Re: "Referendum Needed on Arts Centre" (P.G. Citizen, March 21)
Choosing 460 people at random is precisely how one gets an unbiased sample. Ms. Serup reveals her own considerable bias by presuming that the question will not be fairly worded and also by assuming that the much-needed arts centre will be, in her words, "fancy". Anyone who patronizes the arts here knows that her assessment that there are already suitable venues is, plain and simple wrong. If you look at other Canadian cities with populations in the same range as Prince George you will find that we are pretty well the only one of this size with no dedicated first-class arts centre. As for the pot holes (whose time-of-year as a preoccupation for civic letter-writing is, I see, now arriving like clockwork) no doubt the authority of bus-driver MacAuley is considerable - although unlikely to be unbiased given how his work days are spent. But the idea that holes should be filled "right away" makes neither engineering nor financial sense.
This is of course by no means the first correspondent who has tried to pit (pun intended) pot holes, or snow removal, against the Arts Centre. Believing in this false opposition is indicative of the mindset which is exactly why we need to have a Centre that uplifts us all. But the real beneficiaries will not primarily be people Ms. Serup's or my age, but children born and unborn, who, alas, do not get to vote between long-term cultural endowments and short-term grousing about roads.
Norman Dale
Prince George
