Why change the fricken system when in the end it is still the taxpayers paying for it. Just leave it alone, save the 600k and put that towards snow removal instead. I am so sick and tired of seeing these half baked ideas put into action at the waste of thousands of dollars. I mean really, is there any purpose to having snow removal paid out of a different budget that what it was? Little town trying to grow up and be a big city syndrome is alive and well in prince george again.

Consulting for what!!! what do we pay city staff for?

“Snow removal is slated to be moved to a new “utility” in 2014,”

So Mayor Green what is the point of that?

Again the city tax payer is on the hook to fund stupidity. Over half a million dollars to be spent on setting up a new category on an old subject, as old as the City of Prince George (it snows in Prince George) – it costs money to clear snow, that’s part of living here. Whatever category you put snow clearing under, at the end of the day it still comes out of the same tax payer’s pocket…..stop wasting our tax dollars!

They can’t figure out how to get a City Councillor some simple figures on what a consultant’s charges were for with say an hour’s work, how the hell are they going to accomplish “…. developing a data base for billing, training staff and rolling out the program”?

This new prograqm … will it have improved quality and more cost effective snow removal as part of it, or is this just an exercise to get us to pay for it by the amount of street frontage our lots have and the frequency you clear snow in front of it?

Hey Cheetos…. you better get your body over to Starbucks. ;-)

They have to hire consultants because the inside staff is too busy with the administration of the consulting work. ;-)

The number of times a plow truck runs around on a Sunday, not dropping sand with it’s plow up as there is no new snow to plow this year is a joke. Complete waste of time and therefore money. What happens to these people when they get voted into office in PG. The money waste they rally against to get elected attaches to them.

Actually this system will make everyone pay the same no matter the tax value of their home. Trailer on the hart or mansion on the nechako your cost is total cost divided by no of homes vs home values.

What a terrible waste of money. Our tax burden is increasing in leaps and bounds financing the stupidity of City Council and the inefficiency of City operations.
This is the Council that was going to cut down costs and increase efficiency and reduce the tax load on City property owners. They sure fed us a line during the last municipal election campaign. We now know the truth of their intentions.

Put it on the utility bill I don’t freaking care but my property tax bill better be adjusted accordingly. But I doubt it will be adjusted. What is next road repair/paving switched to the utility bill too.

How can we exceed the budgeted amount when we hardly get any snowfall… 15-20 years ago we got 3 times as much snow and had much better service!

On the way Gus :)

Maybe PG can hire Thief Spence’s boyfriend at $850 dollars a day to find a way to save money. I haven’t read any complaints about snow removal in Attawapiskat. Have you?

I think the city needs to hire a consultant on why city staff need a consultant…oh wait..the core review….another 350 grand down the boomer. :(

Here’s a way to reduce spending at City Hall: stop hiring consultants to figure out what residents and city staff already know (or city staff should know). My god, it’s snow removal, not rocket science.

Prince George should be the one sending out its staff as consultants to other cities regarding snow removal. Why the heck don’t we know what to do with snow removal. As far as I remember, we have always had snow to remove. Should be good at that by now.

It must be an inside job. She`s probably giving the job to her friends

Honestjoe wrote: “We now know the truth of their intentions.”

I would not say that. Their intentions were, in most cases, likely well meaning. The problem is, they really have not the foggiest of how to implement it. Just look at the background of each individual Councillor. The ones I would hire to be a project manager are few if any. They really do not have the background required.

At the same time, I think we have lost a lot of capacity on the Administrative side as well from the way it appeared to be at one time.

You know, it is the notion of entitlement that people are starting to talk about …. it does not just stop at the youth.

“Prince George should be the one sending out its staff as consultants to other cities regarding snow removal” … I agree …. but not with the way we are doing it … you have no idea of how much they would laugh in our faces.

Yet one more example of how much we need a strong hand at the helm. Until the city hires a city manager(with big gonads)expect to see more of the same.

Data base for billing????

I will only charge them a 10k consultant fee to show them how to cut and paste from the water sewer and garbage data base.

Is the new plan a new approach to snow removal or just a new approach to raising funds for snow removal? As described in the article, it sounds like the latter, in which case spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on it seems even crazier.

I wonder what the snow removal costs are going to look like after the Winter Games. I will guess that during the games you will see the roads in the best shape that none of us have ever seen before while some parts of the city will suffer.

I am discusted that the budget is not enough! Could be done for far less with some efficiency.

Brining in another consultant to tell us we need to sell off public assets and privatize services??

You can add my voice to the list of disgruntled taxpapers who are totally sick and tired of the waste of money spent on stupid studies and plans. Of course the snow removal budget is in the red! Part of that reason is because they were plowing streets that had little snow on them. The way this City is managed is a joke!

yes efficiency is the word.

SNOW !!! Indian say, “White man crazy shovel snow! All melt on Spring anyway!” They have plowed our Street 3 times yet our alley gets plowed twice a week and it doesn’t get used for traffic. Thank the good Lord Wigwham have $650,000 master plan. The place needs a huge enema at the top!

Seems City Hall just doesnt get it.

We had a Mayor who was attending meetings of the World Winter Mayors Conferences in China. One of the things on the agenda was snow removal. Hmmmmmm. One would think that after 100 years of removing snow we would be experts at this business.

City Hall is lost, and stumbling around like a dehydrated horse in the Mohave Desert.

They need to come to terms with the actual costs and needs of running a city. They had better come to terms pretty soon, because no one AND I MEAN NO ONE will continue to support this high level of stupidity.

Most of what they do are manipulations of various process’s to glean more money from the taxpayers to maintain the status quo.

The status quo, being over staffed, over paid, under worked, and bereft of any responsbilities, especially monetary.

Want to have some evil fun, ask a city employee who actually moves the snow and does not sit in some comfi office about how well city hall manages snow removal. Medical science has no idea how a person survives with that high a blood pressure.

Can the managers and just let the workers go at it.

Don’t forget to re-elected just about all of them next time. It is to laugh. IMO.

You would think we would be good at snow removal considering it comes every year.

But every year for the past few years, it’s the same gong show.

“Prince George should be the one sending out its staff as consultants to other cities regarding snow removal”

15 to 20 years ago, this was the case. Our snow removal methods were the envy of other entire countries.

What has changed since then…? Perhaps a series of councils that have been plagued with “other people’s money” syndrome with deals paid and promises made, IMO, and special interest projects that were never very well thought out, and they forgot about what managing our collective tax dollars is all about. A broken record, I know, but what about that new RCMP building, folks….and how much is the DES saving us? How about the “Commonwealth Guys Property Flip”, a reality show right here in PG?

So, consultant work is where it’s at, evidently. Janet Bigelow had a good interview with the Free Press and talked about what I have heard in the wind….the amount of staff time assisting these hired guns is astronomical.

We seem to pay top management more and more, for less and less overall responsibility – just bring in a consultant and reduce management to clerical support. Ground level folks that are actually performing the work are left out altogether.

*yet, they (management)cannot provide any background regarding expenses to 7 vendors, to a damn councilor. OK, I know, that’s over with, right?

question: I would like to know the breakdown of staff hours/remuneration in the snow removal budget between actual employees and contractors. I see at least double the number of contractors out during big dumps, as opposed to taxpayer owned and operated equipment. Not a beef, overall, as long as the money is going to local working stiffs; however, would be a good picture for those that scream about contracting out to save money.

Anyone?

One more thought to a previous statement:
“We seem to pay top management more and more, for less and less overall responsibility – just bring in a consultant and reduce management to clerical support. Ground level folks that are actually performing the work are left out altogether.”

The latter are the ones whose jobs are under the microscope and on the chopping block, when the first two levels have sucked up all the money, IMO, resulting in the disaster we are living through now. More taxes, less services and less actual front line workers, building the expertise and gettin’ the job done.

The city employed outside workers have a no lay off clause which is why you see them driving around wearing out cutting edges when it has not snowed for a while. If the city cannot rid themselves of this clause in the upcoming negotiations they should have a list of meaningful work that these people could do during the slow times to keep them gainfully employed instead of just putting in time.

Things like painting, cleaning and servicing tools and equipment used in other seasons and many other things that could be dropped as soon as they are required for snow clearing duties.

Just another example of more mis-management by council / administration and management….

I can drive round and give em things to do,wait till you see 4 of em removing snow from hydrants….

If I ran my budget where I work like that, I’d have my ass fired within minutes.

One of the biggest reasons our costs are so high is that city management departments have grown while the number of workers to do the actual work has diminished drastically. It used to be that just a few managers directed a lot of workers, when this city was growing. Now its the other way around, many bosses and no growth. There are more inside staff than there are workers. Has this saved money? No, it has only cost us more and more. Want to cut down on costs? Always cut from the top on down.
If there are severance packages, pay them and be rid of them! I also think that any new manager positions should not be allowd these golden handshake contracts. The people who do the work certainly don’t get them!
Just because others do them doesn’t mean that we have to.
We’d probably get much better managers in the process.

Reading the comments from the city, they were short $257,000 to cover the bills for snow removal in 2012. If they used the $250,000 they want to spend on hiring a consultant in 2013, the snow removal debt would be almost paid and we wouldn’t need to pay another approximatly $350,000 for more consultation in 2014. This money should be spent on snow removal, not consultants. We, the residents of PG need to find a way to have our voices heard. Maybe we need to hire a lawyer!

or consult a lawyer:)

The municipal auditor cannot get here soon enough!

So if the 4 guys clearing hydrants were normally clearings streets that is a start, just needs to be better managed so that they are more productive. Some savings in fuel and wear and tear on equipment.

If these people were in addition to snow clearing crew….pink slip time and the work assigned to snow crew during slow times.

I agree give more – City hall is very heavy in Managers and Supervisors. I have a friend who told me that in one department about 10 years ago there were 2 exempt staff (manager and supervisor) and 10 unionized staff. That same department today has 5 exempt staff and 13 unionized staff. That’s an extra exempt person for each additional unionized worker.

Take $257,000 divide it by the number of properties that are taxed in the city. Add that amount to each property tax notice.
Simple.

That would be less than $10 per residential property.

bcnorth says “the amount of staff time assisting these hired guns is astronomical.”
I totally agree with you. Just look at the amount of time city planners and other city departments have spent with the proponents for the recovery center and L& M to proceed now with the amendment to the OCP. It would be interesting to know what this has all cost the taxpayer after court costs and labour costs have been added up.And it is still not over. But of course we will never know because it is too difficult and time consuming for staff to add up all the invoices.

Wow so what’s the point in moving the snow removal to another ledger heading?
Why don’t we just take a southern approach to this whole thing, call snow removal a “Black Operation”, give it a huge budget that can’t be messed with, touched and or appropriated by any further prevailing counsels and call it a day.

It snows here, can’t that be a concept we agree on? It needs to be removed at some point before it starts killing the residents literally. Our problem here is the equipment utilization and management, the gear isn’t getting out where and when it’s needed in a timely fashion. That’s a management issue not a ground level worker or operator issue. The system needs to be looked at and a plan formulated to be effective in removing this white menace from our streets and neighborhoods.

Creating another journal column in the city ledger is just screwing with the books and not dealing with the issue at hand, another make needless work project for the Ringaling Brothers City counsel Circus. Micro managing appears to be this counsel’s approach to everything they haven’t got a clue about. Wow simply amazing.

From the comments, it seems none of the posters thus far have read any of the reports that went into the decision to go this route. It will all depend upon how they structure the tiers, but for residential payers, this might end up being more equitable than what you’re paying now. When they do the public consultations, get involved if you’re concerned. Whether people realize it, or like it, we have an infrastructure problem coming down the pipe — literally. The Provincial and Federal governments have spent decades downloading infrastructure costs to municipality, the time to pay the piper is coming due, because in terms of the total tax pie, municipalities get less than 10% of our total tax dollar, but bear a huge burden in terms of the infrastructure they’re expected to supply. In terms of the cost to setup, think about how difficult it would be to develop a new billing system for 30,000 odd customers, such as the case is in Prince George. I’ve worked in the financial industry most of my working life, and I’m telling you, this would be daunting.

I for one like user pay systems, especially with the coming infrastructure crunch. You want to live in an area with 5 acre lots and have city services, well you’re going to have to pay a lot more than some guy living on a modest city lot in the bowl, as you should, because that is the reality of the situation in terms of the cost. Think densification folks, it’s going to be the wave of the future.

http://princegeorge.ca/cityhall/mayorcouncil/councilagendasminutes/Agendas/2012/2012_11_14_cw/documents/Stormwater_Management_Funding_Strategy.pdf

if densification is the wave of the future, then why would city planning want to amend the OCP in Valleyview to allow for more residential housing on larger lots? It seems that there is no consistancy to what the city planners approve and to what the city can afford when it comes to infrastructure.

Better still… with all the demonstrations going on, just have them parade up and down our streets.. solves plowing the snow.. AND it’s free.. Ever see anyone shoveling snow at the court house??? Or in front of lawyers offices??? ect ect ect

Here’s Sine Nomine’s link to the report made clickable: http://princegeorge.ca/cityhall/mayorcouncil/councilagendasminutes/Agendas/2012/2012_11_14_cw/documents/Stormwater_Management_Funding_Strategy.pdf

Well if the new system is user pay then I shouldn’t get much of a snow removal bill on my utilities since our street (cul de sac) gets plowed maybe twice a year fully. Right now there is a huge pile of snow dead center that has been there for over 2 weeks, so its an obstacle course to get in and out of your driveway. My neighbours had to buy 4x4s because they were tired of getting stuck on our street all the time. They plow every street around but seem to forget that little 400′ stretch of road at the end, unless of course they need a place to hide for an extra long coffee break, which I have noticed previous years.
You can all thank kinsley for the rapid downslide of pg’s infrastucture, since he spent more money on pet projects and almost totally forgot about infrastructure during his holiday in office.

No plans in increasing the snow removal budget? What gives here. Do they expect the wages of the employees to drop? The cost of fuel to drop? The cost of operating the equipment to drop? Or has City Hall completely bought into the notion that with global warming (or climate change) that there will be less snow falling and less often when it does fall in the future?

In the last 2 years, they over spent on the budget and completely depleted the reserve fund. Not sure how many time they had exceeded the budget over the last 10 years, but it was more than twice. This is completely insane. Especially coming from this council where nearly half of the councillors and the mayor runs businesses.

The operations and decision making at city hall is completely insane and it is getting worse EVERY year over the last 4 years. I have talked to people where they had issue that needed to be dealt with and they had to talk to several different people, because no one could deal with the issue on their own accord.

The more I see of these kind of decisions being made (hiring consultant after consultant) the more I am looking forward to moving out of this backward thinking town. May 2013 cannot come soon enough. Then I don’t need to worry about this kind of crap again. I do feel sorry of everyone that will still this town home, because they will have to keep dealing with insanity that we have in City Hall.

Simple, privatize it.

It is difficult to understand the need to get consultation on snow removal over a 2 year period, approaching 3/4 of a million dollars ! Unbelievable really !

Read the report…here are the recommendations….
I like what the City is doing, keep up the good work council.

The following are considerations with regards to implementing a Snow, Ice and Stormwater Utility for the City
of Prince George:
A utility provides for dedicated funding to provide stormwater management services and to maintain
stormwater infrastructure;
Revenues generated by utility rates provide for a tax shift from the General Tax Levy;
Stormwater runoff rates are attributed by land use, which represents different runoff volumes
depending on building coverage, asphalt, and concrete surfaces;
Snow and ice management to be included in the utility though rates would be determined by level of
service in specific City sectors, parcel frontage, and other possible factors; and,
Tax exempt parcels may be given special consideration.

http://www.elections.bc.ca/index.php/referenda-recall-initiative/recall/#E

i wish someone could tart this

So living on a corner lot will see someone paying double for snow removal is how this looks to be shaping up. Then we can also assume the regular tax bill will not be going down to reflect the new cost to the utility bill for snow removal as they just announced a 3.5% hike on that part.

I simply can’t afford to live in PG anymore.

I pay $2600 already for city taxes and I don’t even have a curb to keep the road sand from running off onto my lawn, no city sewer, and no city parks in the Hart (services are minimal)… then they want to tax me $30,000 to bring city sewer to my street that I don’t need as my septic field works, but its mandatory every one pays under the user pay system, which will apply across the neighborhood. That will bring my annual tax bill to over $4000 per year, plus the utility bill and I’m now told the utility bill has gone up 19% for the next couple of years and they will be adding snow removal to it as well and be billing me double for being on a corner lot.

I will be over $5000 a year to the city for a 1200 square foot house. I could be half that for twice the house in Kamloops.

Sure Sherri Green will cut city costs by 10% if we elect her… sure good one. Glad I never fell for it, but sure am disappointed others did.

I know it doenst work for all, but do what I did, move to the country.

I live on a school bus route, YRB has our road plowed within hours if it snows on a school day, then the grader goes by within 12 hours of a storm.

In the city they told me I couldnt park my trucks at home, I had to pay more tax, neighbors always a pain in the butt, didnt like my wood stove, the list goes on and on. Now, I drive 10 more minutes going home, burn all the wood I want, park where I want and enjoy watching the wildlife out my living room window.

The moral of the story is you can either bitch about things or do something about it.