Has anyone considered asking the question “why?”

It seems to me that the main reason is that the City made the mistake of not building up sufficient funds to pay for maintenance and renewal. That seems to be the story throughout the City’s operations.

If that is correct, then we are moving from a pay as you go with borrowed funds to a save for future upkeep. When that happens, there will be a period of adjustment which should have a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, however; as we finish off the last borrowing for infrastructure maintenance/renewal, we should be seeing the expenses reduced considerably with a resulting drop or holding steady of taxes.

If that is not the projected case, then something is drastically wrong.

So, who is going to ask the City to come up with those projections for the next 20 years? Or, perhaps they are already included in annual reports.

Someone once told me “you can’t plan for the what ifs…you got to plan for what you know” I generally regard that individual as an idiot.

Prince George’s finances are broken….and no one really wants to deal with it.

With the debt levels PG has its nearly beyond our controls to deal with it anymore. We are now at the whims and mercy of interest rates, and if they ever do go up all our taxes will be tied up in interest payments and or PG will be bankrupt.

Vancouver is the only city in BC with more debt than PG. Most of the cities on the Island are nearly debt free. When interest rates go up it will hardly effect their budget, yet in PG it will start the death spiral of fiscal deficits.

So what does PG council and city hall do… borrow for everything and plan on borrowing another $60 million for a PAC. It defies all logic.

Time to raise the rents on my rental properties. We certainly don’t want to, but after this last utility bill, not much choice.

This is just the beginning, we are a country leading to a mini version of the Greek Economy or should we say little Detroit.

Another reason why we should stop talking about a new performance art building, we can’t even dig ourselves out of this crap .

City Councils gotta show some skin and just say NO to the Performance Arts Building

The nearest storm sewer is 1200 metres from my house I’ll start paying that tax as soon as my roof water reaches the storm sewer.

Ben has made a great point, but the numbers need some clarification.

The graph only shows 5 years of increases, not six because the base year is not counted. Also the interest is compounding, and not just a simple division.

(951.44/559.08)^(1/5) = 13.6% increase compounded annually.

If you take out inflation, it’s closer to 11.6% per year.

It’s still an outrageous amount though.

Posted by: 1fastm3 on March 12 2014 5:55 AM
Time to raise the rents on my rental properties. We certainly don’t want to, but after this last utility bill, not much choice.

Good idea 1fastm3 but why not increase it every year so you can build up a pot of gold?

Does infrastructure repairs ever get caught up Gus? No is the answer unless you live in Pleasentville!

We need to ask the Mayor and Councilors some hard questions as to where they plan to spend our money in the next 10 years.

The Federal Gas Tax Fund starting in 2015 will pay the City $2.97 Million per year for 10 years, plus an inflation increase. So lets say $3 Million for 10 years or $30 Million dollars.

This money can be used for various projects not the least of which is water, sewer, road rehabilitation, storm water, etc; It can also be used for Cultural, Sport infrastructure, so we need some clarification as to where they plan to spend the money. Why a storm water utility tax, when the Gas Tax Fund covers storm water??

The City has plans to transfer funds from the sale of property along highway 16 to a Capital Project Fund. The first money would come from the sale of the Tennis Court lands, more would come from other sales such as the Playhouse Theatre, etc if it goes ahead. Where will this money be spent, and how much do they anticipate on receiving????

Our road rehabilitation levy of some $5 Million per year will generate another $50 Million in 10 years,. So we can say, that in the next 10 years we could have over $100 Million available for various (need) projects. Let hear what the long term plans are.

The above numbers do not include any general increases that we have received in the past 10 years, or the one’s that they surely plan for the next 10.

If the City spent as much time looking for savings, as it does looking for increasing revenue streams we would be in good shape.

We are being bamboozled with flim flam.

I’m going to use rain barrels. If the want a storm water tax, I won’t give them any storm water. What a crock! Someone needs to flat out tell these clowns that if they want to see another term in those chairs at city hall, then they need to pull their head out of their posteriors, and stop treating the people of this city as their “get out of debt” solution. Makes me sad that this is what out city has come to.

When you have no choices, threatening to not elect someone rings hollow. My solution is, hopefully, to sell by 2015 and get the hell out of this place. We found our slice of paradise and it is no where near PG city limits and the pickpockets here.

How does the continuing burning urgency to start borrowing for and building a PAC fit in with the above stark reality?

BTW, Trail needs a new 6 Million dollar library to replace the old one, and guess what? They started a fundraising campaign!

That is something which appears to be a resounding No-No for the local PG PAC society!

As I mentioned before the City will not try to borrow any money for the PAC, because this would trigger an Alternate Approval Process, which if successful would terminate the project.

So they plan to accumulate money from land sales, and any other source that would allow them to come up with their portion without borrowing. This would include the sale of the Playhouse Theatre lands, the Tennis Court Lands (already sold), and any money they could source from the Gas Tax Fund, plus other land sales, and manipulations.

Keep your eye on the ball.

$951.00 per household for utilities multiplied by approx. 32000 households per year times 10 years generates approx. $300 Million dollars. Pretty nice chunk of money and of course this amount would not include any future increases.

Lots of money floating around. Where does it all go?????

What I want to know is, how much do they bring in from this Utility bill a year?

All the rain from my house goes into the ground.. So I wll not pay any rain tax thank you very little

It’s funny, but like most, I’m anti-PAC because I think it’s going to be a burden the city can’t afford – and it’s geared toward a small segment of the city population. But I just had a look at the tax exemptions done in 2012 – and $99,000.00 were to religious institutions – and I thought, why? I believe in God, but I also don’t believe anyone else needs to subsidize my particular brand of belief. So if one of the arguments against PAC is – it’s for a special group, how do we justify exempting a $100,000 a year in revenue, from special groups. And before anyone brings up the Charter – it would only apply if the exemptions were applied to certain religions, and not others.

This is not the end of utility bill increases from the City of PG. The increases will continue, each and every year through to and including 2017. Do you think it will stop there? You may want to phone City Hall to confirm this as I did.

It’s funny because some people think they actually have a choice whether or not to pay the storm sewer levy.

They do JohnnyB. Sell and move is the best protest. You don’t have to move far! Outside the city limits would be enough.
People don’t have to retire here either.

What about the snow removal levy being added to our utility bills! Thought that was happening too or did I miss a council meeting?

Not excusing our City & horrible fiscal management, Eagleone, cities on the Island don’t have the road issues that we deal with. No snow clearing, damage from frost, equipment purchase & upkeep etc. that all comes at a hefty price every year.

Wait till you tally up the increases for your auto and house insurance, auto fuel, BC Hydro 28% increases…etc etc etc. You will be so broke that you’ll be hitting the food bank to make ends meet.

Palopu, I prefer that they would put the money from those land sales into road repair, infrastructure repair (water and sewer pipes) and the repair of storm sewers.

After all the above and + have been taken care of I would agree to a PAC.

The priorities are backwards and have been for a long time. However, their minds are made up and it is not their money.

P Val, phone the City for an explanation about the new storm water utility. Make sure you have 20 minutes to spare.

There is lots of room for cuts. How about the manager who receive a monthly amount to use their personal car but only need to use it once or twice when a city vehicle could do the job. These amounts are often a flat base rate +kms not just kms. Come on city get with the program. Lets see even across the board cut of at least 5%. There is always little bits of fat that when added up turns out to be significant. I still say the problem is managements mind set.

I know I have no choice in paying this stupid tax. The communist regime running our city continues to amaze me.

It would be nice to opt out of things that we pay tax on that we don’t use, but it doesn’t work that way.

With these idiots at City Hall, Counsel and Mayor, they are like teen age kids, they blow their allowance and still come back looking for more. It’s about time we say enough, tax revolt time, we have seen enough ineffective management of the funds they have all ready. No more, they get only what they need and no more new taxes. If it means fighting them in court then so be it, but I for one am more than fed up with there stupid logic and tax grabbing antics.

“No more, they get only what they need and no more new taxes. If it means fighting them in court then so be it, but I for one am more than fed up with there stupid logic and tax grabbing antics.”

LOL….good luck with That, let me know how your ‘courtcase’ goes about NOT paying taxes, are You paying for the Lawyer or asking all the whiners to chip in LOL!!

PG gets what it asks for. Keep voting for Bond and Harris and keep paying more for less.

City Hall isn’t finished yet. If you look at their bylaws, the 2015 utility rates are going up again by 15% to 18%. And voting them out won’t stop the rate increase for 2015. After that, the increases look like they are being kept at 3% until 2017.

“Does infrastructure repairs ever get caught up Gus?”

If the approach to such repairs has been to pay as you go by borrowing money as it comes along because one never knows exactly what will happen, then our taxes are raised or lowered as we go along, never planning for the worst or the average scenario. That is one extreme.

The other extreme is to have enough money on hand to pay for the expense when it happens without borrowing. Thus, instead of paying off the capital (principal) plus interest (about 3%) one is continually feeding the maintenance accounts, with the occasional unforeseen excess, such as a bad snow year in the case of snow removal.

The problem comes when transitioning from one system to another. If borrowing takes place over a 20 year period, as soon as one stops borrowing, the payments will continue until he borrowed money plus interest are p[aid back, diminishing over time as the 20 year period is reached.

In the meantime, emergency as well as planned maintenance is funded through new taxes which fill up the maintenance accounts.

During the transition from one to the other a mixture of the old and the new methods will likely be required. When that transition period is over, which should not last longer than 20 years the proportionate tax will likely be about the same as it was before.

Whether one system is better than another really depends on the interest rates and the rate of inflation for the type of work performed.

The cost of construction has been rising considerably in the last 10 years. I would say that it is higher than the cost of borrowing money through the Municipal Lending Authority. Thus, in the long run, it may be cheaper to continue doing what we are doing.

It would be nice to see the option calculated by a professional. It is called Life Cycle Costing and the City is supposed to be on that process. I have not seen any calculations voluntarily being made to the public. Some other cities that understand what transparency in government means do that.

Gotta say it, but $1,000 a year does seem rather steep for water, sewer and garbage.

I pay roughly $600 a year and that includes curb side recycling. Our water and sewer is also billed based on usage, so you can partially control costs if you are proactive about certain things.

If you do plan on selling yer property, tell the real estate person to specifically avoid showing property tax bills and utility taxes to prospective buyers. Maybe showing potential buyers the tax situation in this ‘burg turns away population growth. Right, Dave W? More people, less taxes. Makes sense to me.

If people are deciding to move to PG, I HIGHLY doubt the property/utility tax situation is going to make them reconsider.

After all, there are cities with much higher growth rates than PG that have much higher taxes.

One has to keep in mind that the utilities are just one part of the equation. It makes more sense to combine the utilities along with the property taxes to get a combined amount.

Going back to my example, I pay about $3,800 a year in property taxes and $600 in utilities for what would be an average house in the burbs. Total of about $4,400. PG is a bargain in comparison. Of course, then you have to factor in services, etc.

I don’t think the amount paid (to a point) frustrates people as much as the value they receive for the amount they pay. I think if people get good snow clearing, good roads, a clean city, etc., they are more willing to pay more because they see where the money is going.

Not sure where all the money for infrastructure has been spent???

Perhaps for new far flung sub divisions, or for tearing up and repairing 500 water main breaks per year.

The road rehab tax pays for roads, the snow tax pays for snow, the utility tax pays for water, sewer, and garbage, the Winter Games Tax pays for frivolity, so what’s left for infrastructure.

Fact is I have never seen them doing any actual infrastructure repairs. I doubt if they even know how bad it is and where they need to start. At best they react to water main breaks, but do they have a plan to replace some water mains.

The outlying areas that came into the City in 1974 have had very little money spent on water, sewer, etc;

So where does the money go. Well it appears that over 60% of all taxes collected goes to salaries and benefits, so that should be our first hint. Second in line is all the money spent on places like the CN Centre, Northern Sport Centre, Swimming Pools, Skating rinks, parks, PG Golf, Curling, and Tennis Club, tax exemptions, etc; etc; etc;.

Last but not least is the huge dollars wasted by a City that does not seem to appreciate the value of a dollar.

The city is making enough to work on making the city back up to,par, enough to fox the roads, sewers, etc, but for some reason they spend it stupidly. And in return we, the tax payers have to pay for it. But the new cop shop, wood innovation centre, the winter games, trips to China, PAC, raises for councillors , hiring friends, etc… All not needed..

I drove by a city worker this morning standing in about 6 inches of water poking a pole at a storm drain (trying to unplug it?) I came back by about 15 mins later, the same city worker was poking the same stick at the same storm drain. Now that’s money well spent.