Prince George, BC – City Councillors have voted unanimously in favour of reinstating $70-thousand dollars in funding for PG Air, breaking with the tradition of deferring proposed additions to the provisional budget until the last budget meeting.

When Council directed staff to hold the tax increase to 3.12-percent last month, PG Air’s funding fell by the wayside.  Both the executive director of the air quality roundtable and the president of the Peoples’ Action Coalition for Healthy Air (PACHA) made impassioned pleas to restore the funding during the public input portion of last night’s meeting.

PACHA President, Dr. Marie Hay, said, as the longest-running air quality roundtable in the province, PG Air has been incredibly successful in bringing together the City, UNBC, Northern Health, the Ministry of Environment, industry, and community stakeholders like PACHA to work together on improving air quality.  She lambasted Council for its lack of leadership on environmental issues, with January’s staff cuts wiping out the city’s Environment division and the funding cut to PG Air poised to effectively ‘kill’ the organization.

PG Air Executive Director, Terry Robert, said the city’s grant was leveraged to at least double the roundtable’s funding.  While he outlined real gains being made to improve air quality – in terms of reducing both odour and emissions – he offered sobering statistics from a study released last year highlighting the deadly consequences of our poor air quality.

"A study conducted Elliot and Copes in 2011, published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health, indicates that within the Northern and Interior Health areas concentrations of PM_2.5 account for approximately 74 deaths per year," he told Council.  "Within the study period, Prince George had the highest recorded annual average PM_2.5 of all the monitored communities in the North and Interior BC."

"This is a critical time for PG Air, after years of investment in identifying and researching air quality issues in the community," Robert continued.  "PG Air currently is in the implementation phase for further reductions of particulate matter."

Their pleas did not fall on deaf ears.  In fact, it appears Councillors had been having second thoughts about the cut, on their own.  Councillor Cameron Stolz told 250 News on Sunday that he planned to bring forward a motion to add the $70-thousand as a service enhancement.  Last night, Mayor Shari Green said many councillors had balked at cutting the money in the first place, and, in hindsight, probably should have made the decision to keep it in at that time.

The Mayor said she didn’t see any point in deferring the matter to the February 27th meeting.  Councillor Stolz moved PG Air’s funding be restored and it was endorsed unanimously.  While the $70-thousand amounts to a 0.1-percent increase in the proposed tax increase, there were some minor cuts made elsewhere in the budget last night that offset that amount.