It will be interesting to observe how the election of the new mayor of Toronto will have an effect on that city's priorities. He ran on a platform of a back to basics, no frills no nonsense government. His landslide victory makes it clear that the people want a straight forward approach to municipal government. Pick up the garbage, supply water and sewer, plow the snow and fix the potholes. He promised that all the perks and frills will be history, no sightseeing trips for council or the mayor, no endless council debates and involvement in global warming issues and social issues which are the responsibilities of other levels of government! This is new approach is something the people want. They are fed up with endless tax and fee increases and the City involving itself in issues which are none of its business, meanwhile neglecting the basic services and spending money on projects which are not really needed.

This may be a sign of things to come even to this part of the country, hopefully.

"When you roll the tape back on the past civic election we are told how the new council is going to take spending by the throat and wrestle it to the ground."

Some wrestling match! Looks like the *control the spending* contestant has yet to make an appearance!

Actually it was only a so called "landslide" because he had two individuals that split the vote. If he had been running against one individual it would be hard to say who would have won.

His Council is generally speaking not cut from the same cloth as he is. Toronto is a very traditional city when it comes to politics. It will be interesting to see how often he can get the required 23 votes on Council on some of the positions he is taking.

He wants to get rid of the streetcars, for instance. I doubt that is a wise or popular move. They are very efficient. Europe thrives on them. Buses get in the way of bike lanes, for instance.

This part of the country move the same way? Calgary went the other way ......

Toronto does have a high budget though. $9 billion for 2.5 million people. Vancouver is just over $1billion for a quarter of the population. In both cases, they have high infrastructure maintenance costs because they are the centre of a much larger urban agglomeration that takes advantage of the infrastructure provided by the core city without paying for it.

It is one thing to be this person trying for a Council seat knowing very little about what that responsibility entails. When reality hits, they all do the automatic North American thing and reach for the credit card. it is an automatic reaction. It is an addiction. From what I see, there is a total inability to assess value and effectiveness and make the hard decisions that come from those assessments which show that the service is not as efficient and effective as it could be.

Ben has pointed out the level of staffing we have in protective services compared to other cities. Higher than any other city of our size. Yet we see situations like the fire at the airport hanger which took far too long to respond to as I recollect.

There is one major problem in this city. This, and all other councils inability to deal with a powerfull Beaurocracy. They are the ones driving the train. We the people have to gain control.

I've seen some ridiculous opinions on this site but this one takes the cake. Get rid of the cops and firemen? Why not try something that makes some sense and cut the number of lazy-ass so-called "workers" that are on the city payroll? Drive by any city run work site and ask yourself, "Do we really need all those people breast feeding all those shovels?" The list goes on and on and on...

You got it giterdun!!!!
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Faxman, you realize of course that firemen are city workers ..... they are people too and are no different than anyone else when it comes to trying to do the least for the most.

Don't get me wrong, when they need to spring to action on a fire, they do their job, no doubt. But those are emergency situations for which they are trained. The rest of the time, I think they cannot be differentiated from other workers.

Of course, their story will be different, as will be the story of the other workers you speak of.

We need a neutral review of the efficiency and effectiveness of ALL city workers to see whether there are efficiencies to be had.

How about cutting the wages slightly? Why do janitors get paid $25 per hour. That's insane and way out of line with what private industry pays. City wages are too high; pure and simple!

Ok Mr Meisner, I'll bite.

What do you want, more police officers or more crime?

In case you missed it, PG is #1 in *Canada* for crime per capita, but you say we need to cut the budgets of the police to save money? You really want to put a budget above personal safety?

How about we not host the winter games, stop going on trips to China, and stop increasing the pay of city councillors, and not spend $50 million on an arts center.

I'm a little shocked at the amount of firefighters we have. I don't understand the need to have that many fire fighters, I'd be interested to see the number of legitimate callouts they go to. Do they really need to go to ambulance calls? It seems like there's a full firetruck load of guys standing around while the paramedics are the only ones working. Why are the firefighters there?

I think if you took into account all the wasted time and money on medical call outs, you could probably trim the fire budget a bit. But even then, you can't cut it too much, they are still necessity.

I am not sure that cutting police in a city with a crime problem is the way to go, however, I would definitly vote for a Mayor/Council that ran on a "back to basics" platform. We are in a recession, and IMHO "we" need to take a hard look at cutting the extras. We have had to do that in our home, it is not pleasant, but that is the way things are. The civic gov't should be looking at doing the same. There is a sidewalk in front of my house that people don't usually walk on, because it is in bad condition. It would be nice to have things like that fixed, because the small things make a place nice to live in.

I guess when comparing firefighters city to city the comparison has to be area covered, not necessarily population. I've lived in Kamloops and I would say area wise it's very comparable to PG - so probably there is something there to be cut.

As for police, you have to look at %of habitual criminals and street people. We unfortunately have a significant core of people who commit the bulk of the crime and drive up our police costs. Unfortunately the cost of incarceration is so high in this country, it's cheaper in the long run to give lighter sentences and police them, than jail them.

All budget choices are about guns and butter. We can't have everything because we don't want to pay more taxes. So we have to decide what we spend on. Last year the city spent 6.5 million on grants, the largest 3.5 million for the library. That's enough to buy 13,000 pg residents a year a kindle ebook reader. Another 1.6 mil for initiates prince george - not sure what they do. The rest arguably on organizations that if they can't get private money to support them, they just shouldn't exist.
Then there's the 209 staff who average just under 100,000 a year in salary.

All this information is readily available at this link at the pg city website. It even lists everyone in this town who got a cheque from the city. The Bank of Montreal is in their at 4.5 million. What was that for? Please tell me it wasn't bank fees.


http://www.city.pg.bc.ca/city_services/finance/statements/

In case you missed it, PG is #1 in *Canada* for crime per capita, but you say we need to cut the budgets of the police to save money? You really want to put a budget above personal safety?

The large police force that we have are not out fighting crime of the typed that made us #1 across Canada. They are out chasing cars to generate more dollars for the City to spend on their favorite projects. We hear them with sirens howling going up and down Ospika all hours of the day.

The fire department is another example of wasted tax dollars. They are out chasing ambulances a function that is funded by the province. When contacted about this practice the response was that the fire trucks are distributed at different locations and can get to an emergency much faster. What a no brainier that is.
Cheers

For those of you who are completely clueless:

THere are several different teams of police opfficers that work in a police station: There is General Duty, Serious Crime, Task Force and in addition to several others - there is a Traffic section. THe traffic section is actually a small number of officers. It is their job to seek out and fine traffic violations - that is WHAT THEIR JOB IS!

So all you people bellyaching that all the police do in PG is issue traffic tickets - it a relatively few number of officers issuing tickets and THEY ARE DOING THEIR JOBS. GET OVER IT.

The other reason for the medical call outs is that they do "lift assists". If the ambulance feels they can't lift someone safely, they wait for the firemen. The fireman will tell you that it occurs all the time. Some cities have absorbed the ambulance into the fire rescue service. Makes sense, the current system is redundant.

Why not have PG "trade" 2 policemen for one "hangin' judge?" That might whittle crime down a tetch.

The Prince George Fire Department is a joke amongst all other BC Fire Departments. I have heard their leaders aren't even welcome at the BC Fire Chief's convention anymore.

They are ALL about more jobs.

They refuse to work with or accept assistance from volunteer departments. They spent three years chasing ambulances (much to the annoyance of paramedica) and lobbying the provincial government to turn ambulance services over to the fire departments. And - they now run a pilot program doing just that.

So, PG taxpayers are paying for a duplication of services during this 'pilot' program whose mandate isn't to increase the value and level of service, but to increase the number of employees in the department.

Ask around - talk to the paramedics, the PG volunteer departments.... you will get an earful!

25 Bucks an Hour for Janitors any Truth to that ? PG must be wealthy

the fire trucks are distributed at different locations and can get to an emergency much faster.???
If anybody has noticed, the ambulance stations are too. If they can get to an accident "much faster" why are they always the last to arrive?

Maybe city council should look at replacing some of the city managers with people who have a successful track record in regards to efficiency and making every dollar count. Instead of city managers telling council how things need to be done, let's try having council tell city mangers how things are going to be from now on or they get replaced.

6% property tax increase? My property taxes, as a senior, increased 15.2% in 2010, from a mayor whose platform during the last election, was to reduce the cost and size of government. I sent Rogers an accounting of my tax increase but he did not have the decency to reply to provide accountability for his incompetence. I am waiting for November 2011 to get rid of Rogers and most of his puppets on council. Skakun seems to be the only council member who tries to get value for the taxpayer's dollar. City Hall does not like this and does not want to be accountable to anyone. The remainder of council should be replaced in November, 2011.

We need the amount of police we have. The firefighters could be scaled back unless of course it will require them to work lots of overtime.

Do the other city's fireman work more overtime? I'd like to know that.

If Kelowna with a population 50% greater than PG has fewer police officers than PG what are they doing right and what are we doing wrong in regards to fighting crime.
I am sure a criminal would much rather reside in Kelowna than PG given the climate, and recreational activities available, not to mention all the potential drug buying clients commonly called tourists.
All you criminals out there. Think about it. Time to move and expand your business.

Resident has it right. We have had more police per population than any of the other cities of our size. Yet the crime rate here appears to have climbed in relation to the number of police we have.

Any reasonable person would reach the conclusion that we are not as effective here as the force is in other locations, especially since the other city attributes in other locations appear to be better.

The one thing we do not know about is the size of the market here. I know we have more disposable income in this city than the others our size. So do we have more addicts here with more money to spend?

Does anyone at the RCMP have a handle on that? What are we doing about that side of the equation? With all these raids, are we reducing supply?