oh god once again our roads are taking second fiddle, behind a new sound system for the council chambers. Wow our council is out to lunch.......

You forgot to list council raises. I mean you all so deserve it. Meanwhile the people who pay you have no say in it. You have a negative budget yet you keep granting the spending sprees.

With governments everywhere drowning under mountains of debt our elected officials have not learned a thing. With credit ratings that would bounce checks at the dollar store they would buy that 50 inch TV because they don't have to make payments for six months. Has common sense completely died? Stick to the basics and cut costs like all of us have had to do.
Council has recently approved a $354,000 sound system so they can be better heard in chambers. Seems to me that every time we hear from council on budgets and consultant's fees that it costs us more money. Perhaps it would be worth $354,000 to not hear from them.

Why are salaries increasing at City Hall? They are the highest paid for the least results in Canada.

The only Increase you have to pay is the one for Hydro 149 230, all the others you don't, who says you have to go by the Contracts when you are broke, the Ratepayers refuse to pay any more Taxes! Don't like it find a new Job.

It seems to me that the city of PG is not a business and therefor does not in the true sense have a profit motive of revenue exceeding costs like a business... but PG is like a business in that all costs have to be accounted for and performance evaluated and in that regard we are a failed business as a city.

For example municipal salaries should be evaluated not on the work load of the individuals, or the degree of education and experience among them, but rather the salaries should be measured by the output of results from their efforts towards goals that are clearly defined by city council and the mayor... these output results should then be compared to the results of similar municipalities to see if we as tax payers are truly getting value for the dollar spent... if not then what expenditures have the highest utility value per dollar spend and what expenditures can we let go should be the questions we are asking prior to budget time... its the people that earn the salaries that need to be held accountable for results and that is not happening because city council fails in its fiduciary duty to set benchmarks for results.

City Council (Stolz included) should direct every City manager to find 10% worth of tax savings in every single City Department. If some layoffs are required, so be it! The private sector has to make these tough decisions to balance their books, and the City Hall bureaucrats should be treated no differently.

Wages and existing contracts are the single largest City cost. How can the bureaucrats and the politicians defend the hiring of new, additional people (eg the new Manager of Communications), when they are effectively bankrupt, except for the generosity of the taxpayers?

Wow!!! 350,000 bucks for a sound & computer
system!!! There is a consultant salivating
somewhere. Go down to Future Shop or Visions, I'm sure they can equip us with everything we need for a fraction of that price. Does the City not have an IT department? If so, videoconferencing &
live streaming should be a snap.These are
challanging economic times, surely City council can come up with better than this.
As for chopping the snow budget, another poster months ago had the right idea. Why
don't City Councillors test out the new ideas on their own streets first? After their neighbours lynch them, we can measure the results & carry on from there.

I think 350k may seem like a high number but could be accurate. While it may seem absurd, some of the hardware and software costs to provide something live internet broadcasting in a professional manner wouldn't be cheap. Just for fun, go look into Cisco's Telepresence setup, it's really nice but very expensive. I'm sure if you wanted to spend more you could, and you do pay for the name a bit. Costs of data transfer that could be incurred could be quite large as well.

You can't seriously consider a place like future shop to provide a system like this. They sell products, to fill consumer needs. I highly doubt they could offer the kind of support this type of solution would require.

All that being said, I don't really believe that it's the best thing to spend money on. Once it's in we're stuck with it too. You can be sure that increases in the cost of providing this service would be reflected in our taxes.

No bluecriminal, I wasn't serious. I am aware of the cost of IT development. I was trying to poke some fun at our "spend
'til you drop" City council. For me it's a question of: "Do we really need this or
can we get by with what we have until times are better?" That is how most people
try to run their household budgets when
times are tough. Why can't City Hall see this?
I'm quite sure coming up with a balanced budget in these economic times is challenging. Public safety should be the #1
concern, not expenses that could be considered frivolous. You have it right
bluecriminal, once this system is installed the user costs will escalate.

So what are the items in the $4.77 million in savings/cost reduction the finance committee and council identified. Easy to throw out numbers with no back up.
Without this miraculous finding of money to be saved our tax increase would of been over 10%.
Council and mayor should not get to comfortable in their positions because the mood to re-elect these people is extremely negative.

I appreciate Councillor Stolz for taking the time to explain in some detail their effort to decrease costs at City Hall. I also agree that it is not an easy task, however there is a number of things that should be looked at.

1. If we can get significant savings from cancelling our operating leases for Mobile Equipt, why are we doing it now?? Why not a few years ago??

2. The snow budget is always a problem, however as you can see if you look out the window there is very little snow around., One would think that there would be considerable savings this year. Problem is I have seen a number of front end loaders, and dump trucks picking up snow from the residential street corners and hauling it away. (This during a period when the weather is quite capable of melting the snow) Why are we spending this money????

3. I can go either way on the sound system.

4. City council cannot do a proper budget if it is counting on revenues from sources over which it has no control. Interest earned on investments, Traffic Fines, Casino revenue, Arena Revenue. The money from these should be put into general revenues and not slotted away for **Special Projects**

5. City council has to come to their senses in regards to the Couger Franchise. The Cougers are the number one reason that Arena Revenues are down. Signing an agreement with Cougers Management reducing the Citys take to 5% of gross ticket sales will cost the City an additonal $60,000.00 per year at the present fan base. It may be time to cut the Cougers loose, as they make a very small contribution to revenue. The CN Centre costs $630,000.00 per year to run. What is being done to reduce these costs. Is it time to close the Coliseum and fully utilize the CN Centre (Without the Cougers) with the Spruce Kings, etc;

6. Its pretty obvious that the main cost increases in the coming year is for RCMP, Firefighters, Salaries and Benefits, contracts. It is now time to quit giving these people increases. The Citys negotiating position should be no more increases after the expiration of the present contracts for a least three years. These people should be aware of the Citys position NOW not later. If people know that their will be no further increases, they can plan accordingly.

7. We pay huge dollars to service debt. Something like $12 Million per year. This has to stop. We have to quit borrowing money. There is not a valid business case for the following project;

a. $45 Million dollar Police Station. We can and should renovate the present facility.

b. There is absolutely no reason to build a Performing Arts Centre in this town at this time. (If ever)

c. There is no need, and never was a need for a Community Energy Project. This project is beyond comprehension and should be killed immediatly.

4. Initiatives Prince George should be disbanded, and the building they are in sold. These people have a budget of $2.5 Million and approx 8 people on the payroll (which doenst show in the Citys employee numbers) and they contribute very little if anything to the City. They can make a case for their jobs, however if they were gone to-morrow, everyone in Prince George would carry on without missing them for a minute.

5. The City has to get rid of some of its real estate. Sell it off and put the money into General Revenue. If this property is being held for some future projects then they should say so. Certainly since we stopped the Co-Gen from being located on Scotia street, there is no need to keep all that property on the East end of 4th Avenue.

6. The City has to stop looking for and inviting projects from other levels of Government that requires us to match funding. This results in projects being built that are not necessary, such as the Kin Connector, Tunnel Under Highway 16, etc;

7. There is no need for the City to be trying to attract the 2015 Winter Games, this is going to cost us huge dollars. Everyone knows that the numbers crunch for these games are always jaded to show that we will make money, however the formula used is flawed, so we never get the actual numbers, on whether we lost or made money.

8. What are we going to do with the Charles Jago Sport Centre. This building costs the City $300,000.00 per year to operate, not to mention a further $300,000.00 that is costs the University. Are we looking at ways to reduce these costs. The phony Com;pany set up to run this facility borders on fraud, with the City and UNBC being partners, who contribute $300,000.00 each for services. What the hell are the services???? This is a **White elephant** and a way has to be found to make it somewhat self supporting.

9. Downtown parking. DO NOT bring back the parking meters. If shoppers and employees do not have to pay for parking at the malls, then why should employees or shoppers pay for parking downtown?? Why should City staff get free parking, and those who attend the cougers games get free parking, but people who work or shop downtown pay??? Who shops downtown the most?? My guess is that it is the people who work there. So quit making it difficult for them to function.

I could go on but you get my drift.


Again I beleive that this Council (those newly elected) are on the right track and that given some time they will make inroads into our debt and costs, so we will have to cut them some slack in the short term.

Snow removal???? reduce the frequency. Gotta be joking. Shows people are from the lower mainland, not from the rest of Canada that understands the problem if there is no timely removal.

How about shutting down the water removal? You know, the system that collects water via storm sewers. Al it to percolate though the soil. Now there would be an environmentally sound approach to saving some money in future developments and maintenance of existing systems.

Oh, we could also shut down the sanitary system and get people to install outhouses.

If we are going to get rutted ice/snow covered streets for 5 or so months a year, why not revert ll residential streets to gravel roads????? SOme more so called savings.

With totally stupid suggestions like that coming from Council, it is obviously time to make a record of what basic standards ought to be and record why they ought ot be that.

Hey, let's shut down the hospital and provide everyone with free bus service to Vancouver. Would be much cheaper...... Or maybe send them to India where procedures are about 20% of the cost here and get a vaction at the same time.

You're kidding me right gus?

A change in snow clearing of two inches? Talk about being overly dramatic!

Having a couple of graders scrapping the last two inches of ice of my road is needed?

How does two inches difference on when the plows come out equate to gravel roads? To closing down hospitals or shipping people to India?

What's wrong with just having a conversation about snow removal without the rhetoric? Isn't that what adults do? Have reasonable conversations?

Just a thought.