Hart Community Policing Office to Close
Thursday, January 26, 2012 @ 2:26 PM
Prinice George, B.C. – The Community Policing office in the Hart is closing.
The closure was announced this afternoon as part of the City of Prince George’s efforts to reduce its operating expenses for 2012, and the Community Policing Budget is taking the hit.
With directions to reduce the budget by $150 thousand dollars, the Hart Community Policing office , (in the back of the building which houses Mr. G’s on West Austin Road) will be shut down and Community Policing will be centred out of the Downtown Community Policing Office at 6th and Brunswick.
RCMP Superintendent Eric Stubbs says the Hart office was not used to its full potential, as some months there had been as many as 23 visits from the public , and months were there had been as few as 5.
Officers were encouraged to visit the office to use the computers there to file their reports, but Superintendent Stubbs says with computers in the police vehicles, officers will now be able to do that work right from the cruiser.
He emphasizes this change will not impact the level of policing for the northern area of the City as the Community Policing office was not an "enforcement" office and all officers are dispatched out of the main detachment, nor does it mean there will be a shifting of resources to other areas of the City.
Comments
Lived here all these years and this is the first I heard of a Hart Community Policing Office. Learn something every day..:)
As a resident of the hart it doesn’t surprise me that we get the first hit in reduced services. As volunteers it was nice having a place where we could drop in close to home. Didn’t our new mayor say she could cut costs without impacting services. So much for that promise.
Our Core review at work. When they spend that, $350.000.00 will our city be lean and mean.
Cheers
Hold on to your hat Mitch2….I’m sure Shariff Green is just reloading right now and the shooting won’t stop until she lose’s a toe. Or until she can afford a dike.
You can’t cut costs without reducing services to some extent, and I don’t Shari Green said anything otherwise.
This is what people wanted. Now the reality sets in.
What’s happening in the public service has been happening in the private sector for the last few years now.
With that few of visits, I’m surprised that it was kept open at all!
Just makes me wonder what else there is that is ‘way underused? C’mon people, speak up. I’m sure there are people who know of other things as well.
Actually JohnnyBelt I seem to recall that she said during the campaign that she would cut 10% and do it without layoffs and not impact services.http://www.opinion250.com/blog/view/21804
The layoffs with community policing were likely what prompted the closure of the office. I see that “crime” was one of her priorities yet among the first cuts she has made was with the very people that were working with the community to make the city safer.
From the link provided by Different Perspective:
“Will that mean staff cuts? Green says she doesnât anticipate any jobs cuts”
I can’t see anything along the lines of, “…she would cut 10% and do it without layoffs…”
At least the council is keeping their raise.
As I mentioned in previous posts. A number of years ago the City transferred the Three (3) RCMP who looked after Community Policing back to General Duties, because the RCMP was down on the number of police contracted to the City. I beleive at that time that they had 121 police and the contract called for 128. In any event the City would not allow for any more police to be hired, and therefore they transferred them from Community Policing.
Then the City hired 3 Civilians to do the work that the RCMP Officers were doing. (One could legitimately ask, what work?) By hiring under a different budget they were able to kill two birds with one stone.
Part of the problem overall was the fact that Community Policing is for all intents and purposes a volunteer group that works with the Police, so it begs the question. Did the City really need to hire 3 Civilians to look after this Volunteer Group. I suggest that the answer is NO.
In any event two of the three have now been laid off, and the Community Policing will continue in the fancy office downtown.
Pr George always boosts that it is a **Volunteer Community** and therefore we now have more room for the volunteers to do their stuff.
Some of you talk like she is swinging an axe all over town. Lets be real, 28 jobs at city hall, 19 were vacant already. That means 9 actual layoffs out of 784 or something? I suspect there is alot more dead weight at city hall then that. As for this center, come on. Can any of you say that staffing and renting a building for five visitors a month is worthwhile?
Interceptor. 910 Managers and Staff would be more like it. The City has 28 Managers and 4 Directors just for starters. Then after that we have all the staff for the different departments.
The Community Policing Centre used to be in a small office beside the Elks building, just off of George St on 6th. Since then they have the Hart Office, and the huge offices in the building at 575 Brunswick St., They still have a number of RCMP working with the program, and in addition they have the three (3) full time positions they hired.
Their webpage under **Who we are** states;
**Pr George Community Policing is a division of the PG RCMP. We are a volunteer organization that offers a variety of crime prevention programs and services to local citizens and business**
This Community Policing **ballooned** under the high rolling and extravagant spending of the illustrious ex Mayer Colin Kinsley. It is long overdue for a downsizing, along with a number of other departments in the City.
Lets not fool ourselves. There is lots of room for cost cutting in this City. We now **seem** to have a Mayor and Council who wants to get on with the job, so lets let them do it.
The needless addition of hexafluorosilicic acid (fluoride) to the tap water in Prince George costs approximately $80,000 per year, plus some other smaller incidental costs.
Only Prince George, Terrace, Ft. St. John and Prince Rupert are still spending money on this! These 4 cities make up the last 3% of fluoridated locations in B.C.
97% of B.C. is artificial fluoridation free!
Allow us to join them! We should have the same opportunity to have non-medicated water and save a hundred grand annually!
BTW:
Calcium Fluoride is the natural fluoride in water! Hexafluorosilicic Acid fluoride is man made and not natural! It is a toxic waste by-product and polluted with traces of lead, mercury and arsenic. This is the stuff which is added to our tap water. Wake up, citizens!
Ditto.
Palopu: you stopped short of mentioning the third person is now the communications manager and is married to another city manager.
PrinceGeorge, why must you keep on flogging this fluoride thing? Did you read the post that Dragonmaster has in the free for all today and read the link from Northern Health? Believe it or not, there are some of us that believe in our health professionals.
Is four seasons pool next? Aged Building,high cost
Four seasons could be next, however I think that having swimming facilities for the younger generation, and the Seniors is a good thing.
A more realistic approach would be to Cancel the Cougers contract and allow the Spruce Kings, and local skating groups to use the CN Centre. This would allow you to get rid of the Coliseum which is a very old building. The upgrade to Kin (1) and the Ice Oval along with Kin 2, 3, and the skating facility on the Hart should be more than sufficient for the skaters and hockey buffs.
The Cougers franchise in Prince George is a dead loss. It costs the City in excess of $60,000.00 per year to keep this franchise here.
The City last year signed a new 10 year contract with the Cougers. They went from a contract that gave them 12% of the gross ticket sales up to $150,000.00 and 15% beyond to a sliding scale. The sliding scale is based on attendence, and as the attendence per game goes down, the City’s portion of the revenue goes down.
As an example under the old contract if ticket sales for 1800 fans totaled $25,200.00 The City;s portion would be $3,024.00. Under the new **sliding scale** contract the City’s portion would be I beleive 8% so $2,016.00. A thousand dollars per game less if you average 1800 fans per game. (Average at this time is closer to 2200). So with 36 home games the City is staring an additonal loss of $36000.00 in the face.
I have not been able to locate anything on the City’s website outlining the *new* agreement, however suffice to say it works in favour of the Cougars owners, and against the taxpayers.
Just one of many options available for the City if they want to be sincere in reducing costs.
Four seasons pool is heavily subsidized by the city
PG guru … considering the Pool is owned by the city … are you surprised ????
Papalou … with respect to the Cougars franchise … would you rather bring in some cash … or none at all …. the Cougars contract states its gives a albeit small percentage of ticket sales directly to city hall … But the Franchise still pays Ice time during the day for practices etc …. its really not costing the city anything to keep the CN center (why is it called the CN center anyway?) running … the money it brings in … operates it … Its probally one of the few venues that is city operated that is in the black
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