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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - U.S. TV viewers' interest in ice road trucking and NWT diamond mines was enough to hold up Mayor Gord Van Tighem from his duties chairing council's priorities, policies and budget committee meeting Thursday morning. The mayor made way for an NBC network crew, up from New York, to give interviews for the Today Show.

The normally-punctual mayor started the meeting 15 minutes late, held up by TV producers who were trying to figure out how to get their blackberries working with the local Internet provider. "They couldn't see their e-mails," the mayor said. "We were showing them how to set their blackberries."

Once done, Van Tighem answered questions for a taped report, to appear on the early morning NBC show on Wednesday, March 25, he said.

Ice road trucking and diamond mining interested the crew the most, as they asked questions about roads and trucking to managers in town from Diavik, followed by others on Yellowknife as the diamond capital of North America, Van Tighem recalled.

Among them were "how has the diamond industry changed Yellowknife; how does the diamond industry stimulate the economy; what does the community do after the diamond mines," the mayor said.

"One preconception they had is they've got a recession and we (in Yellowknife) don't," he said.

"I thought that was kind of cool," even though, he added, that assumption is not true.

"We've already had little hits," he said, referring to layoffs at De Beers and fewer loads going up the ice roads.

"But if we had an automotive plant, we might get a big hit. But then there would be more people to work on our fieldhouse project," he said.

Grow-op bust a rarity

One of the few exceptional crimes RCMP reported to council in their monthly review of crime statistics for February was a rare find for Yellowknife - a marijuana grow operation uncovered in Northland trailer park.

"This is one we stumbled upon," Sgt. Larry O'Brien reported to council on Monday. "It was not one we were aware of ahead of time."

Generally, he added, "grow ops are very rare in the North, strictly because of the cost of electricity and power needed to run such a thing. They are very few and far between."

Yellowknife RCMP has never found any operations that approach a scale large enough to assume "what you might call business-like stature," O'Brien said. "This is the first one we've caught in a very, very long time."

Overall, February is normally a quiet month crime-wise, the sergeant said, and this one was no exception. The only other unusual incident of the month were reports of a youth said to be carrying a firearm at Range Lake North and St. Joseph elementary schools. RCMP "locked down" both schools for about two hours without incident, O'Brien said. No suspect matching witness's descriptions were found, he said, and nothing further came of the reported incident.

City to weigh 911 service

City council will soon consider how far they would like a 911 emergency service to reach, as soon as the results of a $104,504 study roll in.

The city is studying the feasibility of an "enhanced 911 service" - one that would field all emergency calls for police, emergency medical services, and fires.

Coun. Paul Falvo, who chairs the city's 9-1-1 management committee that is overseeing the study contracted to the Vancouver-based consultant Planetworks, said the study considers options ranging from implementing 9-1-1 in Yellowknife-only to implementing it throughout the territory.

"Do we do it for Yellowknife, or do we do it for NWT as a whole, or do we do Yellowknife and the large centres only, at the same time?" said Falvo.

The territorial government did not participate in commissioning the study on the service, the councillor said, leaving Yellowknife as the lead backer of a single emergency line.

"We have a lot of people who come to the committee meetings and there's a lot of stakeholders in this, but who besides the city actually wants it to happen?" Falvo told Yellowknifer. "The GNWT are interested but I wouldn't say they're pushing for it."

City administration expects to see the results of Planetworks' study by the end of this month.