“James says the first attempt to find a successful candidate failed.”

apparently they are having a tough time finding someone who is fluent in double speak!

Love the contracting out of services. That’s an amazing way to spend all these tax increases…….NOT! An increase in salaries is not necessary I it means budget adjusting. Use what you have/taken from us already. You can’t balance a budget if all you do is increase it. Why do we need 3 full time communication personnel? Is our city that interesting that we need 3 people to tell media about us? Just a waste of more tax dollars that the hard earners of Prince George have had stolen from them by this tax-heavy council and mayor.

Once again we are off to the races and spending money that we do not have. (or do we have it?)

I believe that this is the beginning of an effort to control all information that comes out of the City, and will in fact over time mean more applications to the Freedom of Information to get any info.

We should be going in the opposite direction to ensure that citizens are fully apprised as to what’s taking place at City Hall.

This will become known as the era of **Stonewall James**

Seems to me that we posted the position of Communications Manager a number of years ago with a salary in the range of $70,000.00 per year, and when there were no successful applicants, we then hired Mike Davis with a salary around $100,000.00 per year without putting it out for applications again.

Is the same type of switcheroo taking place here. No successful applicants for the posted positions, so we can now hand pick them, and pay what ever the hell we please???

Just askin.

Is maintain the web site part of this department? What do we know about the actual function of this department? Who feeds info into the web site?

The City’s web site has had some improvements to it, but it really is still not where other cities our size or larger are.

In my view, Quesnel has a better web site than we do.

Reorganizing a web site is a major undertaking, BUT I believe it is a one time expense best given to an outsider to give it shape. It is a specialty which is far too expensive to retain in house after it is done and it becomes a maintenance task.

Tell me again why the city needs to crank parking rates in downtown. Why do we the new water runoff tax? Apparently we have lots of money.

Are you kidding me. There were very capable people working in this department until someone gutted it completely. Probably because they refused to spin the information. A very polite way of saying stretching the truth to suit the new CM,and not communicating the truth. The folks who “used” to work there new the history of the City since they were part of it, and could actually provide real, and true input on the impact of decisions that were being made. Obviously not to the liking of the new Sheriff.
So its fire the lot, pay a bunch of severance and increase the Sheriffs budget by half a million. This is the short road to bankruptcy. Please give us a break, and seek therapy for your delusions of adequacy.

1. Increase in Downtown Parking rates.
2. Increase in General Tax
3. Increase in snow and road levy
4. Closure of Quinn St., transfer station resulting in additional costs to get rid of your garbage.
5. New tax (Storm Water Utility)
6. Tax (license) for rental suites and houses.
7. Discontinue discount on paying your utility bills early or on time.

These are the increases that come to mind. Hard to see where the cost savings that were promised during the election campaign are.

It is very important that people keep all this in mind when they go to the polls a year from now.

The general rule is that the more you want to control the flow of information, the more people you need in the communications department.

Whatever happened to the days when politicians spoke directly to the people that PAY THE SALARIES, and let the public decide if they like what they hear or not?

If our mayorette cannot speak for herself, then she most certainly will not be any more better off having someone else write her speeches.

Palopu: “It is very important that people keep all this in mind when they go to the polls a year from now.”

Yes, people will want to go to the polls to replace Green with an unknown who’s promising to give everyone everything they want with low taxes. And then we’ll once again figure out that isn’t possible and run to this site to complain about it.

I believe they call it the circle of life.

JohnnyBelt. How do we know that her replacement will be an unknown.

There are some present and past Councilors who might be interested. In any event getting rid of politicians through the election process is the only tool available to voters. Its not much, but its all we got.

Sheri Green was a past councillor too, Palopu. Anyone see a pattern yet?

The city manager boosts her budget to get communications specialists.
As it happens there is an election next year. I would imagine that these people a spin doctors and will be writing all of the mayors speeches. Save your money she will not get re-elected

Since when is it the City Manager’s job to get the Mayor re-elected?

The Mayor has to keep her re-election campaign separate from her duties as Mayor. It is the latter she gets paid for.

Is anyone keeping an eye out for that?

Seems to me that the there is only a couple current councillors with any political morals and forsight into the realism that is Prince George. One got blackballed for telling the public what they needed to hear before it got “swept under the rug”. I would hope that maybe the moral councillors think about moving up to the Big Seat for next municipal election time.

Where oh where
will we find our new mayor….

Good question middle finger.

We have a limited field to pick from in Prince George.

One can only hope that some individual who has some concern for the average citizens of Prince George, would step forward. Not sure such a person actually exists.

The name of the game seems to be to get the cushy jobs and hob nob.

I really do not think that the Mayor matters as much as the City Manager.

James has to be given some time to see whether she is on the right path.

BTW, the City Managers office in some cities, such as Thunder Bay have the following functions included in the Manager’s budget.

1. Manager’s immediate office – 3
2. human resources – 27
3. City Clerk – 20
4. communications – 6

Total budget for that grouping in Thunder Bay which has about twice the size of budget that PG has with less than 50% more people is $5.2 million.

I think that grouping makes a hell of a lot of sense for the City Manager to deal with more on a day to day basis.

The other departments are all specialty departments which are headed by managers with specific operations specialties – planning, recreation, building, roads, fire, police, etc.

In fact, they have one thing in common – each and every one of them can be contracted out.

For instance, when I came here in 1973, City Planning was contracted out. The city had no planning department at the height of its development.

And, of course, we contract out police.

I have looked at some of the over $100,000/annum compensation positions in Ontario cities of similar size to PG. Their police are all included in that list. That is not the case in PG and other cities that have RCMP contracts, so we really do not see comparative compensations.

Maybe they should stop the subsidies and cheap rent for people keeping there horses at the exibition grounds. This could be one area of savings. why are tax payers helping people board there pets.

Pay severance to the last employees of the communication dept and now hire a head hunter to find new employees. Is there no end to the madness generated by Green and company?

I looked at the 2011 compensation of $100,000 per year and over paid to civic employees in 3 Ontario cities of similar sizes by population and by city area to that of Prince George.

Those in the Ontario cities included city administrators, fire services as well as police services. Since PG has a contracted police force, we do not see salaries of that service included in the reporting out. In addition, we report salaries of $75,000 and over. So that we have equitable analysis, I included only those that were compensated $100,000 and more and also excluded the police compensations for the Ontario Cities.

So, here is what I found when looking at the highest paid city staff:

2011 census population
Prince George71,973
Peterborough75,141
Thunder Bay78,698
Sault Ste. Marie108,359

Compensation for administration and fire services staff $100,000 and over in 2011, first number is admin and second is fire services sorted in order of highest admin. compensation:

Prince George$4,384,958$2,272,650
Thunder Bay$3,311,274$18,330,367
Sault Ste. Marie$3,195,430$2,599,542
Peterborough$3,138,572$2,593,064

Compensation on a per capita basis for admin sorted in order of highest to lowest:

Prince George$60.93
Sault Ste. Marie$42.53
Peterborough$39.88
Thunder Bay$30.56

Compensation on a per capita basis for fire services sorted in order of highest to lowest:

Thunder Bay$169.16
Sault Ste. Marie$34.60
Peterborough$32.95
Prince George$31.58

Please remember, this is limited to compensation for the highest compensated staff in 2011. It is not the total compensation for staff because there is no reporting out on that.

There are many questions that could be asked such as:

1.Why are the highest compensated administrators in PG paid about 50% more than in comparable “remote” winter cities in Ontario when the cost of housing and other costs of living are very comparable?

2.Why are fires services employees in Thunder Bay paid such apparently excessive amounts? Is this something our City has to look forward to in the future? This might be something that is left from amalgamation of two cities in 1970 or so and may also be the cost of having a very large geographic area.

Finally, why did we not see such analysis by KPMG? Such indicators would have assisted in where to look for savings.