Feeling sorry for Creekside developers….who would buy a $300,000+ house at the end of Domano???

“However the overall plan remains at repaving about 30 kilometre lanes of roads this season.”

I recall that they used the expression “lane kilometers” before. Re-doing all four lanes of a 7.5 kilometer long stretch of road would total lane 30 kilometers.

That is precious little when so many of the city roads are in such dire need of repair.

Our city council wants to attract people to Prince George. This seems to be how city council thinks. “Let’s see we should spend X amount of dollars just to maintain the roads, but we are only going to spend 1/2 of X.” The ROADS ARE CRAP! WE HAVE A CRAPPY ROAD SYSTEM. SPEND THE MONEY. THE ROADS ARE CRAPPY AND DANGEROUS (dangerous for bicycle riders that is). Seriously the roads are an embarrassment and we should be embarrased as a city. Gax tax, whatever tax-spend the money.

There is no need to increase our taxes but there is a need to spend the money that we get on roads first and quit thinking of pie in the sky things like the winter games, a new cop shop, building a kin center, and spend, spend spend. First things first, roads and side walks, roads roads and side walks, roads and sidewalks. When our city is brought up to where we as citizens of this fair city can be proud to say “That’s Where I Live” then we can start to think of a piece of that pie in the sky. IMO

Absolutely correct Surefire.

You could add to the list.
So called community energy system.
3 million dollars for a building to house city purchasing people which by the way the city used the AAP to get approval.
Tax holiday for downtown businesses.
Purchase of the PG hotel and a multitude of downtown properties.
The 5 million city contribution to the River Road dike now in the AAP process. Sign the forms. Available on the web, city hall, and a table set up at Northern Hardware.

We could have decent roads if the mayor and council would forget about the photo op projects.

You can thank Dano for that legacy. Yes Green was a part of that process but Dano was the top guy.

They shouldn’t need extra tax to do the job right. They have their priorities wrong. Maybe it’s time to shrink the city limits not expand them. The farther out you go the less dense the houses are so the less taxes you bring in per new roads you have to maintain and garbage to collect. Rural garbarge collection has to be more expensive. I’m sure anyone in those areas would love to go back to the regional district tax system.

Did not Westbank in Kelowna become their own District of West Kelowna? Maybe the Hart and College Heights should split from PG and go at on their own.

Come on people cast your votes! We should be able to take all 10!

Don’t get me started on the District Energy System. The City is spending millions to lock their heating bill in at $12.50 per GJ. Check your last heat bill–I’m guessing you were paying a lot less than that and the City gets bulk rates for natural gas.

The wood the City is burning will put out more carbon than natural gas. Under some weird definition, renewal carbon does less damage than non-renewal carbon. That’s a poor argument because that renewal carbon could have been used somewhere else–somewhere where they didn’t have low carbon natural gas or where they were using high carbon fertilizers.

This district heating system is a white elephant. To keep the cost of the heating system down, the City even decided not to properly compact the roads that they had to dig up. Give it a year and those roads are going to start falling apart… The City is robbing from the roads in order to pursue this white elephant.

Sorry NoWay that’s not right. Westbank split from the regional district to become their own municipality.

http://www.districtofwestkelowna.ca/index.aspx?page=2

I sure hope they pave those top 5 streets to get the road system in shape. But I realize that we need to have money to pay for it. I don’t think our property taxes are that out of line. If they did a 5% increase to pay for it I think that would be ok.

If you have the average home paying $3K/year then a 5% increase would be $150. Would most residents pay another $150 to drive on better roads. I’m sure most would say YES YES YES

That Bill Gaal has said publicly that the city is spending 50% of what is required to properly maintain the roads should be the just cause to fire the city MISS manager Derek Bates. Termination with cause should also reduce the severance package he will receive.

It is no wonder the city’s planning department is all but invisible, they are not needed. Why make a plan if it is thrown out the window every spring and the roads that crumbled the most over the winter go to the front of the line. A crisis intervention team would be more appropriate.

If this continues I expect us to sweep the BCAA top ten list in the next year or two. Pete the Pothole could be the mascot for the winter games.

BTW I think that it was during Kinsley’s(Bates) time that the city started to underfund infrastructure.

One of the reasons I want to stop being a delivery person (other than being a low key job)

I thought Westbank was part of Kelowna. But they are their own municipality now.

Sorry mwk no more tax increases just for roads. They have to learn to spend the money they get in the right places. I was shreading old tax forms the other day and my wage hasn’t increased in 10 years. Everything else has gone up so there isn’t anyroom to take more. My taxes have icreased every year just from the fact that my house value has increased and this darn city keeps upping the taxes anyway. When you budget only half of what is needed then eventually you will have a major problem.
A perfect example of a waste of money by the city is the dike. We have one ice jam flood in the last how many years? And now we need this dike to protect the CN railyard? Give me a break!

To further increase taxes to pay for the roads will just make staff and council less accountable on how they spend our money. It is a matter of making smart decisions and in this they are solely lacking.

The city has a manager of real estate yet spent an extra $500K on the PG Hotel deal. WHY? This f*(& up alone would account for 15% of the shortfall in funding for roads.

The Nissan Leaf is another example of this.
-Poor choice for this climate.
-Expensive token gesture- will have no measurable effect on air quality.
– Another example of useless spending to get some funding from other levels of government? (charging station)

The only positive I can see out of this purchase is that city employees will be arriving at work extra early to get pool vehicle keys so they are not stuck with the leaf.

Something seriously needs to be done with the roads and ifrastructure in this city.. If the roads are left as is for one more year or one more extened freeze thaw cycle it will be past the point of no return.

The probem with our city hall is is they are too focused on being a business rather than a government that is suppost to put critical infrastructure at the top of the prioritys. Like someone said before they are chasing the “pie in the sky dreams” with a pie in the sky budget where there is no accountability. The city needs to step out of being a business and let private investment do just that.. Unfortunatly private business cant compete or operate because of the citys involvement. (Coyotees for example.) Until the city divests itslef from trying to manage the downtown the wheels will still be spinning in the mud.

If you think the roads are bad now wait until after 2015 when the pie in the sky investments (kin centre )start needing repairs.

mwk: “If you have the average home paying $3K/year then a 5% increase would be $150. Would most residents pay another $150 to drive on better roads. I’m sure most would say YES YES YES”

Sure… until five years from now when the politicans come around again to dig a little deeper in your pocket, after this last proposed tax grab is long forgotten.

“If you have the average home paying $3K/year then a 5% increase would be $150. Would most residents pay another $150 to drive on better roads. I’m sure most would say YES YES YES”

I do not want to spend an extra dime on better roads until I am assured that is what it will actually be used for.

I recall that under Kinsley’s leadership we discovered that the road maintenance (not sure if that included potholes AND repaving) was being paid by borrowing money. When we discovered that, there was a decsion to raise taxes to cover the costs directly rather than through credit.

So, we have done it! So we now need more? Then I want to see the rationale. Show me what needs to be done, why it needs to be done, how much it will cost to do it, and when it will be done, and what is the probability of it not being dfone properly.

I am not interested in some half-assed proposal or process. I want to be reassured that when we approve something as taxpayers in this community that it be done properly and in the open.

Right now we get bits and pieces and it takes an accountant to figure out what is actually happening with our money on a project by project basis the way it ought to be reported out.

There is a reason why the province has installed a provincial auditor of municipalities. If the accounting system has not been properly designed, and eucating the municipalities has not worked, then it is time fro enforcement to kick in. That is what we will be seeing shortly.

I am not seeing any light at the end of the tunnel yet on Council. Some of the new people need to make a move shortly to sho me that they are alive and prepared to take on a difficult task. Otherwise I made a big mistake in my voting selection.

The honeymoon and the requisite PC time is over.

I’ve paid ENOUGH god damn TAXES!
The problem IS that city hall Mismanages all that G damn tax money!
Every time we vote someone else in, WHY can’t we get the friggin roads fixed!?
Why does Pr. Geo. ALWAYS have enough money for friggin parties and not enough for roads! Does the Mayor of this town fly to work? She can’t possible be driving!
What does she tell visitors, It’s not her problem? Someone needs to throw this city council into the back of their truck and take a tour of our roads!

mwk: they have already applied a tax especially for pothole repair a couple of years ago. What did we get for it? LESS money spent on pothole repair and more potholes TO repair. But somehow they found money to give themselves a big raise. Now they want extra money from us for a dike. Next time it floods, they will find again that the dike, in no way prevents the water from seeping underground and coming up on the other side. THEN they will say, “uh, guess that didn’t work, now we need more money to put flood curtains down into the soil all along there.” and so on and so on…….. We are not getting the things we need from our taxes but the money, and more and more of it gets thrown around all kinds of hairbrained ideas that end up not only costing us a lot but also costing us a lot more later too.

Smoother roads. More speeders. More RCMP ticket revenue. More money from that revenue for the city. It’s a win win folks.

Pretty sad commentary when we can rate 5 of 10 worst road votes for the whole province!! So pay attention council and city workers; we don’t really appreciate the talk about developing the downtown, art centers etc. We (voters) are waiting to pounce if you don’t do something about the roads. Talk is VERY CHEAP!

How the city has been handling the street repairs in the last few years is akin to a big game of whack-a-mole with Miss Manager Bates running the carnival sideshow.

Just look at what we can do with the few people we have to vote on that site versus people such as those living in Burnaby, Surrey, voting for/against theirs, etc.

If more people vote here, it is because we are more fed up than the people in Burnaby, etc. If they were just as fed up as us, then they would easiy outvote us.

I bet you that City administrators, Councillors and all their network are busy voting for those roads in Saskatchewan (I assume that they will be taken out of the running eventually)… ;-)

Absolutely right Icicle on the so called energy system. Call it what you want but it is nothing more than a stack gas economiser at Lakeland Mills and possibly the ability to absorb some heat when the kiln heat load is very low. What a bunch of BS we were sold for a 15 million dollar price tag.
Just another project that went the AAP route for approval.
Time to stop the wasteful spending at city hall. Sign the AAP form before the 24th of April and stop the spending of 5 plus million of city taxpayer money.

Maybe it’s time to appoint a third party manager? :-)

Hot water under George Street? Sure glad the wind turbine salesman didn’t sell our city council a wind turbine on Cranbrook Hill so we can do more to slow climate change. Got that, Danno?

Not usually in favor of this but …contract out road construction, maintenance, management and all else road related. This would include the contractor setting up an asphalt plant.
There is a lot of highway construction planned on the Caribou Connector over the next number of years so base a highway construction company in PG, give them the contract to rebuild our roads and stay quickly on top of any problems.

Not usually in favor of this but …contract out road construction, maintenance, management and all else road related. This would include the contractor setting up an asphalt plant.
There is a lot of highway construction planned on the Caribou Connector over the next number of years so base a highway construction company in PG, give them the contract to rebuild our roads and stay quickly on top of any problems.

With the rising costs of asphalt, (like the city like to promote) maybe its time to take another look at that little girl’s idea of using plastic paving materials. I’m not sure how her process was supposed to work but with all the plastic waste we have, it might be a good use for it. I just hope that she patented her idea so she will get something out of it.
When the city ‘said’ they were going to try it, it got too late in the season, so they said. Well here’s the start of a brand new season. Let’s see how it would work now.

Don’t blame previous administrations our current administration is the ones at the helm and they couldn”t find their a-ses with their hands on them. IMO