One should certainly complement The Citizen on their investigative reporting especially on what goes on a City Hall. Your reporting of their hiring, wage and staffing excesses seems to go unnoticed by the Mayor and city councillors. No one seems to want to take issue with anything. An example of this is the AAP to forgo the referendum route. This is a huge expense to the taxpayers of P.G. and is being forced on us by using the Alternate Approval Process (The city has made it difficult for 5,000 people to stop the AAP). Did councillors raise a fuss on behalf of the taxpayers? Councilor Wilber did manage a bit of a protest. Perhaps The Citizen could arrange an interview with the Mayor, city manager Bates and head of the city finance committee Murray Krause and ask why we have an over-staffed and over-paid city hall and why is the police station being forced on us at a time when we can least afford it. Also ask why is the city trying to save 400,000 on snow removal when all it has to do is layoff three staff and save 500,000. Will someone on council step forward and try and control the planned spending - police station, downtown revitalization and energy system, performing arts centre, and the Winter Games. We are only 70,000 people with few forestry jobs and an aging population on fixed pensions and cannot afford to finance all these plans. Does the city really listen to the taxpayers or is their agenda spend and tax and look after themselves first.
Robert Anderson
Prince George
