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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Mayor Madeleine Redfern and councillors Stephen Mansell and Mat Knickelbein bid adieu at their last city council meeting Oct. 9.

Cognizant of the possibility it may be their last meeting as well, all of the councillors running for re-election thanked their fellow councillors and the mayor for their contributions.

"You've let the whole world know about Iqaluit," councillor Joanasie Akumalik told Redfern. "David Ell would also be very grateful to you for all the work you did for the city of Iqaluit. I'd also like to thank your spouse and children. You left town quite a bit on business. If I was qallunaat, I'd give you a gold star."

Coun. Mary Wilman, the only other woman on the council and the only woman running in the Oct. 15 election, said more need to step forward.

"I would like to encourage the women of Iqaluit to be a part of local government in the future," Wilman said.

Redfern kept the pleasantries brief to allow council to deal with all 32 items on its agenda, which she suggested might make the meeting extend past three hours.

Partial victory for parents

One of three delegations present at the Oct. 9 council meeting, the Iqaluit Parents and Tots Association came seeking more time for its programming at the Abe Okpik Hall in Apex, where it has been providing drop-in play time for an average of 20 children for two hours each Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

They also use an hour each of those days for set-up and clean-up, for a total of nine hours each week.

"We've spent the last three years trying to work our way out of older agreements where people are getting things for free from the city," said Coun. Romeyn Stevenson, who opposed the request. "The city incurs costs for maintaining buildings, especially recreation facilities, and in the past, there was a great deal of in-kind donating and basically free use of city buildings. We can't afford to continue that. Literally, we can't afford it. We need to take in revenue from our buildings in order to just be able to maintain them."

Coun. Stephen Mansell said the city needs to bend to support causes that provide free services.

"This group is a bit different than, say, the trade show or another group that asks us for in-kind things, because they do then give a free service to the people of this community who have kids," Mansell said. "Is it completely out of the question that we can give more time? I think it's a good program, and it helps kids and we should do something."

Coun. Mat Knickelbein, the principal at nearby Nanook School, couldn't support that argument.

"All the requests we've had come from great associations in the city," Knickelbein said. "There's such a great demand. There's all the children from the various school, and sports teams that we get requests from for money or space. It's all worthwhile. I hate to pick and choose. We've gotten out of the business of picking and choosing. I'd hate to see us get back into it."

Mary Wilman suggested parents should be asked to help pay for the space. The city normally charges $50 per hour for use of the hall. Currently, parents do not pay to attend the group, which is funded by various community groups and government programs.

Despite opposition from Stevenson and Knickelbein, the group was awarded four more hours a week. City staff will work with the group to determine when those hours will be.

Pilots out, satellites in

It turns out there is at least one thing satellites do better than systems closer to Earth: take aerial photos.

Case in point: director of planning and development Arif Sayani came to council to get a decision on the need for a snow fence behind a row of Plateau subdivision homes, whose proximity to a hill left them vulnerable to a microclimate that produced very high snow drifts. To prove his point, Sayani used satellite images, and said during budgeting for the project, he discovered the city had an unnecessarily large reserve fund for aerial images, previously gathered from airplanes and helicopters.

The reserve was $180,000, but Sayani said satellite images would only cost the city about $7,000 a year. He suggested council should reduce the reserve to $60,000.

The remaining $120,000 is not, however, exactly a windfall for the city. Coun. Stephen Mansell predicted the snow fence issue would return in other parts of the city, and suggested the money go into a snow fence reserve fund.

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