Reading day in the park was featured in the paper, but I wonder if those families know the city park standards they have enjoyed over the last two decades are considered dispensable by Mayor Green and city council.
Our elected officials have decided to cut city workers, choosing to let the parks and gardens become overgrown, unkempt, weed infested patches of raw eyesore. This degradation of our parks, especially Snowdrop Park, allows long grasses and weeds to hide the dangers of needles, broken glasses, drug paraphernalia and other hazards - hazards that will remain in the weeds due to Ms. Green's budget cut decisions. The city has laid off important workers who kept Prince George clean, safe and beautiful.
How can you invite people to Prince George, the pothole, mosquito, and crime capital - now let's add parks and gardens too?
Our ugly, neglected parks were featured on Global BC. The entire province saw what Ms. Green and her council's decisions have done. Now, our city has become the laughing stock of the whole province.
Ms. Green is always citing funding shortfalls, yet she continues to tout the virtues of Initiatives Prince George for economic development, at a cost of over $1. 03 million per year.
Economic development starts with the basics, with a city that will attract tourists, residents and tax paying businesses and a city with sufficient staffing to provide services to the community. An attractive city will retain its residents, and stop the relocation of taxpaying residents and senior citizens to the Okanagan and the Lower Mainland.
A city with well maintained parks, roads, gardens and even mosquito control should be the first phase of economic development. Yet, all of this work is done by city workers and labourers; the people who have been laid off, and the few remaining facing more cuts from the core review process.
The job cuts to city workers, and the $325,000 core review itself, are just more bad decisions that Ms. Green has imposed on the taxpayers of Prince George. Take the IPG funds, the core review funds and the Mayor and council travel funds, and apply them directly to the city needs, to the workers who keep this city clean, safe and attractive.
Karen Wong
Prince George
