Ataboy Allen. Now your cooking on the front burner.See you there.
Cheers

Surely there must be at least one person in city hall who has to pay their own vehicle repair bills. When I drive on Prince George streets for one season my front end requires work to be done. I try to avoid the potholes but the trade off is that I put everyone in danger. Rather than building a dyke spend money on our roads they are where the need exists right now!

I hope this AAP goes through. The sneaky way that they are trying to get this through is just plain wrong, IMO.
And yes, Surefire, the roads are bad. Last year at about this time, I called my repair shop about a clunk in the front end of one of our vehicles. I let them know I had to drive at least 100km a week on Ospika. The guys at the shop just laughed, and said, “in that case, bring it in right away, there is a problem for sure.”
Over and over again, I hear (and read) people wanting the roads fixed as a priority. During the election, the candidates said the roads would be a priority for them. So what happened? They got in, and cut the budget on roads. Again.

IMO, The people will win, the city will appeal, The dike WILL be built. Queen Green and her crew will prevail.

You might be close steven. How about- the people will win, the city will spend the $65000 on a referendum, the referendum will be worded so it goes through and city hall will say “see how you silly taxpayers waste our money on things like referendums”

I will be signing the petition, but having said that, I don’t think the AAP will get enough signatures.

The AAP is set up to give City Hall a mandate to do whatever it wants. People barely got out and voted for Mayor and Council, I can’t see how they would be motivated to do this. I hope I’m wrong.

If you actually took some time to do the research, all available on the City website, you would see that this project is a need and not a desire. I think people need to cool down and use their heads.

The City needs to be more vocal about why this is a necessity though, that is their part in this. They have to communicate these things to the public in a clear and unambiguous way; which takes effort and leadership. However people might not like it, this project is just like the RCMP building; expensive and painful, but ultimately necessary. I wish people would have put this much effort in an opposition to the 2015 winter games, which is indeed frivolous.

In my opinion rivers are a Federal responsibility! ALL the funds for dyking and flood control should be made available to federally hired contractors who will do the job according to Federal standards!

A huge project like this dyke is another example of federal financial offloading!

Where are our much heralded (by the Conservatives) MPs Zimmer and Harris???

How about going to bat for this area, for the ridings which elected you?

This one-third cost sharing arrangement is lopsided and unfair! Both the Federal and Provincial governments have budgets of hundreds of billions – the city’s budget is miniscule compared to the two other participants at the table!

Yet, we are being asked to come up with the same amount (or more!) than the others!

It reeks!

Yes, go ahead and buy 65 ATTACK fighter jets! It will only set the country back by 30 billion, not counting 14 extra planes which will be needed over the next twenty or thirty years to replace the ones that fell out of the sky!

Who are we planning to attack anyways?

*orons!

“I wish people would have put this much effort in an opposition to the 2015 winter games”

I think that one simply snuck up on us due to lack of full disclosure of what holding the games would mean.

They put up some idiotic figure of $90million of economic activity without defining what that actually meant to the general public.

If we had not held it, it would have gone to someplace else in BC since it was BC’s “turn”. No athletes would have suffered. Does anyone really think that of those 3,000 or so people a meaningful number actually care whether it is held in PG or not?

The big ticket item as far as a capital poject that comes out of it is the arena for which we get $6million from senior governments while we get to spend $12million. for which our taxes go up by some 3 or 4% every year for about 4 years as far as I can tell. But who knows? Next thing we will be in for another AAP on that one too.

There might be some private spin offs due to the winter games …. in fact, I am sure there is at least one on the way that will likely be associated with the winter games by the spin doctors who want to say “We told you so” …..

“If you actually took some time to do the research, all available on the City website, you would see that this project is a need and not a desire”

We all think differently about such projects. I took the time a long time ago to inform myself about this project. I did not reach the same conclusion.

It is only a need if you wish to protect the industry and the railyards. Both should not have been there in the first place, especially the industry.

The railway is hemmed in and needs a longer shunting yard so it will leave, possbily sooner than later.

Industry is too difficult to access. One is shut down already and no one would buy that in that location, in my opinion.

We have been building a dike to protect infrastructure which has outlived its purpose in that area.

Yes, if the railway would stay there and industry would do the same, then we mst protect it with a dike. In my opinion, the way thst it is built, it will function as it is designed to do. It is just that we will not need it for more than a decade at the most.

Kudos to Mr. Allan for his leadership and time on this….I got more than 20 forms signed this weekend from my kitchen table and encourage others to do the same. What a disappointment that this is even necessary….speaks volumes.

I hear what you’re saying Gus, but once you’ve collected property taxes from people for 50 years you’ve set a precedent. That is a defacto declaration that the land that those houses and businesses are situated upon is and was a) part of an earlier development plan and approved by the planning dept. b) suitable for those types of dwellings. We’re talking about a serious liability issue here that we’ll all be on the hook for if the City doesn’t sufficiently mitigate against the threat. Have you seen the flood maps? The waters won’t just stop at 1st avenue. The potetial treat involves 10’s of millions of dollars of property and infrastructure. The City can’t turn a blind eye now, not after the 2008 demonstration.

As for the Games, yes, ostensibly you’re correct we kind of got blind-sided on that one with little recourse. I’m surprised more of a stink wasn’t made about it though. Essentially, if we didn’t have the games levy, we probably wouldn’t have needed an increase in taxes this year. I’m just spitballing on this one, but at the very least, our increase would have been considerably smaller.

The catering to elite special interests via the public coffers has become a disturbing trend. There is a good quote, the author of which escapes me right now, but the gist of it is that once special interest groups can vote themselves a piece of the public purse, a democracy ceases to exist. I think we’ve crossed that threshold at all tiers of government now.

The upgrade to River Road in 2010 at a cost of $7 Million brought this road up to the 200 year flood level. In addition culverts and drains were installed. The Citys website on the completion of this upgrade states that flooding on river road would be **minimized**.

Soooo,. Why a dike??? Could not the steel sheeting that they want to put in on the Northwest 1.7 kilometre of the dike to stop seepage be put in on the North side of River Road.??

River Road is for all intents and purposes a dike. Why was this work not done on the initial upgrade of river road?

Could it be because of funding?? ie; $3.5 Million for the Road Upgrade under one type of funding, and $3.5 Million for a dike under another type of funding (Grant)

I agree with the above posts. The responsibility for flooding, and rivers lies with the Federal , and Provincial Governments. The only reason we (the taxpayers) are involved is because the City applied for funding under the Building Canada Fund, which requires that we pay 1/3 of the costs of the project.

In other words City Hall got us into this mess with their application for grants. So whats new.

Sign the the petition and get this issue to a referendum, and we can then pigeon hole our Councillors, and Mayor and have them explain why these huge expenditures are necessary, and why they should take priority over the basics, like water, sewer, garbage, and last but not least roads.

Since I have been involved in building design as well as city planning since the time I moved here almost 40 years ago, I am very well aware of most land use issues in this City including OCP, flood plains (including the recent changes which substantially raised the level), zoning, building codes, and a variety of other referenced laws, regulations, standards and guidelines and their interrelationships. That is the reason why I can comment with some relatively reliable background knowledge.

The City has the power, under law, to downzone or upzone property at its discretion via a public hearing process irrespective of whether the owners of a property have been paying taxes on the property for on year or 50.

In the case of downzoning compensation has to be paid for any loss in value. The City also has expropriation powers. They can also simply offer to purchase the property at an agreed to value. In fact, that is what part of the flood damage mitigation strategy deals with.

The new 200 year flood plain has a severe hazard zone limit which actually does not go beyond River Road, but does include Cottonwood Island Park other than where the museum building is located. The rest are well known, relatively minor disturbances.

It is when the 60cm freeboard is added to that extent that the entire light industrial area to the south of 1st from Carney eastwards is added, a major portion of the downtown along both sides of George, then over to Quebec at around 5th, and the entire civic plaza all the way to Winnipeg and beyond almost connecting with the huge “finger” coming in at the slough to Victoria Street. And then there is the north side of the River at Pulpmill Road.

The interesting thing is that the all three pulp mills and their service yards as well as effluent treatment facilities are built up above the 200 year flood plain + 60cm freeboard.

So, yes, the city has a liability, but they way they go about dealing with it is another matter. They have many tools at their disposal. I have not seen a study which looks at the alternatives and measure them on a risk/hazard/liability matrix.

The dike on River road does nothing to impact the 200 year flood plain + 60cm freeboard zone. Should the water actually rise to that level, River Road will be flooded. According to PGMap, it has not been built high enough. But then again, perhaps the City’s own map is wrong. Who knows.

So back a few years (or more now) the city changed the rules so that parkade could be built under the Gaming centre (now Commonwelth Health). Was a dike in the plans back then or is this just the flavour (grant) of the year ?

The City can play whatever games they chose in regards to flooding on River Road. The fact of the matter is that they have done diddly squat since the Kenny Dam was built in 1955. Mainly because they have no fear of flooding.

Why would they put their coveted Community Energy System in a flood zone, if they were worried about flooding?? There is nothing in any correspondence that I have read that would indicate that the proposed dike would make any difference to flooding caused by ice jams, or spring freshets. Seems like seepage will continue **as usual**.

The City uses language like **could** **should** **might** **may** to describe various measures taken to reduce flooding.

As an example in reference to the completion of the River Road upgrade in Sept 2010.

**A reconstructed River Road will exhibit a road profile that will be above the 200 year flood level. With the completion of this project, floor related disruptions will be minimized**

Sooo what the hell does minimized mean??

Will the dike further minimize flooding, how much minimizing has to take place before you have no flooding.

This whole dike process is thinly disquised shell game, played by less than noble people, with an end game that provides prizes for some, and higher taxes for others.

Sign the petition and start the process to end the madness.

Surefire; although I agree the potholes in this city are a disgrace. I have never needed front end work after driving here, and I’ve never put anyone else in danger trying to avoid potholes. You must be a terrible driver, slow down.

Ruez, I disagree. Tell that to the many observant drivers, including professional, long time drivers that have fallen “victim”. Potholes have seemingly appeared overnight and I am not the only one that has adjusted a route to work or home. I feel sorry for the “L” drivers out there!