|
|
|
News Nunavut Nunavik Features Iqaluit Around the Arctic Climate Change Opinion/Editorial Editorial Letters to the editor Taissumani Commentary |
|||||
| |
||||||
|
Current ads
|
||||||
|
||||||
| About Us Nunatsiaq FAQ Advertising services Archives Search archives |
||||||
|
Click below
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
| ||||||
| |
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Around Iqaluit September 22, 2006Iqaluit this weekMining week events Embrace Life fundraiser To have your event listed, free of charge, please call 979-5357, fax 979-4763, or send an email to johnt@nunatsiaq.com. Pool to remain open until 2010Iqaluit’s popular but badly aging swimming pool will remain open until 2010, with a newly-negotiated lease approved by council last week. The new lease, which comes into effect when the existing agreement expires on March 2007, includes a three per cent increase each year. The city currently pays about $180,000 annually on pool lease payments. The new deal is far better than an earlier offer made by Nunastar, the company that owns the Astro Hill complex where the pool is located. In January Nunastar offered the city a two-year contract with an 8.5 per cent increase each year. Council rejected that offer at the time, and requested their staff to keep negotiating. Council hopes the new lease will give the city enough time to build a new pool. In December city officials unveiled plans for a new aquatic centre, to be located adjacent to Joamie school, with an estimated total construction cost of $12.1 million. The proposed design includes a five-lane pool, a leisure pool, a whirlpool and a waterslide. The facility would also include a “party room” to be rented to groups. But this plan appears to have lost favour with city officials, who are now talking about the possibility of building a “multi-plex” facility instead. Meanwhile, during the upcoming city elections, ratepayers will be asked whether they support allowing the city to borrow up to $12 million to build a new recreation facility. The city has no firm proposal of what that facility will be, but finance director John Hussey, who is the borrowing plan’s lead proponent, says the city will use the pool plan as a “basis” for a new building. All this means ratepayers have little information to judge whether the proposed recreation facility will be good value for their money or not as they go to the ballots - although Hussey says that public consultations will be held during the building’s development. The city’s existing pool is 35 years old, built when Iqaluit’s population was only 900. It routinely closes because of problems with its aging equipment. Dollars for snow fenceIqaluit’s city council has approved plans to spend $350,000 on repairs and upgrades to the snow fences built last winter near the Road to Nowhere. That’s $50,000 more than council initially pledged to spend on the project. But Michele Bertol, the city’s director of lands and planning, said her department could make up the difference with savings from other projects that have come in under budget. The snow fence upgrades, voted on at a council meeting this Tuesday, are part of a plan developed by consultants from the firm Rowan Williams Davies & Irwin Inc. The bulk of the $350,000 will go towards building another 115 metres of snowfencing, using steel poles with vertical wooden slats. One of the temporary snow fences built last winter will also be fixed. And skirting will be removed from seven residential units under the plan. That’s because without skirting, some snow could blow beneath the buildings, rather than pile up into drifts. The owners of these homes have not yet been consulted, said Bertol. The approved spending is just part of a larger plan proposed by the consultants. The final proposed fence, if built, would cost $2 million and stretch across 915 metres. Before the motion passed, Coun. Therese Rodrigue asked Bertol what reassurances council would have the fences would solve the problem of homes in the nearby subdivision being buried by snowdrifts. “This is a lot of money for an experiment. What guarantee do we have that this will substantially help?” asked Coun. Therese Rodrigue. Bertol replied there’s no guarantee, but the consultants have spent 20 years completing snow studies around the region. “They intimately know the snow conditions of the Baffin region,” said Bertol. The consultants visited Iqaluit twice, once in the dead of winter, and once not long ago, to take measurements of the ground, said Bertol. Iqaluit this weekSeptember 15, 2006 Run for cancer research And other related events September 8, 2006 Iqaluit this weekLearn how to grow plants in the Arctic Mass registration is coming Run for cancer research ...or eat hot dogs To have your event listed, free of charge, please call 979-5357, fax 979-4763, or send an email to johnt@nunatsiaq.com. Booze and boating prove fatalNo life jackets, no radio; two men presumed drownedA booze-fueled boat ride last Saturday evening appears to have been a death sentence for two Iqaluit men, who fell into the icy waters and have not been seen since. Edward Munick, 23, and Billy Ford, 36, fell overboard from a freighter canoe at about 11 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 2, near the Bay of Two Rivers, about 30 kilometres from Iqaluit. The two men were with three others. No one had life jackets, and there was no radio to call for help. At least some in the group had been drinking. Some sources say two of the men were arguing, and that one intentionally rocked the boat. In the end, two men ended up in the water, along with a woman who managed to swim back to the boat. The three remaining boaters were left drifting, unable to start the motor, until they were rescued by Jason White of Iqaluit at 6:20 a.m. Sunday morning. A search for the two missing men began shortly afterwards, involving 19 local boats. The search continued for three days, but by Tuesday evening there was still no sign of Munick and Ford, and the search was called off. Hunters will continue looking for their bodies, but hope had been given up on finding the two men alive. Police, who are still investigating, say they haven’t yet come to any firm conclusions about the incident. “We have to do more extensive interviews,” said Cpl. Terry Boyd. “Some are still in shock.” Boyd wouldn’t comment on suggestions that one man intentionally rocked the boat. “We can’t say that for sure yet,” he said. “We don’t want to be involved in speculation.” September 1, 2006 Iqaluit this weekLearn how to grow plants in the Arctic Mass registration is coming To have your event listed, free of charge, please call 979-5357, fax 979-4763, or send an email to johnt@nunatsiaq.com.
Council grumbles about late audited statementsSome members of Iqaluit city council say they’re fed up with long delays in receiving audited financial statements for 2005. Rob Elliott, their temporary director of finance, reported to council last week that the department is currently working on a third draft of the statements and is in the process of negotiating the language of the document with the auditor. He said the audit will be completed and ready to present to council at the end of September. Elliott was hired on contract as the temporary director of finance, from June 1 to August 31, while the permanent finance director, John Hussey, serves as the acting CAO. The city’s newly-hired CAO, Clinton Mauthe, will arrive sometime between now and October. “It is eight months into the year and we don’t have audited financial statements,” said Coun. Nancy Gillis. “It’s unacceptable.” She said setting a deadline for MacKay and Landau, the chartered accountants responsible for auditing the city’s financial statements, could speed up the process in the future and suggested a deadline of three months. “With or without timelines it would take a miracle for MacKay Landau to keep them,” said Coun. Theresa Rodrigue. “I’ve worked with them for 15 years.” Elliott did provide council with a revenue and expense summary sheet of the city’s budget and spending for 2006. The document included concrete numbers up to June 30 and projections for the remainder of the year. As councillors examined the document they began to point out errors and inconsistencies in the presentation of some of the numbers. Elliott agreed that the document contained errors and said that he would have to revise the document for accuracy. The last-minute gangWith nominations now open, Deputy Mayor Glenn Williams is the only member of Iqaluit Council to declare an intention to run for council in the Oct. 16 municipal election. Nunatsiaq News was unable to reach the incumbent mayor, Elisapee Sheutiapik, by press-time this past Wednesday. Coun. Nancy Gillis and Coun. Theresa Rodrigue each said they will not run this time. Coun. Annie Gordon said she was surprised to learn that the time to start thinking about the election has arrived so quickly, and said she is undecided. Coun. Simanuk Kilabuk and Coun. Brad Hall also said they are undecided. “I have decided to leave it until the last minute to make up my mind,” Hall said. Nunatsiaq News could not reach Coun. Claude Martel or Coun. Simon Nattaq to confirm whether they will stand for election. Nominations opened Aug. 28 and will close Sept. 11. The mayor’s position and all eight council seats are up for election.
|
| About Nunavut 
Nunavut 99
Nunavut Handbook
Nunavut.com
Nunavut
FAQ
|
||
|
|
||
|
Contact Us
Letters
to the editor
News
tips
Subscribe |
|
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
||
|
|
||
| Discussion Board
TalkBack
|
||
|
|
||
|
