Public Works Move Won’t Be Done Till Summer
Saturday, February 9, 2013 @ 4:37 AM
Prince George, B.C. – It turns out the re-location of city workers from the old public works yard on 4th Avenue to the 18 Avenue yard won’t be completed for another seven months or so.
That’s because facilities will have to be constructed at 18th to house the trades people who work for the City of Prince George. Construction Supervisor Leland Hanson says “the electricians, millwright and carpenter shop is still down at the 4th Avenue yard.” He says they will be moved up to 18th Avenue, adding “that’s the next project.” Does that mean new facilities? “There’s a storage building up there that I can renovate, and they’ll move in there.” The project will involve “taking an existing building, taking half of it, dividing that up into two spaces—one for the electrical shop, one for the carpenter shop—and the millwright, we’re going to put them into the main building. There’s a bay that’s kind of shared by the welding guys, by the welding shop and that’s where the millwright’s going to go.” Hanson says the City has one millwright, two carpenters and five electricians who will remain at 4th Avenue until the renovations are completed in August.
Hanson says the project cost is pegged at $300,000, which was included in the budget covered by the authorization for the city to borrow up to $3 million for the 18th Avenue administration building construction. The price tag for the new 10-thousand square foot building was $1 million-990-thousand.
Hanson says some of the city’s fleet vehicles, trucks, are also remaining at the 4th Avenue yard in the short term but otherwise the yard is shut down and closed off.
Administrators from 4th Avenue moved to their new digs at the 18th Avenue yard two weeks ago while Utility Operations inside workers moved last Monday and the outside workers move next week.
Comments
Ha Ha! Even the city is moving out of the downtown!! Guess it’s part of the Downtown De-vitalization program!!!
Timmy’s is much closer at 18th.
According to this story, blog/view/27369/1/staff+moves+to+city%27s+new+18th+avenue+administration+building?id=143&st=60 “… the project did come in on budget. âIt was right on the mark at one million-990-thousand (dollars). It didnât go over.â “
Now they’re telling us they need to do another $300,000 worth of work?
True cost of this project is actually $3.2 million as there is a 200k line item in the capital spending plan to do ground work / paving around the new building.
One would think that this should have been included in the original budget or was it taken out to keep the project within the $3 mill we had to borrow. I can’t recall if this will come out of the paving pot?
4th Ave will stay open for a long time as over winter, they need to house some of their vehicles inside and there are no facilities at 18th Ave for this…
Yes, they need a place to park their “oh so practical for PG climate” $60,000 Leaf.
BTW, how much longer do we have to stare at a garbage fees poll on the home page?
The got **approval** to borrow $3 Million via the Alternative Approval Process, so you can rest assured that they will borrow all the funds and spend it all.
Thats why we need a better system to curtail City borrowing. The AAP is a failed system. The City uses the AAP knowing that voter apathy works in their favour.
You cant expect local citizens to mount a huge campaign to get the necessary 5200 signatures every time the City borrows money. We know this and the City knows this, therefore they use the AAP. We know on the other hand, that capital projects could be planned in such a way that the money to be borrowed could go to a referendum.
The City’s position that referendums are too expensive ie; approx $80,000.00 is disengenous. What they really mean is that if they go to a referendum, they have a good possibility of not getting sufficient votes for project, and therefore avoid a referendum like the plague.
However we cant let the average citizen off the hook. They have the responsibility to be aware of what is taking place at City Hall, and doing something about it. Seems mostly what they do is follow the Citys lead like sheep, or bitch, bellyache, and complain, with no action follow up.
I beleive that the AAP for the $3 Million dollar building on 18th and Ospika got less than 10 signatures against the project.
Using the Citys rational for AAP’s 10 votes means that everyone in the City is in favour of spending $3 Million on this building. Which of course is not true.
What a joke. Always borrowing money. All we need to do is get rid of 4 or 5 staff that just sit at their desks and conduct numerous meetings amongst themselves. Do you also notice that the assistants of the head chiefs are mostly family that have their kids working so they can climb up the ladder to these high paying cushion jobs after they retire at age 55. If we want to cut expenses looked inside the city admin. Lots of money to be found . We do not need all all these people .
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