Zurowski Hopes to Gift Boundary Rd to Province
Prince George, B.C. – Mayoral Candidate Don Zurowski says he expects communication from
Zurowski was speaking on the Meisner program this morning and was quick to react to the criticism that he was on the PAVCO board during the significant cost overrun for the new roof at BC place “I am not the spokesperson for the chair of B.C. Place, there is a communication strategy for B.C. Place, and I am not it.”
That is not the only rumour says Zurowski, “The other thing that is floating around is that I am close to Mayor Green, but that is an absolute fallacy, its a different team, and a very different leadership” He gave Green’s tenure a grading of 4 out of ten.
He says the service level at city hall is not what it used to be says “We were very good at snow removal until 2008, and we had to hire an American company to tell us what was going on.”.
when it comes to junkets, he says he will take trips to places like Kemess mines, “I do not aspire to take a trip to China on behalf of the City of Prince George.”
On the performing arts centre, he says the Performing Arts Centre would benefit the City, but the population is too low to afford the project. He says the concern is the on going operating costs which would require subsidization from the City, and the taxpayers of Prince George just can’t afford that.
Zurowski was a proponent of the tax break for downtown businesses to improve existing buildings and encourage new development and says downtown is, “A very large geographic area which needs more density.”
While social housing is a role of the provincial and federal government, Zurowski says the City has a role to play.
He says that when he was on council , there were efforts put in place to increase densification and points to the news housing on 7th Avenue
He says he would look at “gifting” the new Boundary Road, to the Provincial Government, “Let the Provincial Government own it plow it and maintain it.” He made reference to the Province gifting the Cameron Street Bridge to the City of Prince George, a move which would eventually cost the City multiple millions of dollars in maintenance and eventual replacement.
As for his plan to grow the City’s population to 100 thousand, Zurowski says he challenges the real estate board to advertise their listings in communities with temporary workers, such as Ft,. St.John, Edmonton. He also says there is new work that can be done to grow the student populations at UNBC and the College.
One caller said he feels squeezed between a rock and a hard place, `We seem to have a champagne taste on a beer budget”. Zurowski, says he agrees, ” but one of the challenges is that there are a lot of amenities, and not enough people to support the costs.”
Comments
Kemess Mine closed in 2011. I think he meant Terrane Metal’s Mount Milligan Mine.
He stated that if the population of Prince George reaches 100,000 then we should look at a PAC because we would have a larger tax base. Not likely that will happen in the next 20 years.
I agree with the person who called in and stated that this is just more of the same hyperbole. We are being taxed to death, and politicians seem to be totally unaware of the impact this has on citizens.
Zurowski is trying to distance himself from anything bad that happened in the past, however the fact remains that it was the Kinsley Years when Zurowski was on Council that got us into huge debt,from which we are still trying to get out of.
It always amazes me when the BC Government gets credit for selling lumber to China, when lumber companies have been selling to China for the past 20/30 years. In fact they had sales offices in Bejing long before Pat Bell was ever elected.
Zurowski says he wants to **gift** Boundry Road to the Province so they can do the snow clearing etc; Ie; Make it part of the Highway System. Then in the next breath he states that the Government **gifted** the Cameron St., Bridge to the City, and this cost us all kinds of money.
His advice is that you should beware of anyone trying to gift you a bridge, etc;. Hmmm So not ok to receive gift, but ok to give gift.
Didn’t we gift the land for the Wood Innovation Building to the Province, and is the Province now considering **gifting** this building back to the City???
“As for his plan to grow the City’s population to 100 thousand, Zurowski says he challenges the real estate board to advertise their listings in communities with temporary workers, such as Ft,. St.John, Edmonton. He also says there is new work that can be done to grow the student populations at UNBC and the College.”
How does Initiative Prince George (IPG) fit into this? Isn’t this pretty much their mandate, to promote the City to make it more attractive for residents, workers, students, etc.? How successful has it been?
If Zurowski is taking on the challenege of growing the City by engaging the real estate board, the business community, building “Open for Business” signs on the outskirts, what is the point of IPG?
Whether or not he is the spokesperson for the chair of BC Place is completely irrelevant, as is the BC Place communication strategy. The fact is he was the Chair of the governance, finance and audit committee for PavCo when PCL, who was hired on a $318M Fixed Price Contract to replace the roof, was paid $398.7M; $80M more than the fixed price contract. As the chair of that committee, he should be answering for it and if he’s going to bring that “quality” of oversight to the Mayor’s position.
Hall is trying to distance himself from the last 3 years. He’s acting as though he was a hapless victim of Green’s reign of terror. He had a vote! If he was such a leader why didn’t he garner the voting power of the other 7 Councillors to change the conversation and direction? Over $13 million in grant money was used to pay for and finish Boundary Rd – a grand and glorious road to no where! Can you imagine the infrastructure we could have fixed with that money?
Actually Hall garnered the vote on a number of issues such as downtown parking, business licenses for rental properties, to name a few. There were others.
I agree that it was later in this term before, Skakun, Krause, Frizzell, Hall, and Everitt started to vote down the Mayor and her backers. In any event they did put a stop to the shenanigans, and were a thorn in the side of Green, Stoltz, and Wilbur. If the **fab five** get back in along with 3 newbie’s I think we will have the making of a functional Council.
You hit the nail on the head Filtered. I expect people to speak up during all three years of their tenure not just in an election year. I don’t know what Hall did in years 1-2 he seems to have been fairly silent until he decided it was time to take a run for Mayor. Or it could be that I missed some of his decisions along the way.
“Kemess Mine closed in 2011. I think he meant Terrane Metal’s Mount Milligan Mine.”
-Kemess North underground is going through the environemntal assessment review process..
-Thompson Creek Metals owns Mt Milligan & Endako. (TCM bought out Terrane.)
Its good for our local politicians to get out to these projects to see just how our local services/workforce and economy can benifit.
Seems to be development happing on both ends of boundary.
I didn’t get a chance to listen to either interview, but did Ben actually ask either candidate about the $900K of air over Commonwealth? I’m not seeing any reference to it either write-up. Just curious.
“in either write-up”
10:00 pm tonight the program will re-air on 93.1 CFIS.
“I expect people to speak up during all three years of their tenure not just in an election year.”
It is in fact a four year term now.
If neither of the two candidates comes with something new I won’t voting for the mayor position at all.
A good start would be a reasonable resepctful affordable agenda and a notarized statement signed by the candidates and mailed to every citizen that they will resign if they have not kept all their promises by the third anniversary of them being elected (Nov 15th 2017)!
I am extremely tired of all the bluster and bragging which is usually followed by a huge let down! It is like listening to the wind breaking when the inflatable boat is being readied for winter storage. :-)
I get the feeling that Don is just telling us what he thinks we want to hear. Really all politicians do this to some extent, he just always appears to be very thin on details. The biggest reoccuring one is the population growth idea. Putting out signs and advertising can only have so much impact, and we are already doing at least some of this. Should we be doing more certainly, but it is not going to magically grow our population beyond a reasonable rate.
It also concerns me that he talks about the good old days in city hall, specifically developmental services, when he was there pre08. I delt with developmental services when building a house during his time. They were
terrible to deal with, inspectors had different views on service standards depending on their mood. Not sure what they are like today but saying it was better before leads me to believe he thinks it was good and wants them to go back to the past.
“As for his plan to grow the City’s population to 100 thousand, Zurowski says he challenges the real estate board to advertise their listings in communities with temporary workers, such as Ft,. St.John, Edmonton. He also says there is new work that can be done to grow the student populations at UNBC and the College”
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That already exists, it’s called realtor.ca . . .
I think growing the student population has some merit, but what is the work he speaks of? Is he thinking about advocating for additional programs? Partnerships with industry? Developing additional research capacity? I’d like to hear more about this plan and the specifics.
Lynn Hall gets my vote. Zaroski voted in favor of the 2nd tax on downtown businesses,
Now when he wants a job as mayor, he is in favour of tax relief but only to new businesses. I have never seen a worse time in our city where eveyone has all the answers, yet nothing happens other than spend, spend,and spend. Sherri Green certainly didnt have to hire someone at a cost of $200,000 to do her job. enough, im gonna be sick.lol.
Nice try Don! You must of had your spin masters working overtime on this one! Early on you had no problem with Green/Stolz until you finally realized it didn’t fit in with public opinion. Where were you over the last 3 years? Seems to me Skakun, Hall, Frizzell and Everitt have been the only ones working for the taxpayers in this community!
Oops I forgot to add Krause to that list. All five of those gentleman, IMO deserve
to come back to council on November 15th.
See….this is way more fun than left, right, Fibs, Dippers……
How can we clone Ben and send one of him to each of the newsprint outlets. There is a saying about being well informed … it works a couple ways so for one, I will for Don because he is a proven business man and when on council, always used common sense and made sure he was well studied on the issues. Have any of you watched City Council over the past term to see how many times your fab 5 including Hall flip flopped or paid thousands to have things studied? Don does refer to councils past as its been a while since Mayor & Council have been functional. I for one don’t want a Mayor like Hall who needs a little fab group to share notes and constantly change their minds when their selected few in the City tell them to.
Let’s hope it doesn’t snow on election day but if it does, at see you’ll be able to see the potholes.
That’s will definitely vote for Don!!
yes you are right palopu, double fees on downtown parking, raising business licenses and getting no better service, taxing rental properties and don’t forget the drain tax ,and there were others………
If zurowski isn’t getting support from the greene camp then he must have the same script writer. His platform seems to be full of the same type of spin that greene was spewing in the last election.
First he defies all the experts by saying the city will grow to 100,000 in his first term no less. And now he somehow thinks he can gift boundary road to the province? Do these guys know they are applying for the top leadership position in the city and we deserve serious, well thought out comments rather than just dribble and pandering to the masses.
Mind you it did work for greene – people are pretty gullible. lol
One of the hardest lessons to learn is to watch how people treat other people when things go pooorly or they dissagree with them. This is especially true when things are going well and you are getting lots of encouragement. True friends know we all make mistake.
Make your own decision about what Don said yesterday about giving his friend Shari a 4/10 as a mayor. Then council a 3/10 some of who will be on the next council. That will make for a unified team – not.
Where were you during this difficult time Don? I am disappointed because I thought you were better than that. You still have 4 weeks to convince the voters you are but I am not so sure any more.
In regards to Don’s rating of council and the current mayor , I think he was being honest. Would you prefer him to be dishonest to avoid hurting peoples feelings? That’s exactly the type of person you don’t want leading the city. Anyone who experienced the lack of snow removal last winter or knows about the core audit fiasco would give council a failing grade as well. Hopefully council has thick enough skin to take responsibility for their less-then-stellar performance in the last few years and improve from it. If not they don’t deserve to represent the people of Prince George. Just one woman’s opinion.
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