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Boundary expansion denied |
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Written by MARK NIELSEN
Citizen staff
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Monday, 01 December 2008 |
It will be back to the drawing board for Downtown Prince George and the attempt to expand its boundaries.
In one of their last acts as the current city council, members voted 7-2 Monday to turn down the proposal, after hearing from parties representing both sides of the issue and after seeing the results of a counter petition process in which 23 per cent of the affected property owners voted against the proposal.
Although well below a majority, both current and potentially new property owners were included in the calculation. While it's not clear how many who voted against would have been new additions, 73 in total voted in opposition while the expansion would have added roughly 110 new members.
Speaking to council, opponents cited a lack of a business plan showing how the additional money DPG would receive -- revenues from members would jump to as much as $343,000 from an average of $110,000.
They also accused DPG of trying to sneak the proposal through by using a counterpetition, also known as a negative vote in which the onus is put on opponents to get a majority against to kill the proposal, too determine support.
And they claimed any meetings to discuss the issues were held only because they asked for them and were not initiated by DPG and that many of the property owners, particularly those living outside Prince George, were not properly notified.
Their concerns were enough to convince most council members that allowing the expansion to go ahead would only create hard feelings.
"If we were to get behind this, we would be contributing to divisiveness downtown rather than enhancing it," said Coun. Don Zurowski. "I think there is more communication to take place."
In an interview following council's vote, DPG past president Kirk Gable said the next step will likely be to sit down and work out a business plan that will be agreeable to most property owners.
"I think we need to make sure we get all of the people together and make sure they're all clearly on side before we move forward with any new proposals," he said.
Increasing the levy charged to existing members is unrealistic in the current economic climate and staying to the current boundaries won't work for the DPG, asserted Gable.
"I don't think we would've made that proposal to expand the boundaries if we were content with what we had," he said. "It's about what we can afford and what resources we can generate with the levy and what we really need to make the association successful."
The idea was to maintain the existing levy at $1.70 per $1,000 assessed value while increasing the revenue-raising base to roughly $202 million from $113 million by bringing in more properties.
Had the expansion been allowed, it's boundaries would have been shifted westward from Victoria Street to take in property along both sides of Vancouver Street as well as along Second and Third Avenues to as far as Winnipeg Street and south from Seventh to Victoria and Patricia Boulevard.
The Parkwood shopping centre would have remained out of the DPG and only property zoned commercial would have been included in the expansion.
Council members who voted against the expansion were Mayor Colin Kinsley, Coun. Shirley Gratton, Coun. Brian Skakun, Coun. Sherry Sethen, Coun. Don Bassermann, Coun. Glen Scott and Zurowski.
Those against were Coun. Murry Krause and Coun. Debora Munoz.
Krause said his concerns about the future of DPG trumped any ill will that was generated and Munoz said DPG with strong resources can do a lot of good.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 01 December 2008 )
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