A banner day for a protest march

The residents arose as one, well a group of fifty or so anyways, marched on City Hall on Tuesday, seeking out answers and redress to the suddenly controversial issue of tourism banners around the city.

The Bannermania issue has become one of the hot button political topics of the last week as local residents outraged at what they believe to be rather poor handling from senior city officials began to express their anger with the city's print media.

As things seem to have turned out, compromise will rule the day (and maybe save a politician or two at the same time) as the two sides work out arrangements to have the 88 publicly created banners introduced to the city streets in short order.

Both the Northern View and the Daily News have devoted a number of stories on the topic, culminating with Tuesdays protest at City Hall.

We provide both of their interpretations of the day's event below, the Northern View website release and the article printed in Wednesday's Daily News.

Banner protest unfurled at city hall
By Kris Schumacher
The Daily News
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Pages 1 and 2

Although tempers flared this week over banners designed by hundreds of school children, it appears cooler heads will prevail and a compromise between involved parties could be reached during the next week.

More than 50 people showed up at Prince Rupert City Hall yesterday afternoon to protest the city's decision to purchase commercially designed way-finding banners and to demand the 88 locally designed pieces of art be hung downtown. Members of the Prince Rupert Civic Pride Committee, teachers, parents, students and members of the public gathered on the 400 block of Third Avenue West to ask Mayor Herb Pond exactly why the city had deviated from the original goals of the Banner Project.

After 10 minutes of attempting to explain the city's intentions and assure everyone that they have every intention of honouring the local art with prominent placements in the community, it was apparent those gathered were not getting the answers they had hoped for and let Mayor Pond know with a barrage of questions, demands and opinions on the matter. It was at that point that Mayor Pond told the crowd that continuing such a chaotic dialogue was not proving productive, and he invited everyone inside council chambers for a more structured and coherent discussion.

Some 30 people took him up on the offer, and what began as a protest turned into an impromptu town meeting, with Mayor Pond and Bob Thompson, general manager of engineering and public works, answering to the group of concerned citizens. While the meeting lasted well over an hour, within the first 10 minutes both Pond and Thompson admitted that a gross lack of communication between the city, Civic Pride, and other stakeholders had occurred with regards to the Banner Project. Pond was adamant that the city would be paying the highest honour to the locally created banners, which he said are undoubtedly "better" than those that were purchased as part of a $200,000 tourism grant to the city.

After hearing about the tireless work of volunteers including Prince Rupert Senior Secondary art teacher Tasha Parker, who dedicated many hours of her time to ensure the student banners were as beautiful as possible, Thompson stated that he would be personally delivering an apology to Parker for the lack of communication on the project, and to ensure that future endeavors between the city and school district are not plagued by such problems.

Pond and Thompson heard from many parents, teachers and volunteers who felt strongly that the city has no choice but to honour the original arrangement and let the student banners hang in Cow Bay, Third Avenue and George Hills Way. While their passion was felt by everyone gathered, it was perhaps the student artists who made the strongest point with the most impact when their voices were heard at the table.

"We've been doing these banners since last year, and to us, being art students and not being athletes, for people in the city to notice us and our artwork by putting it up made us happy," said one of Parker's PRSS art students. "We were all thinking 'Yay, the city is recognizing us for what we do, and we don't have to hold a basketball to get a picture.'"

Although many of those in the meeting didn't walk away happy, there was at least an understanding that over the course of this next week Thompson would be doing everything in his power to meet with the students, teachers and volunteers to come to an agreement for this year's batch of banners. One idea brought forth at the meeting was to have the local banners and way-finding tourist banners staggered and alternating block by block down Third Avenue.

Another idea was to hang the students banners either above or below the commercial banners, and yet another was to hang the student banners with coloured streamers on either side to correspond to the city's colour-coded mapping system to guide tourists.

With the first cruise ship set to arrive next week, the Daily News will have all the details of the final decision as soon as it's reached in the days to come.

City to work with students, teacher to resolve banner dispute
By Shaun Thomas

The Northern View

April 22, 2008

A crowd of well over 50 people gathered outside of Prince Rupert City Hall at four p.m. on April 22 to protest the city's stance on potentially moving the more than 80 banners painted by local students out of the downtown and Cow Bay areas.

Mayor Herb Pond quickly came out to meet with the protesters, and was met with some very vocal opposition to and questions regarding the replacement of the students' banners with commercially produced banners aimed at helping cruise ship passengers to navigate their way around Prince Rupert. Stressing that the three objectives of the city are to beautify the city, honour the students who painted the banners and improve wayfinding for tourists, and that not putting up any of the students banners in those areas was not the city’s intention, Pond said he believed all three of those objectives could be achieved.

However, it soon became difficult to fully respond to questions from the crowd without being cut off, so Pond invited those in attendance to sit and talk in council chambers, which most protesters did. With a packed council chamber that included parents, students, teachers and representatives from Civic Pride, Pond and Public Works' Bob Thompson participated in a discussion around the issue that lasted more than an hour and included input from almost everyone in the room. Some ideas to resolve the dispute included the staff recommendation to do one side of the block with the professional banners and one side with the students' banners, alternating block by block, and hanging colour coded streamers from the students’ artistic banners. It was also noted that the City has a permit from Highways to place banners along McBride up to the Lester Centre.

As the meeting came to an end shortly after 5:30 p.m., the mayor and Thompson said they would work with the students who painted the banners and PRSS arts teacher Tasha Parker to ensure that the banners were hung in a manner and location that would honour the students and their artwork.

Look for more details in the April 30 issue of The Northern View.