MINING MAN BEHIND $10,000 OFFER TO MAYOR

The president and chief executive officer of Polaris Minerals
Corporation is one of two men who offered Mayor Sam Sullivan money to
fund a drug maintenance program for sex trade workers.

Marco Romero, who also started a foundation in the mid-1990s to save
endangered wild tigers from extinction, spoke to Sullivan briefly
over the phone Tuesday about his $10,000 offer.

Romero, who lives in West Vancouver, told the Courier he didn't want
to comment on his offer until he met with Sullivan in person. He
hoped the two would meet within two weeks.

"Mayor Sullivan and I were trying to get together and talk," said
Romero, noting he and the mayor have only communicated via email and
the telephone. "Give me a chance to talk to him and find out more
about what he's proposing to do and I may have a lot more to say after that."

Sullivan confirmed he spoke to Romero but a date hadn't been set for
their meeting. The mayor said he has yet to speak to another unnamed
man who offered $500,000 for Sullivan's drug maintenance idea.

Sullivan told the Courier last week that he wants the money to be
directed to an agency with expertise in drug maintenance. The mayor
wants those sex trade workers who have failed treatment options to be
supplied with drugs to manage their addiction.

In a search of newspaper articles and publications with reference to
Romero, there is no indication he's done any work related to drug addiction.

According to Polaris' website, Romero has spent 26 years in the
mining industry with senior roles in exploration, mine development,
mergers and acquisitions, environmental permitting and business management.

Polaris' headquarters are in Vancouver with project offices in Port
Alberni, Port McNeill and Roswell, Georgia. Its projects include the
development of a quarry on Vancouver Island and a construction
aggregate terminal in San Francisco Bay.

Shipments of high quality sand and gravel to the California ready-mix
concrete industry are expected to begin in early 2007, according to a
press release on the company's website.

The company formed in 2000 to focus on the "rapidly emerging business
of marine exports of construction aggregates" from B.C. to
California. As of Dec. 31, 2005, the company had "working capital" of
$229,000, including cash of $1.2 million, according to its website.

A Vancouver Sun story from November 2002 said Romero and his wife
Ritsuko Tsurugida started The Tiger Foundation while holidaying in
China in the mid-1990s after his family saw a tiger paw for sale in a market.

Within a few years of attracting donors and sponsors such as the
National Geographic Channel and Taiwan's 7-Eleven stores, the
foundation raised $170,000, the article said.

Romero is also listed as the "driving force" behind the Somass
Conservation Society, according to an article posted on the Vancouver
Aquarium's website.

The society unites the Hupac'asath and Tseshaht First Nations, sport
and commercial fishermen, environmental groups and citizens of Port
Alberni to conserve the Vancouver Island's Somass River.

Sullivan, meanwhile, said he will continue to push his drug
maintenance plan and wants to see a reduction in addiction and the
crime it fuels by the 2010 Winter Olympics.

"Ultimately, I want this problem gone by 2010 and I don't want to use
the technique that all the other Olympic cities have used, which is
move them out of town for a month. I don't consider that an option
that I'm interested in."