Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Tuktoyaktuk (Feb 04/02) - Waterfront lots, peace and quiet, lots of space. Like suburbs across North America, Reindeer Point in Tuktoyaktuk has what many homeowners want.

But the residents of Reindeer Point are finding out first-hand why public housing and the suburbs usually don't mix -- the transportation stinks.

Reindeer Point is a subdivision about eight kilometres from town, built in the mid-1980s when the town site first ran out of room.

About 80 people live in the neighbourhood, spread among 10 privately-owned residences, and 23 public housing units.

The private homeowners, for the most part, have their own vehicles. Those in public housing generally don't.

Jackie Beaulieu lives in a public housing duplex with her husband and two-year-old daughter.

She says she would live in town if she had a choice, but when the Tuktoyaktuk Housing Association offered her a place at Reindeer Point, it was either take it, or go back on the waiting list.

So she took it.

"We managed to buy a Skidoo, so the only time we go back and forth is in the winter. In the summer, we were using the taxi, and it was like $10 for me, and $5 for my daughter. So that's $30 for a round trip," she says.

Sometimes in the summer, Beaulieu says she rides her bike to town, but with her daughter in tow, the trip takes about a half hour.

"I think the hamlet should be taking care of it," she says. "If they're going to do the bingos, they could put some money aside for a bus service."

Funding the issue

Former mayor Ernest Pokiak was trying to get busing into the community before he was defeated in the December municipal elections. He says the problem was with funding.

Until a year ago, the hamlet was offering bus service to the subdivision by stretching the money it received from the district education authority to bus Reindeer Point school kids to town. Offering three to four trips a day, the bus service was eventually shut down when the hamlet could no longer afford to spend the additional $14,000 to $16,000 a year that the service was costing.

The hamlet is now putting a proposal together requesting additional funding from the territorial government to operate a bus service.

Pokiak says with about $75,000 a year, the hamlet could offer transportation to the residents of Reindeer Point several times a day.

Economic development officer Tonya Skanes submitted a proposal to Nunakput MLA Vince Steen recently and she is now waiting for a reply.

In the meantime, residents will continue walking, hitching or cabbing it to town.

Taxi operator Wayne Gruben says the location of Reindeer Point is an inconvenience even for him.

"When I get calls out there, I'm hauling one person out there for 10 bucks and then I lose five or 10 calls in town," he said. "Why build something like that, if they can't accommodate it?

"They should have thought about that before they built that damn place."