Parks Strategy Continues to Engage Public
Prince George, B.C. – With the opportunity presented to gather feedback from the public during yesterday’s Healthy Kid Day event at the Canada Games Plaza, the first round of public input input gathering hit the halfway mark.
City and Parks staff have been meeting with area residents in some of the major venues in the City, to gauge the public’sr priorities for park development.
With more than a hundred parks, of varying sizes and purposes throughout the City, City Hall is looking to gather info on what residents want to see maintained and updated.
Staff have already visited College Heights and Duchess Park, this week, there are two public sessions planned, one on Wednesday at the Blackburn Community Hall from 6-8 p.m. The other will take place on Thursday from 6 -8pm at the Cpl. Darren Fitzpatrick Bravery Park in the Hart.
“Funding for parks operatins has remained low relative to many other similar sized communities over the years while costs continue to increase and community demands grow” says City Manager Kathleen Soltis. She says the development of the strategy will “improve our parks for the benefit of all.”
A draft Park strategy, will be presented to neighbourhoods this fall during the “TalkTober” neighbourhood consultations. The final draft, complete with dollar estimates for the maintenance and/ or upgrades, is expected to be presented to Council later this fall.
Comments
What I am not able to find is a past “parks strategy” of say 5 or 10 years ago which resulted in a maintenance and renewal plan and associated costs which brings the City up to the end of 2016 fiscal year as well as any reconciliation of the projected costs of such a plan with the actual cost and projects completed during the lifetime of the plan.
In other words, a retroactive, easy to read document which tells us “how are we doing with what we planned to do and what we planned to spend”
As has been the case in the past with some of the other services in the City, my fear is that this will be setting the stage for yet another 3+ percent increase over the next several years due to planning negligence on the part of the City.
I think we need to step back a bit during this process to include a full overview of the City planning and budgeting process, which includes all hard and soft infrastructure and services provided, so that we can see where past Councils and Administration have done their job proactively and where they have had to react to needs that had not been planned for.
I realize that some of this information sits in Annual Reports and Budgets, but nowhere have I seen a document which is easy for those of us not involved with the day-to-day operations of the City to get such an overview.
The multi million dollar Cityworks CMMS system that the city is in the process of rolling out has the ability to capture,forecast and report on all areas of the city including parks and recreation. The one big caveat….properly training the users of the systems and trusting them to do so and this is where they normally trip up.
If the city’s Pavement Managagment System is any indication of what we can expect…don’t expect too much. At last council meeting it was reported that the city manager cut a check for $87,444.00 to pay for a Strategic Paved Road Management Plan. Has too much dust accumulated on the keyboard of the current every expensive Pavement CMMS or do they not know how to use it to it’s full extent?
As most things in life it can be related to an episode of Seinfeld, in this case the one where Jerry buys his dad a high priced PDA to keep track of important things in his life and the only thing he ends up using it for is a tip calculator as all other functionality is way over his head.
We are the proud owner of a Cityworks tip calculator costings some $4 or 5 million if memory serves….someone call the Guinness people.
“properly training the users of the systems and trusting them to do so and this is where they normally trip up”
I agree. That has always been the problem. As they used to say, GIGO. Still holds true today.
I found the “wish list” or guesstimate projections for some proposed changes pending “public input”. It is located in the 2016-2020 Provisional Financial Plan available on the City site.
One of the things which makes such documents difficult to read is that the projects are not listed under the various divisions of the City. One has to enter search words such as “parks” in order to find some or all of them.
However, the provisional projected expenditures are there for the five years from 2016 to 2020.
Two examples –
Cycling route improvement for 2016 = $25,000 from capital reserve fund + $225,000 from Development Cost Charges + $250,000 from Provincial Grants = $500,000
Nature Park Improvements to facilities in various nature parks. To include outhouses, garbage bins, signage and benches = $50,000 per year for a total of $250,000 over 5 years. Source of funds = General Infrastructure Reinvestment Fund + Capital Expenditure Reserve.
Mayor Hall, and fellow councilor. how about a freeze in taxes for next year.
I’m happy for expecting less service. Do we really need all that staff in the ivory tower. How about letting the guys in the field do some input into it, instead of the pencil pushers who have no idea on what the real world is about. Let the community stake holders have a say for their parks. I think at the end of the day, they want low maintenance.
“Let the community stake holders have a say for their parks.”
That is what this is all about. So come out to have your say.
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