Prince George Citizen - All the News That's Fit to Spin (in a positive light)

Thanks to a diet last night that included far too much coffee, salsa and fresh cherries...I got to spend a great deal of time reading today. It was either nuggets of trivia from Uncle John's Big Bathroom Reader...or our local rag in both paper and electronic form (on my blackberry, of course...I'm not quite so evolved as to bring a laptop computer in yet). Thankfully I chose the latter, because there were a few doozies today.

First up was a marvellous little nuggest that should probably have made the front page but which our city editors of the perpetually rose-colored glasses elected to bury on page 5. "Horizon Air Cancels Daily Flights Between Kamloops and Seattle". Citing "rising fuel costs and the US recession", they pull the pin on this service. Gee, what a huge surprise...not. And this supposedly super-successful service was one of the mainstays in the NEVER-MADE-PUBLIC market research from InterVISTAS that our IPG and municipal council relied so heavily on to gamble away $400,000 of your tax dollars. Given that we are well into the summer travel season and flights between PG and Seattle are still only getting around 20-30 people per flight (a couple dozen under what we need to avoid a payment to the US company)...and given that Kamloops has a lot more to offer a Seattle vacationer in terms of Sun Peaks, numerous amazing golf courses, better air quality, warmer and drier climate...shouldn't an incredible blow like this (and the painfully obvious message that we're next) have been bigger news to the suits at the Citizen? I guess not, when you're so chummy with the suits at the Chamber of Commerce, the airport authority, etc. that your more immediate mandate than presenting the ugly side of the news is to preserve and protect the facade that everything's A-OK here in the Central Interior.

Along those lines, we saw more gobbledy-gook from our local housing market analyst, a press release printed virtually as-is without any "raised eyebrow" questions from Citizen staff. This gal is another government hack paid not to tell people like it really is, but to spin the figures into keeping the masses from panicking and causing even more chaos in the ever-worsening economy. "We're still doing better than we were 10 years ago!" was the message. Apparently we are to ignore the realities of the significant drop in building permits, the huge inventory of homes on the market taking longer to move and at lower prices, the tightening of mortgage rules, the fact that so many more people are without work, etc. etc.

Another great headline today? "CN excited about a second containter ship in Rupert". Yeah, another great story about more Chinese boxes rolling through Prince George. But when asked to provide REAL HARD numbers and evidence that any of these containers are actually providing employment or significant economic benefits to our city...the company spin-man trots out the same old line we've heard for months now "It's too early to speculate on the numbers". Too friggin' early?? Gimme a break, dude...have you got anybody in your employ with 10 fingers and 10 toes? Count how many freaking boxes you are paying people to unload or load on day one...and then count again how many freaking boxes you are paying people to load or unload on day 90. Then let us know if ANYTHING coming out of Rupert is benefitting anybody other than a few longshoremen there and a whole bunch of Asian suits. It's not rocket science, or speculation for that matter! But again, no boat rocking by our industrious Citizen. No fighting for your rights to know what's really going on around here. No, instead let's just keep lapping up the nauseating sugar water that's spoon fed to us by all these PR cheerleaders. I guess that other headline I saw today "Circus Coming to CN Centre" should have been followed by a sub-header suggesting "But No Clowns Though--They're Too Busy Spreading False Hope Around City".

I tell ya, it's enough to make a person sick if you think about it too much. So I'll try and put all this exasperating corporate and media spin out of my mind and focus on the other great headline I saw today announcing "Drew Barrymore Single Again". Maybe if I can get this "chopper" style mustache that I'm trying to fashion out of my old goatee just right, I have a shot. She likes bad boys right?

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written by Stacey N , July 10, 2008 (11:46:35 AM)

I agree, I looked at the Horizon Air website and there are only 16 passengers on their way here tomorrow. Boy we are really racking up the tourists from the Emerald City are't we!!

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written by Buzz , July 10, 2008 (11:50:00 AM)

Your suggestions for improvement then please.......as apparently all efforts so far are from bozo-the-clowns.

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written by Pylot Project , July 10, 2008 (12:34:43 PM)

I'd like to know if there is a clause in the contract with Horizon in our favor? Perhaps if THEY cancel the flights before the year contract term is up, are we no longer required to make that lump some payout?

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Buzz
written by tombstone81 , July 10, 2008 (01:24:54 PM)

For starters, I'm curious why a guy with as many years of life experience as yourself, who is so politically and civic minded (you post here frequently on just about every single topic)...never adds anything more than a curt "so what is YOUR suggestion then?" to every other person's complaint? How about YOU provide some of your own suggestions instead, as I'm guessing a lot of them would be a whole sight better than what comes from the current crop of characters in City Hall, IPG or the Airport Authority and UNBC Boards of Governors.

As for tangible suggestions, okay, I'll play mayor for a day. For starters, I want a forensic audit of the city's finances, including a full list of job duties, responsibilities and performance evaluations of all city staff, to see which areas are lacking and which areas could have their budgets pared down. Secondly, I take the city right out of the bulls**t marketing and promotional business that has been virtually the entire scope of the current crew. Why should I spend and/or risk your tax dollars so that for-profit businesses can make more money here in Prince George? That's what the Chamber of Commerce is for...funded by the businesses themselves. I look at cutting any funding to IPG, travel to China, advertising brochures in Seattle, etc. that's not already paid for out of the Northern Trust or Provincial government grants. Let the businesses pay for their own advertising...but give them a clean and well-structured city to operate in. THAT is my mandate. I take all the money I've saved from not having to fork over almost half-a-million to Horizon, and from the rest of the aforementioned spin-doctoring and cheerleading BS, and I focus on my REAL job responsibilities as mayor: keeping my fellow citizens comfortable and safe. Road repairs, infrastructure improvements, beautification of neighbourhoods and downtown, police and fire upgrades, bylaw enforcment, etc. Instead of ignoring all of those duties for which I was elected, and pouring all my effort and money into trying to get new corporate investment here...I instead clean up and maintain the city that I was elected to govern...knowing that making it an attractive place to live and work will make the investment come on its own.

As part of that mandate, I use technology to include taxpayers in the decision making process. I understand that not everybody can write a letter to City Hall, or the Editor, or Citizen forums, or attend a council meeting in person. I also know that 99% of the taxpayers in this town have a valid e-mail address...and I initiate a "non-scientific" quasi-referendum system that costs almost nothing. A major decision like whether or not to stupidly risk $400,000 USD on only quarter-full direct daily flights to Seattle? That gets e-mailed first to every taxpayer looking for some input. Sure, it's not a "true" referendum (which cost a fortune and can't be realistically used for every decision), but it's a hell of a sight better than doing nothing. Or instead lying to the public and telling them you "had it on good authority and market research" that it was a good decision. They relied on market research that nobody has seen, except a couple of people at IPG who pushed for the decision. This same market research was based on the Kamloops and Kelowna (two cities with far more to offer than PG) direct daily flights supposedly doing a barn-busting business...and now Kamloops is shut down. If that's the kind of "quality" research this council wants to spend money on, I'd rather send out a simple e-mail to every taxpaying household in PG for some more realistic market research. Every coffee shop in this town was buzzing after that decision with people scratching their heads going "Who the hell is going to use this service on a daily basis?". And now we know--almost nobody.

I hope that's enough tangible possible solutions for you for now, Buzz. Would love to hear what you'd do.

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written by Buzz , July 10, 2008 (02:36:44 PM)

Tombstone81 I'm sorry if my posts annoy you, and I'm saddened to think that all I ever add is "so what's YOUR suggestion?" to these discussions...I'm concerned that I already type too much. But to answer your question, I don't personally have the answers, however, I prefer to put my money where my mouth is and participate fully in the development of this community. I can tell you that some of your suggestions would create just as much or more complaints than currently happen. No matter what a political body does, there has always been and will always be those who shriek out their complaints and take pot shots at the leaders. Same thing happens in business to the owners and managers/leaders. Same thing happens to hockey coaches & refs. Same thing happens to anyone who puts themselves 'out there' and takes a stand on anything. It's in our nature, apparently. Here is MY answer to improvements: I fully participate as much as I can in a huge variety of forums, groups open to public input, running my business in a responsible manner, as well as trying to help solve problems by volunteering my time. (Examples: helping to create DARE BC, helping to create the teen Crisis Line, 1/4 century of Big Brothers, United Way, Chamber of Commerce, new Medical Program planning, youth sports, etc. etc. etc.) Unfortunately I have to stop my examples there because there's lots more, but it would also reveal who I am and I choose to remain anoymous due to my professional career which requires me to appear unbiased and open to other people's opinions...it's how I make my living. My point is that it's fine to have differences and complaints, but what exactly are you doing to solve our community problems? THAT's my answer...to get involved and try to understand and help. I've also learned that many issues that YOU choose to take a firm stand on have many different sides to the coin, and it depends on which side you choose to decide to focus on. A good example is supporting travel to China. You disagree with it. MANY others agree with it and thinks it's an excellent investment that could have excellent returns. Another example is 'how to fix downtown?'...ask a homeless person, ask a downtown business man, ask a College Heights resident, and you'll get vastly different answers, and who are you to say that YOUR answers are correct? Unfortunately it's not all black and white, but I often wish it was. I also perceive that our city has improved vastly since I moved here 28 years ago. I remember George street when the Canada and Mac hotels existed. What a disgusting hole. Much of downtown looks a heck of a lot better than the 'good old days', as does much of the rest of Prince George. Still lots of room for improvements though. Sorry Tombstone for the long post, and you'll probably be PO'd at my vague answers.

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Au contraire, Buzz
written by tombstone81 , July 10, 2008 (03:26:55 PM)

Your posts don't "annoy" me...and I'm not PO'd in the least by your answers. In fact far from being vague I found it quite meaty. I suppose I have been trying to "goad" you into a more verbose answer on stuff for the exact reasons you describe above...I suspected you were an intelligent, community-minded individual and wanted to hear about that and some of your suggestions/solutions rather than just a cry to see what others might suggest. I think only through dialogue can true progress be achieved.

To be fair, though, I think we have both strayed quite far from the original blog...which was a complaint about media, corporate and government spin. Painting a rosier picture than is actually true, in order to keep the masses spending, borrowing, buying, etc. on false illusion or a house of cards. Our suggestions for how to solve Prince George's municipal woes have little to do with the original complaint. The only suggestion or solution I can make to the original blog complaints is "won't somebody please tell these people to stop lying to us?". Taking only the most flattering stats from a government press release, whether it be housing starts, crime, unemployment, tourism figures, etc...and reporting them as gospel while ignoring or detracting from the negative is hardly investigative journalism. Why should the people of Prince George read continued headlines screaming "ALL IS WELL HERE!" when it clearly isn't? Why should young families go make decisions to take out large mortgages or business loans on the media and corporate spins, when they won't even give us the hard figures? Why won't CN disclose how much of a financial impact the inland port has had on Prince George so far? Why won't IPG tell us what real figures from InterVISTA they were basing the decision to risk our money with?

You and I are probably more alike then you think. I'm not at all against trips to China or corporate promotion...I just don't believe that Joe and Jane taxpayer should pay for it. If you are a member of the Chamber of Commerce, or run a business in this town, or are a large developer...than YOU pay for it, not me. I would prefer my $400K in tax money go towards the roads and police officers...not a "hunch" from the Mayor's PR machine.

Keep on buzzing, my friend.

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One last thing, Buzz...
written by tombstone81 , July 10, 2008 (05:13:25 PM)

In re-reading your post, I guess the only vague part of it was your suggestion (without supporting evidence) that my suggestions would cause "just as much or more" complaints than the current regime gets? I would love to know how you come to that conclusion? How is looking after the city taxpayer, perhaps at greater cost to the business and industrial community, going to cause more complaints? How is looking after our own backyard instead of galavanting around China and Seattle going to create more complaints? How is trying to use free & environmentally friendly technology (i.e. e-mail) to communicate and interact with my tax base, and give them a greater role or say in potential government decisions, going to create more complaints? As I suggested in my original post...I appreciate that "e-mail voting" is not exactly scientific nor a direct substitute for traditional referendum...but it's a better option than constantly relying on nothing but one or two government or corporate alchemists that constantly attempt to spin fool's gold into economic hope. A free e-mail to a thousand PG homes on the Seattle flight issued would have garnered far more intelligent feedback than the useless fodder IPG was fed by InterVISTAs, a Vancouver outfit that knew nothing about this city...gladly took its thousand of dollars in consulting money...and told IPG exactly what they wanted to hear.

Not saying my solutions are all airtight either by any means...but if you're going to suggest they have to potential to create even more angry taxpayers...I'd love to hear how or why.

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written by Buzz , July 11, 2008 (09:01:33 AM)

Thank you very much for your intelligent and thoughtful reponses Tombstone. I agree that we're both probably on a similar page in terms of what we want for thic city etc. I can't disagree with you that government spin can be revolting at times, same as corporate spin. I don't agree that ALL of it is spin though - there are some extremely positive and optimistic things to cheer about in our city/region, and part of the role of government is to spew out positive messages, I guess. My reasons for suggesting that some of your ideas would also cause some opposition hysterics are, for example:
"Forensic Audit of city hall": VERY costly, requires a huge amount of time to do the scope you suggested. Also, it's been very thoroughly done, granted, internally, but from what I've seen, extremely well done. If you hired an external company to do this, don't you think tax payers would freak out at the cost, and wouldn't the audit be done by the same 'consultants' that you are saying are outsiders and will only tell them what they want to hear?
"Paying for business promotion": If you were mayor and stopped all of that activity, don't you think that many people would bitterly complain about the lack of promotion of our city, and that it's going down the toilet while our city council shelters itself from the outside world and does nothing. Surely SOME tax dollars spent on economic promotions are a good value for ALL community members...more business = more jobs = more prosperity for our city as a whole.
"Horizon air tax dollars spent": good question. I'm not sure what that's all about.
"City doing a better job of consulting residents, e.g. using email": How would they gather and maintain all of the email addresses? My guess is it would require some huge efforts by a staff person, which = $$$. How would they communicate highly complex issues that require a certain depth of knowledge and expertise to make a good decision? Which decisions would be put out to the public, and which wouldn't? Who gets to decide? Sounds like a huge, unmanagable project to me that would have a large amount of upset people...I'd probably be one of those who were upset. Also, the City has tried countless times to invite input: OCP meetings open to the public, plans put in the media, plans and questions mailed out to everyone. Buget meetings...lots of previous mailouts and media and meetings available to the public. Most recently, Downtown planning meeting.
"InterVISTA...and presumably other consultants...knowing nothing about our city and I assume you therefore wouldn't use that type of consultant": For the record, I have nothing to do with InterVISTA, but I can tell you that their level of expertise and professionalism is outstanding, they are respected around the world, and the reason they've got that respect is because the research and information they provide is accurate and extremely valuable. Why do you assume that consultants are all essentially crooks (my paraphrase, not yours I realize) who are just ripping us all off. Of course there some are bogus reports and studies, but there are also plenty of extremely high quality reports and studies that have done wonders to help improve our city. (UNBC, Medical Program, Cancer Clinic, Civic Center, Multiplex, all had extensive consultant type of studies done, just to name a few off the top of my head)
Tombstone, I do agree that the more efforts the City can make to involve the public, the better, but the other reality is that Municiple voter turnout is absolutely ridiculously low; public planning meeting rooms are largely empty (except for the small usual crowd who always make efforts to participate); requests for written surveys/comments get about a 2 - 4% return rate at best; and very few people take the time to try to contact a politician or city hall manager to have resonable discussions or give helpful suggestions. Perhaps surprisingly, many of our local leaders are extremely open and willing to have a good discussion and listen to constructive conversations, but I realize not all people are comfortable in taking that kind of initiative.
So, to summarize, I'm not at all against your views or suggestions, I'm merely pointing out that there are those who will also find fault with your ideas and will oppose you if you were mayor...us public can pick apart anything from our armchairs.
Thanks again for your comments, and let the debates continue!

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Forensic Audit of City Hall
written by tombstone81 , July 11, 2008 (04:01:57 PM)

I haven't got time right now to address all your great points Buzz...but given the timeliness of the other current thread (20 at City Hall making $100K-plus) that has people griping here, including myself, I wanted to quickly put my 2-cents in on that.

I find it hard to believe that a forensic audit has been conducted at City Hall recently, if we are paying more staff more money than a City the size of Kamloops and getting far less in return for it. If you say that it's been done (and I'll assume you have an inside scoop there) then I would disagree it's been done very well.

I'm not talking about hiring more outside consultants to do anything. I'm talking about calling my 20 "hundred-G" senior administrators into my office and asking them to justify not only their own salaries...but the 100 beneath them making $75K a year or more. Let's see the performance reviews. Let's see the job descriptions. Let's give "Joe Worker" the opportunity to grade his/her boss anonymously. Given the sorry state of our streets and the fact that heavy-metal concerts can get permits in the name of a "block party"...I guarantee you that there are probably a half-dozen to a dozen people on Patricia Blvd making $80K a year or more who are redundant at best and useless at worst. It doesn't take an external consultant or a lot of money to figure out where the waste is. You remove six $80K mid-managers from the equation and you save more than a half-million a year, by the time benefits are factored in. A dozen of those people and we've saved a million. I don't think taxpayers would "freak" at all if I spent $100K of there money to save a million.

There is just no way PG should require more employees, or more expensive employees, than Kamloops when you look at the quality of the streets and services there versus here.

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