I really hope we do not win. The estimated cost of 28 million dollars will balloon to double just like the Olympics. Remember how that was supposed to only cost 900 million. Campbell actually guaranteed that remark. See how that has turned out? We sponsored the curling and the lack of fans was so embarrassing. Kelowna and Kamloops are way nicer to show case British Columbia. Have you ever watched council on television? Do so. Our mayor acts like a robot. Prince George is broke! If council is already squawking that they need to raise water, sewer and garbage fees then you can be certain that our house taxes will increase as well. We were polled as the highest taxed city that spends the most money in BC. If you need to raise taxes then stop SPENDING! With HST looming and the Carbon tax raising we need a break! At least wait until the recession is over for God sakes.

We have now reached to point of no return.

If we pull out, the headlines in Vancouver's papers, and possibly even in the Globe following that will read:

"Prince George pulls out of Canada Winter Games Competiton - recession has hit the Gritty Little Mill Town hard."
--------------------------

"We were polled as the highest taxed city that spends the most money in BC"

That is a totally inaccurate statement.

I hope we get it. I hope we get to put in 20 million dollars of tax payers money and get 60 million dollars of upper government funding.

Ya gotta spend money to make money. Go for it.....


PSST Dan, tell them we get snow regularily, since global warming is going to get canceled because of Climategate.

Gus,

So how did we get the baseball tournament for 2011????? did some one bow out?

Tournaments are great for this town. We have a lot of venues, and it fills up the hotels and restaurants.

Prince George tops the list of municipalities in B.C. which were spending more than inflation and population growth would warrant, according to a study released by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB).

According to the report, between 2000 and 2007 operational spending at the City of Prince George increased 34.7 per cent. Inflation and population growth combined justified a 12 per cent increase in spending, according to the report.

“Prince George is spending (nearly) three times more over that period than population growth and inflation,” CFIB vice president Laura Jones said.

http://www.theprovince.com/story_print.html?id=2186197&sponsor=

http://www.bclocalnews.com/bc_north/pgfreepress/news/69697337.html

Also opinion 250 recently posted a list of the municipalities that spent the most money and had the largest taxes and PG rated very poorly.

Municca, cry me a river, go live in India and bitch about tax.

You can do that after you drink water from a river that 10 million people washed clothes in upstream and don't eat for 2 days. You are pretty lucky to live where you live.

You can do that after you drink water from a river that 10 million people washed clothes in upstream and don't eat for 2 days. You are pretty lucky to live where you live.

You can do that after you drink water from a river that 10 million people washed clothes in upstream and don't eat for 2 days. You are pretty lucky to live where you live.

Just curious...where are our ski hills. Surley you not talking about Tabour Mountain, they would laugh at us.....
Went outside and looked for the peaks...none to be seen....

numbers!

You are obviously new here so I will remind you that this is an OPINION site and everyone has the right to speak their mind here. You are not allowed to attack people on here. Munica does not have to move to India to bitch about tax, he/she is allowed to do it RIGHT HERE. Just because you do not like hearing the truth does not mean that the rest of us do not want to know the information so that we can make up our own minds on the subject.


Munica

I remember the post you speak of and thankyou for bringing up something that all of us should be aware of.

Longnecks I agree with you. We do not have a good enough ski hill to provide for the winter olympics.

Municca, thank you gave us a excellent picture where this "Gritty Little Mill Town ."Those are Gus's words.

Numbers go get a life and stop living off tax dollars. Your remarks are a bit off the mark.
Cheers

Double edge sword in a way, yes you have to spend money to make money... and if successful, yes it will likley generate revenue for city business... but haven't heard if Canada Games actually ever make money, the olympics do generally because of huge corporate sponsors... so if we look at this logically, we will spend probably 1 to 1.5 million to win the bid in the end, how much will be invested by the "spendthrifts at city hall" (sarcasm intented) to make the city suitable to host the games.
A couple of questions I have, is the Canada Games based on billeting athletes, or, do we need to come up with 3700 rooms, might work if the games are done in shifts, which I think (but not sure) is the case.... still who pays for the rooms, and are there enough in PG... Second 4000 to 6000 volunteers is a large number in a city of... (do we really know how many are left with the decline of the forest industry).... probably, but still kind of unknown
so, how much is the city willing to increase the tax bill for PG to generate how much? I think we need to know the net figure....
Given the recent increase in garbage fees,and other spending fiascos (Police Station one example) the clan down on patricia don't have my confidence to manage the coffee fund let alone something this big....

Let's have some disclosure here....

Rogers! Don't raise our taxes again for this. Utilities raised twice in one year. Taxes raised 4+% every year. You are a big disappointment to the taxpayers of PG. You lied you way into the mayor's chair. May I suggest you resign now since you will never be elected again.

Who elected Shellshadow as the moderator of this site?

With any luck at all Kamloops or Kelowna will get these games.

It is time Prince George quit acting like a **big shot** town. It has a small time Mayor, and Council with big time ideas.

Lately everything we have touched has turned brown. We do not have the intestinal fortitude to look honestly at a situation, or to tell the truth. For the most part we operate on pure unadalterated BS.

There would obviously be some spin offs if we got the games. Such as a athletes village that could be turned into homeless apartments after the games, however other than that, there would not be much. Most of the infrastructure for the games is already built. Ie;

CN Centre, Civic Centre, Two Swimming Pools, Northern Sports Centre, Various skating rinks, School gymnasiums, etc; etc; etc; Dont forget a lot of these so called sports (games) require very little to support them, and we already have the facilities.

We of course would not get any income from the 4000 to 6000 volunteers, and we would have to pay for the 80 to 100 full time staff. The difference between the number of people who come to Prince George every week-end and the number that would come when the games are in town, probably would not be significant. So we would end up with 3700 atheletes (in shifts) and 1300 managers or officials. These would be the people who would spend the money. How much would have to be determined.

Seems to be a hell of a lot of hoop la, and money to see someone play ping pong, or ski in the backwoods at Otway.

In any event I truly hope that we do not get these games. What we need is a period of time where we can look at where we came from, where we are, and where the hell we think we are going.

I for one am sick and tired of politicians running around in circles, clucking, barking, baying, and belching, and spending my money. Its time for them to settle down, and do some serious thinking about tax reduction, cost reduction, staff reduction, and fiscal responsibilities.

Is it possible that we could get a list of the Athletes that are presently training in Prince George for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Remember that, that was one reason that the Northern Sport Centre was built, and why our last (diamond Jim Brady) Mayor and his co-horts went to Turin Italy. Where are the people doing the training????

You would be very hard pressed to find any athlete of any consequence using the facilities at the Northern Sports Centre. This facility is used mostly by University Students (Mostly Girls) Retired people, WCB people, Mothers with babies in carriages, and the odd weight lifter. A rare site indeed would be a Bona Fide Athlete.

Its time to cut the BS.

Municca .....

Read my posts at the following location on Opinion 250.

http://www.opinion250.com/blog/view/14521/13/p.g.+tops+list+of+communities+overspending

I am not about to restart a debate that was had.

Remember you wrote: "We were polled as the HIGHEST TAXED CITY that SPENDS THE MOST MONEY in BC."

Neither of the two upper case phrases is true. In fact, considerably from the truth.

The article speaks about RATE OF INCREASE, with some highly questionable factors associated with those rates.

Let me remind you that when one has a low level of spending with poor quality of services compared to other communities, at times of making improvements, rates of change will be higher in those communities that take action.

"Municca, thank you gave us a excellent picture where this "Gritty Little Mill Town ."Those are Gus's words."

Actually those words were the words of a reporter who wrote a story in the Globe several years ago. I repeated them here because I was speaking about a hypothetical headline one might see from an outside news service.

Actually, these days, one might even see such a headline from the local Citizen as well, watching what they have been writing lately.

just for fun, go putting "gritty little mill town" into the search engine for this site to see how often it has been used, normally in a tongue in cheek context.

Hills? Tabor and/or Purden.

These are not the Olympics. The Canada Games are quite flexible. They have been held in Whitehorse, Sakatchewan, Brandon Manitoba, PEI and will be held again in PEI in 2031.

The Canada Games are everything the Olympics are not.

The group that was here were looking at ALL those facility technical needs. They have said that PG meets that standard, end of story.

Now let's see whether PG can meet the ORGANIZATIONAL challenges which Kamloops has already met once since they were the venue of the larger Canada Summer Games in 1993.

The Games like small communities. They have been in the same community several times for the Summer and the Winter games. So, Kamloops is very much in the running.

Saskatoon has had both as has Halifax (2011), Charlottetown, and Brandon.

So that is four cities that have had a repeat. Kamloops is trying a repeat.

I do not know too many cities that would try to host a losing venture twice.

It depends on who is doing the losing. Taxpayers lose, business wins. Hotels, restaurants, etc;

You left Grande Prairie Alberta 1995 off your list.

Business= Tax payers
Business employees= tax payers

Missing your logic Pal.

You are right. Grande Prairie is another one with minimal vertical or vertical in the range that PG can provide.

Fairhill is about 450 feet vetical .. They identify Powder King as 110 km away. It is in the 2,000 ft + league.

Tabor's site already identifies that they support the Games attempt. 15 minutes from the city with a vertical of 800 feet provides us with the closest facility of all in the competition. Other than the downhill, especially given today's proliferation of new ski/board competitions, that facility will be quite good.

Purden is closer to us time wise than the hills in the southern two cities. 45 minutes versus an hour +.

1,100 ft vertical which can be expanded (and has been in past national competitions) to aobut 1,600ft for downhill.

Businesses win, taxpayers win.

Remember that a City can be seen as a more complex and larger version of a shopping mall.

The mall provides the common area services plus the infrastructure. The businesses provide the common area charges plus rental as their return for the use of the space.

Business drops off and the 6% increment does not kick in and the base rent stays. Businesses leave and trouble starts. Cut services ... some rent increases may be tried .... and others will leave if that balance is not maintained.

Malls provide marketing events to try to pull customers in to draw business to the various renters.

Look on the Games as a marketing event in the City competition field rather than the shopping centre competition field.

Of course, we can roll over and die and have a fire sale.......

We can start by stopping plowing residential streets as Councillor Greene suggested.

A man has a better chance of getting pregnant than the games to lose money!! Huh! What? Someone said that already. Twins you say!?

This is why I rarely read the "opinions" on this site. It's the narrow minded individuals that sit on their computers all day and put PG down. Get a job, and contribute to society. Dan's doing a good job with the council and city managers that he has to deal with.

HA HA Powderhound....that one made my day!

Gus,

How did we end up with the baseball tournament in 2011?