I have to agree with many of these. The City should not be in the real estate holding business.

There are occasions where the City needs to own certain pieces of land, but owning and adminstrating 789 properties seems out of line to me.

Of course it is sell, sell, sell. Take the parking lot for example for the RCMP downtown. We will be giving it away for peanuts for a hotel etc. Not long after that we will see our Civic Centre sold.
Does not make sense if the city sells the the parking and then put a useless Wood Innovation Centre downtown – what will it draw?

I agree the city should not be in competition with the private sector to a point, but not at the expense of the taxpayer.

The OCP was put in to be reviewed every 2-3 years for planning of our city – not for planning at whim…

And we (taxpayers) paid how much for this report? Fetterly for mayor!

I have no problems selling city owned land. But there should be a plan on what to do with the land sold. What do you do with the money.

60% goes to debt reduction. 15% goes to future infrastructure projects. 15% goes to paving budget. 20% goes to improving existing infrastucture to reduce operating costs. No more money for administration. No more make work project to hire people. Focus should be on reducing taxes.

selling 789 properties is raising short term capital. So if we dont sell any property what kind of capital return are we getting.

Sell it to private parties, and tax them. No longer a short term capital, but a long term customer!

No one noticed yet

Uh, sell to whom? Who is it that wants to spend millions on property to locate what in Prince George? In order for a private business to invest, there would have to be some kind of return on investment. Right now a million dollars can get you $30,000.00 a year from a GIC, and you don’t have to pay property taxes on it, or build a building to earn it. In order for this land to sell, there needs to be economic growth. I’m doubtful there’s enough going on to absorb everything the city owns – and then – the big question is what will they do with the money. My guess – a performing arts centre.

This information cost $350,000? Not one person at City Hall thought of this? I know this is only part of the report, but what else is this report going to say – “turn off the lights”?

Now the City should focus on changing the development procedures so investors will want to spend money here.

This makes more sense than selling off the pools and civic centre. Sell 2880. Wasn’t that the plan when the art gallery was built?

Can PG sell their real estate for more than they paid for it? Hopefully, but I doubt it. Shouldn’t have bought up downtown in the first place. Oh well, that’s the past.

They should sell, but I have a funny feeling the brokering will be done by a certain group close to the Mayor’s heart. I’m gonna put on my tin foil hat and say this has been planned for a while.

Sell it, fix the infrastructure above and below the city streets, and don’t build anything until its fiscally prudent to do so.

Thank you He. I was going to say the exact same thing.

A professor of mine used to be an urban planner in Victoria and was telling us about how much that increases the city’s income. Technically, we’d be better off with the city owning all of the downtown business buildings and having rent and taxes paid to us.

If we sell it all off, we get one lump sum of cash that goes where? Haldi Road? Kin Centres? Charge rent on it all and have a regular income. Also, with the city owning all of the buildings, there wouldn’t be that much of a difficulty in revitalizing downtown through cooperating with private owners. City would own it, not someone living in Toronto.

I’m not saying the city should own ALL of the land, but we should have control over the business sectors. They rent buildings from the owners already, better from the City of PG than some person out East.

The 10 acres on Rustad Road should not be sold if there is any potential for flooding unless it is written in that the developer covers the costs to protect area.

There are two other areas on the North Nechako where the city plans to spend in excess of a million dollars in flood abatement in the next couple of years(Preston Road and Morning Place.)

Pointless to take in $1.3 million if that much or more has to be spent to build dykes or buy back houses after they are built, ala River Road.

No mention of the multi-year plan to Buy Buy Buy land along Patricia Bvld?

Maybe the downtown core will actually have a chance now…

sieg: “If we sell it all off, we get one lump sum of cash that goes where?”

Paying down the massive City debt would be a good start, certainly before building any pie in the sky projects.

omg . there is nothing new in any of these recommendation. why the he– did mayor and council have to pay 350 thousand of our hard earned tax dollars to some consultants (kpmg) from Ontario to tell us what they already know.

I might also suggest that selling a capital asset to be used for operational needs, is not sustainable. It also requires a willing buyer. Just ask the pg golf and country clud who thought they would make millions by selling their course. The only problem was the market demand (i.e. price) wasn’t there.

If the city goes on a fire sale of property you can guarantee that surplus will drive down value. the realities of market driven forces.

I agree with many of the suggestions to sell off some of the hundreds of properties the City owns and is responsible for. I am sure that many of them do not generate any income and many are probably a liability to the city. So, they will generate cash and reduce expenses at the same time.

I like He Spoke’s recommendations to reduce debt, improve infrastructure with a vision to continue in the future as well.

No new Capital projects until we get our fiscal house in order first.

It is lost on me just what Mayor and Council are trying to fix. There is nothing wrong with Prince George. We are not in any trouble financially, or at least were not when Dan Roger’s was Mayor. Nothing Mayor or Council has produced supports a need for such drastic actions. KMPG is contracted by cities all over this country and their reports are mirror images of one another. They all same the same thing, cut, sell, privatize, layoff, contract out ect. This is not about saving money; this is about opening up our public services to private enterprise. The Mayor and Council have been asked to entertain a public conversation on the CSR and Mayor Green, Councillors Stolz, Wilbur, Krause and Kroehler have all declined. That speaks volumes folks. If they were so sure of their direction they should not be afraid to speak with the citizens of Prince George about their concerns. Truly gutless the bunch is.

Sell 10 acres for 200k an acre and get 1.3 million…? Am I missing something?

Anything about savings from reducing duplication or savings through reduction in red tape?

KPMG report is a joke, sell everything today and whats left??? for the next 2 or 3 years?? good god get off your ass and sell PG to those outside the region sell what we have to offer. PG is the hub of the North act like it dont be shy screw this report and move on. PG is a great place to live and work.If we want to grow then sell what we have to those that want to do business in the North

Thats it I am Running for Mayor and bring a slate of people with me that know how to get this Town on the move without selling the bloody farm. We need action not BS this Town has everything except forward thinking people with the balls to get the job done.No more crap lts move forward,

789 properties? Wow!! How about tattoo parlours, a few more pawnshops, food banks,a needle exchange shop, drop in centres, half way houses, homeless shelters, an Insite building for heroin users and crack pipe dispensers. No more needle van polluting the air. Soup kitchens, First Nations offices, second hand stores, maybe a used bookstore and some low cost tenements. Lotsa land. Any takers?

“Sell city owned downtown commerical sites. The city has 12 assembled parcels of land in the downtown which currently act as above ground parking”

And where will the cars park?

BTW, above ground parking would be a parkade. On ground parking is what those lots sound like.

If the lots are sold, will someone buy them to operate a parking lot? If they do that, how will they make any profit? If they make a profit from on-grade parking, how come the City cannot make a profit from on-grade parking?

If someone wants the lots to build reasonable sized improvements on them, then the City has achieved its purpose of investing in property when property is relatively inexpensive and selling it to the right kind of developer. This recommendation makes it sound like the City is wanting to bank the property just to bank it, not to use it as leverage to get development going downtown when the opportunity arises.

“Sell the Pine Valley Golf centre”

I thought that was the plan. Does KPMG want to buy it?

Better be careful that whoever is proposing to buy it does not require the City to do a plan, at the cost of trhe City, of what the City will approve for a development.

“Now the City should focus on changing the development procedures so investors will want to spend money here.”

If someone wants to move to PG to do business and they need a facility to do it and cannot find an existing one, then they will build one no matter what the development process is. Any developer worth having come to PG to do business will know how it works. The local process is not much different from anywhere else.

When the firm that was manufacturing truck trailers decided notr to come to PG but move east of Kamloops, they did so because of location. If this would have been the location for them, they would have managed to deal with the development process here.

I wonder how many of the 789 properties are park or green spaces. I would like to see a list of them. They can be viewed on PGMAP. I have looked at them and parks and green spaces are identified as City owned property, which they are.

So, since much of KPMG’s work is pretty shoddy, in my opinion, my first intuition is to assume this one is as well.

Why would the City want to own land, eh?

I mean let’s look at that for a while. Why would the province want to own the forests? We should sell the land, privatize it as such land is predominately in the USA, and pay down our provincial debt. Why stop with City land?

I have a much better idea. Let’s keep the land and sell the air rights. I mean just think of the money we paid for air rights on 6th Avenue recently. Apply that valuation to the average downtown lot, and we would make a “killing”. Remember, the City still owns the property up to the roof of the parkade on that project.

Why sell real land when one can sell real air? Any Vancouver developer would know all about those advantages.

slinky wrote: “Anything about savings from reducing duplication or savings through reduction in red tape?”

You have to be kidding, right? That would mean they would have to write a serious report based on in depth analysis of work processes. What do you expect for $350,000….. LOL

Sieg: if the city did own land and buildings downtown and rented them out, who would do the upkeep on them? The way they have let the present police station go and other buildings delapitate, doesn’t speak well for what we would have left in a few years.
And honestly, couldn’t the city have read some of the other city reviews that KPMG has done and figured this out for themselves?
gus: you are right. This sounds about as glib and superficial as a used car salesman.

Air Rights! What a bunch of malarky. Leave it up to a bunch of lawyers to figure this one out.

Hey, I have one to consider? I want to do some laser advertising on the side of a large building not far from my business. Who can stop me? Who authorizes this type of advertising?