Practise What Your Preach? Never At City Hall
Wednesday, September 5, 2012 @ 3:45 AM
The Mayor and seven Councillors from the City of Prince George will be on their way to the UBCM convention in Victoria later this month.
Do we really need eight people representing the City given that we are supposed to be in the midst of a core review with a thrust of trying to effect savings at city hall?
Eight people to do the job is a bit like sending one person to shop and then having seven others push the cart out to the car. Strictly overkill at the expense of the taxpayer who has been continually promised that the folks who are running the show are bent on saving the taxpayer money.
So six grand to register and a further nine or so to have them attend the function and quickly you realize that any suggestion that tax savings are in order is simply just more talk.
Think about the optics of the venture folks, on one hand you lay off a bunch of workers under the guise of saving those hard pressed taxpayers while in the second breath you’re on your way with a contingent of councillors to attend a function that a few would be more than sufficient to attend.
This bunch simply does not have a grasp on the reality of their decisions. If you are going to conduct a core review and you are looking at cutting city services as a means of holding the line on taxes, lesson one would be to practise what you preach. Sadly, that is simply not the case.
I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.
Comments
http://www.kitimatdaily.ca/go6210a/COUNCIL_GETTING_READY_FOR_UBCM
Interesting that Kitimat appears to discuss reasons for going to UBCM in open meeting. Perhaps it was done here but not reported. Or perhaps behind closed doors. Do we know why individual Councillors are going and who they are scheduled to meet?
In other words, what are the objectives? That should indicate who and how many should go. Knowing that would go a long way to improve the optics.
We have to remember that they have a City to run and associated work to do.
They have to remember that it is our work they are doing, we are paying them, and they are accountable to us. Not the Mayor, not the City Manager, but to the electorate.
http://www.quesnelnews.com/THAPAR%20DENIED%20TRIP%20TO%20UBCM%20BY%20QUESNEL%20CITY%20COUNCIL.pdf
Interesting happenings to the south of us
http://www.kitimatdaily.ca/go6210a/COUNCIL_GETTING_READY_FOR_UBCM
Interesting that Kitimat appears to discuss reasons for going to UBCM in open meeting. Perhaps it was done here but not reported. Or perhaps behind closed doors. Do we know why individual Councillors are going and who they are scheduled to meet?
In other words, what are the objectives? That should indicate who and how many should go. Knowing that would go a long way to improve the optics.
We have to remember that they have a City to run and associated work to do. They have to remember that it is our work they are doing, we are paying them, and they are accountable to us. Not the Mayor, not the City Manager, but to the electorate.
Here is the preliminary agendaâ¦
http://www.civicinfo.bc.ca/event/docs/2012/UBCM_2012_Conv_Brochure-final.pdf
I must confess, looking at that, I am wondering why anyone who is not a voting delegate would be going.
Food? Marijuana? Shipbuilding? I did not realize that such issues were at the forefront of our Cityâs Councillors.
I think they have some serious explaining to do for spending the money in such an apparent frivolous manner.
Am I missing something? Perhaps this is just a junket after all.
Maybe a bunch of folks with placards saying “Shame on you” could meet them at the airport when they arrive home.
I thought they were car pooling to save money. ;-)
Were any of them contacted and asked for an explanation of how the city will benefit by them attending en masse?
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Arm twisting session to fill the the upcoming vacancy in the city manager’s office?
http://www.douglasmagazine.com/headlines/16083-city-manager-among-canadas-most-powerful-women.html
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Thumbing their noses at the bean counters doing the core review?
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BTW gus would take at least 2 trips if pooling with the Leaf!
From the article posted above,
“As CAO she helped lead a diverse team of departments including police, fire/paramedics, transit, community services, water and waste, and public works to become one of the most cost-effective city governments in Canada with a citizen satisfaction rating of over 92 per cent.”
One can always dream
A very good article Ben and right on the money. Prince George is so poorly run and a costly expense to the taxpayers of the City. Why are there no checks and balances? Are there audited financial statements of the City’s spending that are available for the press to publish?
I don’t know what the constitution of the UBCM says about delegates voting at its conventions. Does each municipality have one vote? Or does it get more votes depending on how many delegates it sends?
Too bad that we (the ones that are paying) are as usually kept in the dark like mushrooms!
of course they are all going….probably the last trip for most of them as elected officials and they want to get their monies worth.
All elected officials attending UBCM get to vote as delegates if they have paid the registration fee to attend the convention.
So depending on how many elected people a community sends to the convention, that’s how many votes their community gets. Staff attending (city managers, chief administrators) do not get to vote.
omg. have you folks not been paying attention. Mayor Greene and her band of merry men live by the slogan – do what we say not what we do. Their week long holiday in Victoria en mass is just another indication that they enjoy defining the word “hypocrisy”.
It began last election when she promised 10% cut across the board and added don’t worry, services won’t be cut and we can do it without axing jobs. And what did we get? Right, job cuts, service reductions and, wait for it, a 4% hike in our taxes!
The hypocrisy continued when Mayor Greene and Council gave themselves a nice pay hike while asking everybody else to tighten the belt. Nice.
The question is why should we be upset or surprised, we voted them in.
The question is why should we be upset or surprised, we voted them in.
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That is a strange question when you gave us the answer to start with. As you stated “it began at the last election when shem promised etc,etc”. we were fed a bunch of do good stuff. Thats why we are upset.
Cheers
lonesome sparrow: I wonder how many 8 hour stops the Leaf would have to make for recharging to get there and back? Presuming of course, there would be charging stations everywhere it needed to stop to charge.
The mistake we are all making is thinking that our mayor and council care about what we, the voters think.. they have proven they dont and just do business as they want.
Green know she is done next election so I guess she is in the milking mode, going to milk us for all she can till she is sent packing..
I voted for Green last election since I felt she was sincere in wanting to improve the efficiency of our City. How wrong I was. Yes, let’s send her packing next election including most of the present council.
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
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