Core Review Outline in the Works
Prince George, B.C.- Council for the City of Prince George has unanimously approved the laying of the groundwork for a Core Review.
This was one of the campaign promises made by Mayor Green in her bid to lead the City. The groundwork will see the City Manager, Derek Bates, putting together a report on the scope of the work, who will do the work and the expected cost of the review. Mayor Green says she is hopeful the report will be back to Council by the end of January.
Councillor Brian Skakun wanted to know if the work will include examining the benefits of selling off the property in the core which is owned by the City, and that was confirmed.
it is expected the actual core review will take anywhere from 6-9 months to complete but the actual cost of the review has not been discussed. There are some consultants who suggest this type of review could cost somewhere in the range of $200 thousand dollars.
The final report is expected to make recommendations to Council for consideration.
Comments
My prediction is that this will be the next downtown improvement fiasco. Lots of resources thrown at it without much in the way of results.
We better get some bang for our buck on this review. With all our debt, and the increase in services, taxes, and the winter games, plus the huge $12 Million or more per year for debt servicing, we need to take some serious action now.
While it is important to look after business interests to some extent. The time has come to get serious about expenditures, high salaries, excess staffing, and overall general waste.
While business, and corporations have made serious reductions in staffing, and reduced costs to a large extent,over the past 10 years, the City has done the opposite, and increased costs, and increased staffing. They are going in the wrong direction.
Time for a reality check.
Will we be getting a chance to have input into the core review? When Toronto performed a core services review the public was given a chance to provide input and recommendations.
http://www.toronto.ca/torontoservicereview/
You did verallabel……its called elections
The city has to hire a consultant to make recommendations on how to reduce costs at the city? Please, someone tell me what kind of city manager do we have if he can’t make those recommendations himself over a cup of coffee and a speadsheet? Same crap different day.
Palopu, could you be more specific as to where the excess staffing is and the overall general waste? I’m not sure what to believe as you are not being specific enough…
Well at the risk of sounding a little cynical, this whole core review is generating a lot of hot air and it’s not coming from the “community heating system” – Mayor Green continues to suggest that the promise of a core review put her over the top and into the victory lane. I don’t think there is any validity in that conclusion. For starters 71% of the electorate did not vote. So out of the 29% that did vote 46% voted for Green, the end result was that out of, I believe 53000 potential voters Green garnered 6969! The reason Green won was because she had a strong campaign (lots of money went into it) and her team got out the vote. This whole “core review” is looking a lot like a “Core dance” that is going to cost the tax payer at least a quarter million dollars! The big ticket items are not being reviewed like Police and Fire service, so who are the big spenders, the clerks?
Streetwise–you ht the nail on the head. Why do we pay these people obscene salaries to do nothing??
Its like the fox looking after the hen house.
If I may but in whatintheheck, there are 19 dirctors on City staff and about a thousnd supervisors. Go to the City website and all the info is there and its mind bogling.
Cheers
Streetwise2, you put your finger on it!
Why do the feds have an auditor general?
Because if one would ask each government department or even the PM (the *city* manager) to come clean if there is any waste in the system the answer would be a resentful Of Course Not!
Who would admit that they didn’t do a perfect job already?
Only a neutral outsider who has no axe to grind and who is not into job preservation
can make a useful and honest assessment.
Well said Palopu and to whatintheheck, where have you been living?
Interesting view Cheetos. When you look at the numbers more people actually voted against her agenda of slash, burn, and privatize than voted for it. Also interesting that all her boys on Council voted for her core review so they all must believe its the right thing to do.
Having an outside firm do the review is the proper way but in the end do the elected folks have the guts to follow through on recommendations they come up with? History has shown not likely so don’t waste tax dollars on a political exercise.
Spending a year and lots of money on consultants just to freeze travel budgets or sell off a bit of property, or some other minor adjustment is a total waste of time and our tax dollars. The only way to make a big cut would be to do something like privatize garbage collection. Is Sheri and her boys really ready to go to war with the city’s outside workers?
If council wants to lead by example, a good start would be to turn down their own 30% pay raise til economic times get better and while they are at it, reduce their own travel budget. Do they all really need to go to every single conference?
NO, not âwell said Palopuâ, quite the opposite and âWhatintheheckâ obviously has a brain instead of a kneejerk automatic response unit for a mouth! All the âTaxpayersâ want is to cut Cut CUT at City hall, but their the first people to whine when the streets arenât cleared or the neighbor isnât ticketed for his yard or the Civic center isnât clean enough etc etc. wake up folks, it takes MONEY and PEOPLE to work for a City! The city of P.G is No worse off than Kamloops or Kelowna or Salmon arm for gods sake but to listen to the populace here youâd think that ALL the City employees do is sit around and collect a cheque. Really, those arenât garbage fairies taking that stuff away, there workers and guess whatâ¦..Ya have to pay them! The average salary at the city of P.G is no higher than any other municipality. The Supervisors at the city of P.G NOW that I agree is absurd. But think folks, do you really think that after a âCoreâ revue itâs gonna be managers that get the axe? No it will be the lunch pail workers on the line that get the axe, now you have more families unemployed, less tax base and the services suck cuz theres 3 less grader operators. Make a noise about cutting, but use your brain and speak about cutting where it NEEDS cut, at the top, not all the way around cuz 99% of City employees work just as hard as any guy in a mill or a factory, and having worked in a mill I suspect they probably work HARDER!
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