I see that School District 43 is considering selling a strip of land beside their newly built Parkland Elementary.

They say it is underused. Perhaps they should stop by in the evening and see the dog walkers and evening constitutionals using that space.

It is false budgeting as well. Next March/April when the Minister of Education makes up their budget, they will say School District 43 needs $100 million for its capital budget, so taking $100 million minus $10 million raised by the sale of land, they are entitled to $90 million in transfer payments.

I have a much better use for that land. You know that we have an excess of bears since we clear-cut their mountain home and built houses made of ticky-tacky on it.

We could get some poultry wire and build a big cage on that excess property. We could ask the volunteer streamkeepers and the Burke Mountain Naturalists to build dens. Then we could catch some of those excess bears and stuff them into it.

Parkland could market it as the Parkland Nature Reserve. As part of their history lessons, they could learn about the beautiful natural area we had here and which now is lost. As part of their Good Host Program they could act as tour guides explaining the natural cycle. We could be known as the City of the Black Bears.

Think of the tourist draw that would have. The shekels would be pouring in, far more than the onetime $10 million that the sale of the land would bring.

We could build a special festival around it with musicians singing "paved paradise and put up a parking lot" - just one of the many ideas people could come up with if we had a focus group on school funding.

Leslie J Hammond Port Coquitlam