V North | Vancouver School District .44 will lease the prefabricated building for seven years for kindergarten to Grade 4 students while the area’s elemen- tary population ‘‘crunch’’ moves up inte the secondary school system. . St. Pius X will then operate a parish elementary school on the site. Following a reconvened public hearing Monday night, district council approved second reading . of the zoning bylaw in a 5-2 vote, but withheld adoption pending finalization of the lease and reso- lution of neighborhood concerns with traffic flow to and from the school. Council was forced to reopen vthe hearing Monday when a mo- ‘tion intending to conclude an earlier hearing on March 9 mis- takenly used the word ‘‘adjourn.”’ Neighbors adjacent to the In- dian River site used the additional hearing to re-emphasize their concerns about traffic safety dur- _ing pupil dropoff and pickup times at the school site. Many had collaborated in pay- _ ing for a professional traffic im- |. Pact study that they said refuted SEABUS CRASH Details of dis cipline against two employees revealed “BC TRANSIT chairman Eric Denhoff recently revealed’ ‘discipline handed out to two ‘SeaBus workers involved in a Jan. 6 incident in which a SeaBus passenger ferry crash- ed into Canada Place. By Michael Becker News Reporter .SeaBus master Walter Mees ‘{ and SeaBus mate Jack ” McMaster :.received suspen- -sions, retraining -and demo- tions. an The master. ‘was issued a two-week suspension without ‘pay. and a three-month _suspension ‘from master’s “duties. » “The ‘mate was issued a _8ix-week suspension without pay..as well as a one-year _suspension of master’s duties. Both. employees are also “undertaking compulsory Tetraining. —. -BC Transit had refused to reveal disciplinary measures taken in the wake of the crash $ findings, but went public. when an Independent Canadian Transit Union spokesman said that the two ‘employees involved ‘‘got off- pretty good... : ' - A BC Transit investigation into .the . collision of the SeaBus Burrard Beaver with Canada Place concluded that human error, compounded by a-mate who disregarded two direct orders from the captain of the vessel, caused the mis- hap. « _ Eight people | were injured -as'a result of the accident. a By Martin Millerchip Contributing Writer much of the site access option supported by district traffic and planning staff. Virtually ali of the speakers supported limiting traffic access and egress to a pickup/dropoff zone off Mount Seymour Road rather than allowing any through-site. routing onto Brockton Crescent. Ken Burgess presented the neighborhood study and said he was concerned about’ ‘‘a dismissive attitude’? of Brockton resident concerns by staff. *There’s going to be additional traffic somewhere. Let’s have it put on the commercial street,” said Burgess. But several speakers opposed the concept of an annex in any form. “ft don’t think that the children who attend the annex will get the full benefit of the school that they should get,’’ said Bill Bates. And several other parents ques- ‘ tioned the quality of educational opportunities that willbe provided at “NORTH VANCOUVER - DISTRICT COUNCIL the new facility. They cited potential problems with inferior gym, library and computer instruction and the problem of transporting children to after-school activities at Dorothy Lynas. Wendy Olk said the proposal would ‘‘not just divide the school but divide the community.” She described the leasing of the annex as ‘‘a Band-Aid that’s go- ing to explode.”’ District 44 board chairman Don Bell told council that while the board would have preferred a permanent solution to. the Dorothy Lynas overcrowding, the St. Pius X site was ‘‘appropriate given all the factors the school district has had to weigh.’* Bell said that without the annex the facilities at Dorothy Lynas would be so. overcrowded that library use, computer studies and music would be severely limited in any case. Coun. Joan Gadsby was unsuc- cessful in deferring siting approval for one month to allow a joint council/school board/community pressure group to lobby the pro- vince for the funds for a perma- nent school site. Bell told council that even if provincial funding was approved Wednesday, March 31, 1993 —- North Shore News - 3 roves school for c Eight-room annex to be used as short-term solution to Dorothy Lynas overcrowding OVERCROWDED DOROTHY Lynas elementary school ‘could get a new annex as early as September now that North Vancouver District Council has approved a siting plan for an eight-classroom elementary facility at St. Pius X Catholic Church, 1150 Mount Seymour Rd. fc) o MOUNT SEYMQUR ROAD LS NORTH VANCOUVER Schoo! yy yy By ke PA if wsmor mace NORTH District 44 will lease. the prefabricated building from St. Pius X Catholic Church for seven - years. ; ‘tonight,’ it would likely take three years for the schoo} to be open because of a_ provincial funding allocation process that moves in stages through planning to site acquisition and then to construction. Coun. Pau! Turner joined Gadsby in opposing the St. Pius xX annex. Turner said he was bothered by ‘a solution that’s a- quick-fix,” the use of public funds and no public accounting of those funds since the schoo! board refuses: to publicize the lease arrangement... “It’s not a quality solution, and it slows the process of getting a quality school,”’ said Turner. « But Mayor Murray Dykeman said, ‘‘The population demand-is ... right now. It’s not three ‘years from’ now, not five years from now, ‘We have a major. problem, ‘and we have a reasonable solu- tion. I haye seen other ‘annex solutions work and work well.”’ Tobacco sales restrictions not tough enough, charge anti-smoking groups’ Provincial commission fails to address tobacco licensing 1 issue THE SMOKE has yet to clear over the issue of whether merchants on the North Shore and around the province will have to buy a licence to sell tobacco products. Ina. long-awaited report that was expected to set the: stage for tough laws. concerning _ selling tobacco products to youth, rec- ommendations regarding licences: were not included. The report was tabled in the provincial legislature on Friday. “We decided not to do the work of administrators as to the mechanics of how the (licensing) scheme should operate,’’ said North Vancouver-Lonsdale NDP. MLA David Schreck. Schreck headed the commission that looked at: tobacco sales to youth, The report recommends that: @ 18 should be the minumum age to purchase tobacco; @ tobacco vending machines should be restricted to adults-only premises; ® the sale of tobacco in packages containing less than 20 cigarettes should be prohibited; ® photo identification should be required to buy cigarettes. The report does not specify penalties, except to say that a store operater’s tobacco saies licence should be suspended if he is caught breaking the law. And the Jength of supensions should escalate with repeat offences. The report: also recommends that wholesalers selling tobacco to an unlicensed snerchant should be fined a maximun of $100,090. To enforce new tobacco sales laws, the report recommends that regular. inspection’ programs take place with the assistance of under-age youths (‘‘kid stings’). It also recommends the establishment of a 1-800 com- plaint line. Anti-smoking rights spokesman Deborah Wotherspoon, an By Anna Marie D’Angelo News Reporter Airspace director, said the report wasn’t bad overall. But the West Vancouver resi- dent said her group was: disap- pointed that an explicit - licence was not recommended and that the smoking age was not set at 19. NV-Lonsdale NDP: MLA David Schreck headed the commis- sion that looked at tobacco sales to youth. “We think you should set an age that gets tobacco legally out of high schools. There are high school students that are 18,’’ said Wotherspoon. « Schreck said ‘the commission decided to let administration deal with whether to set up an explicit licence. He rejected the suggestion that the taxpayer would now have to pay for ‘enforcement, instead of using the money collected for licences. “T will point out that the pro- vince raises hundreds of millions of dollars in tobacco taxes so the notion of linking a specific tax to the enforcement effort need not be a one-to-one. correspondence,”’ said Schreck, . He said it was: up to school administrations to deal. with keep- ing tobacco out of schools: ‘Meanwhile, the Retail Council of Canada (RCC) continues to oppose explicit licensing. RCC spokesman Alasdair McKichan said licensing would be 44 We decided not to do the work of administrators as to the mechanics of (licensing). . . 99 -NDP MLA David Schreck expensive and would create an unnecessary bureaucracy. Speaking from the council’s Toronto office, McKichan said the federal government’s amendments to the Tobacco Act’ were adequate to control elicit tobacco sales. The amendments include $1,000 fines for the first offence up to a maximum of $50,000 after several offences. ! (Anti-smoking’ groups have crit- icized the federal initiative for not addressing enforcement.): “1 think if you ask! retailers, they'll agree that. the thing they least need in their lives is another jevel of licensing,’’ said McKichan. : F Reacting to the proposed $100,000 maximum. fine, for wholesalers selling tobacco to unlicensed merchants, McKichan said, ‘‘For the sale of a product which ‘is legal, this seems some- what unreasonable, to) say the - least, and it seems _ dispropor- tional.”* ; He said the primary responsibil- ty for tobacco sales to. youths should fall on the retailer. But he added that there was also a good | argument to be made that the consumer should also ‘be respon- . sible. : “If it is illegal to sell (tobacco) to young people, it should also be illegal for young people to buy (tobacco),’’ said McKichan. Schreck said there were provi- sions in the report that might see youths fined for buying ‘tobacco products. ‘The ‘youth fines are part of possible ‘‘additional future steps” suggested in the report ‘if im- plemented measures’ aren’t suc- cessful. . “ft was found (in a United '' States example) to be difficult to enforce and a controversial aspect of the faw,’’ said Schreck. Currently in B.C., merchants break the law when they sell ciga- rettes to youths under 16, but.the merchants face relatively minor, if. any, consequences for the crime. : Selling cigarettes to minors ‘is currently viewed as a nuisance- type offence that carries a $10 penalty on a first conviction. The maximum fine is $100. : Schreck said new laws based on © the report are not expected until the fall. .