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City needs to correct inconsistency If developer Ray Decorby is right and city hall was inconsistent when approving developments along Old Airport Road, then city hall should correct what's gone wrong there. In all fairness, the city has offered to mitigate the traffic chaos that has resulted from allowing back entrances to the parking lot behind Wal-Mart, Mark's Work Wearhouse and Tim Hortons. But that's not enough. Before that development was ever approved, according to Decorby, he asked for rear entrances to his property where Extra Foods is located, but was turned down. The idea was to increase traffic flow to the businesses. At the time, senior planner Dennis Peck said such an entrance would create an unsafe traffic situation. How strange it must have been for Decorby to watch as the next-door developments were not only allowed to put in rear entrances, only to suffer precisely the fate that Peck had predicted on Decorby's own lot. In order to cure the traffic chaos, Petro-Canada, and Wal-Mart have taken stop-gap measures, including makeshift barriers that curtail the chaos but in no way put an end to it. Decorby, himself, put a line of boulders between Tim Hortons and Extra Foods, forcing motorists to use proper entrances and exits to his property. It's not always too late to correct a mistake. If the city were to take the high road, it would offer to complete a study of the parking lot and roadway problems along the four-hectare strip of shops, come up with recommendations and then offer to implement a solution. Not only would Yellowknife motorists, pedestrians and cyclists be safer along the busy commercial strip, but all voters would see this as a sign that city hall can show leadership, albeit, after the fact.
The Liberal government took it on the chin in the Maritimes on election day. Some say their cuts to unemployment programs are the reason. Maybe so. But Yellowknife entrepreneur Dave Bondy is proving that the feds are doing at least some things right. He took advantage of a new EI program that continues to pay him benefits while he sets up his own store, a military surplus outlet on Old Airport Road. Considering how many businesses go bust in their first year, this is an excellent way to wean people off the public dole while encouraging small-business development. We wish Bondy well, and hope others follow in his footsteps.
No doubt more than a few eyebrows would be raised by southern city folk if they came across last week's story about sweat-lodge therapy at the Yellowknife Correctional Centre. Raise away. Innovation and creativity are in short supply in the justice system in the South and North, and such relatively inexpensive programs should be encouraged -- and not just for aboriginal inmates. Rehabilitation is a personal -- some would say spiritual -- process. In that context, sweat lodges are a step in the right direction, even if only small percentage of inmates actually benefit from the process. |