Gord Van Tighem - NNSL file photo

Yellowknifelife: When you look back on this year, what stands out to you?

Gord Van Tighem: A year ago now, we did an informal study that showed a need for probably up to 1,600 housing units in the next four to six years. At, or about, March it started. That led to the start of about 383 housing units this year: 109 single family, 274 multi-family. Two hundred and seventeen multi-family have been identified for next year and 230 single-family are already permitted or indicated that they'll start. So we've made a good initial start.

The biggest problem is that the real need is for finished, ready-to-move-into units so we're still a bit behind.

Yellowknifelife: Are the mines fuelling the housing boom right now? Some people say the mines aren't making big changes because people are flying in.

GVT: Once the mines get into operation, the surety of having their employees accessible to the mine, meaning the last airplane stop, meaning Yellowknife, is invaluable to them. And with the vagaries of their flight schedules in the South and other things, they prefer to have people here.

So at that point in time yes, they contribute. How that fuels things, though, is that if you get one more mining family living here you also need someone to teach their kids in the school, someone to look after their boo-boos at the hospital, so there's a multiplying factor.

Yellowknifelife: How long do you see this frenetic pace of building?

GVT: Another four years at least.

Yellowknifelife: The GNWT is moving ahead, albeit slowly, on paving Highway 3. How important is that to Yellowknife?

GVT: One of the other big investments of time during the year was being involved with the NWT Coalition, which was a group of business people and associations that travelled to Ottawa. We made pleas towards increasing transportation infrastructure and the last 51 kilometres of road between here and Alberta outside of Yellowknife is pretty key to the way we are right now, from a safety standpoint -- from the volume of resupply trucks, but more for economic diversification in the future. Because where we're at, one of our main opportunities in diversification is tourism and wheeled tourism is a huge market.

Yellowknifelife: With talk of things like a convention centre this year, it seems as if Yellowknife is moving away from being a small town -- one of the things people really value about this place. Do you see that happening? Is it inevitable?

GVT: I don't know how much of it is inevitable -- it's one of the really tough things. When you look at the city, the frontier spirit, mining community -- rah, rah fights on 50th. There was a time when that was accepted as common practice. That's becoming less of a reality.

How much of that is the mystique of the community and how much do you try and maintain? How much do you have to get beyond? So, as far as the heritage and historical values of the city, that's being monitored. As far as the lifestyle and the rowdy bars and that type of thing -- I think that's something we need to get by.

Yellowknifelife: But you see the make-up of the city changing that way?

GVT: The make-up of the city is changing and a lot of stuff that we're doing (including the downtown revitalization committee) is try and not have the mistakes of other places. But as far as evolving and maturing yes, it's really happening. And it's not without pain. Anyone that's lived here say 10 years or more has an affinity for the way things were. People that have lived here 20 or 30 or 40 years, were born here, it's even more challenging but the bulk of the population is new and there's less turnover than there once was.

Yellowknifelife: Talking about economic diversification: is tourism the only alternative to a resource-based economy? We saw this after Sept. 11, 2001, tourism can be....

GVT: Fickle. It's not the only thing but I guess you'd look at it as something that fuels other things. Is tourism the only economic diversification thing? No. We're getting a growth in Northern research involvement. We've seen one lab renewed and finished and there's some significant interest finally in research in Northern areas. We're a transportation centre, let's be involved in it. Oil and gas, environmental monitoring, those are both big new industries.

Yellowknifelife: Relative to the South, do you see the cost of living going down in Yellowknife, and what role does the city have to play in that?

GVT: There are things that will make the cost of living go down. As transportation initiatives grow, airline competition, that would be a contributor. The major cost of living factors up here are utilities and transportation due to distance. There are very few people to distribute fixed costs to.

I talked to some Russians that were here last week. They take a pail out to an above-ground pipe and turn a tap outside their house and go back inside.

The same with sewage, they take another pail out, dump it into another pipe that runs out of town. So we've got pretty luxurious, comfortable infrastructure here and not a lot of people to spread it to. So as long as people demand that level of service, they're going to end up paying for it. That will be expensive. On the positive side, we're growing. If you look at city-controllable costs, and one of the examples is taxes, there hasn't been a significant increase in nine years. Nine years ago we were probably one and a half times Edmonton. They're ahead of us now.

Yellowknifelife: Some people have charged the city with being irresponsible with its use of money, especially when it came to the $2 million overruns on the arena and the cost of developing Niven Lake. Are those fair accusations?

GVT: The arena has been one of the biggest good things and the biggest challenges of the past year. You've been inside it -- it's bright, it's airy, it's great. It's very exciting and stimulating. OK, there's the good side. Then there's the realities of the construction. It came on stream at a time when a lot of other stuff came on stream. One of the biggest challenges for everybody this year in Yellowknife has been staffing and maintaining and supplying construction sites.

Yellowknifelife: Should the city have foreseen that there would be a building boom?

GVT: We knew there was a building boom and we knew it was happening. We're going to do a complete review of the project, we've got professionals that will participate in that and at that time we'll know 20/20 hindsight what happened. But could you have done it differently? I don't think so.

Yellowknifelife: So the city's going to get screwed?

GVT: It's not a matter of getting screwed. It's a different level of work. They know that they're going to get drawn into this stuff right at the outset. All it needs is one newspaper article and they've got their head office coming in from Edmonton saying what the heck are you doing? Whereas on a private job, newspaper article, the guy just decides never to talk to the newspaper again. It's almost that simple. But if there was one thing to do differently, I think it would behoove the powers that be on a public job to determine what the worst possible scenario is and predict that. Don't take the best scenario and tell everybody that's what it's going to be. Because what has happened in the case of this is that somebody said when is the earliest it could open and somebody said oh we can probably open by mid-September. So they said it's going to open in mid-September. And then they've been back-pedalling ever since.

Yellowknifelife: We're coming into an election year, both territorially and municipally. What are your thoughts on your own future?

GVT: I like doing what I'm doing. Unless things change really dramatically with my personal situation or unless something unpredictable comes up I wouldn't mind continuing.

Yellowknifelife: So you'll be running again?

GVT: Yeah.