ICBA president Philip Hochstein is on the mark when he sums it up: “These gold-plated pay and perk packages are the main reason why city hall never turns around to tell you your taxes are going down.

“What’s unfair about the situation is you’re being asked to send more money to the taxman off your paycheque to subsidize increases so civic workers can get pay and pension richer than yours.”

http://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/opinion/162654226.html

If the solution is not to cut back on civil service employees, then the solution may be found by providing all taxpayers with the same benefits.

Raise everyone to the same level, increase the taxes accordingly and basically end up with an improved tax based benefit plan to increase the OAS, CPP, and MSP plans to something which is more livable.

That way all of us gain through an expanded insurance plan and through everyone paying more or less according to the ability to pay.

What is good for civil servants is also good for all the private servants.

BTW, those who believe that this and any other city in Canada will ever be in a position to reduce taxes are living in a dream world.

We have to get ready to laugh in the face of any candidate who tries to promise tax cuts during next year’s election campaigns.

So true Gus….I can see a run on shovels next civic election.

Why am I not surprised that the City of Prince George is facing another budget short fall?

We should be switching the pensions to the defined contribution model. Those jurisdictions in the States that have switched don’t have the major financial issues of places that haven’t switched.

Under the defined contribution model, the pension for each employee is based upon what was contributed plus what the return was. This means that there is no such thing as a pension that is not fully funded.

Start cutting back the workforce. There are way too many people gorging themselves at the taxpayer funded trough. As we’re seeing; this model is not sustainable.

As soon as the politicians switch over to a defined contribution model that isn’t fully indexed, I am game to being switched. ( I already am a defined contribution model, that isn’t indexed and I am a public employee ). Come on now, lets have our politicians show some leadership, by example

“Start cutting back the workforce”

I do not think that will help very much, in fact, it may make things more expensive.

If you were to say start cutting back the services, that is another thing all together.

I think cutting back the workforce and contracting out will simply mean that the “manual” labour will be cut, management will be kept and will likely increase since they will have to have a few more contract administrators.

It would be eashy enough for City Hall to price that out, department by department.

An easy one, I think. Contract out all Leisure and convention services as well as parks and street maintenance. Set a standard by which the contractor(s) will be evaluated, promote some city staff to the position of contract administrators and quality control.

The two scenarios should be fairly easy to be given some cost attributes to help decision making.

Again, where were KPMG on this type of input. They are bean counters and they supposedly had the expertise in City Operations.

But hey, we only had one bidder, so the wised people at City Hall went ahead and awarded it with little control.

“But hey, we only had one bidder, so the wised people at City Hall went ahead and awarded it with little control.”

Not only was there just the sole bidder, the city went and told them what the maximum budget was before they submitted their bid. This city (indeed pretty much every city in this country) is incapable of running efficiently. Municipal governments are nothing but a massive boondoggle. For the politicians, this is just a stepping stone (they hope!) to bigger and better things and they certainly don’t want to be stepping on any toes this early in their political careers.

gus: “An easy one, I think. Contract out all Leisure and convention services as well as parks and street maintenance. Set a standard by which the contractor(s) will be evaluated, promote some city staff to the position of contract administrators and quality control.”

I’m in total agreement gus, and this is only one of many opportunities.

The only problem is that with such thinking, you’ll run into heavy resistance from CUPE and other such unions who do not like to see their membership numbers fall. They don’t care what they cost the taxpayer.

Phil Hochstein is the wrong person to talk about gold plated perks. He is one of the people on the inside of the BC Liberals so gets all the goodies they give. He is also a super hard liner who believe construction companies should be able to pay carpenters and plumbers $10/hr while his companies rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

He may be right on the perks but it is the case of the pot calling the kettle black

Phil Hochstein is the wrong person to talk about gold plated perks. He is one of the people on the inside of the BC Liberals so gets all the goodies they give. He is also a super hard liner who believe construction companies should be able to pay carpenters and plumbers $10/hr while his companies rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

He may be right on the perks but it is the case of the pot calling the kettle black

I am not sure why some think contracting out is the magic solution that will reduce taxes forever. All that happens is that you reduce the wages paid to those doing the actual work and the savings becomes the profit margin for the contracted company and it’s shareholders.

There would also be costs associated with overseeing the contract to make sure the contractor is living up to established standards so whatever you might save by paying people less is eaten up fairly quickly. There are also some services like police, fire, water and sewer, that you may not want to put in the hands of a multinational corporation.

The bottom line is you have to evaluate each opportunity case by case and even if you contracted out everything, taxes would still go up.

I taught part time at the college for five or so years and was part of their pension plan. One day I get a statement offering me a significant chunk of cash to buy me out of my measly monthly pension. I called and asked why they were being so nice to me, and they said that they have to base the payouts on what current interest rates are, and because rates are so low, they have to give me more cash. If rates went up, they would have offered me less. So, it should stand to reason, if interest rates ever go up again, so that pension plans can earn more money, that the contribution required should go down. Unless of course higher interest rates trigger inflation,and since these plans are inflation protected, it would be a wash.

Maybe if the province stopped downloading costs onto the municipalities, we would not be in a budget shortfall position?

Posted by: People#1 on October 8 2013 1:00 PM
Maybe if the province stopped downloading costs onto the municipalities, we would not be in a budget shortfall position?

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You’re kidding right? Whether it be the provincial government or the municipal government the money is still being sucked out of the taxpayers pocket.

In my opinion the only solution is to start trimming the fat (and there’s a lot of it!) from the civil service.

I am not kidding axman;

“Eighty-six B.C. city mayors are huddling in an Okanagan resort over the next three days to strategize and confront what might be called The Big Download.”

http://thetyee.ca/News/2012/05/16/The-Big-Download/

So give us some examples of fat that needs to be trimmed from the City of PG civil service axman.

In Switzerland they are bringing in a system that sees every person in the country get $2900 a month base income from government. Eliminate welfare, and pensions, and smooth out the divide between the rich and the poor building a society that leaves no one behind is their idea. Kind of a social credit idea. Their tax rate I would assume is higher than ours in Canada for the rich though, but $2900 a month would sure go a long way to paying ones tax bill?

The reality of whether a pension plan is “underfunded” or not is based on actuarial science. In essence, one has to look at the assets in the plan, expected future rates of return and estimated future plan obligations. As such, there can be HUGE deviations and swings in regards to whether plans are “underfunded” or not.

It’s funny how these think tanks never spoke up before the financial meltdown when plans were fully funded, some so much that governments actually raided them and transferred surplus money from them into general revenues or to pay down debts. Had those funds been left in the plans (like the actuarial scientists no doubt expected), we may not even be having this discussion.

As for what to do, I agree with gus. I say make some form of retirement savings vehicle mandatory and give the person the choice as to which one they choose. They can either do it though RRSP’s, an employee pension plan or increased CPP premiums.

Current CPP limits are woefully inadequate as to provide a retirement income and many people just don’t have the discipline to invest into a retirement savings plan. Let’s get with the times and adjust those programs so that people don’t have to work until they are 80 years old and crippled . . .

When the highways maintenance was privatized service went down and cost went up.

Posted by: People#1 on October 8 2013 2:36 PM
I am not kidding axman;

“Eighty-six B.C. city mayors are huddling in an Okanagan resort over the next three days to strategize and confront what might be called The Big Download.”

http://thetyee.ca/News/2012/05/16/The-Big-Download/

So give us some examples of fat that needs to be trimmed from the City of PG civil service axman.

——————

But the money still comes from the taxpayer. Either way, we’re paying; one way just makes the city’s budgets look good, the other favours the province.

In Switzerland the maximum pay that CEOs can collect already has a limit. A new referendum (they love referenda in Switzerland whereas here they are feared and frowned upon by politicians!) is being drafted that will limit the salary of CEOs to twelve times what the lowest paid company employee (hourly and staff) is being paid!

I don’t know if government bigwigs will have to abide by the same limits, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t.

Look at ANY City that has contracted out and the services Always suffer! I laugh at how its ALWAYS the “Greedy” city workers who are the easy solution on this site when in reality a massive amount of the wages are going to pay 5% of the Top Heavy city positions. Tax dollars go to pay for City, Provincial, & Federal services, why does the City of PG have folks making 6 figure salaries for all doing the same job??!

I have to agree with Knowledge88 – never mind the wage earner fixing the streets, handling our garbage etc. They deserve a decent wage to care for their families etc..My concern is over those at City Hall who are approaching a quarter million a year for wages! This isn’t Vancouver or Toronto, it’s little Prince George. So that’s the wage scale, some would say…but really…do we really need someone of supposedly that caliber…couldn’t those jobs be scaled back to junior positions with half the wages, which even at that…would be a good wage.