Time For Residents To Have Their Say On River Road Dike
Proposed flood protection dike would run along north side of River Road
Prince George, BC – Prince George residents against the City’s plans to borrow funds for the River Road flood protection dike can now register their opposition…
City Councillors need approval from the electorate to borrow $3.558-million dollars towards the total project cost of $11.5-million dollars for a 3.3-kilometre dike that will run along the north side of River Road. It’s estimated the cost of borrowing the money over the 20-year term will result in a tax increase of $5.66 per year for the average residential property owner.
Councillors have opted to seek that approval through the Alternate Approval Process – otherwise known as a reverse petition – where 10-percent of eligible voters must submit forms signalling their opposition to the loan.
The Elector Response forms are now available at City Hall or from the City’s website, by clicking here
Residents have until 5pm, Tuesday, April 25th to submit their completed forms. If 5,351 eligible voters submit completed forms by the deadline, council would then have to hold a referendum to seek voter approval for the loan bylaw authorization.
If the deadline passes without the required number of forms, councillors will adopt the bylaw at its regular meeting, Monday, April 30th.
Comments
We can say all we want but it’ll happen. HST come to mind?
The deadline date for submitting the form is 5PM Tuesday April 24th, not the 25th. In addition if you print the form off the Citys website, it is a two page form, and the City Clerk, advises that both pages need to be returned to City Hall, either by hand, fax, mail, or an attachment to an email.
There is a good opportunity here, to force this issue to a referendum, so the first thing to do is print the form, fill it out and email it to the City. Then print off more copies and have your friends, relatives, family, and others also sign the form, and get it to City Hall.
Its pretty obvious that the City has no intention of paying any attention to our concerns about our roads etc;, however if we force this issue to a referendum, you can rest assured that we will have their attention.
**acrider 54** You posted at 5.17am to-day. No doubt you have already submitted the form via email to the City**
Insofar as the HST goes, we did defeat it, and it will in fact be eliminated on April 1st 2013. Will they throw us another curve?? Who knows, however if we do nothing, they are gauranteed a win.
$5.56 tax added each year to the average households property taxes doesn’t sound like much. I hope that number doesn’t make some people decide not to vote against it, because the real issue here is whether this dike is necessary and we have to get this council in check when it comes to borrowing money for these pie in the sky projects. And I think we should have just had a referendum or AAP on whether the dike should be built period, not just the borrowing phase of it. So this bylaw is shot down doesn’t mean they aren’t going to still get money from somewhere which will ultimately cost the taxpayers anyway, and it may be more than $5.56/yr.
FIX THE DAMN ROADS …..FORGET THE DIKE’S. IT DOESN’T FLOOD ENOUGH TO JUSTIFY.
True dat vocer! Meisner mentioned on the radio last Friday that the only time the river had flooded was when Alcan released water into the spillway. There’s prevention available, just not in the form of a multi-million dollar dike.
The City of PG should put the 3.5 million towards roads!
Why would page 2 be required other than if not submitted it may disqualify a vote. Page 2 has nothing more than eligibility requirements.
Seems like another city hall scam to spend another bunch of taxpayer money needlessly.
Let’s hope enough people sign and submit the form in order to stop this perpetual waste. Mayor and council seem hell bent on a course to drive PG into bankruptcy.
I now know the cost of borrowing the money,,but how much a year is it going to cost us to repay the money for an unnecessary dike?
I just looked at the forms on site.
I could not find a map which located the existing work that has already been done and the new work which is supposed to be done with the current money.
Can anyone find that. I looked for that a few weeks ago and could not find it and I called city hall. The person responsible was not avaialable, so I left a message and never received a return call.
I am going to try once more with feeling.
In the meantime, this is the article on this site from just about 5 years ago that explained the “emergency” situation. It includes an aerial photo showing a proposed dike layout. I believe that is the end of River Rd. that is supposed to be done with the current money. BUT, I am not sure. Why the big secret? One would think this information would be front and centre. In fact, I would think that there would be signs up on the road where this is proposed to explain it to people who travel the road.
I know, I know, we are saving money. A great excuse if one does not want to do something.
http://www.opinion250.com/blog/view/5528
The City Clerk wants the 2nd copy of the form returned because it would (in his words) indicate that the people who signed the form actually read all the information pertaining to the petition.
The actual cost of borrowing the $3.558 Million is $279,594.00 per year for 20 Years. Or $5,591,880.00. Approx the same as when they borrowed $3.75 Million for the River Road upgrade in 2010.
The point is that by the time they are finished they will have spent. $9.5 Million City of PG money. $8.9 Million Fed/Prov money, for a total of $18.4 Million, plus $11 Million in interest, on this 3.5 kilometres of road. To say that this was overkill would be a huge understatement.
gus
I just read the link that you posted. So what the hell does Flood Mitigation mean?
Gus. Report to Council by Dave Dyer, Manager, Utilities, dated Jan 30/12 outlines the project for 2010/2011 and associated cost.
I cant however locate any maps, etc; He does refer to an approximately 1.7 kilometer groundwater cut-off wall to work in conjunction with a subdrain and pump chamber system installed in 2009.
I have read the information about elector eligibility, the last paragraph states that “if a property is owned by more than one individual, only one of them may sign an elector response form.” My understanding of that comment is that only one member per household could vote.
2nd comment: how do we have 53,000 plus voters in PG when our population is only around 72,000.
This is a real joke…have to send in 2 pages, one per household….doomed to fail…and i get just livid when you cant drive anywhere in town for potholes….
I think that the last paragraph on page two is related to non-resident property electors.
Why do we have to build this dike now, we have better things to spend borrowed money on.
“how do we have 53,000 plus voters in PG when our population is only around 72,000.”
Anyone 19 or over is elligible … right up to the oldest person in town …..
So that means that roughly 19,000 are below 19 and 53,000 above.
“The actual cost of borrowing the $3.558 Million is $279,594.00 per year for 20 Years. Or $5,591,880.00”
The cost of borrowing is the interest one has to pay.
Thus, the cost of borrowing is:
Total cost of borrowing is principal plus interest minus the amount borrowed.
$5,591,880 – #3,558,000 = $2,033,880
The cost of borrowing, as opposed to direct collection through taxes, selling raffle tickets, or earmarking the gas tax refund to this effort is $2,033,880.
The other way, of course, to save the $2million + is to postpone one or more other projects and pay for it without borrowing.
This is ridiculous!
Most petitions have an area for hundreds of people to sign on just a few pieces of paper.
With this petition those fighting the spending will need to cough up 10,752 pages, unless of course they print on both sides.
For some reason I would bet if they did print on both sides it would make the petition void.
Thats how these backroom dealers operate isn’t it?
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