The 100,000 Dollars We Spent On Haldi Rd Would Fill A Lot Potholes
Monday, August 20, 2012 @ 3:45 AM
The Proponents have lost investment, it has cost the Haldi Road resident’s time and money and the City of Prince George will have shelled out about $100,000 in tax payer dollars before the dust settles on the Haldi Road rezoning matter.
If you set aside for a moment how you feel about a therapeutic center in the area, you can’t help but wonder who, in their infinite wisdom, decided the Official Community plan is a document that is used to wrap fish?
How did the deliberation get to the point where it went to court?
City Manager Derek Bates is far too clever to have not sought a legal opinion as to whether the city would win in a court action. Why in the world would you have the city put out 100K without first spending a thousand to get a legal opinion as to whether you have a chance of winning? Coupled with that, we have our own legal department at city hall and a lawyer sitting on the city council as well as one who is the City’s legislative clerk . Did they have a look at it? And if not, why not?
So how and why did the issue end up in the hands of a Vancouver lawyer going to court at a cost of $100,000 dollars to the local taxpayer? That is a lot of filled pot holes.
The residents of Haldi Road will recover some of their costs in the action, the lawyers will be paid, the proponents of the project will lose their shirts and the taxpayer of the city will get the bill to pick up the costs of an item that never should have been passed by Council in the first place.
Perhaps now, after the voters in recent months have turned away the River Rd dike and now the courts have ruled against the City, that the "Hall" would get the message that it is time to have a look at how they are operating, and we aren’t talking about a Core Review, we are talking about the search for some good old common sense.
I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s’ opinion.
Comments
You are bang on Ben, that is why finding the right city manager to replace Bates is critical to getting things back on track. Mayor and Council should not be trying to run the day to day affairs of the city, they are not qualified. If ever there was a time for quality leadership it PG it is now.
well what lawyer in his right mind would tell the city they can’t win…they live on chargeable hours. Anyone remember the Rahn Bros. fiasco. Cost the city nearly a $million and anyone from grade 8 and up would have said the city couldn’t win that one.
Ben, I hate to say, nailed it, “City Manager Derek Bates is far too clever to have not sought a legal opinion as to whether the city would win in a court action.”
City managers are the stabilizing force in the city, when mayors and council come and go, the city manager keeps the transitions going smoothly. Well, looks like thats gone. Wasn’t someone in the Mayors campaign involved in this project? What are the agendas of some of those people who contributed to the same campaign? Unfortunately I think PG has entered a new era of politics, I think we’re in for a bit of a ride.
Fingers crossed that the mayor and council let the HR department do their job in the search for Bates replacement, not micromanage, and allow them to come up with a couple of viable candidates to choose from.
As we are only a year and a half away from the next election chances are that the person chosen will be reporting to some new faces in the mayor and a few council seats.
An editorial in the paper this morning predicts that the city will appeal the decision. I would love to see this as it would put more teeth in OCPs making it harder for campaign managers and donors to influence decisions.
I laughed when the mayor rammed this down the throats of residents for the first three readings and then stepped aside for the final one. If there was a conflict for the final reading was it not there for the first three where all the heavy lifting is done?
I am not sure i would agree totally with ya Ben. If the city manager did get a legal opinion it likely would have told them this was questionable and they would have acted on that advice. As it went forward as it was without an OCP change, that suggests that no legal opinion was sought and everybody relied on the planning department’s interpretation which said it was fine.
Isn’t the former planning department manager who was adamant about it being okay now working in the private sector?
I think Gus may be right in saying on a previous post that there should be some municipal appeal body that can give a third party opinion on these things without having to rely on the courts which can be costly and time consuming for everybody.
It would nice to be a fly on the wall of the in camera meeting tonight while Council discusses this. Hopefully Brian will let us know what happens.
I don’t think the saga is over yet. I’m willing to bet that the women’s centre spent a fair bit of money on renovations. I’ll bet they were given a building permit which means that the City is possibly on the hook for these renovation costs…
From an earlier story
“The project proponent has applied for a building permit, which Bates says cannot be used for the proposed land uses”
If they spent money without a building permit in place and while the issue is before the courts then I would think they do not have a leg to stand on in trying to take the city to court.
Mitch2: “If the city manager did get a legal opinion it likely would have told them……”
No, hang on. If the city got a legal opinion what DID it say? We think you can win the case, or, no we don’t think you can win the case. No “likelys” and “suggests” and “everybody relied on the planning department.”
#1. Tried looking on the city website for building permits – for the work already done on the building – I could not find any – may have missed it.
#2 There are various renovations a property owner can do without a permit…
#3 All the new renovations have been removed to my knowledge from the residence/building according to some locals in the area that have noticed things being removed from the building…way before the court ruling.
#4 Tried to get on the website for the centre, unless I am doing something wrong it does not work….
Another question is where does the $100,000 figure come from?
According to media the Haldi Group will only get about 1/3 of their money back from the city. The city has 30 days to appeal. One would not even want to bet that it will be behind closed doors within the next two weeks and the city does not even have to say a word to the people if they are going to appeal or not. No accountability………
StreetWise2
One problem is the mindset needs to be changed…it is called accountability to the citizens.
I believe the judge used the words “Carte Blanche” – meaning Unrestricted power to act at one’s own discretion: unconditional authority. Cities should not be allowed to do what they want – when they want.
City/council needs to remember even though they are in office does not mean they can have or make Carte Blanche arrangements as they are often a bad idea due to their high potential for abuse.
Council and City need to be reminded they work for the people.
OCP’s are Provincially Legislated in law and should be treated as such – not as altering guidelines to be used at whim.
When is the city council going to start listening to the people? They need to realise that when a large majority or even a small group that is directly affected by their upcoming decisions, says no to a proposed project, more than likely it is not going to go ahead or create a lot of animosity with people if it does. The river road dike for instance.
Wake up and smell the coffee, folks. Remember that people voted for you. They can just as easily vote for someone else next time.
Hmmmm Is the mayor allowed to sit in on any of the meetings stemmed from this court case? Is she still in conclict or not? How do we as citizens know what goes on behind closed doors and who is in attendance? Just asking.
Why would they listen to the *ordinary* folks when they already know everything better?
Recall.
I wonder if this case could open a can of worms. Will be interesting to see what comes out of it as it could have a possibilty of affecting other municipalities. The 2012 UBCM Convention will take place from September 24-28, in Victoria, BC. I wonder how many of our city council and mayor will be attending at our expense again.. oh, and by the way, their theme this year is communication…taken off of UBCM’s website:This year’s Convention theme is around communication. Whether it’s with local residents, other levels of governments, or our teenager at home, this year’s focus will be on improving these relationships by examining how we relay our messages and how we receive feedback.” ;)
“focus will be on improving these relationships by examining HOW we relay our messages and HOW we receive feedback”
Who cares about how?
The important thing is WHAT.
1. WHAT message we relay AND do we do WHAT we said we would do?
2. WHAT do we do with the feedback we get?
HOW is a total waste of time …..
HOW does not answer the ACCOUNTABILITY issues we are facing more and more with all governments.
Our society has lost the ability to govern, except govern like a dictatorship, benevolent as it may be. No one understands bottom-up governance, only top down.
lonesome sparrow says “An editorial in the paper this morning predicts that the city will appeal the decision”
I remember that the citizen editorial predicted in the new year that Haldi Road residents will also lose their battle with the city. Hopefully they are wrong again. It has cost Haldi Road residents thousands of dollars to prove that they were right. Its time to stop spending money unnecessarily.
A hunnert thousand dollars for costs? Pshaw! Piffle. Just spare change to be added onto our city’s $111 million dollar debt. Might even jack up the interest rate payment on that debt by about $12 dollars a month. Maybe the city should sell a prime piece of their extended land holdings in downtown and pay the hunnert thousand outright and forgo the addition to our debt. Got my services tax notice today. Not impressed. No opting out clause under garbage pick up fee. Bummer.
In this City the Government and who knows who else buys property then worries about getting the zoning later. Queensway St. is a example of this. The Haldi Road residents did what the residents of my area of town could not do. What Residential Area are they going to be shopping in next??
Here’s hoping if they are going to build a refinery here in PG they don’t build it in “the bowl”.
Well the way I see it is….someone on council tried to pull a quick one for self or someone else and got caught. Perhaps some of that 300 plus grand, being used for a core review, could be diverted for an inquiry as to what happened and who did it!
Right on Ben! This City is being operated by stupidity at the expense of we, the taxpayers and property owners of PG. Possibly council members and the mayor should suffer financial penalty for their ignorance, not we the taxpayers.
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