Hahaha!! What next? They can’t even deliver our bills correctly. What a bunch of fools. This city does almost everything wrong.

I haven’t even received my bill yet and I know others that have had the bills for since last month.

They are in such a hurry to collect this extra money that they can’t get the job done without making mistakes.

It really is a shame to think of the millions and millions of dollars we pay in taxes and the lousy service we get in return.

We’re paying for a Cadillac and getting a Model T Ford.

Whats next.

Eliminating the discount for paying early is just another increase in taxes.

So, last September I paid $348.23 (including the 10%) discount. Now I have to pay $439.28

Thats around a 25% increase.

“Thats around a 25% increase.”

Of course this City has never followed the principles of “truth in advertising”.

“So, last September I paid $348.23 (including the 10%) discount. Now I have to pay $439.28”

Yup. That’s what we get for funding multi-million dollar projects that have driven us into debt. We have to play catch up on things tax dollars should have been maintaining to begin with.

“The City offers a payment plan for utilities. Payments are automatically withdrawn from your bank account. Utility accounts on the pre-authorized plan receive the discount.”

That is an interesting one. So if one was using that payment method, have people been notified that there will no longer be a discount?

They did the same screw up with the garbage cans – the no fee for changing required if containers were downsized.

We need a “Better City Bureau” to lodge complaints against the City.

“However, the face of the actual bill does not address the issue that the 10% discount is no longer available. Council approved doing away with that break , instead, the face of the bill only makes reference to the fact that if not paid by the due date, there will be a 10% penalty.”

It’s either an ‘early payment reward’ or a ‘late fee’. Same thing, different approach.

26.1% to be exact new2pg. City even gets you by adding a $30.00 fee if you thought maybe going to a smaller container might save you some money. Nope they have this covered off just to make sure they get your money. No incentive to going to smaller container.

Maybe they need to stop picking up garbage on stat holidays. Last Monday in College Heights they picked up garbage on the new BC Family Day Stat. Workers were probably getting double time. Didn’t even have time to roll the garbage can out when I saw garbage truck. Barely anyone on street had there containers out. Who was the idiot who sent the garbage trucks out.

Good luck ever solving finances @ City hall with this type of action. Same issue with snow polwing. At least two times this year they plowed streets in College Heights the day before garbage collection. Only issue was the streets were practically bare. Why send the plow trucks when there is no snow. Park the stupid plow trucks and save the money for when it really snows.

“We have to play catch up on things tax dollars should have been maintaining to begin with”

I am hearing more and more that condo owners are having a similar problem facng them. Regular maintenance such as roofing, painting, paving, etc. is starting to take a toll.

Have things become too expensive to fix? Did a whole generation not understand to take care of their physical assets or it would bite them in their asses?

I agree with BaldEagle if we have to increase water and sewer rates 26% to maintain the contigency fund as stated in city’s utilities information, then we definitely aren’t in any position to be hosting a Canada Winter Games.

This is the basis of financial crisis around the world. Cities and governments are spending money they don’t have. How often can they go to the tax well to increase revenues? They must find ways to decrease spending. If we can’t afford to fund basic water and sewer services with current tax rates, how do we have the money to host a high priced Canada Winter Ganes?

I am really seeing the benifit of the $350,000 audit.. Green.. back you bags lady

gus: “Have things become too expensive to fix? Did a whole generation not understand to take care of their physical assets or it would bite them in their asses?”

No idea. I do see many homeowners who don’t nearly put enough effort (money) into maintaining their properties. They just wait for something to break (or the roof to leak) before they put any money towards something.

It seems like the past few councils have seen it the same way.

Maintenance is boring and it seems like you’re spending money on nothing. But it is a requirement, whether you drive a car, own a home, run a city, etc.

My utility bill says I can have the discount of 10% if I pay before April 4, 2013. That’s what I am going to pay. No way do they get that 10%. Their mistake; too bad for them.

In our business, if we forget to bill for something, we do not call the customer and ask them to pay again. Too freaking bad City Hall.

Sure hope the city spends more than ten cents for every tax bill they collect and pay down the city’s $111 million dollar debt.

Harbinger. The debt is probably more than $111 Million. I don’t think all the money borrowed for the new Police Station, or the new City digs at 18th and Ospika have been added to the debt yet. They will take the money later this year, so it wont show up until 2014,.

That’s how the game is played.

The City taxed us for all the maintenance, snow removal, garbage, water, and sewer, over the years, and then spent a lot of the money on their favoured projects.

These projects were things like the Downtown Energy System, Airport Runway Expansion (City made a contribution) New Cameron St., Bridge, New Police Station, New Office buildings 18th and Ospika. $300,000.00 per year supporting the Northern Sport Centre, and of course the $1.6 Million per year(more or less) to support Initiative’s Prince George. Purchase of the PG Hotel. $15 Million for the Winter Games.

Problem is the taxpayers didn’t have a say on a lot of these expenditures, and those that involved borrowing money all went to an Alternative Approval Process, which required 5200 signatures to stop the borrowing.

So to indicate that the taxpayers allowed this to happen is probably somewhat misleading. It would be more correct to say, that the previous Mayors, and Council, created this problem by spending our money with no regard to how it would effect taxes in the future.

We now need to rely on the present Council and Mayor to set things straight. Will they?? Can they??

Who knows. In any event if we don’t stop this spending we are all going to go broke.

Does every municipality in BC pay more in utilities and property tax every year? Something has to be done to put an end to the increases. I don’t have the right to demand more money from my employer when my expenses don’t match my spending so why does the city get to! Makes me sick to my stomach!

How many pennies is $439.28………..

SC. Yours is not the only stomach that is churning in this town.

It seems that the City just doesn’t get it. Whether its selling off assets, increasing taxes, or increasing service charges, increasing salaries and benefits, and generally spending money, they seem to think that taxpayers have an endless supply of money.

If they don’t start to become more fiscally responsible in the near future, I will predict that there is going to be holy hell to pay, from the taxpayers of Prince George.

Anyone, and I mean anyone, who thinks that this kind of BS can continue is deluding themselves.

I am predicting a tax revolt of mega proportions within the next two years.

gus: “Have things become too expensive to fix? Did a whole generation not understand to take care of their physical assets or it would bite them in their asses?”
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How can they do that when the rate that overall prices and taxes are rising exceeds the rate by which incomes are?

You need only look at the exponential growth of debt levels, in all three sectors of the economy ~ government debt, business debt, and consumer debt ~ to realise something more is at play here than a few people with ‘affluenza’ trying to live beyond their means.

Not that we don’t have some of those too, we do, but they are NOT where the main problem lies. For if they lived “within their means”, strictly speaking, spending only from their earnings and never from any borrowings, the whole economy would melt down with an unemployment rate that would top anything seen in the Great Depression. That is FACT.

Another FACT that we have wished on an already defective financial system is the late 20th Century phenomenom of “planned obsolesence”. It’s not restricted to automobiles and what we now somewhat facetiously call ‘consumer durables’ anymore, either. There’s evidence of it everywhere, where product after product, “…sure doesn’t last like they used to.”

It’s something deemed necessary if we’re to “keep the factories working”, and maintain ‘jobs’, (which are still disappearing apace anyways, through automation and outsourcing).

And CAN you even ‘fix’ some of these modern marvels? Like could be done with their predecessors in days gone by? Or do we just recycle them, at best, or add them to the landfills? And go finance a replacement, hoping it’ll last long enough to get it paid for.

How long is it going to take before we start to realise that if an economy is not fully financially self-liquidating in each successive cycle of production/consumption ~if the providers of goods and services, be they private enterprises or governments, CAN NOT always consecutively FULLY recover ALL their financially incurred Costs through Prices and Taxes, we have a chronic shortage of PURCHASING POWER in the hands of the public?

That’s ALL growing debt is ~ a cumulative shortage of consumer purchasing power recorded over time. We can’t cure that the way we’ve been trying. Time to look beyond that, before we further bankrupt ourselves into a debt slavery that’ll be just that much more harder to ever reverse.

The problem is in the ‘accounting’ ~ for that’s all money really is, the figures of accounting. Change it to properly REFLECT reality. It’s not set in stone, nor governed by the immutable laws of nature. Systems were made for man, not man for systems. Make the needed corrections and end this needless misery once and for all.

So if shoes deteriorate over time, why should money not deteriorate over time?

If, in 2005 I bought a pair of shoes for $100, why should my shoes have worn out by 2013 that they no longer work properly while the $100 should not be “worn out”?

I think the universe is unfolding just as it is supposed to. EVERYTHING wears out, even human beings. EVERYTHING needs to be renewed. The process of renewal is what keeps the race racing. Without the effort of renewal, there would be no purpose.

Shangri La is a bore.

I guess the crash of 1929 was the process of renewal, and the recession of 2008-12.

You’re looking at money as something ‘tangible’, gus, but fundamentally it is not. It is, or is based on, credit ~ an intangible. In its ‘tangible’ form as banknotes and coin it does wear out. Witness the replacement of one and two dollar bills with metallic loonies and twonies that last longer. Or the new banknotes that look like a thicker version of Saran-wrap, introduced for the same reason. But currency is only a minute portion of the overall supply of money. Most of which only exists as deposit balances in Bank accounts.

Aside from that, it currently does ‘deteriorate’ continually in what it will buy through the process of ongoing inflation. Which is really the reverse of what should be happening.

A deflation, however, under the current conventions of finance, ruins producers. Since the lower limit of Price is always financial Cost, and when Price declines below Cost the willing seller disappears, and production ceases.

“I guess the crash of 1929 was the process of renewal, and the recession of 2008-12.”
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Renewal of the Banks’ claim to the “ownership” of the money they create on the behalf of the community.

And through that, a claim on the tangible Assets pledged as collateral security for the use of that money.

Something which could be justified, perhaps, if the Banks’ position of “terms maker” when loans were issued WASN’T combined with that of “deal breaker” in preventing repayment through their current monopoly over credit issue and withdrawal.

For it is one thing to foreclose on an individual borrower who gets behind on his payments through mis-management of his affairs, or one who has no intention of repaying his loan. But quite another to foreclose on borrowers, en masse, who HAVE managed their financial affairs quite prudently, and DO intend to honor their debt obligations as they’ve originally committed to, BUT ARE PREVENTED FROM DOING SO BECAUSE OF THE ACTIONS OF THE BANKS’ THEMSELVES THROUGH IMPLEMENTING A GENERAL ‘CONTRACTION’ OF CREDIT.

For what they’ve loaned cannot be fully repaid under such a circumstance. And whether their acquisition of those collateralised assets is purely an accidental circumstance that occurs as an unfortunate side-effect of every credit contraction, or something planned, more sinister, and purposeful, or a combination of both, there are devastating consequences for those who produce and distribute, and all of us as consumers.

It isn’t a problem that couldn’t be corrected. Left uncorrected we’re headed for worse than we’ve got now.

Just wait until next year when they throw snow removal on the utility bill. Why would anyone want to retire in PG?

Are we all to pay the after April 5 date amount so that the bill is paid in full? If I did not get the newspaper or have computer access, or listen to local radio I would be paying the before April 5 th amount as my bill is written. (and I could assume that my bill has been paid in full?)

I for one cannot afford to retire in PG. I totally understand that in the past there was no allowance made for the maintenance or expansion of our infrastructure, but wow, we can’t continue to face these huge increases. Our incomes do not increase at the same level. Tougher times are comin’ no doubt about it.

When and if you ever sell your house here make sure the real estate agent side tracks the buyer by some how not showing them the tax bill that comes with the house. Good luck with that. Taxes inconsequential when wanting to live or retire in our “gritty little mill town”? Taxes here gonna affect house sales?

I have always paid our taxes early to benefit from the discount. Received my bill yeterday and I will be paying an additional $38.69 ($77.38 anually).The people that did not or could not pay early are only out of pocket the tax increase.We are not happy about the increases this year and next year another 19% increase on top of this.My spouse and I live on a fixed income and these increases are more than whatever increases we got this year. Every council we get seems to be worse than the ones before them. Sure wish we could get them out of city hall especially ones like Lyn Hall and Murray Krause and the rest are losers.

retired senior, you got off easy. Our utility increased over $100 and that’s with the discount included.

There needs to be a dedicated forum as to how to best unite the dissatisfaction with our politicians and funnel into a cohesive effort to bring about some real change.
I’m game to do my part.

Initiatives Prince George, funded by taxpayers,given by city of Prince George is a joke. IPG gave out $1,400,000 loan for $800,000. equity. You would think the city would have been watching more closely.
They were too busy trying to get a tax free 30 yrs for the same company. IPG has to be closed down, also same as Downtown
Business Developement, another cull. Do I have this right?

Get the taxes from big industry and box stores. The big stink should be footing the bill not the citizens. Fine the mills everytime it smells up our city and they would have money to burn, or more money to burn!

If there is no benefit to paying early maybe we should all pay late? Sounds fair to me!

bornandbred, that increase I showed was just the amount of discount that is being taken from our pockets.Mine total increased over $100. I was just compairing and saying that all those that paid early are now with a larger percentage increase than those that never paid early.Trying my best to explain my thoughts. And to PGMAKESMECRazy, they have us there also because we will be stuck with a 10% penalty.