Sorry Don , you turned your back and walked away once before, so convincingly tell me why i should trust you now? I have a feeling you can’t do it….

I’m open to hear from both Lynn Hall and Don Zurowski. I like the ambition of growing our city to 100,000. But over how long? and how? We’ve had a large marketing push, but with the rural areas of our province being more accessible with by plane. We’ve seen a lot of people choose to live all over our province, while taking advantage of northern prosperity. How do you convince them to call Prince George home?

I would also like to hear what Don’s strategy is to revitalize our downtown. If we want to be seen as an urban centre in the province, we need a strong urban centre within our city.

I should also mention, he’s not wrong asking our residents to be the marketing team. Be proud of PG. Look at the positive effects Hell Yeah PG! has had.

I know if I run into someone who says rude things about my city, I’m quick to ask them what about PG do they have an issue with? Normally it leaves people without further comment…

dan left town when he lost not don

pgjohn: “Look at the positive effects Hell Yeah PG! has had. ”

What positive effects are those exactly?

As for the plan to grow the City to 100,000, that’s all well and good. We’ve been trying to grow the City for a long time now, and have gotten nowhere.

pgjohn: “I know if I run into someone who says rude things about my city, I’m quick to ask them what about PG do they have an issue with? ”

I would say we’ve got a lot of problems to overcome; crime, gangs, drugs, poor national reputation, bad air, long winters, and a boom and bust economy just to name a few. PG is just not a hugely desirable place to live compared to many other areas in BC.

Correct me if I am wrong should the figure be nearly 72,000 not 80,000 citizens of PG? Check the stats.

Zurowski believes we NEED a PAC to help attain more population does he not?

Not in my books……

editor’s note….
Zurowski has not said he is in favour of a Performing Arts Centre….His platform clearly states “needs, not wants”

johnnybelt, there’s been a lot of people that have been more proud of being from this city…

“I would say we’ve got a lot of problems to overcome; crime, gangs, drugs, poor national reputation, bad air, long winters, and a boom and bust economy just to name a few. PG is just not a hugely desirable place to live compared to many other areas in BC.”

Crime has been significantly reduced, gangs, and drugs along the same issue. Boom and bust? Our city faired better than most of the country through the past recession. An incredible university is something else to be proud of. Long winters? Find a hobby, deal with it. Another positive… People in PG can afford to live in PG. Don’t live in an artificial bubble like the lower mainland, island, and okanagan where everyone claims they couldn’t possibly leave it, while not being able to truly afford to be there.

PG has been a great city for me, and I’ve been able to achieve more here than I could have in other cities in BC, or Canada. Plenty to be proud of! Canada Games were also awarded to Prince George over Kamloops and Kelowna, so apparently our national reputation isn’t that poor.

And I’ve traveled Canada, a poor reputation isn’t the issue. Most people in the east aren’t aware we even exist, so your point is invalid on poor national reputation.

I have had one occasion to deal with Mr. Zurowski when he was an alderman and he completely ignored the facts and went with flow, I would consider him a follower and not a leader.

My first thought after reading the headline…..

“Let’s get it growing”……Zurowski campaign slogan

“Let’s get going”…….Shari Green campaign slogan

Who writes this cheesy stuff ? That’s just stealing the IPG theme song.

Or was it “moving on up” ? No, that was the Jeffersons theme song.

P.G. does have a lot to offer, unfortunately P.G. does have its faults. Compared to Quesnel P.G. wins hands down for its high populations of narrow minded, greedy, clicky and negative residents. Not sure if a new mayor or counsel can change that, maybe we would have more success hiring a priest to perform routine exorcisms.

Growing the city population base in any meaningful way takes economic activity that Mayor & Council has little power to effect. They can become “industry & business friendly” by changing the tax class ratios and putting more of the burden on residents (a hugely unpopular approach I’m betting) and cleaning up the regulatory environment in terms of running business in this town. Beyond that though, I can’t see what they could possibly attract people in greater numbers. If your plan is to offer more access to recreation, think again. We have plenty already, in fact, I would argue that we should rationalize some of what we got already.

I’d like to offer a suggestion for a slogan change to “Let’s Get Smarter.” We need to start running this city a lot smarter than we do right now. I’d like to see a focus on sustainability, affordability, densification and innovation. Mayor & Council have a great deal of power to effect such things and would contribute more to base growth than any slogan and banner waving campaign ever could. If you start spending tax dollars in a way that reduces the overall cost of providing the services, and use innovative methods to achieve it, people will start to sit up and take notice. Job number 1 is to stop urban sprawl and start creating serious incentives for infill development. Developers who still want to build further out shouldn’t be discouraged directly, but we need to start charging those developments with the actual cost to provide services that far out. Once you start doing that, people will automatically start infill development on their own. Start there and fix the infrastructure issues and when tax rates start growing out of control in other communities, people will start to look more favourably on this one.

Its one of the things that I always liked about PG and that was the people that live there . The big problem is that the City spends so much time trying to get it too grow when they should be concentrating on making it a livable place, concentrate on what’s there and as they get a handle on the things that need to be done for those that already live there the city will grow or at least not shrink like it has been doing.

There are areas in the City where willows and weeds grow next to city streets which gives it an unkempt look and shows the lack of maintenance that the city suffers from. The Ginter Meadow is an area that should be park land instead its become a scruffy doggie area covered with dandelions.

The planning is even no existent. The commercial areas have the parking in front of the shops where they should have landscaping. In Kamloops they have flowers, grass and shrubs next to the sidewalks and the parking is behind the buildings or at least to the side. Enough said.
Cheers

There is no way to change the weather! Get used to it!

As for the other shortcomings, for all of them there are solutions! And PG is not the only city that has crime, drugs and gang problems! Just tune in to the Lower Mainland and Greater Vancouver area daily news! Lots of murder and other mayhem! Even in the Okanagan things are not as cozy as they used to be!

A defeatist attitude is not going to accomplish anything!

There is nothing defeatist or negative about being honest about our faults as a City. More of our elected leaders should acknowledge this rather than trying to blow a lot of smoke up resident’s you-know-what. It’s pretty much all IPG does.

The fact of the matter is that it hasn’t grown in a long time, and as Sine pointed out, a lot of it requires economic activity that the City has very little control over. For whatever reason, business is not moving out here in droves.

Or… we can continue to bury our heads in the sand and see how that works out.

Politicians and people have been talking about growing the population of Prince George to 100,000 people since the 1970’s. This is nothing new. All smoke and no fire.

Zurowski shouldn’t play the BS game about asking us to make comments and suggest idea’s on growing the City. Perhaps he should outline his platform, and let us know how he (as Mayor) would grow the City. Does he have any specific plans that he could put out there so we can discuss them, and decide if he deserves our vote.

Personally I don’t think he has a clue about how to grow the City. He is just repeating all the **spin phrases** of the past, and unless he shows otherwise just more of the same.

Awesome idea Palopu, the city should have a blog site so people could post idea’s of what they think would benefit the cities growth and prospectus.

All the things which attract people to cities such as jobs,recreation and other leisure activities,cleanliness,low crime rate are all things people can have some control over.So if Don Zurowski has some ideas of how to attract these particular items and ideas to PG,then I think he should be quick to share them with the voting public and not beat around the bush about how everyone should be spreading the word of how great a place PG is to live.All it takes is one person moving away with a negative outlook of the city,to quickly spread the word to people who live in other areas of the world.People need good reasons to up and relocate!

“caper” from what I heard Rodgers had to leave town to find work. He must be commuting back and forth because I saw him at Home Depot the other day and I think his family is still here.

At least that is one good thing about municipal politicians, they don’t get a pension so they still need to work like the rest of us. As for the slogan for Don’s campaign, let’s get growing sounds a lot like Mayor Green’s slogan. Same campaign manager?

Sorry Racer..you have your facts wrong…Don didn’t leave, quit or turn his back…he lost the Mayoral election to Dan…talk for hours without saying a thing….Rogers! That meant he had no seat on council!

Why does PG have to grow in terms of numbers of people? I personally love the city the size it is. I would like to see it grow in other areas such as more bike lanes, trail networks, more sidewalks, etc. I would love to see PG become much more accessible physically. So many of the developments allowed by the planning department at City Hall are not friendly to people on foot.

Shouldn’t the politicians and city workers be concentrating on the infrastructure and how to make it better with the dollars they have instead of wishing for for money?