You’d be surprised at how some people will react when they’re laid off. While they may not “drop a bomb” there is the possibility of a disturbance of some sort.

Municipalities in BC and elsewhere in Canada are the recipients of downloaded responsibilities without an associated ability to add revenue other than increasing property taxes and user fees. We have known this for some time. There has been enough discussion about this over time with reports by left and right leaning public policy organizations all providing their opinions from reducing tax burdens from businesses and dumping them on residential property taxes to sending downloaded responsibilities from senior governments back up the government pecking order.

While many in Canada have been “enjoying” reduced income taxes both for corporations as well as for individuals, municipalities have been saddled with more and more responsibilities.

An easy one to follow is the cost of policing to municipalities. Policing and fire protection make up over 30% of the operating budget of PG. Increases in municipal costs for RCMP policing vary by location, but those expenses have been rising by about 4 to 5% annually across BC. That is greater than the rise of inflation hovering around the 2% mark.

Over a 5 year period, inflation has added 10.4% to the cost of services while policing has added 27.6%. That is a significant downloading of federal costs of operating the RCMP. We are handed the bill and we have no choice but to pay.

From the CD Howe Institute: “Fiscal matters have been a continuing concern of municipal governments. Concerns typically focus on fiscal capacity and on fiscal arrangements with other governments. Matters dominating recent discussions are the variability and uncertainty of intergovernmental transfers, the costs of offloaded or downloaded responsibilities, new (or the perception of expanding) local needs, a growing infrastructure deficit, and the constraints of own-source revenues imposed by reliance on a single major tax, the property tax.”
http://www.ppm-ppm.ca/SOTFS/McMillan1.pdf

From a recent report by UBCM

“Statistics collected by the Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development confirm that operating expenditures by municipalities across British Columbia have been increasing consistently in recent years, even when adjusted for population growth and inflation. …. The explanation …. relates to the need and demand for services. Put simply, local government expenditures have increased in recent years in response to the demands and needs of communities for important local services. Expenditure increases can also be attributed, in part, to the rising cost of key service inputs, and to service and regulatory initiatives taken by senior governments that result in additional responsibilities and net costs being downloaded onto municipal governments.
http://www.lgma.ca/assets/Resources~and~Publications/Documents/UBCM~Fiscal~Mgmt/Comment-on-Fiscal-Mgmt.pdf

Given the above fact of life of city governance and finances, the fix for this year to reduce a projected increase of 5% and higher down to just over 3% by laying off people and not rehiring positions which have been vacated, is not a one time fix.

This fix will be required every year until the structural problem is resolved. In other words, look forward to this next year, and the year after and the year after and so on until the situation becomes untenable. Our financial capacity to deal with the problems will continue to spiral downhill which, in turn, will contribute to the continuing “death” cycle.

If this is not fixed soon right across the province, especially in slow growing and negative growth communities, we will be in an ever continuing spiral of catching up with at least three aspects of operating a small to midsized city in the early part of the 21st century in Canada which is entering the baby boomer retirement peak for the next 20 years to be followed by the boomer echo cohort.

1.Paying for services and cost downloading

2.Paying for aging urban owned infrastructure replacement

3.Competing with other cities to provide “lifestyle” in addition to “core” services to entice job providing businesses and new residents, who are the human resources to those businesses, to move to this City rather than other cities. It has become a jobseekers’ market and will get worse with the baby boom retirements now upon us.

Neither Council nor Administration has publicly addressed this issue head on. We are kept in the dark. This needs to be a public “conversation”. It is our City. We need to know whether the people we have placed in charge of it for three years understand the problem and are doing something about it. So far, it does not look that way.

Repeating what I asked yesterday, why is the union leader on council absent from the picture accompanying the story on layoffs? The caption reads: “members of council and Senior Staff stand behind the mayor as the news of the layoffs is delivered.” Do you, or do you not, stand behind council on the matter of these layoffs? Are any of you council members prepared to roll back your council pay raise to save the job of a city employee, who may have a family to support, a house to run, one who may PAY TAXES? Are you, council, willing to scrap this ridiculous “Core Review” and save the 350-grand now that the hatchet has dropped? And what was the rush to makes these cuts when the review hasn’t even been conducted? How much of the work previously done by city employees is going to be contracted out, and at what price?How many people are you going to lay off when budget time comes around a year from now? Many questions, council. How about some answers from our “transparent” local government?

Until the city has the resolve to not use the AAP to circumvent the referendum process minor savings such as a few layoffs will occur. Where real cost savings occur are in not going forward with a 3 million dollar building to house city purchasing people, purchases like the PG hotel and other downtown properties, so called community energy system, and the winter games.
Natural gas prices are under $2.50 a therm. The lowest in 10 years yet the city spends 15 million dollars to supplement the heating of a few building with a stack gas heat recovery system from a local sawmill. While it may result in some phot-ops for city staff it is entirely a financially non viable project.

“yet the city spends 15 million dollars to supplement the heating of a few building”

One example of downloading from a higher level government. This is a federal “greening” initiative which is provided with some seed money, so the City is not actually paying the $15 million you keep quoting. However, the money is taxpayer money, and the effort edns up throwing more C02 into the air rather than using true “green” energy such as hydro produced electricity.

Our leaders in Ottawa, Victoria, and PG at their finest. NOT!!!

“Repeating what I asked yesterday, why is the union leader on council absent from the picture accompanying the story on layoffs”

People on Council have lives outside of Council business. I understand he was out of town or whatever.

Lyn Hall was absent from the Council meeting on Monday but Frank Everitt was there.

What is your point?

Are you, council, willing to scrap this ridiculous “Core Review” and save the 350-grand now that the hatchet has dropped? And what was the rush to makes these cuts when the review hasn’t even been conducted?”

So, in one sentence you want to scrap a services review to save money and the very next sentence you suggest they should have waited till the service review is done.

Can’t have it both ways.

Interesting read here to see how candidates are tied to some local businesses and corporations, such as canfor and ken sands. Why is is that not ALL candidates, especially those who got elected, don’t have to have a Campaign Financing Disclosure Statement? It would be interesting to see how contributions link to possible upcoming contracts.

Oops, forgot to post the link to the above thread
http://princegeorge.ca/cityhall/elections/Pages/Default.aspx

Oops, forgot to post the link to the above thread
http://princegeorge.ca/cityhall/elections/Pages/Default.aspx

First, if you want to understand how politics really work, take advantage of a free one month membership to netflix and watch Yes Minister. It’s very difficult for an elected politician to steer the ship in a direction the bureaucracy doesn’t want it to go. It’s city management’s responsibility to get us value for money, so the very fact we think we need to spend money on a core review – means either the city management isn’t doing their job – or, the politicians aren’t sure if they are or aren’t, and lack the skills necessary to determine the answer to that question.
The politicians have jobs and lives outside of city hall, and it’s easy for administration to overload them with information so that they don’t know if they’re coming or going, and they don’t have the time to figure it out.
What might not be a bad idea, is to strike a steering group of eminent citizens – retired labour leaders, lawyers, accountants, business people, educators etc. Get a representative from each strata of PG society – and ask them to do the core review. Because these people have lived here, they love it here, and they’ll know BS a mile off. And even better, if it costs us the same, it’s 350,000 that will stay here, and be spent here. And bonus, these people are retired so they’ll have the time to sift through the crap that administration tries to snowball them with.

URGH!!!
Taxpayer: We want less taxes!!!
Council: We have to reduce our costs, lets lay off 25 people and save about $2M (what the radio said this morning.
Taxpayer: You bunch of a-holes those people need those jobs.

Yep, Council is overpaid for their easy job with absolutely no stress where you are showered with love and adoration everyday. Heck they should make it a volunteer position.

Ski50, Good points. We have 18 directors and a CEO and they are just passing the buck and council has eaten their guff.
Cheers

Ski50 wrote: “It’s city management’s responsibility to get us value for money, so the very fact we think we need to spend money on a core review – means either the city management isn’t doing their job – or, the politicians aren’t sure if they are or aren’t, and lack the skills necessary to determine the answer to that question.”

Yes, it is City management’s responsibility to get us value for money. It is Council’t responsibility to check up on them to see that they do. The problem is, there is no City Council in Canada that has the time or the expertise to do that, nor are they necessarily far enough to do that without bias. Thus, just like a financial, audit which is done once a year, the world of municipal operations is changing to add proper quality, effectiveness and efficiency audits. For those who may not know, those are quite different from financial audits.

The province, which is responsible for having proper municipal governance in place, has now created a position of municipal auditor which sets a direction we are going in, which is following others who went before us.

The world is becoming more complex. Computers having given us the tool. Our brains are slowly following.

Besides, 2% of the population can keep uys fed these days rather than 50%. We have not yet gained the wisdom to distribute the savings resulting from that efficiency increase to the 48% who are out of work as a result. So, we are madly trying to create jobs and everytime we think we have got it licked, more effciency is shoved down our throats with more and more goodies on the shlves to keep us wanting them and keep us employed making them and creating new jobs.

We are on a treadmill from which we cannot get off. But hey, PG folks can sure try … LOL.

They laid off the wrong people.They should have started with IPG as we definitely don’t get our monies worth out of that organization.What private investment have they attracted to the downtown or anywhere else in the city of PG?There is investment projects going on in other communities even during the recession,but we always seem to be left out of the mix.What was once Westbank is continuing to grow at a staggering rate.Surrey continues to grow during this time,so why can’t IPG attract any of these investors?With the additional businesses comes additional tax dollars which would decrease the burden on other taxpayers and having to cut other jobs in order to find savings in city hall.IPG has delivered very little for the amount of money they are costing the taxpayers of PG,it’s time they shut it down!

“Westbank is continuing to grow at a staggering rate.Surrey continues to grow during this time,so why can’t IPG attract any of these investors?” – because we aren’t a 3 hr drive from the coast and we don’t have balmy winters. But, I agree, IPG is a huge waste of our money.

Now there are less staff and very little recruiting going on why were no human resources positions eliminated? There are at least 2 who deal with recruitment so what are they doing now?

We have to keep things in perspective.

1. We cannot continue to assume that if our costs and taxes are in line with other like Communities then we are on the right track. Why? Because other Communities also are out of control when it comes to spending tax dollars.

2. Cities are geared to spend all the money they collect in taxes and other revenue, and then borrow money to continue spending on projects that they imply are wanted by taxpayers when in fact they are not.

3. You cannot hire a Fox to guard a hen house. The City Manager, and Staff need to be told in no uncertain terms what is expected of them.

4. The Federal Government, and the City of Toronto, have asked their various departments to reduce costs by 5 or 10 percent. There was no room left for negotiating. Just do the reductions in those areas that you feel you can live with. This is not rocket science.

5. While the City of PG crys on the one hand about added costs being downloaded by other levels of Government, they neglect to discuss the increase in revenue that they receive from RCMP traffic tickets, gas tax revenue, gambling revenue, and of course revenue from both the Federal and Provincial Governments for various and sundry projects, like the **stupid** Community Energy System. The upgrade to River Road (Not necessary) The $25 Million for the Charles Jago Centre, that now costs us $300,000.00 per year to maintain. The money that will be forthcoming for the **stupid** Wood Innovation Building, $22 Million for the illfated Airport Runway Expansion, etc; etc; etc;. All of this money could have been directed to projects that were more in tune with the needs of the City, as opposed to the needs of the hairbrained managers that thought them up. Bidding on the Winter Games, that will cost us an additional $15 Million in taxes is a prime example of how fast we can get into debt.

6. The City of Prince George has 904 Employees, this number would include the Fire Department, and the 60 staff that work for the RCMP. Of his 904 employees 210 receive over $75000.00 per year. So the average income of the top 210 employees would be $90,000.00 per year. Cost $19,309,651.00 per annum. 694 Employees get paid less than $75000.00 per year. Their average income would be approx $40,000.00 per year. Cost $27,006,811.00. Total cost for staff $46,000,000.00. Plus $678,000.00 in expenses, for a grand total of approx $47 Million per year.

7. The RCMP have 60 staff who are paid as City employees. When we talk about maintaining the RCMP at their present level, there is no reason to beleive that we could not downsize the staff portion.

8. We cannot continue to find reasons why we cannot downsize. We have to. The end result if we dont, will be just like the EU with all its attendent problems.

9. Government workers, teachers, politicians, people who work for Government entities like Hydro, BC Transit, BCLC Board, ICBC, etc; etc; etc; are all draining the system.

10. We are a rich Province, and City, the problem is, we are being bled to death by Government. Smaller Government, Less taxes, and less stupid Goverment projects would save us billions of dollars, that could be directed to buying consumer products, houses, etc; which would help to get the economy going. Government employees are a drag on a Country and shuld be kept to the minimum required at all times.

“The City Manager, and Staff need to be told in no uncertain terms what is expected of them”

And exactly who on Council has the expertise to be the objective judge of that?

Is there anyone on our Council who has the experience of operating a business with a span of $200 million annual budget, 700 or so employees and over 70,000 clients?

When private industry looks for senior managers to run a business of that size they look for people who have had previous experience with organizations that have close to that type of operation.

“the City of Toronto, have asked their various departments to reduce costs by 5 or 10 percent. There was no room left for negotiating”

You bet there was room for negotiation. There was at least one 24 hour session with speakers providing their points of view. The City went back on the proposal to curtail some library services, including closing down branches.

http://www.torontosun.com/news/torontoandgta/2011/02/24/17398141.html

In fact spending in 2011 increased by $170 million.

It is too early to tell how the 2012 budget will fare. We’ll know in about a month ….

Once again, Palopu is spouting nonesense with his percentage …. yes, there was a move to decrease the amount of increase, but Ford has an uphill battle.

“….. save us billions of dollars, that could be directed to buying consumer products, houses, etc; which would help to get the economy going.”

Palopu, why does it matter, from an economic point of view, who buys consumer products, those who earn their money by providing services through the public purse or the private purse?

Specific to PG, we have one of the highest personal diposable incomes in the province since we are paying considerably less for housing, which means we pay considerably less interest to banks. That means we have more money to buy those goods made in other countries and go on vacation in foreign countries to buy services there with our money.

Luckily we have resources which other people want to make things from since we really do not know how to do that too well. We prefer to buy out of country.

or those

Thanks Porter for putting it the way I was about to . . .

“URGH!!!
Taxpayer: We want less taxes!!!
Council: We have to reduce our costs, lets lay off 25 people and save about $2M (what the radio said this morning.
Taxpayer: You bunch of a-holes those people need those jobs.

Yep, Council is overpaid for their easy job with absolutely no stress where you are showered with love and adoration everyday. Heck they should make it a volunteer position.”

Never saw so many armchair quarterbacks.

Ford may have an uphill battle, but it is the City administration he is battling with.

Anyone, anywhere, anytime, can give you a good reason why you should not get rid of thier job. What Council has to do is go beyond the so called justification for not reducing staff, to acutally forcing the issue. We can live with the results. One would hope that they would make cuts in the most appropriate places, but who the hell knows.

My main point on leaving money in the pockets of taxpayers was in regards to billions of dollars being wasted by different levels of Governments on projects, that at best are more for getting re-elected than for any actual need. In addition there is no need to be paying civil servants a huge salary and benefits, if we are getting no value for our money. Better to have them work for the private sector and the money we save will be spent by us.

An interesting statement made by an associate professer of UBC (Craig Mitton) which I agree with.

**The wealth of the Province or Nation is the main driver of expenditures** I would add Municipalities to this statement.

That statement was made in the context of a discussion on healthcare spending. http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=ede976e2-98f7-4990-9876-5626ace15d2c&k=24906

According to the above linked article, Kim McGrail, a health economist with UBC’s Centre for Health Services and Policy Research has a more detailed perspective. Rising expenditures are driven by expectations. In other words, the wealthier one is, the greater the expectations for the quality of goods and service, the greater the expenditures. I would think that in our world that is a common truth and has been for hundreds and thousands of years.

In fact, in today’s world, consumer buying or demand is the key driver to wealth creation. If our desire to have things and services would diminish, we would not produce things because we would not have the money to sustain production. Production by itself does not produce wealth. It produces potential wealth. Produce the wrong thing, offer the wrong service, there will be no wealth created.

One cannot compare provincial and federal spending on health services to municipal spending. They are as different as night and day, not from the point of view of the expectations of people, but from the point of view of the capacity to provide the expected services. Why is that so? Because, despite popular perception, healthcare spending in Canada has not increased as a percentage of government budgets over the past 20 or so years. Municipal spending has.
http://parl.gc.ca/Content/HOC/Committee/411/FINA/WebDoc/WD5138047/411_FINA_PBC2011_Briefs%5CCalgary%20Chamber%20of%20Commerce%20E.pdf

“Over 80% of Canadians live in Canada’s largest urban centres, which are the main drivers of our economic prosperity and provide a necessary environment for sustained economic progress” ,The Institute for Competitiveness & Prosperity 2002

That was quoted by the Calgary Chamber of Commerce in response to the Federal Budget. The following is from that report.

The key component of this strategy to provide support to Canada’s national urban centres must be fiscal reform. While municipal governments service 80% of Canadians, municipal revenues represent approximately 10% of total government revenue11. These services that are different in nature and scope from those provided in smaller jurisdictions, such as affordable housing, public transit and other forms of infrastructure, as well as immigrant settlement and support services. In many instances, the federal and the provincial governments have programs to support the provision of these services, but current financial levers are often insufficient for our country’s largest urban centres to provide these services to meet demand.

Municipalities tend to rely primarily on property taxes and grants from senior levels of government as their main sources of revenue – revenue sources that are either not responsive to municipal activities and citizen demand, or create an accountability deficit in that they are at least one-step removed from the taxpayer.

Canada’s largest urban centres need a more stable, secure and growing revenue base established through a framework that ensures sufficient and predictable tax revenues for sustaining municipal infrastructure and operations.

Any efforts to provide municipalities with access to greater revenues, however, must go hand-in-hand with those municipalities demonstrating sufficient fiscal discipline through greater transparency and cost controls.

BTW, there is an interesting report going to Council on Monday regarding the matter of greater transparency with respect to the more frequent reporting of financial transaction.

The legislated requirement is to do that once a year. Quesnel provides a current report once per month.

Council was asked to provide the information in a more timely matter such as Quesnel does.

http://princegeorge.ca/cityhall/mayorcouncil/councilagendasminutes/agendas/2012/2012_01_23/documents/Cmte_FandA_FOI_and_Fin_reporting.pdf

The response from the Finance and Audit Committee was that it would take 65 to 90 hours PER YEAR to provide the required information in a more timely matter.

Based on an average fully loaded cost of inside employees of $100,000/year, that means the cost of doing that would be $3,500 to $5,000 PER YEAR.

I think it would be worth it to get current information.

However, I do wonder why it takes that many hours to hit a computer key 12 times per year rather than 1 time. Setting up a new report on a bookkeeping program takes a few hours, even a few days perhaps, depending on how much testing has to be done to make sure it brings in the right data. Once that is done, however, it really is virtually just the matter of requesting the program to spit out the monthly report.

Gus. My point was that if the City did not have such a wealthy tax base, ie; commercial, industrial, and community taxes, it could not.

A. Borrow as much money as it does.

B. Spend as much money as it does.

Its the **easy** access to tax dollars that drives the City to take on expensive projects, hire consultants, hire more staff than is needed, and generally spend us into debt.

We have convinced ourselves (wrongly) that we are a *big* City, and we try and act accordingly. We are at best a small City, and without the huge commercial, industrial tax base, we would have very few frills.

If you use the Industry located on the Pulp Mill Road, as an example ie;

1. Prince George Pulp and Paper
2. Intercontinental Pulp
3. Husky Oil Refinery
4. Chemtrade
5. FMC Corp.
6. Maple Leaf Industrial Park.

These companies, supply their own water, buy thier Hydro, Provide (for the most part) thier own fire service, and security, and keep their plants free of snow, etc; The only service that I am aware of that the City supplies, is paving the road every five or so years, and snowplowing. The roads and snow plowing for the most part would have to be done in any event for the people who live on this road.

So my point is, that the City collects millions of tax dollars from these companies for little or no service, and then spends the money willy, nilly, on stupid projects.

Prior to bringing these companies into the City through amalgamation they did not have this money available to piss away.

The City of Prince George has no shortage of money. What it does have is a Council and Administration that is hell bent to spend every dollar received, and to borrow more. This doesnt happen by accident. It is in fact a planned and controlled spending program, that most cities have. IPG is just one example of setting up an organization to spend tax dollars. The Tourist Bureau is the same. The Art Centre should be open 3 days a week at best. The Civic Centre sits empty most of the year, and yet has regualar staff to look after it. I could go on and on however you get my drift.