Unfortunately PG city council is not aware there is 12.4% unemployment in the city and that thousands of forestry and forestry related business have laid off thousands of workers in the surrounding area. Council continues to spend like a drunken sailor. 1/2 a million for a bid for the winter games, 45 million proposed for a police station, 50 million for a PAC as well as untold hundreds of thousands spent on downtown revitalization.
When it comes to good idea to collecting household refuse every 10 days rather than every 7th day to save money it gets shot down by council. Why? It just makes sense and is to simple an idea for most on council to grasp.
The city spent $36,000.00 participating in promoting PG in Turin. The council spin at the time was PG would see all these athletes training in PG for the winter games. That theory has been a bust.
Send council to other municipalities to study how to save money you bet. Unfortunately present city council and city management would be unable to grasp the concept.

"Council continues to spend like a drunken sailor."

You mean to tell me they are all boozers?

"Consider this as well, a home that sells for about $1.2 million dollars in Vancouver has a tax bill of about $3600 dollars and yet we are told that we have some of the lowest taxes in BC"

I haven't bothered to confirm whether this is true or not, but even if it were, what does it have to do with the property taxes we pay in PG? Well here is one possible link:

- PG has an area of 316 sq km with a population of say 75,000. That's 237 people per sq km to service.
- Vancouver has an area of 114 sq km with a population of roughly 610,000 people. That's a density of 5,350 people per sq km to service.

Common sense suggests that Vancouver should be cheaper on a per unit basis, since they have way more people in a smaller area. Much like Walmart or a big box store, they can offer lower prices (property taxes) and still be okay because they can make it up in volume. PG can't. We've spread over the entire area of the city and expect high density price structures. It ain't going to happen. Perhaps if everyone that lived in the Hart, on North Nechako and in Westgate moved into the bowl we could . . .

Of course there is a relatively simple solution for those people that want to pay Vancouver property tax rates. Quite simply, you can move to Vancouver. The price of the house itself may be a constraint, but let's not let that little detail get in the way of a good rant, LOL.

The other, much more difficult solution, is to maybe pressure the city to plan and develop more effectively with the hope that a greater population density will reduce per unit costs because it's cheaper to service. This is tougher because it means that people may have to change their thoughts about where they want to live (maybe city council should NOT permit developments outside of the city core for 10 years), how they want to heat their homes (tough to have a pile of wood stoves in a downtown condo development), how they want to get to work (why walk when I can drive my 1 ton), etc.

In short, PG COULD develop into a more effective and efficient city, but I don't think we have enough people in town, yet, to support such a vision. Just look at what happens on these pages whenever downtown revitalization or any similar type of initiative is mentioned, LOL.

To NMG: I life on the Hart where the smell from the refinery and pulp mills very seldom reach. We do not have to deal with as much crime and panhandlers. No thank you to moving into the "core" not untill you can clean up the smell the panhandlers and the crime.

Yep, there's a reason that many people have moved to the outskirts (College Heights, The Hart)... 'the core' isn't a desirable place to live due to many areas being infested with crime and air quality issues. Make it desirable and people will move in instead of everyone trying to get out.

Ben has it right. We have have a huge tax base from Industry, Commercial Business, and Home Owners. In addition the City borrows money like its going out of style., In addition they take in money from Gas Sales, RCMP tickets, and of course Gambling. So anyone who thinks we do not have sufficient money to run this City in a responsible fiscal manner is just kidding themselves.

The problem with this town is that the people at City Hall now live the culture of taxing and spending, and have very little if any concern about the taxpayers. I sometimes think that they do not have the actual intelligence needed to get the City back on track.

The last thing we need is people making excuses for City Management and Politicians for the way they have handled things for the past 10 to 15 years.

The City is into the real estate business in this town in a big way. Who the hell is watching this to see if we are getting any bang for our buck.

We bought the propery on 4th and Victoria for $2.75 Million, kicked out the tenants, and then left the buildings empty.

We bought the CKPG building for $220,000.00 and left it empty for years, and are now in the process of tearing it down. I beleive we also bought the restaurant adjacent to the CKPG building and we are tearing it down. Are we going to be able to sell this property for enough to reclaim our initial investment, and cost of tearing down the buildings???

We bought the building on 2nd avenue and put it some high priced wiring for the Livebridge call centre, which then went to ACS, and has now been sold to Teresan Gas. Have we reclaimed our initial investment on this building or are we taking a loss. Are terms on sale contingent on Teresan getting the OK from the BCUC, and does the sale take place now or in a few years. If its in a few years, then once again, we are babysitting an empty building.

We own the CN building on 1st Avenue, through IPG, and God only knows what we paid for this building, and when it will be paid off, however you can rest assured that the cost along with the $2.5 Million budget for IPG is a direct loss.

In addition we have the old Williams Moving and Storage East of Queensway that was purchased years ago for some weird reason, and we have now purchased the Norgate Auto Body building for f$550,000.00 for some other weird reason.

There are many other things taking place that I am not going to go into now, but you can see that there seems to be little control over spending, and a concerted effort by the City to keep taxpayers uninformed.

Missasauga Ont. which has a populaton of aprox 500,000 people and Mayor (Female) who is 83 years old and has been the Mayor for over 30 years, has **NO DEBT**

Repeat **NO DEBT**. In addition they have a surplus of $755 Million dollars.

If we want to take advice from a City, maybe we should be looking at Missasauga Ont.

Have a nice day.

I recently got one of those myPG surveys in the mail and was quite disturbed by one of the questions. In essense, it said,

"For Capital Projects, would you prefer that we borrow the money or raise taxes"?

How about neither? How about getting our spending under control and taking a serious look at some of the things we spend money on NOW. As palopu has said, this city has burned through millions of dollars with little or no accountability and that has to end.

Why does City Council have this penchant for unnecessary capital prjects? We do not need a new RCMP building or a new performing Arts centre at this time.

Where is the fiscal constraint that was promised at the last election? Mr. Rogers has been a disappointment for his lack of leadership and for his support of the new cop shop.

Seeing as how Quesnel has adopted our method of automated garbage pick up, I wonder if their garbage pickup rate will rise akin to ours? If it does, the city of Quesnel lied to it's residents saying it would save them money. If rates in Quesnel don't rise, maybe some residents of PG can raise a few questions, along with their eyebrows asking why our garbage rates increased.

Population difference in PG and Quesnel will be a red herring answer. Not an option for an answer.

Downnotout and MrPG, I understand your points completely. Truth be told, I simply couldn't live in the bowl because of the bad air. I did it for a couple of years and was never sicker in my life.

What I was trying to suggest was that the sprawl we have in PG is extremely inefficient and because of that, it costs more money to service the population that we do have. If we are happy with sprawl, then we have to accept that we'll probably have to pay a little more because of the inherent inefficiencies. If we want a higher density and the cost savings that go along with it, then we need to start addressing the barriers to achieving that, of which air quality I believe is the biggest . . .

As for Mississauga, how exactly does one realistically compare PG with a population of 75,000 to a city of roughly 700,000?

Am I missing something? Has the PAC been approved? Heck, has a location even been decided upon? Has the design been finalized? Have funding sources even been identified and confirmed?

Why does everyone here seem so convinced that it's being built when for all intents and purposes, it's at the "kicking the tires" stage? Are people that uninformed about the things they speak of?

NMG the PAC will pass I have no doubt. Even if all the home owners that pay the home owner tax that finances the great majority of the city were to say no to the last one of them, then this PAC would still pass.

The problem is that we have unaccountable voters that don't pay for what they vote for. Anyone that rents, which is a majority of the cities population, still gets to vote for tax and spend politicians and enjoy all the amenities these politicians will promise. The captive home owner that ultimately pays the bills is out numbered and at a democratic disadvantage to see any form of accountability to tax and spend policies.

IMO the tax model fuels irresponsible tax and spend politics. They know the home owner is a captive source of revenue, and they know the home owner is out numbered in a vote. I would like to see homes taxed only for the essential services they receive to the home (ie garbage, water, sewer)... the rest of the city budget should come from the carbon based sales taxes that we already pay and that everyone pays including renters and visitors from Stoner, or Vanderhoof that use all our amenities, but pay none of the costs.