We Could Have Won the Bad Roads Contest: One Man's Opinion
By Ben Meisner
Tuesday, March 28, 2006 03:45 AM
-by Ben Meisner
Recently Winnipeg, Manitoba was judged as being the city with the worst roads in Canada.
It is a blessing in disguise the judges did not feel the urge to come to Prince George. We may be out there pounding the pavement, so to speak, trying to get some Kenyans to come to this part of the country (where many will discover snow for the first time) to train for the 2010 Olympics, but when it comes to looking down at where we are walking, it takes on the air of "out of site, out of mind".
It also may be hard to convince a training athlete coming to our city to ski the trails that the stuff they're are breathing is just the smell of money entering their lungs.
We have this great ability to look to the far off corners of the world without so much as giving a glance to the issues of home.
You may recall when a contingent of Councilors and the Mayor headed off to Taiwan to meet with government officials there. On their return they said, the big area of success they had enjoyed was the recruiting of students to UNBC and CNC, an area by the way in which the city has little knowledge. If they were bent on improving recruiting, why in the world did they not sponsor those people who know something about the subject for both of those centers? So what did we get ?
Well the student enrolment dropped in both facilities and we were out there in Torino peddling the very same message, perhaps driven by the fact the business the city fathers said they were promoting, turned them down when it came to heading off to the Olympics.
Business knew there was nothing in it for them; they also knew they had better stay at home with their nose to the grindstone making money to pay for those ever increasing taxes. If nothing else, the dollars will go towards paying the debt for fixing our roads.
I’m Meisner and that is one man's opinion.
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Posted by: Foo738 on March 28 2006 10:55 AM
"It is a blessing in disguise the judges did not feel the urge to come to Prince George."
Too bad I didn't know there was a competition under way because I would have invited the judges to come to Prince George!
City brass would have taken the Grand Pretenders' trophy - given only to those who convince others and even themselves that there is no "real" problem while in fact rattling and pounding through the same potholes and cracks that "ordinary" drivers deal with on a daily basis!
http://www.city.pg.bc.ca/city_services/transportation/potholereport.cfm