And I thought new garbage trucks and cans were going to save tons of money. Seem rates go up every three months.

And scrap Boudary Rd and the police station.

One hundred and seventeen million dollars in debt and we have eleven million to host some future "games" here?
Haven't we learned the lesson that you pay down debt before blowing money on friviloties?

I'm SummerSoul and this is just SummerSoul's opinion.

Dan Rogers promised during his campaigning that he would put the PAC to referendum. I sure hope he keeps his word.

My property taxes just went up by nearly 500.00 per year..I think I'm paying enough taxes!

"...increased tipping fees at the Foothills landfill"? And we haven't even begun to receive all the additional junk China will be sending us to pay for the oil the Enbridge pipeline would deliver to them! Wait until you see the size of the tipping fees then!

Wholly man where the hell is a person supposed to get all this money from for taxes. My wages never went up.

..." City Council will be asked to increase your garbage pick up rates by 4.5%."

Who is doing the asking? Is it possible to debate with that person why the new system is NOT living up to the advertised benefits?

Can it be fixed?

We switched from the largest garbage can to the smallest. We do not put anything in the garbage that can be recycled. No newspapers, cardboard, plastic milk containers, etc.

Result: Higher fees and a couple of extra trips a month to the recycling bins. Extra trips every month to take grass clippings and garden trimmings for composting to the local landfill.

Perhaps each households garbage can ought to be weighed when it is picked up. It is supremely unfair to charge an ever increasing flat rate as sometimes our garbage can is only half full.

What happened to the highly touted long-term savings when the city purchased the automated garbage trucks?

Who did the study (no doubt for big bucks) and why are are no positive results?

Posted by: hammmy on June 7 2010 8:11 AM
Wholly man where the hell is a person supposed to get all this money from for taxes. My wages never went up.


All part of the gov't/corporate agenda Hammy.

5 years ago my husband and I relocated to Prince George. Shortly after my son and his family came. My mother in-law passed away so my father in-law also came here. 2 years ago my daughter and her husband also moved here. In those five years our taxes have gone up every year. Air quality is disgusting and crime is one of the highest in BC. Two women have been attacked and the attackers never found.

My daughter and her husband have left and my son has plans to go as soon as his course is done at the college. My husband has applied for work elsewhere and has been offered the job. We will be gone by September taking my father in-law with us and we will not look back.

If you research how many people have left PG in the last five years you will also see that we are not alone. The population has dropped dramatically. The PG city council is out of control and on a spending spree. $111 million dollars in debt even after raising the taxes every year is unacceptable! Our mayor is the highest paid mayor in BC aside from the lower mainland. The money being spent on studies, beautification and nice to haves have broken the residence of this city. Even through the recession they kept spending and spending on things that were not a necessity.

8 people who spent money, paid taxes and were a huge part of PG will be gone. It is unfortunate that it has come to this but we tried hard to make PG a place to call home. I wish you all luck and hope that things change but that amount of debt is sucking up so much interest that PG is in for a long hard fight to pay it down if they ever can. You really need to reign in the cities spending habits and soon.

Maybe Mr. Frizzell can explain how he spent $6000 more on expenses than Mr. Skakun when they both do the same job?

1. The whole garbage collection scheme has been a disaster. We were supposedly going to get some savings with the new program, however we only got additional costs. Some people should be fired over this issue.

2. How can the City be looking for a location for the Performing Arts Centre, when it has not been determined if we want one or not. Who the hell is deciding that we want one. I suspect about 50 people in Prince George including those at IPG are driving this issue. Other than that, no one wants this building at this time.

3. The City is going to spend $650,000.00 on upgrades to the intersection for the Boundry Road extension. This is just the tip of the ice berg. Before this is over we will have spent someting in the area of $8 Million plus another $26 million more or less from other Governments. Private interests will pay approx $6 Million. Who the hell is going to benefit from this project. Certainly not taxpayers. This is another smoke and mirrors project that allows Government money to be spent to facilitate private business ventures.

4. What is happening with the Golf Course lands. The par 3 is going to stay where it is. There doesnt appear to be a buyer for the PGGCC, so the question is. What is going to happen. How is the new course going to be built if the old course isnt sold. Lets hope that this bloody council doesnt have a plan up their sleeve to purchase the lands for $15 Million and hold it for development so that the new course can go ahead. This would be one possible scenario. The PGGCC is broke at its present location, and will not be a viable operation at a new location. So basically it is toast unless it can get some funding from somewhere. I suggest they get a long term loan from NDIT and fix up the present course and stay where they are. There is really no need to move. The original reason was for the developers to take over the course, however it seems development in this town has ground to a halt.

I agree with Municca. There is no reason for people to come to this town, when we are faced with high taxes, poor infrastructure, poor snow removal, bad air, poor roads, etc; etc; etc;. The City spends its money on stupid (I REPEAT STUPID) projects rather than on infrastructure, etc;, and then raise our taxes to pay for them. They are so incompetent they cannot run any facility in his town at cost.

Lots of people are leaving and lots more will leave. Our latest fiasco is this blood Winter Games fiasco. Hopefully with any luck at all Kamloops, or Kelowna will get the games and we will save some money.

Come next civic election time, I am quite sure that these "taxation" shortcomings emanating from city hall recently will be forgotten by most , if not all voters. Weeks before our next election nothing will matter except brand new promises and dreams from our candidates.It worked before, time and again, why not during our next election?

Very well said Municca!!! And I'm sorry to see you go, but totally understandable. I too will be leaving once I retire in a couple of years. PG & BC are both getting too expensive to live.

1. "In those five years our taxes have gone up every year"

They have in other cities as well.

2. "crime is one of the highest in BC"

Crime in BC is near the top in Canada. Good luck if you are staying in BC.

3. "Our mayor is the highest paid mayor in BC aside from the lower mainland."

No Mayor has to put up with as much chit as this mayor. BTW, Kelowna's mayor gets more. On top of that, instead of paying their Mayor, Councillors and Administration more, Kelowna has decided to create two Kelowna's, so the Mayor of West Kelowna gets part of the action too, and new staff, and new offices .....

We can always create South Fort George and Central Fort George again. Then we can all proclaim that even though the total salaries are over $100,000, the individual Mayor salaries are among the lowest in BC. :-)

Some of the smaller communities in BC are so expensive to live that they close down the coffee shops and other conveniences at 5pm since there are no customers who can afford such frivolous activities.

Too bad some people leave in total frustration. I won't. I like it here and I have been living here for a long time. I intend to stay and criticize (whine!) whenever I have a reason to. Like Palopu I think that the City has lost its focus and overall direction.

The City appears to be only reacting to the latest pressures from special interest groups and the like. Belt tightening is not found in the vocabulary. We need some toughness and decisiveness when moneys are to be spent since money does not grow on trees.

Of course every interest group feels that its latest dreams are a necessity without which the city would simply grind to a halt. The PAC is a good example. The city won't collapse because we have many great entertainment venues already

Even the planned new RCMP facility is not an absolute must.

The city needs more money for the garbage collection? No problem. Shut down the fluoride injection system, don't buy any more poisonous fluoride and save about 75,000 bucks per year, and every year thereafter!

96.5% of B.C. residents drink water which is NOT being fluoridated at the source. We - P.G., belong to the unfortunate 3.5% who still have their water needlessly medicated by the City.

BTW, stopping fluoridation may save even more money in the long run: Lawsuits can cost a lot of money.

Funny how the garbage collection rates keep going up. Almost like it has become an annual event. I really don't udnerstand why the rates are going up when so many people are recylcing. There are at least a half dozen, if not more, little companies that are in the recycling business now. For less then $10 a month, I have all of my recycling material picked up from my doorstep. How come these little guys can afford to do it and keep their rates decent; while the city has to keep increasing prices. And these little guys have to pay to store the material they collect. With all this recylcing going on, you'd think the city's rates would be coming down. Maybe they should privatize the garbage pick up and let the little guys do it.

"Little guys" get $5/hour in the end .... "big guys" get 10 times as much by the time all costs are calculated .....

What is being missed is how much garbage would have gone up had the changes not been implemented. What is the cost per ton or some such rated system instead of per person or per household?

The most important part of all is this. The method being used to have one agency, the RDFFG, handling the garbage disposal at essentially one end location was supposed to have a better control of inducing reductions in tonnage delivered to the site. Instead, it appears to have been steadily increasing.

Can anyone shed any light on THAT part of the information? The whole thing was to have been an attempt at reducing our garbage gpoing to landfills. Looks like that has been a miserable failure and no one is reporting that.

Do people realize that the Residential Wood Innovation Comprehensive District proposed for the Winnipeg-Vancouver Street corridor is looking for planning money from Council tonight to the tune of $77,000+? To "study" impact of having higher density in that region on transportation, city services, and the willingness of residents to accept shadows cast across their properties.

It is proposed to be taken from the Council Contingency, 2010 Downtown Initiatives Budget.

So, no more contingencies then? It is all going to be blown on something that should have been known beforehand if people were astute enough to understand what they were proposing and approving and is not a contingency at all.

Hopefully, when these lots get sold for future developments, the developers will have their DCCs raised to recapture all these costs or else make it loud and clear how the City has provided a hidden incentive to raise their property values.

BTW, the objective with contingencies is not to spend them unless one is in dire straits.

And that group has not been around for some time. :-)

I am sick and tired of these garbage rates,water & sewer,taxes always two-bitten us to death.The residential customers are obviously subsiding place such as Northern Health,who do not have recycling programs in place.Maybe City Hall should start buying Lotto Max tickets,with the hope of winning and paying off some debt.

I think City Hall is already spending too much money on hopes. They need to spend money on known winners.

how does a municipal recall get started? How do we force a new election, now?

The only way that an new election would help would be to bring in a slate of candidates that promise to make major changes to the city hall administration and staff. They are the ones who do all the legwork in the background. For the most part council just rubber stamps what is brought forward to them.


It is no wonder our property taxes are going up every year when they want to dip into our wallets twice in a few months on something as simple as garbage collection.

Buy out the senior planning staff and bring in some people who understand what budget and planning actually mean.

Gus:..."Do people realize that the Residential Wood Innovation Comprehensive District..'

What in tarnation is a Residential Wood Innovation Comprehensive District?

Who makes up these pompous sounding names?

OMG.

The cost of garbage disposal increased substantially because of the new trucks that the City bought. These trucks cannot carry the same payload that the bigger trucks could and therefore they have to make many more trips to the landfill. This of course means more gas, and more time spent on the road. We had to buy an additional truck, because of the wear and tear on these vehicles.

The BS about saving money on WCB claims was just a red herring used as fodder to make a case for the new system.

The Regional District charges a tipping rate for all garbage delivered to the site. If the economy is in the dump then there is less garbage to dispose of, and the District makes less money. So in essence this means that the more we reduce our garbage the more our costs will rise, because the City and the Regional District will not reduce their costs of handling the garbage.

The Mayor sits on the board of the Regional District so he was complicite in having the tipping fees raised, and therefore our garbage costs raised.

This is just one of many projects that the City has initiated that immediatly turned brown. Problem is they do not get rid of any of the people who bring in these programs.

For anyone who is interested, are you aware that there is very little use of the Civic Centre. This facility sits empty for most of the year. Some of the business it used to have has been **kited** to the CN Centre so the cost of running that facility doesnt look so bad. ($600,000.00 per year)

Why couldnt we renovate the Civic Centre and turn it into a Performing Arts Centre. Why do we need to build another building that will sit empty for most of the year???

Building new buildings is great for contractors and City Planners, but it costs tax payers a fortune. Lets start to use our heads for something other than a hat rack.

We should also renovate the existing Police Station on Brunwick St. rather than build a new state of the Art station for housing criminals.