Core Review Marathon Starts This Morning
Monday, July 8, 2013 @ 4:00 AM
Prince George, B.C. – Council for the City of Prince George will meet at 8:30 this morning to start going through the 120 page report on Core Services Review Implementation Plan.Although the initial Core Services Review presented nearly 200 recommendations, this report is different from the one the City paid nearly $350 thousand dollars for KPMG to produce.
This report has bundled together those recommendations which had the same “theme”.
There are also some items which have been added to the list of ideas, and some of the ideas which KPMG advised the City NOT to pursue, are back on the table. As an example, KPMG advised the City to to pursue the suggestion that the City stop funding the Library. Well, that idea has been tweaked and reappears as a suggestion the City examine possibly closing the Nechako Branch of the Library.
Then there is a whole suite of user fee hikes, from Transit fares ( another 25 cents a ride) to arena use, (15% per year for three years, ) business licences and a drop in the early pay discount for dog licences. On the issue of snow removall, there is a suggestion the threshold for clearing residential streets be increased to 12 centimeters up from the current 10.
There will be one Councillor missing from today’s session. Frank Everitt, who is the president of Local 1-424 of the United Steelworkers Union, will not be able to make the meeting due to his involvement in contract negotiations with Canfor. Everitt say he had requested that today’s council meeting be set over to another date, but that request was denied.
Councillor Brian Skakun will be in Council Chambers this morning. His employer, Canfor, has agreed to give him the time off to attend the core review meeting. Skakun had been unsure that would be the case due to the fact summer vacations have resulted in few replacements available for his particular job. Skakun also wanted other dates considered for this meeting but his request was also denied.
The meeting is set to start at 8:30
Comments
It would be interesting to know the reason(s) why council would not consider other dates to facilitate the requests of these two men.
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