Wow!!!! Who voted these people in? Oh yah u did!
And you ask y I dont vote. Because they will just screw us anyways!!!!
Who wants to bet they ask for a raise?

So what’s new? Taxed to death!

$333thousand generated with new fees!? So; tell me again how much the holiday in China will cost?

Why not say we really need a 20% tax hike so we will feel real good when you spare us and drop it down to 7.09% .
Seems buying new energy eficient light bulbs , not idling the car and waiting for the natural gas dividends to pay off ain’t working for us.

I say we bump user fee’s, raise tax’s by 15%, that way we can send a crew of 9 out to put banners up along the bypass. Somebody has to get the lazy people jobs, might as well be the city!

The only way to lower taxes is to lower spending. — Lower spending by being cost effective unlike silly hall’s New police station, river dyke, winter games—ok when we can afford them. All of these excesses cost money we don’t have and if mayor and council were to manage city finances the way they are supposed to there would be money available with out having to borrow it which also cost tax payers. Also when an expensive item comes to mind of council it should go to referendum not to a system where the possability of collecting enough votes puts a stop to it.

I for one say bring it on. Are all you posters afraid to live in a nice city?????

The changes they are talking about represent probably about another $200 per year for the average house. I for one think we need to get out of the 1970’s and move into the present.

For too long people look at PG as the armpit of BC. Let’s fix this place and make it something to be proud of.

For all of those posters that think the City wastes money. I bet the same can be said for just about every City in the world, PG is not unique.

So let’s get this town going again so that people actually move here, not move away. Or pretty soon that 80,000 population number is going to be 60,000.

I would bet if you looked at the Mayor and councils personal finances, you would find their credit cards are all maxed out.

There will be no tax hikes! There are staff cuts coming soon! There will be city assets being sold.who ever wrote this article is wrong!

If I see another huge tax increase, I’m leaving for kelowna.I looked at a house there a few months ago. Nice house close to the lake with a pool and a 3 car garage with lower taxes than my single car garage home with a pool. Grow the base.

Ooops. I don’t have a pool.

Hey jiminy… If you don’t vote don’t bitch. Nothing worse than people that don’t participate and still think they have the right to complain about the way things are

From what I read on here, it seems that most don’t want any changes to services or City staffing levels, so the other option is a tax hike.

mwk wrote: “I for one say bring it on. Are all you posters afraid to live in a nice city?????”

I very much support that way of thinking. I am tired of seeing the CIty I moved to 40 years ago turn into a garbage dump.

The problem is, the core review did not address possible inefficiencies in the work done by the City.

The City operates a public monopoly. Public monopolies require checks and balances. We just blew $350,000 because the wrong firm was hired. The people in charge of this City could not even ask the right questions in the RFP, hired the wrong people who had absolutely improper background to cary out any meaningful research into this City’s challenges.

Those challenges are really not all that unique. What is somewhat unique is that this City has elected officials and hired staff who are inadequte in carrying out the job they need to carry out.

I really do not understand how to fix it because we are working with obstinate people in governance, management and union workers.

At the moment we have a total infighting mindset in this community.

“The problem is, the core review did not address possible inefficiencies in the work done by the City.”

Bang on gus. It seems that the ‘public monopoly’ of the City doesn’t want to rock the boat.

The other problem with a tax hike is that most don’t trust the City to manage the increased revenue. Who’s to say that the money raised from a tax hike would be used in the most effective way?

Buy more Leafs.

PGguy – Kelowna is ranked as on of the most expensive places to live in Canada. average house price in Kelowna is $460,000. Average in PG is $240,000. Enjoy your move and your big tax savings :)

“The other problem with a tax hike is that most don’t trust the City to manage the increased revenue. Who’s to say that the money raised from a tax hike would be used in the most effective way?” .. that would be my big concern. If levels of service improve because we pay more taxes…so be it, but I have so little faith in that being the case. All you need to do is look back the last 4 or 5 years and see how much your tax has increased and see if ANY of your services improved or got worse. Bet you will find the value for your dollar greatly diminished. Yet the payroll at the city continues to climb at a staggering rate.

Not sure why my comment was deleted? (I assume it was I made the mistake a quoting someone who was somewhat less than polite. Mea culpa.)

All I said was that the city needs to cut back it’s over bloated work force. There is no need for a city this size to have 900+ employees.

Let’s start with garbage collection. Privatize it. Snow removal? Privatize it. Park maintenance? Privatize it. Etc, etc, etc…

There are so many place to cut back on the 47 million being spent on salaries. All we need is a skeleton city hall work crew whose job is to monitor the work. Roads aren’t plowed in accordance with the contract? Contractor doesn’t get paid. etc, etc, etc…

I agree with Gus. The core review was a 350k joke. I also think mayor and council should disclose their spending just like Quesnel.

The key words here is TRUST and MANAGE!

Something that this City and Council cannot provide. So I have to disagree with yet another tax hike. There has to be a way to have these thieves fired, the whole lot of them. Start all new, only then will the city here that tax paying citizens are fed up with being ripped off.

“The increase in fees is projected to generate $333 thousand dollars.”… only $17,000 short of the cost of the core review.

I don’t mind paying higher taxes and utility rates, but I think there are better ways to save costs. For example, I don’t need weekly garbage pickup – biweekly would do just fine. Tighten IPG’s budget. Give department managers a cost reduction mandate and allow them the flexibility to make their own decisions on whereto cut costs and increase revenues. We could have skipped this whole core review.

Nice to see Dan back. Shows that he really does care about the community. The election is too far away to accuse him of campaigning.

Does this mean we will have to wait longer to get our Performing Arts Centre? Boo hoo. Say it ain’t so.

Election propaganda. Cut spending by 10%. After election raise taxes by 7% along with all the user fees. Sure a lot simpler for council to raise taxes than curtail excess spending.

Just think of the size of tax increase if city council’s dike had not been defeated by the citizens signing a petition. Add another 3 points to the 7 being contemplated.

As for the core review not looking at past spending decisions like downtown property purchase or the energy system there is a reason. Looking at previous decisions would have made past and present city council members look extremely stupid.

For those of you that have been here for upwards of 20 years………
Do you remember all those years of 0% tax hikes, because previous mayors felt that the only acceptable tax hike was a 0?
Well you may also remember that the city had about 25 million dollars in the bank, look into it, its true. Btw, the 25 million has been spent
Well guess what all those years of 0% tax hikes, no reduction in service and rising costs gets us, it gets us where we are at today.
I am not saying I agree with our present Mayor and Council, but history gave them what they are dealing with.
If my taxes go up $200, I’m all in.
Lets look at something else, there is no profit motive for the city, so honestly think about it, and if there is no profit motive, would the costs be higher, or lower than a business to do the same thing.

Off topic a little… Why were police and fire excluded from the core review? They are about as core as you can get and take up the majority of the City budget.

If you’re going to exclude police and fire services from scrutiny, then call it something other than a ‘Core Review’.

its all doom and gloom eh miesner

JohnnyBelt
Fire was not excluded from the review, there were a number of “opportunities” involving them

They werent the only ones excluded Johnny, IPG was excluded as well. I am sure a bunch of pet projects were also excluded.

I see that our elected officials are not doing too well on the front page poll. If I am not mistaken the next election is 18 months away and not 2 years as the civic elections are being moved to the spring.

As for the tax hikes, if the city was a lean mean efficient machine and they still needed money to maintain and even improve things I would have to agree as things are not free. During the campaign the mayor spoke of challenging the department heads to find saving, no sign of that!

The increased taxes in the story are just to maintain the status quo which is far in excess of the inflation rate which means they are getting worse.

IMO it is just another sign of how important it is to have a strong person in the city manager’s chair. The choice of a successor to Derek Bates will be the most important decision made between now and the next election, and cringe when thinking of the group that will make it.

I don’t think the city was very forthright in telling us what the ‘core review’ would include. It was a total waste of money. I think a group of interested citizens could have come up with an altogether much better assessment of what the city needed to do to reduce costs and generate income.
The parameters of the core review were hidden from us otherwise there would have been a public outcry.
I would only be in favour with staff cuts if they started from the very top and then worked down.

I think that people will start to get a better idea of whats taking place after the meeting of the whole to-night at City Hall.

Hang on to your hat, because things will be starting to move.

Once the dust settles, people better get a grip on reality because they are going to be ripped off to the extreme.

If there’s no strategy to tackle the deficit and debt, this will all ultimately be a huge waste of time and money.

It’s not rocket science. Raise taxes and user fees, and/or reduce staff and services (after looking for inefficiencies).

1) privitize everything that can be. 2) can 50% of middle management) 3) can 50% of the supervisors 4) can 50% of the workers……………..start collecting taxes from illegal basement suites! Thousands of people live and work in our town but don’t kick in their fare share for the services they use………………. it’s not rocket science….anyone can sit on council and raise taxes. Why do we pay so much for so little?

I have lived in the same house for 20 years now. First year taxes were $1350. Last years taxes $3600. We have no city water or sewer.One of our roads not driveable this summer. Bump signs still up where pot holes were and still are since spring. Ditches do not get cut anymore. Maybe see a plow a week after it snows. I do not mind paying my share of taxes, but it seems to me that we keep paying and only see a reduction in services. Prince George is a great city with great people and that is why we choose to stay here but council needs to look at all services. Not just the ones that affect the average taxpayer.

littlebird is a good example of how the taxation and delivery of services are skewed in Prince George. Thats where the real problem lies. People paying high taxes and getting little or no service.

Palopu, the problem is that you think $3,600 is high taxes. Obviously, you shop in the same stores I do. What does a dollar buy these days????

Not much. I’m afraid. I think most of us have forgotten that 20 years ago we didn’t make near the income that we do now. So in my opinion $3,600 is not really high.

I love retyred comment “why do we pay so much for so little”. Obviously, retyred doesn’t know where his taxes go. Think about clean water, RCMP, firefighters, roads, street lights, sewer system, garbage pickup, soccer fields, baseball diamonds, schools etc etc.

Yup we are getting……..oh that’s right a good deal !!!!

We are not playing Sim City this is reality, it is time to tighten the purse strings at City Hall, sell off the green car it is not needed, cease all travel, and have this money redirected to the operational costs of Prince George.
Remove all the fluff from the new RCMP building, it should be an office, not a palace. Clear the snow off the streets when needed, not because every Tuesday Alward street is cleared needed or not! Learn to patch pot holes effectively.
Many citizen in this city our on the same page as me, please I asked City Hall get on our team. Let’s make Prince George a wonderful place to be. If taxes need to be raised so be it but please quit wasting tax payers dollars!

mwk..I wasn’t trying to get across that $3600 was a lot for taxes, just that the more we seem to pay the less services there seems to be. Council needs to look at the whole picture and begin to be accountable for their own spending and pet projects. Its easy to say, oh it will be just another $100 on your tax bill but $100 needs to be spent wisely. The cost of living has gone up in 20 years, and even though wages have improved it never seems to be enough when everyone is wanting more.