I say we call KPMG as a consultant to get the Xmas card designed right away .

Somebody better check the lemon aid at City Hall…something is seriously wrong if the Mayor thinks twinning with another city in China will have benefits for us in Prince George, what is she looking for…4 dollar a day window washers :(

You’ll eat your words Ben when Air China starts landing 777’s on our big runway! All they needed was a big runway so they could come visit. They will come you’ ll see.

“what is she looking for…4 dollar a day window washers”

Of course that’s what they are after. Our govt’s in bed with business and their bottom line is to maximize profits at the citizens expense.

Reminds me of the wasted $25,000.00 spent in Turin Italy trying to entice the lone Kenyan cross country skier to train in PG.

posters can bitch and complain all you like. What are you going to do about it. Post and hope that one of the city Council reads it? Why not try to use some of this energy to do something about it?

57chevy – good words. Why not start the ball rolling with some suggestions. Seriously, I mean it. See if this forum can be a place to enact change for the betterment of the city.

I’ll start with one:
Why not start packing out city hall at council meetings. I mean pack it to the rafters so they know what we feel.

O.K. Now it’s someone else’s turn for a suggestion…

Well Mr. Meisner can only do so much. Haldi Road needed some people to head The fight. Now we need somebody to step up or a group of people to step up and head down to Council and start making headways about how we can fight City Hall on important matters. If it’s a recall everybody wants then we need to sign petitions. We need to get the provincial government involved. But posting and complaining does not seem to be getting anyone ahead. Now it’s time for some people to step up to the plate

Good idea jetstream.

Another note of interest in Twinning Cities.

This was a phenomenum that started after the second world war in Europe, and mostly the United Kingdom.

Now the clincher. ****The United Kingdom and some European Cities are starting detwinning***. That is to say they are terminating the twinnings they have as a cost saving measure, because while there are costs to twinning there have been very little or no benefits.

So while we head into twinning other Countries and Cities are getting out of the business.

Why am I not surprised???

57chevy – Haldi Road still needs people to fight. The application will be coming in front of council again soon.

Has any one thought that Haldi’s fight is not just theirs but is everyones?

All of what is going on with this council and city hall is amendment after amendment to the OCP. Read it, you all may learn something of what the citizens and other stakeholders took a lot of time to generate.

The Haldi people in my books have been trying to wake people up for a while….

Very true palopu. But what ideas do you have on sending city Council iMessage? Everyone seems to be extremely frustrated with this counsel. Counsel is running around in the media rubbing it in everyone’s nose. The question of the day is what are we going to do about it?

Well make no mistake about it if you’re intending on fighting city hall it cost money. First thing you need is a good lawyer. The mayor and a few counselors do not pay one bit of attention unless it’s done through a lawyer.

jetstream – here is another idea.

The time it takes to post on the blog you can have a short letter emailed to city. The link is below.

This way it gets to everyone on council and mayor. Will be required to be posted on the agenda and minutes for the public to view if I am not mistaken. Especially when that subject is up for review at council meetings is it not?

Another reason for using this email address is that if anyone does an FOI request for certain information it will be there

mayorandcouncil@city.pg.bc

If you didn’t vote for this council then you can’t witch. If you don’t write then don’t witch.

A couple of years back I posted my email address on this site to try and form a rate payers association and guess what I got three emails in responce.

I have written many lettert to mayor and council via snail mail and the trip to china was one. I have no idea where the email goes but I have noticed that snail mail comes up under correpondence on the council agenda and I generaly get a responce from the city clerk telling me that the letter has been foreored to councul. But if they are read I do not know.

Thnere is only one more council meeting before christmas. But in the new year lets see if the posters on this site are serious about puttinfg their legs where their mouth is and see if they will attend council meetings.
Cheers

Its hard to make suggestions and come up with ideas when you dont have all the information.

As an example. We do not yet know what the final results of the Core Reveiw will be, however there are a number of issues that makes one wonder.

1. Councillor Hall made a good point at last nights meeting when he said that before he would support the sale of Pine Valley Golf Course he would want to know where the money from the sale would go.

The problem with this statement is that at a previous meeting Hall and other Councillors voted to have the money from the sale of this land go to the Capital Projects Fund. So one would assume that they not only know where the money will go, but what it will be spent on. Hmmmm.

2. Councillor Wilbur stated that over all golfing was on the wane. This is really not true in Prince George. What is on the wane is the number of members and the number of rounds of golf played at the PG Golf and Curling Club. (of which Wilbur is a member). PG Golf and Curling club lost a of business to the relatively new Aberdeen Golf Course, much like Pine Valley lost some members to the Alder Grove Course on the old Giscome Road. So I suggest that golf in Prince George is not on the wane, but has in effect moved around. Im sure Pine Valley can re-attract its previous high numbers. I would not say the same for the PGG&CC.

3. Councillor Stoltz said that one reason for the sale of Pine Valley is because the sale of the PGGCC did not go through and that they would not be moving anywhere. Not sure that he actually wanted to make that statement, however it seemed like he was incapable of stopping talking. If what he said is in fact true, then the real reason for the sale of Pine Valley is because the commercial use of the PGGCC lands are now not available and Pine Valley will be sacrificed. People might want to ponder on this, because what it means is that regular taxpayers, and users of facilities are being thrown to the dogs in favour of developers, and commercial interests.

4. Councillor Koehler doesnt seem to be on top of any issues at all, and at best just muddies the water.

I am not at all convicned that this Council has the expertise to hanle this Core Review in a sane and efficient manner. It seems that they barely understand the issue’s before them. This was pointed out by Meisner when he reported that we already have three sister cities. Did Council know about these previous twinnings?? I kind of doubt it.

.

57chevy, it will be hard for the rest of PG to help Haldi Rd. When the area I live in had a fight with City Hall at first they said we were to small of an area to stop what they wanted to do. Then when people outside our area started speaking against what the City wanted to do they were told that it didn’t effect them so they were not allowed to state an opinion, even though they would be paying extra taxes. This problem of just doing what the City wants to do has been going on for a very long time and because they got away with it they have just become worse.

Maybe we need to go back to a ward system instead of voting city wide plus no wages for the mayor and council. The people that would then run are running for office because they love the city.

Hah…can’t find a ‘like’ button to click on. Especially point #3 got a good chuckle out of me, thanks for the pick-me-up on a rather doldrum day Palopu and Stolz!

Would it make more sence to email the councillors . They all have an email address on the City website. Just click on bios and they are all there.
cheers

Palopu …. I listened to “cross country check up in an hour” yesterday afternoon while driving. The topic was “From the ouster of Rob Ford to the resignation of Montreal’s Gérald Tremblay, are you losing faith in municipal politics?”

So, we find out that the country may be in a bit of a crisis which no one has a solution to.

Let me try something.

80%+ of the people and businesses in this country are located in municipalities of varying sizes from say 10,000 upward to millions. As a group, they generate incomes and transactions which are taxed. Part of that income as well as transactions are also taxed by the province. In addition, the province charges taxes for land use as well as resource extraction.

In addition the people also all either own or lease space to reside in or do business in. That activity is taxed by the local municipalities. Unlike the USA, for instance, we do not have access to taxing income or transactions.

Thus we have what is similar to downloading and that is the notion that the traditional tax sharing pie is effectively giving municipalities less and less of the share of the money when looked at from the point of view of cost sharing based on the nature of costs over the many decades resulting in municipalities having a greater share of the cost per person of running the totality of the country with all its constituent parts of nation, provinces/territories, regional districts/counties, and municipalities.

That, then is crisis number one which is putting municipalities into a very precarious position. It seems that those who are working at it through the provincial and federal municipal associations are not getting much traction anywhere, sometimes even amongst themselves. On top of that, there are very few people in the general public who are even aware of what is going on, yet we are the taxpayers in all cases at all levels.

The second crisis is the one of competency at all level of government. We see the municipal one more often through local media, council meetings, etc. so that appears to be the one making the news more often. Is that perception there now because with modern communication actions are more visible?

So, there is a move to change Council size for all the wrong reasons – to save money. Well just because it may change from 8 to 6 with a community referendum, people who vote should be just as informed as Councillors want to suddenly be informed in order to make decision.

So

1.Why to 6?

2.What guarantee will there be that some Councillor will not say on a 7 person Council that the workload has just increased so there should be an increase in compensation to reflect the increase in time on committees, community events, acting Mayor, etc. etc.

3.Why would a 7 person Council be more or just as effective s a 9 person Council.

4.If it is decided that it is more important to increase the effectiveness of Council (I would be shocked if that were ever to be the case) would reducing the Council size be a key component of that and why.

5.How does one increase the effectiveness of Council? – ward system? Divide watchdog roles of Councillors to give each a specialty functional area?

Systems within government are becoming more complex. So is the oversight and direction setting role of governance structures. The core review has failed to address that. The core review was conducted under an archaic system of conducting business, the one which is failing us and is not prepared to handle emerging issues from basic principles.

We need someone in charge who needs to address the changing environment through the eyes of integrated management not managing of simple, single functional silos. I see no champions of that on Council who are willing to address that in an up-front fashion.

In fact, one year into some new members of Council, it seems that the learning curve is too steep for them. While it is true that Council is only part of their normal work load, it seems that they may not be giving it 25% to 33% of their time or they are not effective with their time management

http://www.cbc.ca/checkup/episode/2012/12/02/from-the-ouster-of-rob-ford-in-toronto-to-the-resignation-of-montreal-mayor-gerald-tremblay-are-you

Palopu wrote: “People might want to ponder on this, because what it means is that regular taxpayers, and users of facilities are being thrown to the dogs in favour of developers, and commercial interests.”

That is nothing new. Why is anyone surprised at this?

We have had an OCP which, for at least 2 decades, has promoted a more densely populated community with infill and downtown or let us just call it central densification in order to reduce sprawl, yet subdivision after subdivision has been approved and pushed forward to development without consideration to the sprawl which has simply continued.

This City is playing along with the building of new businesses and housing along the Westwood-Hwy16W corridor in lieu of keeping it as recreational lands either in perpetuity or till such a time that more appropriate uses can be found.

I see no reasons to promote more car dealership properties which are essentially land gobbling inventory storage land uses generating few jobs and client visits when one compares such an enterprise to shopping malls and larger retail outlets.

GRAYMARE – You are wrong.

What happens to Haldi area affects the whole city. The city does not want a fight especially when it comes to changing the OCP. If I am not mistaken the city also told the Haldi people that they had no choice and the applicants told the people the same thing!

The people of this city need to speak up! Do you think the special interest groups don’t? This includes business etc.

RETIRED 02 -It does not make more sense to email the councillors with their own email addresses. There is no accountability that they received them or proof they received them. If the email goes to:

“””mayorandcouncil@city.pg.bc”””

The city is obligated to be sure it goes to all and then the people of this city see it posted on the council agenda meetings and it is recorded at city hall! In other words if the city.pg.bc address is used it is then public information. The councillor’s own emails are private – that is why they are different.

It is my understanding if you only put it to the councillors as you mention the public cannot have access to that information under the FOI – private information. So when one councillor emails another the public will never know and this goes for anyone with their own email address in the city. In order to trace any information in needs to be the city email address! HUGE difference.

Lots of good points here, but to get back to the original topic, this whole idea of twinning cities is just feelgood BS which doesn’t benefit anyone. Time to let this idea go and save the taxpayers some money.

“I see no reasons to promote more car dealership properties which are essentially land gobbling inventory storage land uses generating few jobs and client visits when one compares such an enterprise to shopping malls and larger retail outlets”

This is Prince George gus, where logic, facts and sound decision making take a back seat to non-sensical political whims.

“Lots of good points here, but to get back to the original topic, this whole idea of twinning cities is just feelgood BS which doesn’t benefit anyone. Time to let this idea go and save the taxpayers some money”

Have to agree with you there JohnnyBelt. More seriously though, if PG were looking for a twin city, perhaps they should contact the Mayor of Gotham City. It seems to have more in common with the PG of late, LOL.

Lot’s of twinning’s going on out there. Whodda thunk!

http://www.britishcolumbia.ca/Connect/twinning/Documents/BC_Local_Government_Twinnings0906SR.pdf

There is another interesting thing about car dealerships.

OG has bought into the latest vogue … the past 20 years or so in other places but just recently in PG, of internalizing the parking on a shopping centre mall, such as can be seen at River point. The result, in the case of PG is a single story strip mall building with its ass end to the road . …..

In the case of car dealerships, however, they are not not only allowed to display their wares on the road frontage, but I am sure they would create a major fuss if they were not allowed to do that.

Maybe we need to allow lumber yards to do the same .. and hot tub vendors … equipment renters …. and others who sell large items … and junk yards, like the one(s) on first avenue.

Yes, but as you can see from the reality of the PG situation, Dragonmaster, it is all just government pounding its chest …. I mean, if we have three listed which Council and Administration does not know about, do you really think ours is the only such case?

This twinning thing almost looks like a vacation program for elected officials and their minions.

Really??? You cant tell me that not one councilor, clerk, manager anyone working at city hall didn’t know this. Really???

I didn’t say that what happens on Haldi Rd doesn’t affects the whole City. What I said was that the City Council does not allow other parts of the City to have any say in what happens to another area. Look at the Miller Addition area, the City moved the drugs, etc. up into that area and when my neighbour spoke out against it she was told that it was none of her business. This way the City keeps the population divided and each group has to start from scratch to fight City Hall.

“Alder Grove Course on the old Giscome Road” .. actually, Palopu, it is “Alder Hills”. There is “Aspen Grove” and “Alder Hills”, but no Alder Grove course up here..)

A “small town” in China comprises of about two million people.