’s time all levels of government worked with the company to ensure its viabili- ty. Or Cominco may not be around to pay any taxes.