Well its #1 to me….

Hell Yea!!!

Hell Yeah!

Full list if interested.

http://www.moneysense.ca/canadas-best-places-to-live-2014-full-ranking

Did I read that correctly? That Money Sense ranking reads that PG has an unemployment rate of 10%. Yikes.

Total population (Age 15+) 125,500 Unemployment rate In Prince George 4.2 % – See more at: http://www.workbc.ca/Statistics/Regional-Profiles/2#sthash.yMpWz7zD.dpuf

A little disparity between the ranking body and the agency responsible for reporting the figures.

is it 10% @ 80k population or 4.2 @ 125k?

Any list that has Port Alberni as the worst place to live in Canada is way out of touch with reality. That is a very nice clean city with low crime and fantastic surroundings, warm winters, and the city has no debt so very little interest rate risk to local taxes.

I see Wood Buffalo has the highest earnings per capita in Canada. Tried to find it on google earth and it doesn’t exist. I am assuming this is another name for Fort McMurry as that is not on the list at all?

Wood Buffalo is what is called a Regional Municipality in Alberta. It contains Ft. McMurray as one of the municipalities. It is the largest.

They have a single Council made up of a mayor and 10 Councillors. I watched some of their meetings. Quite a progressive, open and transparent process, reminding me more of a USA municipal government than a Canadian one. Definitely very progressive compared to PG.

I do not know when the 10% unemployment figure is taken. Must be a couple of years ago. Money Sense and McLeans, etc. usually run a few years in arrears.

The link Loki shows connects to the 7 economic regions of the province. PG is part of the Cariboo economic region.

That MoneySense magazine makes no sense! Nothing to get excited about! It is better to live in Terrace than in Prince George?

Give me a break!

PG average property tax as a percentage of household income 2.08%.

It is the 40th in the list of 200 with 39 having less and 159 having more.

Victoria, North Van., Williams Lake, Dawson Creek, Prince Rupert, Langley, New Westminster, Quesnel, Terrace, Campbell River, Forst St. John, Port Alberni, and Cranbrook are all better than PG.

So, that is property tax based on affordability of the incomes this community has.

The average household income ranks PG as 94th in the country at $77,441.73.

Average discretionary income ranks PG higher as 69th, for a value of $40,782.65.

Rated as number of doctors/1,000 population we rank 44th at 2.49 doctors/1,000

We rank 89th with the number of people employed in health care at 3.97% of the workforce.

Going back to crime rate, we rank 190th with the 5 year change in crime rate. It INCREASED by 7.79% of the 5 years.

Wow ! Terrace, (ripbum) must have a PAC to rate higher than PG. ;-)

“It is better to live in Terrace than in Prince George?”

Based on the criteria they set … weather, doctors, income, disposable income, crime rate, etc. etc.

Not on access to recreation, cheap flights to get out, remoteness or proximity to other interests, quality of restaurants, entertainment, etc.

Absolutely nothing about education, diversity index for jobs, etc.

Prince Rupert has had a Municipal Theatre for some time.

Gus said: “They (Wood Buffalo) have a single Council made up of a mayor and 10 Councillors. I watched some of their meetings.”

I say this only because I care…. you need a hobby.

LOL… Pylot Project, made me laugh! :-D

When looking at one specific ranking, you definitely have to look at how they arrived at their conclusions and factor that in when you try and interpret the results.

What I find more meaningful is to look at trends from year to year or to see how cities tend to stack up in different rankings.

For example, there are some cities that always seem to come out near the very top, regardless of what methodology is used. Unfortunately for PG, many of these studies tend to focus on larger cities so it can be tough to see where PG would “fit”. That said, I think there are lessons to be learned that could be applied to smaller places like PG.

Generally speaking, the places that always seem to rank high do very well in a number of different things. Some of them are obvious like high annual incomes, low crime and accessible health care. Others are less obvious but important to the ranking nonetheless. Things like population diversity, a clean environment, above average cultural and recreational opportunities and highly educated populations.

Well from this position when can go only up right?
Oh wait a sec they surveyed 200!

I guess this would be the old; is the glass three quarters empty or a quarter full?

PG may be ranked 148th among the best places to live in Canada, but we also rank 14th in Canada for crime rate.

Prince Rupert Performing Arts Theatre is called the Lester Centre of the Arts.

A quick look at the events calendar tells me this theatre sits empty most days.

Jan 2014- 4 events in 31 days
Feb 2014- 4 events in 28 days
Mar 2014- 6 events in 31 days
Apr 2014- 3 events in 30 days
May 2014- 7 events in 31 days
Nothing on the calendar after that.
I realize this does not include set-up tear-down days and rehearsal days.

That’s fine with me. Prince George can stay a best kept secret for a while longer…

Gus – “Prince Rupert has had a Municipal Theatre for some time.” – L.O.L. – that’s a good one.

“I say this only because I care…. you need a hobby”

You do not know me …. so how do you know I need a hobby.

Have you bought any of my photographs yet??

How about my carvings?

I might take up charcoal drawings again. My family is trying to get me to do watercolours ….

My favourite hobby actually is keeping myself informed about changes. I love learning new things.

I am also slowly becoming a curator of my family photographs going as far back as the 1930s during my mother’s and grandfather’s days when they were going to the coast for the summer, their canoeing and sailboating, tennis, swimming, etc.

Of course the thought that go through my head is why should I do such things?

My father had no hobbies to speak of. I am not like that. They might be unusual hobbies to some, but they are my hobbies, my decision to carry them out, no one else’s.

Remember, the thinking is that if you keep your brain active, dementia and Alzheimers is less likely to set in.

So, my advice to you in return, in your later years ….. ;-)

Personally I think Prince George, is still one of the best places to live in and is highly under rated. When I’m in Vancouver and tell a waitress I can be at work in less then 20 minutes, their eyes bug out. A young couple just starting out, still have a hope of owning a home in Prince George. We have lakes and ski hills near to the city. You don’t have to stand in line for 20 minutes to half an hour for an ice cream. Traffic congestion is maybe an hour in the morning and in the late afternoon. We can have some really nice summers. Even when it’s 30 below we still most often have the sun shinning. Not like Kamloops or Kelowna, where sure the winters are shorter, but it’s gloomy from about October to March. If you get tired of winter we have a direct flight to Mexico, come on people count your blessings. We just need to get a better Mayor and things would even be better. :)

“You don’t have to stand in line for 20 minutes to half an hour for an ice cream”

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Where the heck are you buying ice cream? LOL ;)

148th out of 201. Pretty damn good. Only another 147 positions to go. Like Avis PG needs to try harder.

Gus, you mention doctors! Just go to see an eye specialist here in PG, or one of the other specialists. Who do you see in the waiting rooms? People who have travelled from far and wide (including Terrace) because they do not have these in their towns. Ditto for the Cancer Clinic and the Lodge…and the General Hospital.

There is the University and the CNC. Great educational facilities for the kids who grow up here, for instance! Maybe somebody should alert MoneySense about these and that they actually exist?

I agree with Cheetos! Knowing that nothing is perfect I accept some of the bad in PG together with the good. I am also an optimist, always thinking that those in charge of this City will wake up one day and go to work tackling the problems which are surmountable if reason would only prevail over hard too modify habits.

It is a pretty good town to live in (albeit not pretty) – even without a PAC and with far too many potholes!

Granville Island on a hot summer day …. ???!!!

“We have lakes and ski hills near to the city”

Hmmm … Vancouver … sail in the morning, ski in the afternoon at one of three ski hills on the north shore … or at night with the city lights below …. probably the only place in the world with such a view from a ski slope. BUT, it is an urban view ….. not like the view from Whistler runs …. just a jumping alpine village with the ambience of some of the ski hills in Europe …

BC is beautiful …. I really do not find PG to be one of the jewels in the crown of this world class scenic province, other than maybe for those who go hunting …..

Yes, I mentioned doctors and doctor offices because that is one of the higher rankings that we have – 156 communities are worse off by count. I assume that has to do with the medical program we now have and the fact that we are a regional center drawing all those people in from the northern half of the province.

Strange you should mention eye doctor, because I have just been visiting mine. She is known as one of the best around who even gets patients from outside of BC.

Yes, she asks each patient whether they are from out of town or PG so that she can accommodate them better for scheduling visits/procedures.

I also enjoy the fact that students often accommodate the doctors who often assist with clinics at the hospital. One can learn a lot from some of the dialog.

NMG – It was more like Gelato being served near West Hastings, near Coal Harbour. Line up was too long, didn’t buy any.

Well lets say, Prince George is a diamond in the rough. At least it still is affordable. Every where you go in Vancouver, you need to put out a dollar, here and there. Go across a bridge and you get a little present in the mail for $10.00 bucks please, like welcome to Vancouver, hope you had a good stay, now please pay for crossing the Port Mann Bridge. Vancouver is a beautiful City, along the ocean framed by the mountains, but it must be an expensive city to live in every day. You can go water skiing and sailing on one of the many lakes, not too far from PG; we have an amazing view of the North Lights, coming down airport hill at night presents a wonderful light show of Pr George and during the day a great view of the confluence of the Nechako and Fraser Rivers, nestled near a 100 year old Bridge. I mean it’s not Vancouver, but hey it’s not chopped liver also.

The area around PG was much prettier before all the trees died. When I came back for a visit a couple of years ago I was actually in a temporary state of shock, LOL. I knew it was bad, but after living a couple of years in a pretty lush environment, your view of “normal” changes.

The area around Cottonwood is nice, but it’s also in the middle of an industrial park. Forests for the World is also nice, but again, it’s not that unusual to find stuff like that in virtually any city.

The other BIG thing PG is missing is ambience. There is literally no place that people can just go to hang out and enjoy a summer evening. The downtown is a dead zone, there are no public markets, etc. From a public space point of view, it’s a very impersonal town. Everything is done inside a building it seems.

I’m not sure I’ve visited a reasonably sized city in this end of the continent that didn’t have some sort of “gathering space” and/or a “created” environment. I love nature as much as the next person, but sometimes just sitting back on a bench, watching people and taking in a nice city scape is as relaxing at going for a hike.

Cheetos, you just did a months worth of IPG work for free. Well done !

“NMG – It was more like Gelato being served near West Hastings, near Coal Harbour. Line up was too long, didn’t buy any”

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Ah gotcha. Some really good spots in English Bay for ice cream and gelato as well. Damn, now I want a snack, LOL.

I can thinking of 147 other cities that I would rather live in.

NMG – I think Prince George is a victim of the mentality of “hey let’s make our millions” and then leave dodge. I know I might get criticized, but that’s okay. I think there has been some very poor town planning. I have lived in PG all my life and I’m quickly approaching 57 years of age. Downtown revitalization has been talked about as long as I can remember. But whenever there was the opportunity, it fell through our hands. The University, the CN Centre, the Casino, should have all been located downtown. It would have brought people downtown and the dynamics would have changed dramatically. Where the University is currently located, could have been an excellent place for housing overlooking the City and such. It’s really too bad, but nevertheless when I was growing up, we always found places to hang out. Fort George Park was an excellent spot and still is, but parks seem to have become old fashioned. Caunaught Hill was another spot.

Middle Finger….I think that instead of our Mayor going to China, she and her team should spend some time in Vancouver promoting our fair city. As far as IPG is concerned, I don’t even know what they are doing..

NMG – unfortunately we can’t find good Gelato in Prince George, so I’m missing that snack also.. :)

NMG:”I’m not sure I’ve visited a reasonably sized city in this end of the continent that didn’t have some sort of “gathering space” and/or a “created” environment. “

You are correct! A city without a town square or downtown plaza for gatherings and open air events, Christmas market, farmers’ market – whatever one wants to call it – has no heart, no ambience!

PG chooses to put very square meter of downtown space to commercial use. The WIDC
is the latest example! There was an opportunity to create a town square close to City Hall with restaurants and small boutiques, perhaps a band stand and a fountain…well, perhaps some other time!

We ( I mean IPiG) rented billboard space in Vancouver to promote PG. I’m sure any one who seen made travel plans to visit us.

NMG….the only place where people congregate in everyday PG is the soup line at St. Vinnies.

Speaking of Saints…..lets change our name from Prince George to St. George. That will fake out all these magazines.

HAHAHA ….a fountain ? Prince George already screwed that one up.

Even though we have doctors and a hospital and a cancer clinic, we still have a hell of a lot of people in this town that have to go to Vancouver, Kelowna, or Victoria, for various operations etc;.

That’s why we have a huge bus that is on the road constantly between PG and Vancouver. Not only do they have to go to Vancouver, but sometime they have to stay in emergency (no beds available in hospital) for four or five days waiting for a plane to fly them to Vancouver.

So all is not milk and honey at the local hospital.

I agree that a gathering place would be a good fit for Prince George, however who would ever do anything to see it come to fruition??? Certainly not the Mayor, Council, or City Administration.

We have very little civic pride in Prince George. A case is point is the Courthouse building, that was to be a centre piece of downtown. It is surrounded by less than stellar buildings, and has no attraction what so ever for the populace at large.

Worse yet they allow all the snow during the winter to pile up in front of the court house, and don’t seem to have the intestinal fortitude to remove it. It looks terrible, and no one seems to give a s..t.

There are many other City owned sites, and buildings in Prince George that are nothing more than eyesores, and the City seems not to care.

Getting some sort of half assed rating from a Magazine will not make any difference what so ever.

The City spends millions putting in flowers in the parks and on Connaught hill, etc; while at the same time, people are dumping in the alleys in the downtown area because of no bathroom facilities. Hmmmmm.

Dear ACQ(arm chair quarterbacks),please think about the number of bitchy words you have hammered, than try to become more positive, as many in Prince George have done to build this city to where it is today compared to even 20 years ago…Thank you for your time

“Dear ACQ(arm chair quarterbacks),please think about the number of bitchy words you have hammered”

Interesting that you had to use “bitchy” words yourself in order to strike back.

;-)

“You are correct! A city without a town square or downtown plaza for gatherings and open air events, Christmas market, farmers’ market – whatever one wants to call it – has no heart, no ambience!”

Actually that identifies most European cities the size of Prince George. Larger cities typically have moe than just one square.

The cities in the USA and Canada this size rarely have such “squares”. They normally have linear streets. On occasion they will close some of those streets for one day or less farmer’s markets.

Examples are the closing of a block in Kamloops, the use of a field in Kelowna which makes for no so wonderful footing when it rains.

Victoria is a city which is older than most and has a series of alleys. One has to go back east to find real market squares typically built prior to 1900.

Today’s “market squares are shopping malls, either indoor or out. Why? because today’s cities and satellite neighbourhoods are based on the automobile, not streetcars, whether horse drawn or electrified.

A fact of life. Think of it.

New York has Times Square, Washington Square. Rockefeller Plaza. Vancouver has the Courthouse and Art Gallery spanning from Georgia and spanning across Robson.

The most concentrated area to see and be seen is Granville Island, where one could drive around for 20 minutes to find a parking place. For those who know the area you know that there is no public transportation on the island. It is totally based on automobile traffic. In my mind although very successful, that is one of its main failings.

We had a group looking at creating a downtown public market some 15 years ago. It failed miserably because no one was interested in providing an old solution to a modern problem. PG is not that type of city.

Instead we have a butcher on the other side of the river, one on 1st avenue, a fishmonger in Nicholson centre, a couple of bakeries downtown, a deli on Massey …. Each one is a destination outlet capable of creating a greater drawing card to a central place much larger than the sum of the whole.

So, how do we plan for that in a free market enterprise in the 21st century? Therein lies the challenge.

This is Toronto’s venture into creating another active square in the downtown. It is not the only people active square in Toronto. Just a new generation square fed by public transit.

Yonge-Dundas Square.

http://www.ydsquare.ca

We have three perfectly good “squares”.

City Hall with potential commercial space on its northeast-north-northwest sides and is an anchor to George Street and the Courthouse Square and its potential commercial activities on the at least three sides.

Then we have the Civic Centre Square which never received the commercial activity it was supposed to get. We have a new hotel going up. The potential is still there. The $500thousand+ to be spent there does not create any incentive to use the square more.

We have no planning department which understands or is allowed to bring forward its understanding of the dynamics of social spaces in a public-private space.

It is almost as if the planning department has decided that Council wants to micromanage planning in this City, so let us just let them do that.

Just thinking …. we do not have social spaces … we have social media …. people at the end of computers communicating in a quasi real, quasi fake world never knowing who we are really communicating with and who is sitting next to us at this café table in the internet listening in to our conversation.

Some of us on the internet still live in both worlds, some barely get out anymore to interact face to face.

“please think about the number of bitchy words you have hammered”

What the duck does that mean ?

After the last Utilities increase I will be finding a better place to live when I retire in two years, just can’t afford to live here any longer. Now I understand why so many City staff live outside City limits.

Seems a bit high to me, this town is awful if you aren’t an old white man (or the wife of one) who works in a mill and lives on the hill.

Filthy town, full of crime, racism, and FYGM attitude. Access to healthcare sucks, shopping is limited, and yeah sure you can get a cheap house as long as you are willing to live on a street named after a tree.

I had thought the university would liven things up and improve the city, but most of the grads seem to wisen up quick and use their new degree to get the hell out and move somewhere that isn’t such a dump.

Looking forward to leaving here as soon as possible, soon as my contract is up.

I see we have the same usual 250 crowd saying the same usual things about PG. It must suck to live in your glass half full world. Enjoy!

Haha..of course I meant to say “glass half empty world”. My bad for being positive even when I’m trying to be negative.

Top 150 is not bad for PG. With it’s long winters and high crime rate. I figure it would be right at the bottom of the list. Maybe the new Target store has something to do with it. (sarc)

Survey most likely put together by urban dwellers not rural. Add in hiking, fishing, hunting, atv snowmobiling etc almost out my backyard then see the results.

Well, trees can’t move but people can. Those who hate this town so much can look for greener pastures! Their negativity contributes to drag down the overall positive ambience, as little as there is.

Because I like doing statistical analysis that gives me a bit more meaningful information, I have took the time to take a closer look at what gives this city some “positives” as well as some “negatives”

Each one of use will look at these things differently, so I have put my spin on things next to each ranking which tells you whether the ranking is done from low to high or high to low. If you do not like one or the other, just reverse it given that there are 200 cities being evaluated according to the magazine.

13 – days above 24C (assume fewer is better)

16 – provincial income tax (assume lower is better)

43 – total rainfall (assume less is better)

45 – medical offices/1,000 (assume higher is better)

50 – property tax % of income (assume lower is better)

62- doctors/1,000 (assume more is better)

69 – average years to buy a home (assume lower is better)

69 – average discretionary income (assume higher is better)

75 – average property tax (assume lower is better)

76 – days with rain (assume fewer is better)

89 – % employed in healthcare (assume higher is better)

94 – average household income

108 – days below -20C (assume fewer is better)

111 – take public transit to work (assume more is better)

116 – bike to work (assume more is better)

118 – days with precipitation (assume fewer is better)

127 – walk to work (assume more is better)

129 – average house prices (assume higher is better)

142 – average household net worth (assume higher is better)

143 – population growth (assume higher is better)

149 – mean daily temperature (assume higher is better)

150 – days above 0C (assume more is better)

154 – employment in arts and recreation (assume more is better)

159 – % new cars (assume more is better)

174 – unemployment rate (assume lower is better)

177 – % of new luxury cars (assume more is better)

180 – days above 20C (assume more is better)

186 – crime rate per 100,000 (assume lower is better)

Oops, forgot these in the list so adjust the previous post accordingly.

187 – crime severity index (assume lower is better)

190 – 5 year change in crime rate (assume higher is better

192 – violent crime severity index (assume lower is better)

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Being 100th on the overall list would put us in the middle of the pack. We have 12 below 100 and 19 above 100.

So, we need to work on those above 100 to bring them down. Most urgently, if we want to get lower than 148, we need to work on those 11above 148.

So, let us work on

1. increasing CO2 release so that the climate will get warmer or look into covering the city with a buckydome.

2. Lets build a PAC and a bunch more arenas, golf courses, swimming pools, family Ys etc. to employ more people in culture and recreation

3. buy more new cars instead of running them into the ground.

4. make more jobs (actually I think there is something wrong with the use of 10%)

5. Ditch those $60,000 crew cabs and buy more $45,000 beamers

6. legalize pot

Of particular interest to those who are beating this City to death on the property tax issue, and those few of us who feel we are not a high property tax city are the following 5th and 9th best of the criteria:

50 – property tax % of income (assume lower is better)

75 – average property tax (assume lower is better)

The real question is not the amount we pay, but are we getting value for the dollars we are paying. I do not think we are. BUT we cannot start to tie the hands by asking for something that really cannot be accomplished.

middle finger “hammered” as in angrily struck the keyboard keys