City councillors sharpen their pencils on budget wish list
NEWS/ CITY HALL — Taxes will go up about 2.38 per cent for Kamloops residents, according to current expectations, but City councillors sharpened their pencils Tuesday and pared some items off their wish list.
Cenotaph as it looked shortly after construction.
Among them was a hefty contribution toward repairing the clocks at the Battle Street Cenotaph, with most councils favoring setting the old clocks — which haven’t worked for decades — to 11 o’clock instead.
The bill for fixing the clocks would come in at about $50,000, part of a proposal to also upgrade the four-acre park on which the old Cenotaph is located. The Cenotaph hasn’t been used as the main site for Remembrance Day ceremonies for several years.
The entire project would cost about $90,000, with about $63,000 coming from taxpayers.
“I think it’s a lovely park as it is,” said Coun. Tina Lange.
A long-standing request for pedestrian-safety improvements on Todd Road, at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars, may have to wait awhile longer as councillors expressed concern about the fact future road work will likely undo much of the project.
Coun. Pat Wallace was in favour of keeping the project on the list. “I think it’s time that we addressed the issue of a safe sidewalk.”
ArmchairMayor.ca 
In regards to the old Battle Street Centotaph, maybe this could be a project for some of the service groups in town. One would hate to see this historical site decay and fall apart. Some of the names on the Cenotaph are the who’s who of Kamloop’s history.
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Yup, by all means pour a lot of money in renovating various buildings which come under Parks and Recreation. Don’t put any money into some of the streets of this city that are part of our infrastructure, i.e. Todd Road, Pacific Way etc. When was the last time major work was done developing Todd Road. The last time that anything major was done on Pacific Way and Aberdeen Drive was probably prior to eighteen years ago. Public works can only put so many patches on the roads. I also admire the way that public work’s management avoid answering questions from the public, even though the questions were forwarded through city council from this taxpayer. Good thing that the public don’t have a say on any evaluations done on city managers.
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Much, much money gets put into road work in Kamloops every year. Too much in my opinion.
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Depends on what roads you are using, Pierre.
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