New Survey Launched to Gauge Your Thoughts on City Budget
Friday, September 20, 2013 @ 4:00 AM
Prince George, B.C.- The number crunching is about to begin as City Staff start preparing a budget for 2014.Council has already called on staff to prepare the budget with a maximum 2.5% increase in mind. As part of the information gathering process, a survey has been launched by the City, asking for your preferences on how tax dollars should be spent. You can access that survey here.
The on line survey is part of the community consultation plan, which is to be presented to Council on Monday evening.
In an effort to get more residents involved in the consultation process, there is a proposal for City Staff to host an e-town hall meeting in October. This meeting would be live streamed on the internet, perhaps as a Committee of the Whole meeting. The proposal would see residents able to participate in person, over the phone, or, with some minor tweaking to the video streaming process, able to ask questions or make comments.
According to the proposal, the meeting would feature three components:
1. an overview of the budget process and the key issues related to developing a budget
2. a moderated dialogue and
3 an open question and answer period
It is expected the first scheduled budget deliberation meting for Council will be in late November.
Comments
What is the point of a survey? Do you really think they will pay any attention to the results.
Best to participate because if you don’t and all the PAC people do, they will be building a PAC next year.
Kind of like voting. If you don’t vote you don’t have the right to complain.
“Canadian governments â slowly, awkwardly and in the usual piecemeal manner â are gradually beginning to address the financial elephant in their shared room, the problem of unaffordable public pensions.”
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/09/17/kelly-mcparland-alberta-says-it-cant-afford-public-pensions-then-who-can/
Didn’t the city disregard the results from the last survey they did for some really ridiculous reasons? I can’t remember the exact details, maybe someone else here can?
Scary Mayor said it could be the same person sending a couple hundred replies….
Ohh a “survey..” Or as i call them.. a pre determined set of outcomes you can vote on without the option of providing any tangible input or solutions..!
They just voted at the UBCM to extend the term from 3 years to four years! Rest assured that they will work fast and hard to change the next election date from November 2014 to November 2015, giving you an extra year of enjoying the present elected council!
First, I know of no one that got a 2.5% increase in their wages, so they make this number sound like it’s austerity, when in fact it should be no more than inflation. That said, if part of this number is capital spending to improve infrastructure, it makes sense because the reason it’s in such decay is previous councils didn’t tax enough.
As for this 4 year thing, it’s bad enough it takes 3 years to get rid of an “off the rails” council. I suggest if they want 4 years like the MLA’s have, then we should also have recall provisions after a year and a half so we can get rid of a bad Councillor without waiting for 4 years of damage to be done.
It would be nice to get an overview and explanation of the budget process. I can’t very well comment on it in a survey if i don’t understand it.
It would be nice to get into the survey link itself. Seems it does not work………..and it is not from this end but the city website itself..
It comes up with this:
2014 Provisional Operating Budget Survey (Old)
Skip Navigation LinksCity of Prince George Web Site > Info Centre > Citizen Engagement > Engagement Bookmark and Share
This survey is presently unavailable, sorry for any inconvenience.
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