Finally the chickens are coming home to roost !!!

When you only buy stuff and work from the lowest bidder, you gotta live with the results of your decisions. This laughable approach to getting the best value for your dollars is not the only factor, but certainly is a huge contribution to The current situation in your town.

Those old pennies “saved” are sure to be useful now. Good luck with that.

V.

“In fact, Councillor Dave Wilbur pegs the national infrastructure deficit at $23 billion dollars.”

“According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, however, the DND estimates are misleading: the F-35 program’s full cost to Canada will be more like $29.3-billion, or $450-million for each plane over its planned lifetime.[7]”

See, it’s so easy: FORGET borrowing any money for attack fighter planes (who are we going to attack?) and borrow enough money instead to fix the national infrastructure dilemma!

We could also stop building roads and bridges in Afghanistan (where we are neither wanted nor appreciated – they want us out!) and give up trying to TRAIN them! They didn’t need any training to confront the troops of the mighty Soviet Union and sent the Russian troops packing! Why would they need expensive training now?

Will common sense prevail and put peaceful purpose ahead of military chutzpah?

NOT very likely!

“They didn’t need any training to confront the troops of the mighty Soviet Union” .. actually just to clarify, the taliban was trained and supplied by the US, and we all know what happened there. It came back to bite them in a big way.

Bill Gaal seems to have had the information and I would think that others have the information dealing with their departments.

The question I have, of course, is why does this show up at budget time virtually every year. Why is there not a process going which deals with these important issues at this time.

Why was a budget forwarded to Council which caused people to be laid off to drop the intial revenue increase down, when, in fact, another $3.5 million was required to start working on road infrastructure?

Is this the only way senior governments will help? They put cities into stress mode?

The poor municipal auditor, she has her work cut out to bring this all to a head across the province.

But, this is nothing that the feds and the province have not known about.

Where are we going wrong with our politicians? They don’t like the bad news stuff?

Where do they get this head in the sand attitude from?

I agree the F35 deal is a bad deal for Canada. We could buy 1800 CF-18’s for the same price and the CF-18s are tried and true, faster, more maneuverable, carry more armaments, and more reliable for Arctic missions with their duel engines and longer range. With the CF18 we would be a global air power for the price of the F35. The F35 deal is corruption at its highest level IMO and the money wasted has to come from somewhere.

Harper Inc plan is to privatize the municipal infrastructure in Canada to foreign multinationals through deals like the CETA that make it law, rather than help fund to ‘catch up’ on required maintenance. Articles like this play right into Harper Inc strategic planing….

“…actually just to clarify, the taliban was trained and supplied by the US,”

Actually they were muhajedin fighters.
Afghanistan fought other invaders successfully before, including the British. The muhajedin conducted a guerilla warfare method NOT practiced by Americans and did not need any training or teaching for that. They were poorly equipped in beginning, mostly with captured Russian equipment. Later they acquired very effective American stinger missiles to supplant the very inaccurate Russian (and perhaps black market Chinese made) anti aircraft ones.

Don’t know if the Americans ever admitted letting them have Stinger missiles. Probably not, why should they?

Nevertheless, Karzai wants everybody out. Everybody. It’s their country so there is no further need to spend our Canadian tax dollars over there instead of on our own crumbling infrastructure.

Iraq, by the way, wants everybody out as well.

It seems Prince George BC wants everybody out also. Or one would presume so, the way they continually increase taxes, and fail to make any inroads on spending.

In simplistic terms the $3.5 Million they need for infrastructure is being spent on a dike that is, for all intents and purposes not required, certainly not right away, and certainly not until we see now the raising of River Road, and installing drainage etc; in 2010 for a cost of $7 Million works.

So in fact we have the $3.5 Million. In addition it seems we have $2.5 Million in the Land reserve fund that will be spent on River Road also.

All the work done on River Road can be classified as infrastructure, so in essence we will have spent $9.5 Million in PG tax dollars on a 3.5 kilometre stretch of road. (Not counting the interest which is huge) and not counting the $8.9 Million from the Feds.

So, its not a question of not having any money for infrastructure. What it is, is a failure by the local politicians, past and present to spend dollars in areas where they are most effective.

When one considers all the money spent on
a. Boundry Road
b. Community Energy System
c. New office for City Purchasing Employees
d. River Road
e. PG Hotel Purchase
f. Many other land purchases around the City
g. Extravagant Police Station.

Its pretty bloody obvious why we have no money for infrastructure.

The City and some people on this site will now blame the Federal Government (Harper) for the mess we are in. The mess needs to be laid at the door of City Hall, as they were the ones that created it.

The Mayor and Council with the exception of Frank Everitt voted to build the dyke, even though they were fully aware of the shortfall in revenue for infrastructure around the City, and that my friends is why we are broke, and driving on roads that would not be acceptable in **Dogpatch**

I have to agree with Palopu on this one. The City has spent a lot of money hoping to attract new businesses/tax base to PG (Boundary Road, etc.), but the lack of spending in infrastructure maintenance is almost driving residents (tax-payers) out of the city.

We could have had some nice looking streets, improved sidewalks, longer-lasting water and sewer system with all the money wasted on the projects with no immediate return.

What kind of return will the City receive from the proposed Wood Innovation Centre? Will that building and property be tax-exempt?

The wood innovation centre is just a “phigment” of the imagination so far.

Senior governments do not pay taxes to lowly municipal governments. That would set a dangerous precedent regarding the hierarchy. However, they do pay grants in lieu of taxes which reflect the taxes that would have been paid had it been a private sector owner.

BTW, I think the pyramid of senior and junior governments is upside down. I think just as Canada is a federation of provinces, provinces ought to be a federation of districts/municipalities giving them “equal” powers just as provinces have from the smallest populated ones to the largest populates one.

It would be interesting to model that to see what, if any, benefits might happen as a result to the overall system of governance.

“The mess needs to be laid at the door of City Hall, as they were the ones that created it.”

I there are many reasons why it exists.

1. the “North American” way of dealing with throw away infrastructure.

2. build properly to begin with

3. collect enough from people to pay for the services and maintenance they want

4. do not put off till tomorrow what you need to do today because costs will increase

5. when faced with tough decisions, make them rather than going into fantasyland

6. don’t rely on developers, their only purpose is to increase their own bottom line, not that of the general public

7. the purpose of government is to increase the assets of the people … diametrically opposed to the purpose of private enterprise.

and on and on …..

There are some fundamental problems with the way both taxpayers and the people that taxpayers elect think. For some time now, it appears that taxpayers want one thing and they have been electing people who want something completely different.

I believe that we are paying these decision makers too much money. When they get the mind set that money is grown on trees then there is no problem to have winter games, expensive police stations, down town land grabs to sell to their buddies at reduced cost so as to spread it around, and other costly items of this nature.

This will continue to be a problem until the city stops approving sprawling low density subdivisions. They either have to force density to increase the tax dollars per km of road and pipe, or they have to increase the tax rate for those who wish to live in lower density areas.

Finally some words of understanding the root of the entire problem, swordfern.

All properties, residential/commercial should be assessed on a higher basis the further they are from the centre of the city.

Gus is on to something with points #3 & #6

3. collect enough from people to pay for the services and maintenance they want.

Yes, especially the businesses who continually go to city hall asking for variances on their plans, and who continually get them, which costs me, the taxpayer, who get stuck with the bill for things like sidewalks that should be built by a business, but instead the city picks up the tab for due to variances.

6. don’t rely on developers, their only purpose is to increase their own bottom line, not that of the general public

Exactly, and the sad part is that these developers feel they can have their own standards without regard to codes or processes. Of course, our business-friendly mayor is more than glad to crap all over city hall whom she sees as a detriment to business, what with building codes and stuff like that. Furthermore, because the council, many of whom have proved their incompetence in other forums, provide variance after variance to developers, it causes a huge deficit in the city coffers. Once this happens, city staff are laid off in the pursuit of fiscal responsibility, while developers get richer and richer.

Palopu regarding your comment that the mayor and council with the exception of Everitt voted to proceed with the dyke, not so. Skakun was the no voter. Everitt voted no to using the AAP.

So, since some may agree with me that the purpose of City Hall, the province, the country, is directly opposed to the purpose of corporations, it could then be stated that putting business first before the people would be putting the foxes in charge of the hen house.

Maybe we could have a rude awakening here.

;-)

Its interesting that everyone is worried about the cost of repairing/replacing the city’s infrastructure, but when Haldi Road residents were worried about what would happen if their water supply was depleted by allowing a facility such as the women’s recovery centre, we were called nimbys. The cost of a new well that will produce efficient water supply in our area? Anywhere from 25,000 to 40,000.

One Democrat.I stand corrected. The Mayor and Council voted to accept the $5.4 Million from the Fed/Prov. for the diking of River Road, with the exception of Skakun who voted NO.

On the motion to go the the AAP to borrow this Citys portion of the project the Mayor and Council voted for the AAP and Frank Everitt voted against using the AAP.

There was very little discussion as to how much this would cost over 20 years. Nor was there any discussion as to why the money from the Feds/Prov made specific reference to diking River Road, even though the Consultants report showed that there were serious areas of concern about flooding at Morning Place, South Fort George, and Landsdowne, and the Pulp Mill Road.

Why does River Road get all the money, and the other areas get ignored.????

Something is amiss with this whole fiasco. It appears that the City has obtained funding from the Federal Government under two different grant programs, for basically the same type of project and is going ahead with it for no other reason than to spend the money.

Taliban = pot holes on PG streets? Bit of a stretch I think. Seeing as how we now have a few cents off our aviation fuel costs(kerosene, aka coal oil) (ultra refined), and with our loooong runway I know where we can get planeloads of unemployed Greeks and some Irish young people. Maybe PG can hire them (on the cheap) to work on our aging infrastructure. Dangle the carrot of citizenship in front of their noses as an incentive and you will get first class repairs done. I guarantee it. Pay them with post dated cheques.