Still Time To Enjoy Northern Lights Festival
Another vehicle passes under the main entrance to the Northern Lights Festival
Prince George, B.C. – For those too busy during the run-up and aftermath of Christmas, there are still two evenings to enjoy the glittering displays that are part of the Northern Lights Festival atop Connaught Hill…
The light-up occurred on December 2nd and will turn-off for another season after tomorrow night’s final ‘showing’. This was the 5th year city residents have been able to add Connaught Hill to their traditional tour of lights in the city.
Speaking with 250News on her last day with the City of Prince George on Friday (prior to joining the 2015 Winter Games team), Community Events Coordinator Lisa Shaw-MacLaren credited December’s mild weather with a really successful 5th anniversary.
Shaw-MacLaren said there was a steady stream of motorized traffic winding its way up Connaught Drive throughout the month. There were more than 650 cars between December 19th to the 23rd, alone. A final tally will be available in the coming days.
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New to this year’s festival was a display at the bottom of the hill, with strings of lights winding the fencing up the driveway. (shown in photo at left)
Shaw-MacLaren said, "Each year, we try and change it up or purchase something new up there, but we’re really limited by the power sources we have on the hill – that’s why you’ll never see (the displays) increase, (they) will just change."
"I think there is potential there to do some new things moving forward," she added, "Like we’ve had a comment that, ‘Wouldn’t music be nice?’ And we don’t have people getting out of their cars and walking around right now, but maybe that’s something we can think about in the future."
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Shaw-MacLaren said special permission was sought, and received, on December 23rd by a gentleman wanting to get out of his vehicle, briefly, atop the hill to propose to his chosen one on Christmas Eve.
The festival flickers into the New Year tonight and tomorrow night between 5pm and 10pm. Admission is $10 per carload – the money is used to cover operational expenses like hydro, advertising, and security at the bottom of the hill. Shaw-MacLaren pointed out, "That doesn’t cover the cost of setting up the displays, city crews do that – they enjoy it, take pride in it and check it everyday to make sure everything is working as it should."
Comments
“That doesn’t cover the cost of setting up the displays, city crews do that”………but decorating a donated tree for the civic centre plaza “tree lightup” was considered too expensive so there wasn’t a tree????
And as one OP250 reader commented, if they had asked for volunteers to decorate the tree there would have been lots of people that would have offered to help(PG is great that way)
Its nothing more then another tax grab.
Cheers
So how much does it cost to collect those “user fee” taxes? How does it compare to the original proposal?
Again, ease of transparency. A 5 year review would be appropriate for all such City programs.
We need to get into the habit of doing that. How about a reporting out by the end of February? All the figures should be in by then, including time sheet charges by City Staff against this program.
I think there should be a single link on the City web site to make it easy for people to see which programs work well and which do not and need improvements or cutting.
Cost benefit analysis; we should get a larger portion of the population used to those, including survey input for measuring social benefits which may derive from such programs according to both users and the general population.
Gus for Mayor.
You sound like our present Mayor but will it happen.
Cheers
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