Would be nice for there to be a audit once this is shutdown to see exactly what we tax payers got from this thing.

Losing 4 jobs and the cost of rent. This will save $500,000 a year… Either they where renting some high end office space or there where at least 4 over paid employees… or both.

Having an outside body do what should be handled by City hall is just money running out of the doorway. Glad they are shutting it down. As for the loss of the jobs, well there’s always another tit somewhere else to latch onto. Sounds cold huh, well for what was spent and the results we as tax payers have seen it’s about time someone called shenanigans on this money pit.

P Val, I agree we should see what we got at the end of it all but that would cost further money that clearly the city can’t afford or wisely enough doesn’t want to waste just to look in a mirror at the past.

I’m sure the people who lost their jobs will find new careers. Someone direct them to the move up PG page… there’s job listings there.

Tourism PG should be next!

P Val. IPG (through the City) owns this building on 1st Avenue. They purchased it a number of years ago. They lease space to Via Rail, and rent to TPG, and some other business’s. The City will continue to collect the rent, and I expect will continue to pay for the building, however if the space is all rented out they should be able to make a dollar until they can sell the building.

Good day IPG, excellent City move

Tourism PG has actually done a great job promoting our city. If there is anywhere PG needs to improve, its in tourism. Axing them would be a huge mistake

If they are only saving 500k there are still going to be some high paid people still on the city payroll.

“The city has asked Ms. Oland to lead this transition and manage economic development going forward”.

She makes twice as much as the mayor. No savings there. I think I have only ever heard from their communications gal once….savings to be had there.

@PGJOHN. I wasn’t inferring that they need to be axed, I meant that they need to be absorbed. I agree that they are doing a good job lately, but does their current existence warrant a CEO with a wage well in excess of $100K plus many other staff wages, plus building, vehicle and other expenses? I simply feel that savings could be found if this were absorbed by the City.

It really was not new news. Everyone knew it was coming. I guess Lyn was the only mayor that had the cahonees to do it. In another ten years, another form of the IPG will be established. yep that is politics.

If tourism is doing such a good job of promoting Prince George, perhaps someone could tell me what they are promoting.

What tourist attractions do we have here??? It pretty bad when you count people from MacKenzie, Vanderhoof, McBride, Quesnel, Ft Fraser, Fraser Lake, Ft St James, etc: as tourists. These people come to Prince George all year round, so they are actually part of the Greater Prince George area.

My question is how many people actually come to Prince George as a tourist, stay for a week or two, and spend money. That’s the real question. My sense is very few. Certainly not enough to warrant spending $500,000.00 per year more or less, every year for the past who knows how many years.

We get Americans, and some Canadians passing through Prince George going to other areas, ie; Alaska etc; and we count them as tourists because they stopped at the Tourist Centre and signed the book.

Eighteen people just lost their JOBS at the Blood Clinic and no one cared no severance package for them, just politics.

Well at the very least there will not be the opportunity for any future mayor to hide travel expenses through IPG as our previous Mayor did. Hats off to this council for this decision.

“how many people actually come to Prince George as a tourist, stay for a week or two, and spend money”

It does not matter. The definition of tourism has changed some time ago for everyone working in the industry across Canada and rightfully so.

“Tourism is the activities of people traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for leisure, business or other purposes for not more than one consecutive year.”

The interesting thing is that by that definition, students living in PG for less than one year at a time are actually tourists and the University and CNC can be considered as part of the tourism industry, as can temporary workers who work on shut downs at the mills and refinery, short term construction workers from out of town, and of course all those who come to summer games, winter games, tournaments, family weddings, reunions, medical treatments at the cancer clinic, Okanagan fruit trucks that stay here for a few days, etc.

I think that is a reasonable approach because the impact they have on the economics of the community do not really differ. They bring business to town for short periods of time and most use similar facilities. Some, like the fruit retailers, consultants, construction workers remove money from the community. Just travel down the highways into smaller communities where it is obvious when CN rail is working on tracks, contractors are working on highways, Telus is working on communications lines and so on.

To get a full picture of tracking these people and looking at leakage of money as well as income of money to the community is more of an economic development metric. I have not seen anything like that from IPG, nor do I expect to see anything like that from an internal economic development function at this community’s City Hall.

Read books such as “Economic Development Programs for Cities, Counties and Towns published in 1990 which speaks about inflows and outflows. To look at only inflows in the economic development business is like preparing a budget for revenue only.