I can tell them a quick way to save $350,000….. and I’ll tell them for free!

In addition, they can save a TON of money on the Fire Department budget if the Firefighters stop attending every incident that the ambulance responds to.

This is why the PG Fire Department budget is so much higher per capita than other BC departments.

Why the City every agreed to a plan that allowed the Provincial Government to download a service to their government is beyond me!

The Fire Department will fight this – this is union jobs – extra hours for extra men.

Let’s hope the core review includes a look at the AAP so handily used by our past mayor to feed his pet projects. Also look at projects like the so called community energy system that is an absolute waste of taxpayer dollars. How about curtailing land purchases downtown.
Don’t just look at snow removal, street sweeping, and garbage removal. I hope when questioning the city employees how to save money they start by asking the people on the front lines rather than the dept heads so the real answers come out.
Somehow I feel if Bates is involved it will just be a waste of another $350,000.00 of taxpayer money with net result of zero savings.

I too can tell them what to do without spending $350K; reduce the freaking crazy wages they pay to their staff!

What a waste of money. I bet you this review won’t lead to sfa but another $350k hole in our collective bank accounts.

Our City leaders are bufoons.

So skakun is the defender of the average working stiff and votes in favour of setting aside $350,000 for some high priced consultant to do the work that we elected them to do.

The mayor is convinced that the consultant will find more than $350,000 in potential savings. How can she be so sure? The only way would she can be “convinced” is if she already knows where the cuts can be made. If so just make a dam decision rather than creating yet another “committee” and commissioning yet another “study”.

I am also still amazed that some believe that a “core review” is about finding small savings or efficiencies. That is the responsibility of management. If the City Manager doesn’t have a list of where cuts could be made to save money then fire him. I suspect though that the city manager knows where cuts could be made as does the Mayor. They just want to be able to blame a consultant for coming up with what some might see as unpopular moves, like closing a pool or cutting snow removal on residential streets like our new mayor wanted to do the last term.

My predictions:
1. The cost for the consultant will come in less than $350,000 and Council will say “hey look how much we saved already”.
2. The study will identify numerous areas to save money and also where new revenue could come from and all will be initiatives that Council and/or the City Manager are already aware of (or should be).
3. Council will accept half the recommendations but shy aware from the ones that will have a long term impact like contracting out garbage, reducing recreational services (do we really need two pools and six arenas?), cutting social grants, scrapping tax exemptions for churches, putting the parking meters back in downtown, stop fluoridating the water, and start charging for parking at CN Center.
4. The consultant will delivery a slick final report, smile politely and take the $350,000 (or the +/- $200,000 that it will actually cost) out of town on the last flight back to Vancouver.
5. CUPE will criticize the report and cry foul for what they will declare is bargaining in bad faith.
6. Mayor and Council will declare the political exercise a huge success and suggest their salary should increase another 30% next year.
7. Taxes will still continue to climb year over year.

Palopu – I agree with you that the “Manager” of the City should be managing the departments and looking at least a 5% reduction and reports. A company/corporation can do it, why can City not do it? Look inside and start from the inside as the city workers are getting paid to work….

I went to City Hall not to long ago and got “the look” when I interupted a few workers chatting about their holidays. I apparently interrupted them….so how about making the place a little more professional and welcoming?

I too am fed up of seeing wasted tax dollars – even if it seems meaningless to some. How many times are company vehicles taken home. How about meter maids driving the vehicles as in College Heights and taking pitcures of their friends kids at 8:30 in the morning on Halloween etc.

How about a hotline for the taxpayers – if they can look at doing it for the coliseum..Oh, I forgot that is micro-managing……..

Paying over a 1/3rd of a million dollars is a waste at this time. If corporations can do it from the inside then the City can. This goes for the “at arms lengths” businesses also.

Different Perspective:”…stop fluoridating the water…”

Yes, please! An immediate annual saving of 300 to 400 thousand bucks, because that is the REAL amount which cities of the size of P.G. in North America are spending yearly on the needless and potentially harmful addition of this hexafluorosilicic acid to the drinking water!

Fluoride is already in toothpaste everywhere, people!

The first year of having clean water coming out of our taps will pay for the core review study! A similar core review done recently in Toronto pointed out that significant savings can be had immediately if Toronto shuts off the fluoride, like Waterloo did and Calgary!

I would, think it should be part of Mr Bates job to do a core review not just at the request of council but on an ongoing basis.How is it that in a flash he comes up with a figure of 350 thousnd for the cost of this review? So why do we need this expence/?
Cheers

A recent editorial from the Victoria Times-Colonist is interesting in light of the current pious political rhetoric we are hearing from our new mayor.

http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/editorials/Rebuilding+trust+politicians/5939007/story.html

Amazingly this editorial also ran in the Citizen which pretty well runs in direct conflict with the radical right wing editorial view from the past publisher but that is another story.

While the editorial was written mostly with a provincial perspective it does apply to what we are now seeing at city hall. Of particulate interest is the following paragraph:

“The notion that all taxes are bad – and there are plenty of politicians ready to claim that – is simply ludicrous. We need taxes to pay for our parks, our roads, our police, our schools, our health-care system and hundreds of other things.

Anyone who separates taxes from government spending should not be taken seriously. Anyone who claims that taxes are too high, without specifying which services are to be cut, is either a fool, or assumes that everyone else is.”

So in light of this, who is the fool, the one now in occupying the mayors chair or all those of us who put her (and her special interest backers)in power? Never mind I think I answered my own question.

A toronto councillor made the comment we can either have longer library hours or more police on the street – but not both – you tell me which one more people want.

What really needs to happen in PG is council focuses on a priority list, and then fund it accordingly. That means some things on the bottom of that list will just either have to find it’s own funding, or disappear.

Example, how do you think the majority of most PG’ers would answer this question.

Would you like downtown sidewalks plowed and sanded more often, or would you like to give 118,000 to Theatre Northwest so you can enjoy live theatre?

I enjoy live theatre, but I’m thinking most people would like to be able to walk downtown with risking a broken leg. So if Theatre Northwest is to survive, then raise ticket prices so those who use it, pay for it.

As for a core review, I’ll do it for $100,000. It’s real easy. We start with the list of suppliers paid, and city staff explain to me what they bought, why they bought it, and what would happen if we didn’t buy it. Then council decides if they want to spend more/less/same.

As for wages, we’re stuck with union contracts there and probably can’t do much. But, same process. Why did we pay that person, what do they do, what would happen if they weren’t here. Then council decides, keep them, fire them, have them do something else.

This CORE reviw is a waste of Taxpayers dollars and nothing but an empty Grandstanding campaign promise. If you REALLY are serious about cutting at City hall, its NOT with the construction workers and IT techs etc its in HUMAN RESOURCES!!! The City of P.G has folks in Human Resources making 6 figure salaries??!

“As for a core review, I’ll do it for $100,000. It’s real easy.

We start with the list of suppliers paid, and city staff explain to me what they bought, why they bought it, and what would happen if we didn’t buy it. Then council decides if they want to spend more/less/same.”

LOL

Sounds to me staff is doing all the work of getting that list, providing you with explanations, and then having council make a decision.

You know waht your role in all that is? The middle man who does nothing.

Everyone knows that the first one to get rid of if you want to reduce the cost of procurment is to get rid of the middle man who creates no added value.

BTW, that advice I just gave you is gratis. Consider it a loss leader.

Here is a point form summary of the salient parts of the core services review conducted by Penticton in 2010 which resulted in a tax decrease in the following year of about 1/2% and the laying off of over 10 people.

The implementation plan is also shown. I understand that they have had some problems with some of the implementation plans.

Doing a search on the Penticton Site gets virtually no informationl. Either I am using the wrong key words or they have simply removed the info.

Perhaps someone else knows where it might be on the net. Sure is different from Toronto.

http://www.lgma.ca/assets/Programs~and~Events/Conference/2011~Conference/Speaker~Presentations/Doug%20Leahy%20-%20BALANCING%20A%20BUDGET%20WITHOUT%20RAISING%20TAXES.pdf

The Federal Government has told its various departments to come up with to scenarios to reduce their budgets.

1. Reduce their budget by 5%

2. Reduce their budget by 10%

These proposals will then be reveiwed and a decision will be made to implement option (1) or option (2).

Thats it. No core reveiw. Nothing. The Managers of the various departments are responsible for the proposals (as they should be) and have a precise time in which to get them completed.

The City can do the same. Each department to come up with the 5% 10% scenario, and the **BANG** its implemented. You can rest assured that they will come up with proposals that will cause them the least amount of headaches.

Right off the bat you save $350,000.00 and its all down hill from there.

I guess you do not realize that many of these departments are used to going to the community to poll them of their opinion before they make recommendations which will affect the community.

Can you imagine parks, road maintenance, bylaws, fire safety, community groups receiving grants, etc. etc, going to the public on separate occasions to get some sense of what people think might be a way to cut expenses?

These people are not going to make such decisions. If they do, the first question Council will ask is “do you feel the community will support this?”

You know Palopu, I hate to remind you that neither you nor I nor anyone else on this site represents the community or is even representative of the community. This is a special subset with totally unknown representative value. We have no way of knowing how skewed this group is. I have an opinion about that, but it is not easily verifiable.