One Would Think The Chair Of The City’s Finance and Audit Committee Would Know
Tuesday, July 23, 2013 @ 3:45 AM
By now, one would think that the Chair of the Finance and Audit Committee for the City Of Prince George, Cameron Stolz, would know that the downtown merchants pay an extra levy of $200,000 a year for snow removal to enable the crews to get the snow off the downtown section quickly.
One would think that.
One would also think that he would know the downtown merchants pay an extra levy for off street parking, about $720,000 annually.
One would think that if Stolz wants to make a comparison of the Pine Center Mall and downtown, it’s like comparing dynamite to gold, but if he wants to make the comparison, the people who own the ten story buildings downtown would be more than happy to only pay taxes on the foot print of the building .
One would think that the Chair of the Finance and Audit Committee for a city as large as Prince George would be able realize that if you award a bid to one company, then the other five (in this case) may be disappointed that they didn’t get the bid, but they made an investment , they took a gamble, and will likely do so again if another opportunity is presented. To suggest companies won’t want to submit a bid because a decision on the matter might be changed is a red herring.
One would think that before you spend 1.2 million dollars on some new meters, one would see how you can collect the unpaid fines which amount to about $120,000 dollars .
One would think that you would use the power given you in the city to pass by laws that would be able to enforce the payments of those fines.
One would think that if you attend the various meetings of municipalities in Canada, you might want to ask someone how they go about collecting those fines .
You would think that because you brought in a by law to charge an extra levy on downtown merchants so those funds would go to a DBIA so that they might improve the area, that you would spend some time listening to them.
One would think that given the fact that you are the Chair of the Finance Committee that you would know the downtown merchants pay one of the highest rates of tax , that you would consider their concerns given that their proposal will save " all of the citizens of the City" money.
That leads us to the final question, does the Finance Chairman know what downtown business is paying? Because one got the distinct feeling from the Council meeting of Monday that simply isn’t the case.
I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s’ opinion.
Comments
Regarding parking…I was at Pine Center Mall Saturday afternoon, parked in the ‘Drop off Only’ zone for a few minutes, came back and lo and behold I had a $25.00 ticket on my window. A City of Prince George ticket yet. Can anyone clue me in as to how the Mall gets the City to issue tickets for them?
And regarding paying parking fines, the city actually took people to court years back to collect unpaid parking fines, but I read on here that now they cannot collect on them anymore?
Ha ha ha Play the parking game and you lost, pay up.
I think the proper question should be.
Does Chair of the Finance Committee, Stolz know which city he lives in?
Like any good lap dog he does what he is told to do. I cannot think of one time when he did not vote in lock step with the mayor.
Very good article Ben, it is painfully obvious that from the Mayor down, there are people who are simply out of touch with reality. We the citizens of Prince George are paying very high wages to planners and managers that are simply not earning their salt. We would get just as good results or even better by getting rid of those positions in exchange for “Junior Positions” and half the wages.
From my point of view the long term question(s) are:
Are the voters going to take responsibility for electing the Chair of the Finance Committee to council and secondly, make sure this NEVER happens again?
with a business in pine center mall isn’t it to his advantage to make the downtown less desirable?
One would think that come election time next year in November enough people would remember this when they mark their ballot, but…this may be wishful thinking too!
Why are we even bothering to blame Stolz? He is a part time City Councillor who hs no responsibilities when it comes to running this city. That responsibility belongs to the City Manager.
Where has the City Manager been before he left, and what is the current City Manager doing about getting her directors in ine to putting together proper cost accounting systems separated into distinct programs and projects so that one can measure expenses and revenues and get some idea of life cycle costing of option a versus option b.
The running of this city is turning out to be a joke. Neophytes aon Council need to be tougher on th staff they have that is supposed to do this work for them.
And we, the public, are not understanding who has what responsibilities and who is accountable for what.
I pay taxes, and everyone else does to the degree that they have investments in the city and use facilities in the city.
I expect that we deserve an adminstration and a council who understand their individual roles and don’t play games of who can piss the furthest all the time.
I guess if you ever make it council Gus it wll be a whole new ball game.
Cheers
Why would it be a whole new ball game? Single Councillors cannot make a change. It requires a slate of like-minded people to make a change.
The current system is divide and conquer. As long as Council cannot get it together, Administration will keep on dividing and conquering.
As I said, too many people are having pissing contests and not getting down to productive work that they share with the people of this community. It has been over a year and a half for the newbies who many thought would change the way this City is run when it comes to having “conversations”.
Little did we think that those conversations would be soliloquies.
Soliloquies with circular reasoning.
Mayor Green says she ran on promise to save money. Take a look around after the meters are in and see who’s shopping. If a person needs a dollar every time they need to run into the Northern or similar store downtown when they can get what they need elsewhere, who are the shoppers going to go to.
Mayor and council take a cut in wages and apply to the shortfall that will only get bigger with meters no one is going to be around to put money in.
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