Way to go Dawson Creek! Time for PG to follow suit I think; perhaps a referendum on the new cop shop or the PAC or the...?

I think taxpayers are getting the message that the wild borrowing and spending which has been going on in this country for the last several decades has to end.

I see the Dawson Creek ratepayers have set themselves up a web site. There is a lot of interesting information on it. I especially like the logo on the home page. It says "Our money does not grow on trees" The following is the link to this web site:

http://dcratepayers.com/

Also check out this little bit of information (employee wage comparrison) about Prince George which is on this site. You may have to expand the size of the page to read it.

http://dcratepayers.com/pdf/Wages%20Employees.pdf

I think the taxpayers in Prince George should set up a similar type of web site.

The City of Prince George has 948 employees?

OMG.

what is even scarier is 183 employees making over $75,000 per year.

That nearly 20% making that much?

"Downie says this should be a wakeup call for all of BC "Municipalities have to control their spending, the taxpayers do not have unlimited funds"."

Somebody gets it at least. Now if PG could follow suit...

Diplomat. Its hard to follow the numbers but I expect that the City would say that they had 750 Employees, and then when you add in the Police, and Fireman you come up with the 948 employees. Im guessing 121 Police and approx 60 Fireman. Could be other variations. Who knows:

"what is even scarier is 183 employees making over $75,000 per year."

That's probably just base salary. The number probably goes up when you account for overtime.

a clarification would be good, are policemen and firemen considered part of the city employees?

If so there is a better justification for the amount over 75,000.

Police and Fire are part of that total number of city employees and those two departments account for one third of the city's spending each year.

Our Fire fighters are a huge part of that group making over $75,000.

Exactly about the firefighters. There are so many chiefs and sub chiefs and subs sub chiefs ...... all of whom make over $75,000 and a significant number over $100,000.

Police is similar .... and we have no control over that.

What I find interesting is the amount of money the peace regional cities get from the province each year since much of their indutry base is outside the cities yet the cities service them.

BTW, the names and salaries of those who make over $75,000 are published because a provincial law requires them to be published or made available.

I do not know how the pension plan for the employees of the City of Prince George works. (In my books if a City pays someone a salary, they are classified as a City employee.)

Does anyone know the answer to the following question?

Can what is currently happening in St. John (New Brunswick) happen in Prince George?

After months of calling for pension reforms by Dec. 31, council was told Monday that the pension board has fired its actuary. Agreements with employee groups will not be struck until next year at the earliest.

Officials seem to be hoping that economic recovery and pleas to other levels of government will save them from having to make tough decisions. This is a colossal failure of leadership that will leave taxpayers in the lurch.

The city's pension plan guarantees a set income for pensioners, at public expense; whenever investments fail, Saint Johners are asked to pay off the deficit out of the city's budget. The consequences are staggering.

Council was informed that if the plan's $146.7 million deficit did not improve substantially by Dec. 31, the city would be asked to pay $16 million a year for 15 years. The expense is so dramatic that Mayor Ivan Court announced "We would have to declare the city bankrupt."

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/search/article/855994

The RCMP Contract to the City. We presently have 123 Policemen I beleive, so for all intents and purposes these are City employees as we pay for them. In addition they have 50 City employess who work directly for the RCMP. I assume that the Fireman would also be considered as City Employees. Who knows.

As a general rule the City implies that they have approx 750 employees, these I assume work directly for the City and then you have the RCMP and their staff, which would bring the number up to approx 922.

So whatever the variation the bottom line is 948 employees.

If someone were to take the time to investigate, I believe the state of the PG Fire Department might be the city's next scandal.

Just my opinion though.

Way to go Dawson Creek. I agree wholeheartedly with your decision. I believe we, as taxpayers should also put some of these huge capital expenditure plans to a vote. At what point do these city leaders say we cannot afford something?

The RCMP do not show up as city employees. The civilian staff do. The firemen are civic employees.

The City has a contract with the RCMP. The city has no authority over their salary structure, their evaluation, their vacation periods, their pension paln, there transfer to another jurisdiction, etc.

You are likely right jales4. It will be a difficult one to tackle.

Who works harder, a logging trucker or a fireman.

Whose job is more dangerous, a logging trucker or a fireman?

Who gets paid more over a year, a logging trucker or a fireman?

Who gets a better pension, a logging trucker or a fireman?

There is little rational and equitable distribution of income.

$100,000 for a communications manager, eh???

The only group that is not classed as employees are the RCMP. They are called protective services and eat up 28.73% of the city budget. Every tax payer is provided that information with your tax statement each year.

The city has a 160 million dollar debt and they pay out 14 million each year to service that debt. And the direction they have taken in borrowing that amount will increase each year as the debt will increase unlike the mortgage on your home it gets paid down and each year you pay less to service the mortgage.

And its not the services that the city provides that waste our tax dollars . It’s the poor management that’s the problem. Like a section of Ospika boulevard that was paved twice in four years. The planning is a real problem. Instead of infill they have stretched the cities infrastructure to the limit and its becoming more and more expensive to service

Now lets look at the pension plan. There is a misconception out there that the City pays a bundle for that plan. Not so. Provincial, city and a couple of more groups all contribute 7% of their income towards their pension plan. One percent is set aside for indexing. The money goes to an investment corporation who’s board has representation from the employers and the employees The profits from the investments go into the pension fund which at the present time has 18 billion dollars in it.

Don’t forget that city employees are not overpaid. They are paid slightly less then an empolyee at the pulpmill or other union shops. They do what they are told and are no different then you or I. Because they are poorly managed and little on the job training is not their fault.

If you don’t have a union get one. The people that own Macdonald , Wendys or all the minimum wage shops the owners are getting fat its time they slimed down. It’s the Pattisons, Thompsons and the like that need a wake up call. Its time that we sank their boats and got their feet wet and into the “REAL WORLD”. I know Gus do not like reality.
I had better go now.
Cheers

"I do not know how the pension plan for the employees of the City of Prince George works. (In my books if a City pays someone a salary, they are classified as a City employee.) Does anyone know the answer to the following question? Can what is currently happening in St. John (New Brunswick) happen in Prince George"

I don't think it could charles. I'm fairly sure that the City of PG employees would be enrolled in the Municipal Pension Plan:

www.mpp.pensionsbc.ca

Based on info from their website, enrolment in the plan is available if you are a municipality, school district, college, health or social services organization, or if you are a union or association representing employees in these sectors. It also says that there are over 200,000 people enrolled in the plan. Obviously this is a large pension plan and as such, the risks to the City of PG for funding the plan would be quite limited as compared to the scenerio you posted above.

Regarding public sector wages, it has been my experience that many of the "skilled" positions in the public sector are actually underpaid when compared to private sector comparables. The reverse also holds true in that many of the "unskilled" positions are overpaid when compared to their private sector comparables.

Because of this, when you are examining whether the wages of public service jobs are too high, you really can't look at overall wages or "global" statements as a whole (such as "public servant wages are out of control"). You have to break the jobs down by specific position and duties in order to make any meaningful comparison to their private sector comparable. Making it even more difficult is the fact that some public sector jobs don't even have a relevant comparable in the private sector.

Ah, yes! Unfunded pension liabilities. GM has 'em. I mean General Motors. Not Government Motors. A lot of huge employee laden companies have this problem. One reason was the companies dipping their sticky fingers into pension funds. But I don't suppose any government worker need worry. As long as the printing presses work, yer pension is assured.

Great information! (City of Prince George has 948 employees).

The three Canfor pulpmills in Prince George have approximately 1,200 employees altogether, union and non-union.

Not that many more than the City.

Come spring one should not hesitate to report each and every large suspension busting pothole, knowing that the City has plenty of people to fix them.

Who cares how many employees the city has. The more important question is how many employees does the city actually need in order to meet all of the service expectations put to them from the people of PG? Is it 250? 500? 750? 1,250? Just throwing a number out there is rather pointless without some sort of analysis behind it.

"Ah, yes! Unfunded pension liabilities. GM has 'em. I mean General Motors. Not Government Motors. A lot of huge employee laden companies have this problem. One reason was the companies dipping their sticky fingers into pension funds"

Not just companies, even governments . . . LOL:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2007/02/27/pension-surplus.html

It looks to me like a taxpayer bailout of the British Columbia's government workers' pension plan has already started.

I got the following from the pensionsbc web site:

The British Columbia Pension Corporation was created in 2000 as a non-profit agency under the provisions of the Public Sector Pension Plans Act.

We provide professional pension administration services as an agent of BC's College, Municipal, Public Service and Teachers’ pension boards of trustees and WorkSafeBC.

Our team of over 400 professionals serves the needs of our clients—the boards of trustees, over 400,000 active, inactive and retired members and approximately 800 employers.

http://www.pensionsbc.ca/portal/page?_pageid=404,1458193&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL

I got the following from Page 12 of the BC Pension Corporation's 2008/2009 Annual Report:

Every three years an actuarial valuation is performed to assess the financial position of the plan and the adequacy of plan funding. The latest valuation as at March 31, 2008 indicated a $487 million surplus for basic pension benefits. Since that valuation, financial markets have experienced significant downturn. As a result, effective April 1, 2009 employee contributions will increase by 0.15% of salaries, to 7.78% of salaries up to the YMPE and 9.28% of salaries above that. Also effective April 1, 2009, employer contributions made by the corporation will increase by 0.15% of salaries, to 8.78% of salaries up to the YMPE and 10.28% of salaries above that.

http://www.pensionsbc.ca/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/PENCORPCONTENT/PCPAGE/PUBLICATIONS/ANNUALREPORTS/CORP_AR_2008-09_FINANCIALS_2009.PDF

Does anyone know of any private sector pension plan which receives "assistance" from taxpayers if their investments go sour? I don't know of any.

Does anyone know of any private sector pension plan which receives "assistance" from taxpayers if their investments go sour? I don't know of any.

Strange how some read between the lines., If youchecked my previous post you should of seen that the public service pension fund has 18 billion dollars and would hardly need tax dollars to survive.

I guess some only write and cant read.

Cheers

NMG, municipal employee pensions are administered provincially. All public sector employees are members of that plan or related plans. They do difffer in benefits, but are all very similar.

basically, on retirement after specified numbers of years a pensioner gets 2% of the average income for the highest five year period. This amount is then reduced for various reasons such as early retirement and so on.

Premiums are usually 7% of an employee's pre-tax income and is matched by the employer, although some employers put in a lump sum at retirement, I believe. The investments are closely controlled by a pension committee made up of employee, employer and government representatives, and there are legislated limits as to how much may be invested in different areas.

The fund is very well managed and there is enough money to cover all pensions and allow for some annual indexing as well. In fact, the BC Provincial pension fund is a good example of how pension money can be administered. In my opinion, a similar fund should be started for pensions in private companies so the employer can't be tempted to siphon any money out of it and employee pensions can be protected.

"It looks to me like a taxpayer bailout of the British Columbia's government workers' pension plan has already started"

A taxpayer bailout? That's a little dramatic, LOL. It looks to me like it's simply a required increase in employer and employee contributions, in order to meet the future plan obligations. This happens all the time when it comes to pensions, whether they are public or private plans, especially defined benefit plans. Given that the responsibility of funding the pension plans fall to the employer and the employee, who else do you think would fund the increased contributions?

You do raise an interesting discussion about "bailouts" though. If we take it a step further, why not include these local examples, among others, as examples of government "bailouts" funded by the taxpayer (and thereby just as vile in your eye I would assume):

- Money provided to GM and Chrysler so that they could continue operating. Without this money, there is no doubt that their operations would cease to exist and that most EVERY employee of GM and Chrysler in Canada (including the salesmen and mechanics in PG) would be out of a job. Indirectly, they were bailed out.
- Money provided to laid off forestry workers (through extended EI benefits) when their industry went in the tank. Again, more "bailouts".
- I suppose many of the people who work for private sector companies like IDL or WIC could also be considered as being "bailout" recipients. Many of the projects these companies take on are funded from tax dollars and without those projects there would be no need for these people to be employed.

"Does anyone know of any private sector pension plan which receives "assistance" from taxpayers if their investments go sour? I don't know of any"

I believe some of the auto bailout money was used to fund pension shortfalls. That said, pension plans are a contractual agreement between an employer and their employees. Even if the employer happens to be the government, they still have to live up to their end of the relevant agreements do they not?

What would be your suggestion otherwise? Eliminate pensions alltogether and return the amassed contributions to the employees? Move to a defined contribution system instead of a defined benefit plan? Increase the wages of public servants to make up for the reduction in their overall compensation structure as a result of reduced pensions?

Any idea how any of these changes would impact the ability of the government to attract workers to provide the services that citizens need? If it did have a negative impact (and anecdotal evidence says that it certainly would), do you have any idea what the cost of that would be? Would those costs be worse than the additional cost of a defined benefit plan?

It's certainly not an easy analysis . . .

ammonra, makes me wonder how many times you have to explain how the public sector pension plan is financed and what the benifits are. I will try once more and here is the web site that gives the financial report for 2008'
/www.pensionsbc.ca/images/pspp/ar/pspp_2008_ar_financial%20_statements.pdf

I bad quit posting on this site as there appears to be no exchange of ideas. Is my way or the highway

cheers

NMG wrote: "Who cares how many employees the city has. The more important question is how many employees does the city actually need in order to meet all of the service expectations put to them from the people of PG"

Exactly!!! not only that, but it is important to know how much of the work is actually contracted out. There could be cities with low numbers of employees and high contract costs. And there could be cities in the reverse ostuation.

The worst case scenario is, of course, cities that have high number of employees, high average pay rates and high contracting out costs as well as rates.

That still does not tell a complete story until you delve into what the expenditures actually buy. So, a measurement for total costs of services best broken down per service so that one can tell where there is excellent efficiency and effectiveness and where it could be improved.

People who look at budgets and simply say we have to cut expenditures really do not know what they are doing and should not be in a position to make such desisions.
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I looked at the projects Dawson Creek were proposing to borrow money for. It is almost like our road improvement method here, that is that we were and maybe still are borrowing money to build and repair roads.

Then the City upped the taxes so that we would not have to do that. Don't see any change so far.

The defeat of the borrowing bylawe simply means that taxpayers were not in favour of borrowing the money. There was nothing in there that asked them which projects they wanted to carry on with and which they did not want to carry on with. Since it looks to me that among the list are several that fall into the category of need rather than want. So, the taxes will go up to take care of them. Simple.

What people seem to forget, they can vote for or against. That is not where the power lies. The power lies in putting together the referendum question.

It's a good example of "tails the City wins, heads the citizens lose".

Under the Financial Information Act various public organizations have to provide financial disclosure. Some organizations are good at compliance, some are not.
http://www.bclaws.ca/Recon/document/freeside/--%20F%20--/Financial%20Information%20Act%20%20RSBC%201996%20%20c.%20140/00_96140_01.xml
---------------------------------

Nanaimo’s Statement of Financial Information 2008 http://www.nanaimo.ca/assets/Departments/Finance/Budget~and~Financial~Reports/Financial~Reports/StatementFinancialInformation2008.pdf

Prince George – download the 2008 statement of financial information it is a large file which could be much smaller and be more user friendly as with some other cities
http://www.city.pg.bc.ca/city_services/finance/statements

Kamloops has the information openly available without having to look behind closed doors
http://www.city.kamloops.bc.ca/news/publications.shtml
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Here is one view of the information from three communities which have the info on their web site

Salaries paid to employees who made more than $75,000/year 2007/08
pg $16,404,296
nanaimo $10,886,263
kamloops $9,587,140

Total salaries to employees
pg $44,832,807
nanaimo $40,629,943
kamloops $42,195,330

percentage of salary expenses in the $75,000+ range
pg 36.59%
nanaimo 26.79%
kamloops 22.72%

Total supply and service contracts (includes taxes to province and feds)
pg $138,937,738
nanaimo $147,555,701
kamloops $126,141,606

Total payroll plus supply and service contracts
pg $184,088,729
nanaimo $188,518,522
kamloops $168,612,180
--------------------------
Here is the above information broken inot a per household figure.

Total households 2006 census
pg 28,205
nanaimo 33,520
kamloops 32,655

City Payroll per household
pg $1,590
nanaimo $1,212
kamloops $1,292

City goods and service contracts per household
pg $4,926
nanaimo $4,402
kamloops $3,863

Payroll + goods and services per household
pg $6,527
nanaimo $5,624
kamloops $5,163
--------------------------------

What stands out to me?

That of the three similar sized communities, we have by far the highest percentage of highly paid individuals working at the city. WHY?????

It is not as if there is a significantly higher dollar value for contracts that have to be administered by staff.

From the types of contracts that go out, it is also obvious that there is not a ton of that type of work that is done in house.

Great post Gus. Lots of interesting information in those links.

As I wrote before, lots of good input information starting to be made available as a result of laws enacted in all provinces which are being enacted because some other countries have started it before us.

It will take a few years yet before everyone complies as is intended.

We still have to deal with getting some good measures for output. Input by itself is almost meaningless.

Good info gus... the conclusion is that our local City Hall knows how to spend money... not that it's a surprise to anyone.

Thanks Gus. Very interesting.

For all the money being spent here, I simply do not see the quality. Yes in some areas, but not in others.

We have to spend more to heat the buildings and we have to spend more to clear snow. That does not add up to as much as $1,000 difference per household. That would come to $28M. Proper snow removal would be in the $5M to $6M range. I said "proper", not what we are getting.

NMG: "Who cares how many employees the city has."

Well, if nobody SHOULD care WHY are the statistics compiled for comparison?

More employees obviously means more money to pay all of them, i.e. higher taxes.

If one could opt out of services which one doesn't need, didn't ask for and never use one wouldn't care either, but of course opting out is not allowed.

As soon as a new council and mayor are elected (who ran on election promises of more careful and astute spending, more respect for the taxpayer, blah, blah, blah) they raise taxes and are engaged in looking for new ways to spend more.

Just because they always get away with doing that doesn't make it right, imho.

"Well, if nobody SHOULD care WHY are the statistics compiled for comparison?"

Because they are easy to get. As simple as that. They are meaningless without information about contracted out services.

How many employees did the government used to have for the Ministry of Transportation before road maintnance was privatized? They have less now and they have more jobs in contracted out services.

The information that has to be looked at is how many people does it take to do a specific job, how much does it cost to do that job, and look at it over time to see whether it becomes more cost effective or less cost effective over time.

But hey, if they would release information like that, it would mean that we would have better knowledge of how effectively our money is spent.

I understand that the senior governemnts are moving to requiring such information. Of course, that means more jobs for bean counters. As long as it leads to increasing effectiveness, it might be money well spent. Otherwise it just become another 100,000 bucks per person per year for nothing.

It seems to me that the City Staff, and Councillors in all Citys, build a Fortress, and then defend it against the taxpayers. They go to great lengths to keep us uninformed. They plan projects years down the road, and then go through the process of pretending that we (taxpayers) have some say in the matter. Truth is we dont.


A case in point;

The new Police Station. The City bought the property on 4th and Victoria a number of years ago, and when the Mayor Colin Kinsley was asked what was planned for the property, he said nothing at this time. He went on to say that it is good business for the City to buy up the property because if they didnt then speculators could get the property and drive up the price if someone wanted to locate there.

Turns out the property is going to be used for the New Police Station, which the City was working on at the time, however it was not mentioned as a possible resident,. As a matter of interest the City paid $2.75 Million for this property, and when they talk about the cost of the police station they usually do not include this cost.

The City then went on to pay for a design for the building ect; etc;etc;

Now we have the property, we have the design, and we are soliciting bids from various contractors, but we havent got approval for borrowing the money yet.

It should be obvious to all of us at this time that the City does not expect to run into any problem borrowing the money, and why should they?? the bloody process they use is stacked against the taxpayers, and in favour of the City.

In order to stop the borrowing of the $48 million dollars, some citizen in Prince George would have to start a reverse onus petition. (such as the one just completed in Dawson Creek) This person would have to collect signatures from 10% of the registered voters in the City. This amount to approx 5000 signatures. If by some strange set of circumstances he managed to get the signatures, then the issue goes to a referendum, and you would need 51% to pass.

The problems is that the City has money available to use against the reverse onus petition, and also the referendum, while the individual has nothing but a concern about the Citys spending practices.
\
Once we get into these situations the City calls on their buddies, and all the Service Organization, members, their spouses, the City Staff, Contractors, etc; all get out to ensure that the referendum is defeated, because they all stand to make something from the project.

Joe taxpayer is restricted to writing letters to the editor of the local papers (one letter every three weeks) or paying for adds in the paper with his own money, while the organizations who support the referendum can buy space in the paper with their organization money.

In any event you get my point. It is always a David and Goliath situation, with the City (Goliath) winning 99 times out of 100. Dawson Creek was an exception, however they could still end up with an increase in taxes.

The same process would be required for the Performing Arts Centre.

So unless we can get our Councillors to do what we expect them to do, ie; kill some of these projects, we are screwed.

So we need to keep the pressure on Council, and give credit to those Councillors who are trying to cut costs.

The one thing that the City can count on time, after time, after time, is voter apathy.