Mayor to Put Wheels in Motion for Core Review
Monday, December 12, 2011 @ 4:10 AM
Prince George, B.C. – Mayor Shari Green will put her call for a core review of services before her Council colleagues this evening.
The core review was the issue which Green is confident tipped the scales in her favor during the November election.
She will be calling on Council to instruct the City Manager to come back with a report by the end of January that will outline how the review will be done, the budget for the review and a schedule for the review.
It will be a busy evening for the new Council as there are a couple of public hearings in addition to the business of approving the appointments already recommended by the Committee of the Whole.
In addition to those recommendations, Mayor Green will present a few of her own, including the appointments she would like to see to the Select Committee on Business. This Committee is to come up with ideas on how Prince George can trim red tape for permitting, and make recommendations on what can be improved to grow business and jobs.
Mayor Green is also recommending that Councillors Lyn Hall, Murry Krause and Cameron Stolz join her on the Finance and Audit Committee.
Council will have the final reading of the bylaw which sets new rates for water and sewer that bylaw will mean the rates will increase by 5% as of January 1st, 2012.
This evening’s meeting of Council will start at 6 p.m. which is the new starting time for all Council meetings, however, the public hearings are still slotted for 7 p.m.
Comments
I think that if you are having a **core* review everything should be on the table. To leave out the RCMP, Firemen, etc; doesnt leave a lot to review.
That doesnt mean that the RCMP, or Fire department should be reduced, however there could be(and probably are) other ways of doing some things that could save us some costs. I beleive that the staff of the RCMP runs around 50 people, are they going to be exempt from review??
Who knows. In any event at the end of the day you cannot have a **core** review if you only review some of the Citys operations.
Have a nice day.
I think that the very word “core” indicates that the thrust is directed at the heart of the matter, this being how the departments of the city do the jobs they have been mandated to do, how efficiently they are doing it and if and how improvements can be made with resulting tangible cost savings. Leaving out large stand-alone semi-autonomous peripherals (like RCMP and Fire) may be the better approach.
Designating just one single person (a City Manager) to set all the terms and conditions (how it will be done, the budget and the schedule) isn’t necessarily the best way to go, in my opinion.
Actually, it may be more fair and productive to let an independent outsider do this, a person who has a lot of experience, such as a retired city manager who served a similarly sized community.
I’d say Messrs. Bates, Bone and a few others should be polishing up their resumes.
Will this core review include the 19 directors that, are on city staff and all the supervisors that must be falling over each other to get their job done. And then we have a business advisory committee. Donât they have enough directors to facilitate the requirements of our business community.
It appears our new Mayor is applying the operation of the downtown business community to our City that she was on that has been stumbling around for years without any progress. The City needs to forget about trying to drive the economy and get on with the business of running our City.
But I guess if you cant decide what to do form a committee to really ball things up.
Cheers
A Zebra is a horse designed by a committee.
So she hasnt even looked at the “core” yet but as soon as she gets in she raises our taxes.. so much for her main promise of fiscal responsibility.. just like the one before her.. just tax us more .
Guess its time to form a bunch of waste of time committees as well.
A camel is a horse designed by a committee. Also, if you laid everyone end to end on a committee, they couldn’t still reach a conclusion. They’d be more comfy tho.
Hire Commonwealth to do the review. Sorry couldn’t help myself.
Gut the whole thing! Back to basics. Scorched earth!
I sure hope people aren’t expecting miracles to come of this. Rising taxes are being seen (and complained about) everywhere, not just Prince George.
A savings of at least $80,000 annually can be realized by shutting off the needless addition of sodium fluoride to the city’s tap water. Miracles do still happen, sometimes when least expected!~
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