City Hall is a huge expense. Cut backs needed there for sure. Too much staff that have a knack for looking busy and expressing how they always have too much to do. With everything computerized and automated now, do we really need that many men and women working in City Hall? Would be nice to have some job evaluation up there. Also supervisors and managers are too many. One supervisor looking over three people. One would have to question, do we really need that supervisor?

We do not NEED a new police station. There is a big difference between needing one and having a desire for one.

Same for the planned Performing Arts Centre.

If one owns a well maintained older car and it does the job one may wish that one could trade it in on the latest greatest newest fresh smelling model but if one has a very tight budget and can't afford it one has to keep the old one.

Unless, of course, one can get somebody else to make the payments.

That pretty much says it all diplomat!
Unfortunately,that seems to be the way it is done on ALL levels of government!
And we wonder why we are broke and paying too much in taxes?

We need to VOTE on big expenditures like these mentioned above. The city should not have free reign on this kind of decision. End of story!

I have always thought there needs to be some kind of controls on large expenditures by government/s.
Right now,they have ultimate power over our tax dollars,and they don't always do a very good job of managing them,as we know!
Sometimes they are completely self-serving and driven by political power and greed.
We really need to fix that.

I have posted the link to the City web page once before in the last few weeks.

[url]http://www.city.pg.bc.ca[/ulr]

Please note the following new lead paragraph likely placed there by the new communications guy. You know, the fellow who was on a bit of a hot seat as a result of the "stories" on the YXS web page.

Spin spin spin ....

"Known as BC's northern capital, Prince George is a bustling city of over 83,225"

Two things.

There is no such thing as a Northern Capital. It is a self-made title that is not bestowed on the City by neutral people from outside the City. I doubt anyone in the Peace ever says: "I am going to our Northern Capital for a couple of days."

Second, the number cited is the 2006 census figure for the PG CA (census agglomeration) is the same as what the City attributes as its own. The census population for the City is actually 70,981, down from 72,406 in 2001.

Here are the areas included in the PG CA figures.

http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/prof/92-591/details/page_Hier1.cfm?Lang=E&Geo1=CMA&Code1=970__&Geo2=PR&Code2=59&Data=Count&SearchText=Prince George&SearchType=Begins&SearchPR=01&B1=All&Custom=

IR 2 (Shelley) = 107
Area A (north of City) = 3,275
Area C (south west of City) = 3,217
Area D (south east of City) = 4,361
Area F (east to Alberta) = 1,284

Why can we not just be who we are? Why do we have to exaggerate? Are we not comfortable in our own skin? Why this need to embellish? To me that says a lot about a person and says a lot about a community.

http://www.city.pg.bc.ca

70,981 + IR2 and areas A,C,D and F = 83,225. I am so excited, as a "north of city" number I am actually included in our city population total. Oh happy day! ;-)
One question though - what does "of OVER 83225" mean? 83226?

Voting on new buildings to be developed by the city or government would be a welcomed idea.

Its called "empire building".

Look at the information that comes with your tax notice. You will see that 13.29 of the budget goes to administration, 28.73 protective services and they don’t break it down to police or fire protection. But the winner is 13.29% for debt services.

Herd the Mayor welcoming to our City the lone Olympic ice skater that will be training at the CN Center.

Cheers

I agree, ION. It would be very nice if each level of government would have a referendum every month for all major decisions. That would be a true democracy. Of course there are financial costs required for votes like that, but I believe those could be offset by reducing the number of political representatives (MPs, MLAs, and city council). It would also not be that expensive if the voting was done online, but of course there would be some major security concerns with that method. I'm sure with today's technology that an economical and secure system could be implemented, though.

All of us have had to seperate our "wants" from our "needs" during the last couple years.....THE CITY SHOULD DO THE SAME!!!!

They dont have the money to satisfy their "want" for a new police station, and are now trying to squeeze what they need out of the Provincial and Federal governments.....and if they don't get it....well they will just download the blame to them.

Time to reign it in like everyone else Mayor Rogers and Councillors. You have not presented the need for a new police station, and with the stats that are available....I seriously doubt that you can convince the taxpayers.

When your cupboards are empty...you don't go out and buy a new TV.

Clearly this city has less than 70,000 residents, and I would guess less than 65,000 people today (nearly 20,000 less than the city claims) 4-years after the latest census numbers.

In the last four years a lot of high paying jobs have left this city:

NCP... (500 jobs including bush jobs?)

Winton Global... (400 jobs)

Rustads... (500 jobs)

NT Air... (120 jobs)

most mills still running are doing so at 50% or less their previous employment and output numbers... (1000 jobs)

construction on new buildings has dried right up... (400 jobs?)

the education sector will see 14 schools closed and cut backs elsewhere... (400 jobs?)

Small business and retail (????)

City admin, School district admin, forestry service admin... (4 jobs)

So a rough calculation would see that we have likely lost at least 3000 high paying jobs in this city in the last 1.5 years alone. Sure some are working at Home Depot or other low paying jobs, so maybe not quiet 3000 (retail ?)... but then again each of those jobs likely supports a family of at least 2.5 per job... so to say the city of PG has lost 5000 people in the last year and a half wouldn't be a stretch I would think.

At 65,000 this city can not afford a lot of things... starting with a new police station, as well as the top heavy admin which are mostly all 6-figure income earners. We have a recipe for a death spiral that will kill this city from any future recovery though debt burden and high taxation of those not able to get out while the hype is good.

Any new industry will not want to associate with the municipal albatross that is the city of PG and will locate in Hixon or Vanderhoof or anywhere but high tax potential PG.

Also as far as I am concerned the city does not collect property taxes to pay the top heavy admin from property owners to the Alberta boarder, so those numbers should never be used by the city on the city web site unless you are trying to fool tax payers into justification of more home tax spending by city admin for their pet projects and fat salaries.

Like I said before our next mayor needs to be the most feared person at city hall and the place needs to be cleaned out and renewed with better human resource policies than we have had to date. That would be a signal that PG is serious about becoming a city of opportunities once again in the future, rather than a city of admin empire builders on the captive tax payers dollar....

Time Will Tell

You can't fix STUPID!!!
However; you can vote them out!

MEISNER for Mayor.. I know you won't run Ben but is there a clone out there that you know of. If Ben ran there would be people jumping out of the third floor windows at city hall. LOL

Wikipedia says 70,981 in 2006

Good post Gus. I agree. Why do we have to exaggerate, why cant we just tell it like it is. This constant BS drives me crazy.

An example: The City (Skakun) along with Brandi Brodsky, and CN Manager Besely recently put out a news article telling us that they signed a new 10 year agreement for leasing the CN Centre, and what a great contract it was, and how happy everyone is, and how the Cougers are the cornerstone of the CN Centre. That was the story line.

Now the facts: The City signed a 10 year least retroactive to 2008.

The previouse lease paid the City 12.5% of gross ticket sales,to a maximum of $1,250,000.00 then 15%, but not less that $3000.00 per game. It also had an opting out clause for the Couger.

The new lease pays the City a percentage of the gross ticket sales based on attendence, so that when they are averaging 2200 fans per game the City would get approx $1300.00 per game.(5% of gross sales) The last two games had attendence of 1660 so the City would get approx $1000.00 per game. The minimum of $3000.00 per game is out the window. So if we were to use the last couple of years ie; 2008 and 2009 with an average of approx approx 2400 at the City would be receiving approx $1500.00 less per game. or approx $60,000.00 per year. Being retroactive to 2008 the City will have to pay the Cougers approx $120,000.00. In addition their is an opt out clause for the Cougers, that allows them to leave Prince George at the end of any season, as long as they give the required notice.

What this means is that the City will pick up an additonal $60,000.00 per year in costs by hosting the Cougers at the CN Centre, and when this additional cost is added to the cost of running this facility approx $600,000.00 per year, we are in effect paying the Cougers to play in Prince George.

How can a situation like this be played out as a good news story. How is an additonal loss of 60,000.00 a year for the City played out as a Win, Win situation??

The only way that this can be a Win, Win, is for the attendence at the Cougers games to increase by a minimum of 2000 fans per game for 36 home games. Whats the chance of this happening?

An appropriate headline would be.

**NEW COUGERS CONTRACT COSTS CITY AN ADDITIONAL $60,000.00 PER YEAR UNLESS FAN ATTENDENCE RISES DRAMATICALLY.***

The City plans to increase the RCMP by three constables at a cost of $134,000.00 per year per constables in 2010. This brings the number of RCMP in Prince George to 131.

In addition we now have three (3) full time City staff at the Community Policing Station. This is an additional cost of Probably $90,000.00 per year per person.

This is only the tip of the iceburg when it comes to spending at City Hall.

"MEISNER for Mayor.. I know you won't run Ben but is there a clone out there that you know of. If Ben ran there would be people jumping out of the third floor windows at city hall"

The only person who would be jumping out of the window, would be Ben. This is because of the fact that unlike his old business or Opinion 250, he'd be frustrated to death upon his realization that he really had no power to actually do anything.

It's easy to talk about reducing spending, firing people, cleaning up the downtown core, fixing the roads, etc., but even Ben would be faced with the reality that there are things the City can't control and there are also compromises that need to be made when you are dealing with something as complex as running a city.

Now that being said, I tend to agree with the rest of the posts in that we probably should look at ways to reduce spending. Here are my suggestions:

- Put a temporary freeze on all new capital projects until the economy stabilizes and/or we have some level of population growth
- Evaluate whether we need to keep all current facilities open. Maybe we need to close down the Four Seasons Pool and some ice rinks. Yeah it will anger some users, but so what? If we want to make "hard decisions" we're going to make someone mad . . .
- Reduce the service levels for garbage pickup and snow removal. Yes I said it . . .
- Revisit ALL operating grants to community groups and similar organizations
- Perform a comprehensive analysis of city staffing, what essential service levels are for a reduced population, etc. Trim budgets where practical. I actually don't expect there would be a pile of savings here because many of the services the city performs would be constant regardless of the population (road clearing, etc.)
- Raise user fees for civic facilty rentals, ice time contracts, field usage, etc. If we want user pay for art galleries, let's go user pay for everything
- Evaluate whether the money going to Tourism PG and IPG is getting us RESULTS. If it isn't, let's create an alternate model and/or chop the budgets until the results do start coming

I also don't see the point with us saying that we're 80,000 strong. Let's be honest. Let's look at what our real population is, let's re-evaluate what it should cost us to service that population and let's be honest with what our potential for short-term growth is. This may actually be a great oppotunity for us to "clean the slate" a little bit and come back with a new approach to how we manage the financial affairs in the city.

My numbers are somewhat askew for the RCMP. We in fact have 121 members and the City wants to increase this to 124 for 2010,2011.

They refer to what they call core police personel of which they presently have 64 and this would be increased to 67.

Or to put it another way, the contract with the RCMP Calls for 128 Police but there are only 121 actually hired. They will increase this number in the contract to 131,but in fact will hire 3 for an actual total of 124.

Does that make more sense???

In any event we will be paying out an additional $404,000.00 if this goes through.

Regarding the RCMP, I'd like to see some comparables. What do other cities of roughly 70,000 have when it comes to RCMP staff? Do they generally encounter similar policing issues as we do? Does our relative isolation from other large centers and our position as a bit of a regional hub for our area present unique policing challenges for us that a Red Deer or Chilliwack may not encounter, for example? I'm not sure you can just look at the number of staff, you have to look at it in comparison to what they do and what is needed to meet the policing objectives established by the City (and of course the policing expectations for the residents).

A similar analysis could be performed for fire services.

Is there a correlation bettween the numbers of RCMP members in a city and the number of Tim Horton outlets in a city?

I've noticed a reduced number of Mounties loitering on or about Tims for quite a while. Methinks they got a internal memo to keep out of the public eye for a while after killing four people and not being punished and other embarrassing scenarios. There was a poll taken recently and the majority of Canucks are kinda disgusted with them. Bad press and all. IMO.

The ratio across Canada is about 20 to 30 police per Tim's outlet. Anything less than that and outlets will close.

With some additional police, we may see another Tim's under construction this summer.

BTW, they go up much more quickly than Sandman Hotels do.

The new police super station will have a 24/7 Tim Hortons built right into the foyer!

(Just kidding, of course!)