Mayor Suggests a Trio of Changes
Prince George, B.C. – Mayor Lyn Hall has received unanimous support for three proposals he brought to the Council table this evening.
First, he called for staff to come back with a report and possible bylaw changes to reduce the age for ‘seniors’ to 60 from the current 65 so more people can take advantage of reduced rates at Civic facilities. “Many seniors are on fixed incomes which makes it more difficult and less affordable for them to be physically and socially active” says Mayor Hall. He says reducing the age for senior’s discount would “assist in enhancing the City’s delivery of services to the senior’s population . It also acknowledges that an age-friendly community, like Prince George understands how important it is to include seniors in all areas of community life and to work to meet the age-related needs of these citizens.”
The current bylaw covering fees and charges is in place until the end of 2016, but Hall would like to see the changes made in time to take effect January 1, 2016.
Council unanimously supported sending the request to Administration for review.
His second issue was about the cost of reducing the size of a garbage can. The Mayor pointed out that with more residents embracing recycling in Prince George, the need for a larger sized garbage can is slipping, but there is a $30 fee if a person wanted to downsize to a smaller can.
Then there is the matter of the voluntary water meter program. The previous program provided water meters free to those who wanted to move from the flat rate to a water meter. The program ended a couple of years ago. Mayor Hall says having a water meter can be beneficial to those who want to keep track of their water consumption and practice conservation.
There would be revenue and costs associated with the garbage can and water meter program, so he called for staff to come back with a report on the financial implications of scrapping the garage can change fee, and reinstating the voluntary water meter program . The cost of a meter is about $480 dollars and installation in an existing home is in the $1 thousand dollar range. The report is expected to be back before Council before the end of the year.
Comments
$30 fee to downsize your garbage can .. How stupid can our mayor and council be?
P Val: I guess you mistook something. This was in existence before this mayor and council took over.
They want to get rid of the fee to downsize. If there should be a fee at all, it should be to upsize.
As a result of having city collected recyclables, we downsized from the largest to the smallest. I thought at the time there must have been some logic to requiring that payment. I still can’t figure it out though. Obviously, neither could the mayor.
I could downsize my pickup as well. At the rate I am filling or not filling my container, I could survive with a pickup every 4 weeks.
Why it took the City so long to institutes recycling is beyond me. … but wait, I think it was forced on them by the province.
Yes but the recycling was not give more..so since a lot of us have reduced our garbage by recycling they want to charge us because of it… We are doing a great thing and it’s costing us… Strange to me….
as many think it would be better if they had recycling weekly and garbage pick up every second week. It would force people who don’t recycle to join it.
Surrey has weekly recycling and biweekly garabage pick up and seems to work well.
The way this city hall works if they only picked up garbage every second week they would charge us for storage of garbage in the garbage cans ;)
60 is the new 40! Thanks Mr. Mayor :)
$1500 to put a voluntary water meter on ones house… must have one hell of a long payback period to cover that capital outlay.
Imagine if they mandated that city wide. 35,000 homes in PG at $1500 per home and we would be paying $52,500,000 just so that we could monitor and conserve water. That is the direction they are moving us… $50 million to prepare our infrastructure for privatization as envisioned in our free trade deals.
$50 million for meters in PG could build how many more pumping stations or reservoirs making the need for any meter conservation redundant.
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