Interesting Comment by Jay Hill

"I believe Canadians are expecting us to look at every federal program for possible expenditure reductions not increases”

Our council should maybe take note of the state of the economy before committing $$$$ to "nice to have" pet projects

I do not understand why when the economy is at it worst that our city officials are planning on spending MORE MONEY!! It is time for all levels of government to slow down on spending. Geeesus! Build some affordable housing, fix the roads and clean up downtown. That should keep you busy enough to stop dreaming that PG has an unlimited supply of money for trails and arts.

Is this the same Federal Government that promised $1 billion over 10 years to help communities hit hard by MPB in the Interior of BC to diversify their economy, among other things?

Of course it is! Why would a government that needs to satisfy other parts of the country first keep promises they made in a part of the country that they have a captive audience in? They do not need to grease the wheel here. After all, this is sheep country.

The Northern Sports Centre is a **BUST**
The City will be tagged to pay much more than the original $300,000.00 per year as its share of the operating costs.

The CN Centre while great for some venues like Bud the Spud from PEI and others of his ilk, has been a financial disaster for the Cougers. This facility costs the City somewhere in the area of $600,000.00 per annum for operating costs, and I suspect that this cost will rise.

A PAC will be a huge additional cost to taxpayers along with huge operating costs each year, and I suspect that it will be under utlilized also. Hopefully no money will be forthcoming from the Federal or Provincial Governments, and this assanine idea will die a natural and much deserved death.

I find that funny about Mr. Hill's comments. Just two short weeks ago they were handing out money, millions a day and now they are elected, sorry no money for you ! Typical politician.

Mr. Hill, make sure the no new money applies to Quebec and Ontario as well.

Politician = Corruption

As written in the local paper during the recent election: (does Mr. Hill remember that election???)

Conservative incumbent Dick Harris immediately pointed to his party's bigger $1-billion spending commitment, noting there is another $800 million remaining in their commitment during the next seven years. "I would say that's a little bit better," said Harris.

He also dismissed the Liberal charge that the Tory beetle fund had been raided improperly for airport funding, noting that the airport projects are key to helping those communities diversify their economies.

Is that an existing committment? It would seem so! Is it a new spending? It would seem not!

What exactly we spend it on might be an issue. That it is committed money is not!! Will all the sheep please bleat. The rest of us, get feisty and make sure the money is spent to diversify the economy at the very point when it is needed here. Don't let our federal representatives get off so easily. Put their feet ot the fire!!!

Actually, may be, Its Mr. Hill telling us to rethink the project. Maybe he wants to look after the taxpayers interest to ensure that we are not going to bite off more than we can chew. Mr. Hill is a very smart man, and a hard worker. Its not that he does not have the money to hand out. He wants to make sure it is the best deal for the citizens of Prince George.

Realistically, a 87,000 sf structure. The city does not need a white elephant like that. 40,000 sf and a total budget of $25 million. This is all we will need for the next 30 years.

" The funding for the facility could come from a variety of sources said the presenters, from Federal and Provincial governments, private, corporate and endowment as well as local government"

A variety of sources you say?

Lets look at your sources list. You show 6 different sources.

Two of those sources are not using taxpayer dollars but four of those sources are using taxpayer dollars.

That makes FOUR of your sources actually being ONE source.

Interesting way of trying to milk more money out of the bottomless pit.

The source of funds for anything we do comes from ONE source - the consumer.

1. direct payment for a service or product (the theatre ticket price)

2. payment for a service or a product for which the producer decides to keep the price high enough to allow a "corporate donation", otherwise known as promoting the company and being a good corporate citizen using the citizens' own money. (CN Centre)

3. taxation - local money spent locally (municipal), provincially (BC), nationally (feds) and internationally (hand outs to other parts of the world)

When the consumer does not spend, there will be nothing to buy a ticket for, nothing to create, nothing to advertise, nothing to donate to other parts of the world. When that happens, the consumer will have no job to create anything and will not be able to pay taxes.

The economic system comes to a halt.

Prime the pump, and the money will start to flow again. Keeping it flowing at a steady rate is the trick. We have not perfected the priming and regulating the flow yet.

For $51 million bucks maybe the PAC folks can hire Horizon Air to take themselves and other potential patrons to other venues to enjoy what a PAC here would promise. It would cost less than $51 million. They do that with Northern Health buses. Why not arts patrons? Can't get a specialist doctor or unable to see a play or concert here? Make like Northern Health.

Good idea!!!

The idea of developing anything here, whether for $100,000 or $10 million, is to create opportunities here to spend. Maybe that is a dumb idea.

Why spend all the money on developing a new city when there are perfectly good cities elsewhere? With Vancouver we are blessed with one of the nicest cities in the world.

For those who support spending money elsewhere so that economic opportunities to turn over the dollars several times before they leave the community are not created, we should simply create fly-in camps for the mill workers such as the mining industry does.

We could even dam the Fraser below PG, flood out the City, and generate hydro energy. Win win for all.

Is Mr. Hill even going to be in office and/or will his party even be in power if and when the request is actually made to fund this project?

Unless I'm missing something, this is not going to be something that gets built next month. I would assume that the PAC will stay on the list of desired capital projects and that it will be built when the economy turns around and when the City is in a better position to take it on as a major project.

If I were a betting man, I'd hazard a guess that we are at least 2-3 years out from any ground breaking and that's perfectly fine. While I believe that we do need this facility to assist the long-term growth of the City, it also has to be built at a time that makes economic sense for all stakeholders. Allot can happen in 3-5 years.

Gus, where do you think the people are going to come from to use this facility? Vancouver has what, about 2 - 3 million people in closer proximity to them than we have 75,000 close to us. Regardless of what the sign at the highways states, the population of P.G. is only about 72,000. If you watched the dog and pony show last night at city hall you remember they said there would be 87,000 people pass through the turnstiles per year. That is 238 people each and every day of the year. These people should get their heads out of the sand and come to the realization that it won't happen. Theatre Northwest is not even interested in using the facility either. The presenters also have the dream that a certain amount of people are going to come in from outlying areas to use this facility as well. Do you honestly think there will be many people from Ft. St. James, Mackenzie, McBride, and Valemount come to this? With the economy such as it is now they are lucky to be able to afford to drive downtown on a Saturday night. We must quit spending money if we want our taxes to fix infastructure and not just service debt. It is beyond my comprehension why the PAC group cannot see beyond their noses.

We do need a performing Arts Center downtown. But not at a cost of $51 million. The upper limit for me is $25million. But it better be a damn good one.

Build it to hold 500 people. Seriously a play that is held in this town for three weeks is going to be 10,000 viewers. Do you think there are 10,000 people in this town willing to pay $75 a ticket to see a small town production.

I think this is just an exercise in seeing how far you can push a ridiculous idea before you can't squeeze any more "study money" out of it. If it doesn't fly, at least a bunch of people made good money suggesting and studying it.

Here is a thought. If it were to cost $2,000,000.00 a year to heat it, light it, maintain it, clean it, security etc. It will cost another $3.6 million dollars a year to pay for it. Thus 5.6 million dollars a year. if there are 25,000 homes in town, this would mean $224.00 for every home owner in town.

This crap.

Let private industry build it.

Gus writes..."Prime the pump, and the money will start to flow again. Keeping it flowing at a steady rate is the trick. We have not perfected the priming and regulating the flow yet."

Taxpayer dollars don't fit in your scenario Gus.

The more taxpayer dollars that are used for everyones dream projects means less money in the taxpayers pockets to spend how they see fit.

Over taxation is what will bring everything to a halt.

I guess you can't "identify" the Feds as being a "financial source".

My question is this. What kind of co-operation, agreement and unity do we have between the user groups for this facility?
Symphony, Theatre Northwest, Excaliber, Judy Russell etc. They appear to be quite a fractured group to me.

They will be the key users, so are they going to agree and get along using the same facility?

I propose that these groups and their supporters begin fundraising right now. When they have raised their 1/3 of the cost, maybe the other levels of government will have paid down their existing debts to the point where they have money to hand out. Then and only then will I be in favour of supporting this project. Oh, by the way, I am a supporter of the Arts in this city.

There is a difference between what we need, and what we want. Needs are just that, things we need. Things we want, well, everyone would like to have all sorts of things they don't need. City Council, get back to reality!!! Please. We need health care, we need shelter for our homeless. We probably could do with better maintenance for our roads. We need things. We don't need to spend 50+ million on a venue that will periodically satisfy less than 1% of this areas population.

Maybe we will be called rednecks, but let's be conpassionate rednecks who have healthcare for our population, and minimal number of people sleeping on the streets, okay?

Somebody said we need the PAC to get more Doctors to town - I suspect if we used this much money as a "signing bonus" of a million dollars per person, we would have 51 new Doctors in town by the end of the day tomorrow.