Prince George, B.C.- Today, the New Downtown Business Improvement Association will head into two days of workshops aimed at taking stock of where the downtown is   in the wake of the Let’s Get Started rally held   18 months ago.

The sessions will start this morning with a private meeting with the DBIA Board, to be followed by a luncheon with former Premier Mike Harcourt and a private dinner this evening.

Tomorrow, the workshops get underway with sessions which seem to re-hash much of the work already done by the Mayor’s task force for a Better downtown. The sessions will look at issues such as sustainable urban renewal, B.C. housing, policing, an university campus in the downtown, and   to wrap it all up, a town hall meeting and open house on the new DBIA’s “vision of the new downtown.”

Although the new DBIA has yet to present a detailed business plan to Prince George City Council in order to access the funds which will be collected under the new levy, Opinion 250 has learned there was between $50 and $60 thousand dollars left in the DBIA’s account from previous years of levy collection. The budget for the two day event has been pegged in the $25 thousand dollar range.

Opinion 250’s calls to the President of the DBIA for more information on the event and the recent resignation of three Board members, have not been returned. 

The three who resigned, Kirk Gable, Blair Moffat and Paul Williams said they did not feel comfortable with the direction in which the DBIA is heading.  In the case of Kirk Gable, he also noted he could not, in all good conscience, stay on with the Board when there had been no consultation with the Board before the Board’s official stand on the recent report on revitalization tax exemption was issued to a local media outlet. That release slammed the report and its authors for failing to consult with developers, either locally, nationally or internationally before reaching a conclusion that there was no business case for extending a tax exemption to 20, 30 or 40 years.