So how many TASK FORCES has that been in the last 30 years or so? How can I get on the gravy train?

Many of the approaches are not new says Councilor Murry Krause "Prince George does not need to re-invent the wheel."

sigh!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gravy train?? ALL of the people on this committee are VOLUNTEERS. How many volunteer hours have you logged in this year?

Going to need more space for the tenants of the PG Hotel when it closes in January. Are they going to build another shelter downtown? Is that in the plan?

Why does this come under the heading of NEWS! There's nothing newsworthy about it. IMO it is just a rehash of what everybody has been hearing for years.

Seamutt - you've obviously missed the boat - this task force is made up of VOLUNTEERS buddy and as downtownmerchant asked - how many volunteer hours have you logged this year or any other for that matter.

Does anybody beyond the merchants downtown really care?? Very few people I'd guess.

realitycheck wrote: "Does anybody beyond the merchants downtown really care?? Very few people I'd guess."


I really really hope so... I would prefer to be proud of my community and raise my children in a city that thrives than just not care. I hope others feel the same.

A lot of people care. Maybe not those living in those mansions in College Heights or Westgate, but the hard working individuals that live and thrive in the core most certainly to care.

What the downtown needs is Wal-Mart and how would you go about getting it there would put an end to all the planing and frusteration.

It makes no differnce how much money they spend on gardens and flowers if you can't increase the commerce in the area your sunk before you start.

Cheers

What the downtown needs is a D11.
The major retailers have all elected to locate not downtown. The city center has effectively migrated over the last few decades somewhere else. Why hang on to a legacy that is nothing but deterioration. It would be cool if there were any historical or heritage building worth saving, but I am not aware of any. Anything close is too far gone in disrepair to be worth saving.

It is this fervor for maintaining everything as it was that is too costly and non-productive. The only true constant in the universe is change, Accept it and move on. If an investor sees an opportunity to be seized, they will. Apparently none are seen for the downtown. Many posters on this site have expressed the sentiment that they do not go downtown unless absolutely necessary and from the volume of business declining in the downtown, that should clue you in.

Lord grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Let it go, I will provide the match.

Cover over the streets of Paris ..... Rome, London

People the world over have learned to use what they have and recycle it into new generations by doing a couple of things we have been unable to do here:

1. most important of all, when you build, BUILD WELL and MAINTAIN it

2.and UPDATE it to fit the changing uses

3. and charge the REAL costs of developing elsewhere where there is no infrastructure in place to those who wish to develop there. Bet you no of any importance in this community here even understands how to determine the REAL cost of that. That is now coming full cercel to where the downtown developments will be subsidized because the REAL cost of allowing a doughnut to happen is only now being discovered when so many other cities before us could have shown us the way so that we would not be making the same mistakes.

Now they are staring to talk about the cost of replacing underground infrastructure. They are already replacing underground infrastructure at UNBC, buildings that are barely 15 years old. They built cheap. Instead of building proper utility tunnels, such as exist at CNC for instance, they have to dig to replace. Paris and many other cities in Europe have sewers one can walk through.

North America is a throw away society, and downtown PG is the good example of that.

So based on a comment, seamutt is charged and convicted of non volunteerism ( made that one up myself! ) Incredible how some people are able to judge others, based on one sentence.
metalman.

metalman wrote:

"So based on a comment, seamutt is charged and convicted of non volunteerism"

Hardly..... But I will charge you, metalman, of not reading the response for content because that is very evident. You have jumped to a conclusion that should not be jumped to based on the words written by greta.

She pointed out that the task force is made up of VOLUNTEERS ... so precisely what is the "gravy train" those people are accused of being on? Free soup and sandwich? And seamutt, him/herself is of course accusing the volunteers to get some sort of financial gain out of it at taxpayers' expense from what I can tell.

Then there she follows that up with the question: "how many volunteer hours have you logged this year or any other for that matter."

It is a question, pure and simple. The response could be that he/she is a boy or girl scout leader, softball coach, or whatever.

Given the amount of volunteerism in this community, it would not be unreasonable to expect over 60% of the people posting on here to volunteer in the community in one fashion or another.

When I was a young child, I use to walk downtown with my dad. There were still wooden side walks in spots. Jimmy's Ice Cream stand was on the north side of 3rd Ave.between Victoria Street and Brunswick. Best ice cream in the village! There were no drug addicts, drunks causing problems were soon to spend the night in jail, and if convicted, would get to spend a week on the hill if I remember correctly! I remember seeing a passed out drunk getting taken away in a "Paddy Wagon". Life was good, the streets were safe! Today, all the low life's have rights, and we, the honest tax paying citizen have NONE!

You want to take back the downtown, but you build homeless shelters for the people that don't pay taxes, and throw in one or two neddle exchanges into the mix, and you think that will draw new business to the area. Are you all for real???

I think this was turned into a money grab many years ago, for the politicians and their friends!

Downtown Prince George is a disgusting slough, that Murry Krause thinks is suitable for everyone to habitate. It is not! We have some antiquated councilors that are only there to collect a pay check, and hand out there business cards to say "look at me, I'm a counciller for the City of Prince George" Not to mention any names Mr. Basserman.

Go get 'em Brian, myself and my friends support you, and we hope you go for the Mayor's chair in the next election!

Bye, bye Danny Boy!!

slammin' samiam, simply slammin'!

We have no wooden sidewalks today. We also have no ice cream stand or parlour.

Betcha there were hookers!!!! PG was known for that. Too many men. Not enough women .... what does it spell??? drunks and hookers .....

The mentally ill (are we even allowed to use that term thse days?) were put away in "homes", "institutes" and "sanatoria" and were not runnng around on the streets.

Society and taxpayers still took care of those people. Today, we either do not, or we do it in a different way. I think an interesting discussion point would be whether the old ways or the new ways are better.

Remember that we tend to remember the nostalgic best rather than worst. Especially when we have childhood memories where we have completely different understandings on what goes on around us.

BTW, samiam. I am not sure what time period you are refering to. Likely the early 50's.

Were there still any opium dens around?

Gus, I'll ask my dad, he would have turned 101 on October 30!! May he rest in peace.

But I will tell you one thing, he never exposed me to anything like the crap that goes on today. Maybe if we as a society, quit defending this kind of behaviour, and go back to old school, things would start to be better.

Wooden sidewalks and ice cream stands were a good thing. We weren't ruled by drugs and gangsters. At least not at street level.

When everyone gets their head out of the sand, and really admits what has gone wrong, then, and only then, can we begin to change things. What is going on today is just WRONG! When I and most citizens of this city do not feel safe walking down the street at any time of the day or night, something is wrong.

My mother was rolled outside of Esther's Inn when she was 80 years old. Yes, that is right, 80 years old! The time??? Approx. 11:45 A.M on a Saturday. Just got her hair done, and was walking over to Spruceland to do a little shopping before she went home. Don't ever tell me that this city doesn't need some cleaning up. The fellows that did that to my mom, are very lucky they have never run in to me!

So let me tell you my story samiam.

I came to PG in the early 1970's The Pine Centre was under construction. The only real "suburban" and "regional" shopping Centre was Spruceland. Then we still had Parkwood as an interior mall.

The Yellowhead did not exist yet. There was no Sears store. There was no Eatons as a store. The Bay was it. It has a relativel good quality furniture department, unlike today's version. For the higher end furniture store, we had Danish Interiors.

The biggest single difference between centre town and the surrounding area was that it had the restaurants, the lounges and the bars.

That started to change when the liquor act was changed and the province started to encourage the creation of neigbourhood pubs in the late 1970s. It was certainly a good idea in many ways, but it was the start of the movement of drinking establishments from downtown to suburbia.

Today stores, restaurants, hotels and even offices of late have been moving away from downtown. Inner suburban schools are closing and offices and other alternate uses are moving in. The City is allowing that, and we end up paying the price with a continual emptying out of the downtown.

It is not so much that the people we want to remove from downtown now have moved in. proportionately they may actually have not increased much in numbers. What has increased substantially is the number of those individuals as a proportion of the whole of the downtown population, especially when one looks at the after workday population.

My thinking is that you can move every single one of them out, and it will not guarantee one additional store, restaurant, hotel room, office space, nightclub (which are practically banned anyway by this city).

On top of that, if they were all in new buildings after the old ones were bulldozed, no one could afford the $35 to $45/sf annual rent and you would not be able to afford to buy anything in a place that had to pay for that rent. Every store would be like Starbucks .... $4 for a cup of coffee .... $200 for a pair of shoes ... $40/person for a meal.

Downtowns depend on mixes of building stock. Look at Kelley O'Brian's on second. A brick building in PG. Likely most people do not give it a second thought. Look at Speedees .... maybe about 50 years old ... nondescript, other than it is renewed in the inside and more recently on the outside and has probably the best window diplays in the entire city, not that anyone cares about that anymore.

Then there is the Northern, the old Kresge's, Jack Bowie's place, the old RBC, the old BOM. The building that Dandelions occupies .... if one is observant, they could add to this list and soon we will have 50, 60, 70 buildings that not only do not have to be bulldozed, but are the types of buildings that make up the fabric of typcial successful downtowns in cities of 100,000 or so throughout North America.

Be part of the solution people!!!!! Many on here continue to be part of the REAL problem!!! It's not those who you think they are. Look in the mirror and you will see who the key problem maker is.

Samiam. Esthers is not downtown as you know. What you are decribing is a city-wide problem, a province-wide problem, a country-wide problem and a Northern North America-wide problem.

When someone wants money and get it by illegal means, they go to where the money is. It is not downtown. Panhandlers are now in suburan shoppping districts. They follow the smell of money. As the superintendent of police said at Council last night, the problem downtown is not the homeless. The problem is crime. Crime is not limted to downtown. In fact, most of it is located in the areas outside of the downtown.

So, let us compare apples to apples. BTW, some cities are returnng to some wooden sidewalks. Portland is one of them.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3177/2996192650_5c1d9361a5_b.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=wooden+sidewalk+portland

downtownmerchant and Greta "BUDDY" considering my age 50 plus years volunteering in one thing or the other. Hows that for time, can you match it? Maybe the downtown task force are volunteers but will it just be the same old story. Considering gravy train, taking past practice over the years, trips taken, studies commissioned etc, money just keeps going out the window with no results.

Gus says And seamutt, him/herself is of course accusing the volunteers to get some sort of financial gain out of it at taxpayers' expense from what I can tell.

Where did I say that?

Gus, are you trying to tell me the Native drunks arew not a problem downtown? You're dead wrong there. Those people are making their race ashamed of themselves. Those drunks should be run out of town and sent back to where they migrated from. When I ask where they are from they NEVER say Prince George. Ft St James, Williams Lake, Chetwynd, Vanderhoof.
Samiam is correct. Every word is right on!
Samiam for Mayor!

The first post on this thread is written by seamutt ...

"So how many TASK FORCES has that been in the last 30 years or so? HOW CAN I GET ON THE GRAVY TRAIN?

You then tell me I wrote something like: " seamutt, him/herself is of course accusing the volunteers to get some sort of financial gain out of it at taxpayers' expense from what I can tell."

I did write that.

You complete tht ppst with: "Where did I say that?"

My response is that you said that in the post at the front of this thread. I base that on the defintion of "gravy train."

Here is one of several.

"any type of business activity in which an individual or an organization makes a large profit without much effort"

http://dictionary.bnet.com/definition/gravy+train.html

So where is the large profit being made by the volunteers?

If you have a substantive different meaning of the phrase, then please point me to it on the net.