Prince George, B.C. – The driving force behind the groundswell that stopped Mayor Shari Green and city council’s attempt to borrow money for what many considered an unnecessary and unwanted River Road dike is offering some thoughts on the November 15th civic election campaign.

As a quick refresher back in early 2012 the City proposed borrowing $3,558,000 as its portion of funding for a 3.3-kilometre flood protection dike. The mayor and council refused to put the borrowing question to referendum, citing the estimated $70,000 cost as the reason, and instead selected the Alternate Approval Process as the method opponents would have to use to put the brakes on the borrowing attempt. Ten percent of the 53,511 eligible voters in the city, or roughly 5,300 people, were required to sign up in opposition, and nearly double that, 9,653, did. The signatures of 382 people were ruled invalid, leaving 9271 opposed.  And that was the end of the dike.

Fast forward to the current election campaign and a chat with Eric Allen, the man who took on the task of organizing the anti-dike signature drive.   He believes the dike would have been a waste of money, as is the situation at the Quinn Street transfer station. “That facility that we paid for is a huge transfer station that was built by the City because there was a need for it, and now it sits there basically empty. That to me is a total waste of money. Even though they said it’s going to save the city $260,000 a year, that’s not substantiated by anything.”

We posed several questions about this election to Allen. Why do you think we have so many people (25) running for a councilor seat? “Well with the exception of Hall we have the incumbents running, so that’s seven. Then we have a few that have run before. But I think that some of the people out there want to get in and try to make some changes. Then there’s some of the guys that just seem to run every election anyway. Some of these people must be aware that they’re probably a long shot at best, but they put their name in there. Not only that, some of these people are associated with the right, some with the left so there’s more to it than just a list of names.”

“So people have to be able to work their way through that and see what we have to work with here. And it’s a little difficult because there’s so many candidates. If you want to understand what they stand for you have to go to different websites and try to find out, but I think it’s tough for the average voter. Some of the people I talk to haven’t got a clue who to vote for and that’s not right.”

Allen says many news articles have been appearing recently aimed at increasing the voter turnout from the dismal 28% recorded in the 2011 civic election. “In my opinion if you want more people to vote you better start telling them what you stand for, what the issues are and what you’re going to do about it. So far I haven’t seen that. If people don’t know what those running stand for, and are just hearing the same thing over and over, they say to heck with it, why bother. You have to get their interest somehow.”

Regarding the issue of aging city infrastructure, what are you hoping to hear from the candidates in this election? “It’s a huge problem, and it’s a problem because over the years past administrations kind of let it go. And if you talk to some councilors about anything prior to their being elected they say it’s got nothing to do with me, it was before my time. But the thing is, the infrastructure is a problem that goes back to amalgamation in 1972 that brought outlying areas within city boundaries.

“We are the third largest city in area by land in the province of British Columbia. Now you’ve got all this infrastructure that goes with it. We’ve got infrastructure downtown that’s failing and yet some of the other areas brought in under amalgamation don’t even have the infrastructure yet. How are we going to fix all of that? There’s not enough money being targeted to solve it and I haven’t seen a city plan that says this is what we’re going to do about it. Do they have a plan? It doesn’t look like they do. The plan is, if it busts then we’ll fix it.”

“That amalgamation, the idea behind it was the city would become very much bigger and it would grow over a period of time, like the prediction was by the year 2000 or something we would have 100,000 people. Now (mayoralty candidate Don) Zurowski is running on a ticket that he is going to get it up to a hundred thousand. But since amalgamation, fourty some odd years, we haven’t made much progress.” Allen believes the city “got shafted” by the province through amalgamation and says those cities that didn’t see a population growth should be paid by the province “on a per capita basis to offset our costs of looking after those areas, or we should return them to the regional district.”

On another matter Allen believes some of the money collected through taxes in the city is being misdirected. “The five top people in City administration get paid pretty close to a million dollars, and then we’ve got the mayor and eight councilors. We’re paying big money to these people and we are paying them to solve these problems and they’re not doing it. They’re going at it piecemeal. Look at it, we went and taxed people $15 million for the Winter Games and our water mains are busted as we’re driving down the street. Then they’ll say “well you have to have some balance” but there is no balance there. We spend more money on recreation and that sort of thing than we do on infrastructure.”

We asked Allen to list the top issues he would like to see addressed by the candidates in the election. “Increases in service fees and taxes, because we can’t afford it. They took away the incentive for paying utility bills early, then there’s the Quinn Street transfer station and the associated costs that are dumped onto the people, then they’re going to try to slide in the storm sewer tax. They have to quit increasing these things and find a way to do more with less.”

He also cites the cost of snow removal and says it could be reduced by stopping the practice of having equipment travel from the city yard out to various areas to clear snow and then driving back to the yard, only to repeat the process daily. In Allen’s estimation “we’re losing two hours a day ploughing time.” He suggests parking equipment in the large lots of the fire stations in these areas with the operators driving out to their machines each day.

Allen says another major issue that needs addressing is the controversy that’s been swirling around the city in recent years. “We had Haldi Road which was a real battle. We had the BK Bottle Depot. People were just pissed off and I think they still are today. The community energy system, River Road dike, Cameron Street bridge, Pine Valley Golf Course. It was supposedly a five or ten-year deal and now we find out behind the scenes it’s only a two-year deal so they’re setting it up for another battle. I want to see a mayor and council look after the interests of all the citizens of Prince George instead of these vested interest groups.”

Allen also believes it’s time to end the secrecy and lack of transparency at City Hall. “It’s terrible, absolutely terrible. I can understand some of it like land sales, but the city is really bad at wasting money and nobody has taken them to task for it. You’d have to be a Philadelphia lawyer just to track what they’ve done over the last ten years.” Allen says he has been informed that once a city land sale is completed it is not longer confidential and becomes public knowledge. “But have you ever noticed that they never tell us anything about it once it’s finished? Not a word.”

As far as the mayor’s race goes Allen says he is “looking for somebody who is going to be able to plan long term, say 10, 15 years down the road, and has a vision for infrastructure and how it’s going to be taken care of. A vision for holding costs down and somehow turning the ship around because we’re not getting any better, it’s getting worse. And somebody who can talk with the other councilors, form a consensus and do things for the city overall. And that means, they can’t be bought and paid for by vested interest groups, because that then puts the pressure on.” He says businesses need to make money and he has no problem with that, but not at the expense of the community. “So we need somebody in there that’s going to see that side of the coin.” Allen believes one of the candidates can see it while the other does not.

Over on the councilor side, where eight seats are being contested, Allen says “I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water, because firstly you don’t know what you’re getting with the new people and how are you going to have continuity if you have a whole new group in there.” However he would like to see the election of four new councilors, one replacing the seat vacated by Lyn Hall for his run at the mayor’s position, and three more replacing incumbents who have been ineffective or have been “supporters of the initiatives which have caused the most grief to residents of Prince George over the last three years.  Things like Quinn Street, removal of the incentive to pay your utilities early, downtown parking.”