Normally people tend to put the horse before the cart, but with the city of Prince George it would seem that they may prefer to put the cart before the horse on occasion. Even when people complain and tell the city that they have it all wrong, they figure, "yeah, no problem, but we don't really care. We are going to put the cart before the horse because that is the way we want to do it."
This has happened on a number of occasions over the last few months.
In an Oct. 16 2009 story by Citizen reporter Mark Nielsen, City of Prince George long-range planning manager Dan Milburn confirmed that the city had bought the old site of Norgate Autobody, a nearly 17,000-square-foot parcel of land near the corner of Queensway Street and Patricia Boulevard, for $520,000. They apparently didn't have any good reason for doing so when asked by Nielsen - considering we were told that the city was tightening its belt at the time. When asked if the land was to be the site for the proposed performing arts centre, we were given a wish-wash answer.
The city's official community plan, as adopted in 2001, calls for a "cultural facility" at the corner, but long-range planning manager Dan Milburn cautioned it's not set in stone.
"It doesn't say that anything must go there, but it's an opportunity for those kinds of things," he said.
The Smart Growth on the Ground plan also makes a vague reference to a cultural facility at the location.
It would seem that the city has bought the land for the proposed performing arts centre even though the centre and financing for it have not yet been approved by city council, and at the price of $56 million, it would have to go to referendum anyway.
Basically what this tells us is, the city doesn't care what the people of Prince George think, it is going ahead with a plan for a performing arts centre and it is going to build it on this land whether we like it or not.
On Nov. 30, The Citizen ran a story about council increasing city utilities for the second time in six months. Under one of the plan options, the garbage-collection increases would provide for contributions to capital accounts, including $115,000 for storage of a new garbage truck.
However, this storage isn't even needed, because adding a new garbage truck to the city's fleet needs to be approved by city council during budget talks, which don't take place until February. So to make a long story painful, the city hasn't approved the purchase of another garbage truck, but they increased our utilities twice in six months, to accumulate the money to build a storage shed for a truck that hasn't even been approved yet!
So, not only did they put the cart before the horse, it would seem they took the wheels off the cart as well.
The city said it may spend as much as $345,000 on a larger, up-to-date version of the six trucks the city currently deploys to pick up garbage and, depending on how rugged the new purchase may be, spending a further $115,000 on a shed to store the vehicle.
But wait a minute, didn't they tell us in November that they were increasing our utilities in part to gather the $115,000 to house the truck - one which they still don't have approval to purchase.
City and solid waste services manager Aidan Kelly said the industry standard is to replace the trucks every seven to nine years, but by purchasing a new truck now, the life of the rest of the fleet could be extended a little further. With a newer truck in the fleet, the older ones can get more attention.
"What's happening now is we're having trucks that are constantly out on the road and there's not a lot of time for downtime for extra preventative maintenance and giving the trucks a break," said Kelly.
And while a larger truck will cost more than a smaller one, Kelly suggested it should pay itself back in lower operating costs, because it can carry more garbage and so, reduce the number of trips to the landfill.
This is the same reason the city gave us for purchasing the trucks in the first place. So why didn't they purchase larger trucks back then?
The story also said, it would depend on the quality of the new truck's hydraulics and air compression apparatus and how well it would stand up to the winter cold.
But we know how the older truck's stand up to our winters, so why purchase one we know nothing about?
Also, the storage would only be needed if we purchase the new larger truck, so why buy it.
We would save the $115,000 immediately, which could be used for maintenance of the original trucks.
We still haven't been told anything about the staff that used to work on the old garbage collection system, considering the new system required less than half the number of days to collect the city's garbage. Where did the staff go that were not needed once the new trucks came into use, and if they were laid off - which we presume they were not - where did alll the money saved from that go?
