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Chasing after Queen Green

Shari Green won the title of mayor of Prince George at the ballot box on Nov. 19, 2011 but she took power and changed the course of this city three years ago this month.
Rodney Venis

Shari Green won the title of mayor of Prince George at the ballot box on Nov. 19, 2011 but she took power and changed the course of this city three years ago this month.

Whether it was by coincidence or design, it is fitting that Green chose last week to announce she will not be seeking another term as mayor because she leaves her successor a similar choice to the one she made in the early hours of May 10, 2011: accept the current fundamental vision of the city or take this community on a radically different path.

As the Citizen reported, that night council was engaged in a formality, the fourth and final reading of its annual tax bylaw. In years past, heavy industry had shouldered a disproportionate share of the tax burden but Mayor Dan Rogers and council had agreed a week earlier that that class` load would be reduced and handed over to three others - light industry, small business and residential taxpayers.

But the light industrial class pushed back after discovering it would face an around 26 per cent increase over 2010; a city report detailed how 67 properties in Prince George would face a final increase of almost 38 per cent due to rising property values. They found a willing ear in, among others, Shari Green, who said ``I don`t take it lightly that I am changing my mind at this late stage`` and helped spearhead an eleventh-hour revolt against the bylaw.

Rogers called the last-minute flip-flop ``unprecedented in my involvement in local government`` and said with a legislated deadline of May 14 there was no time to modify the tax regime. Nevertheless, it was defeated - with Councillor Murry Krause absent, Green, Debora Munoz, Cameron Stolz and Garth Frizzell voted to change the bylaw against Rogers, Brian Skakun, Dave Wilbur and Don Bassermann. A tie defeated the bylaw; two days later, the bylaw was changed so the light industrial increase was spread over the major industrial, utility, and small business classes.

One could argue Rogers never recovered from the night and morning of that May, which was a coup for Green in every sense of the word. Six months later, with her business allies lavishly backing her with the most expensive municipal campaign in the city`s history, Green overcame Rogers at the polls in Prince George`s first defeat of an incumbent mayor in over 50 years.

The moneyed and business class had found a fervent champion of its interests in Green, whose determination to make this community frugaler and sparser has made her a darling of smaller government. From 2012 to today, residential taxpayers saw yearly increases in the city rate of 3.95, 3.5, and 2.5 per cent; in 2013, council gifted a break on the rate to major industrial of 1.89 per cent to go with a decrease of 5.67 per cent to the light industrial, business, utility and farm classes.

For the rest, they have been ruled by a mayor who has made this city a less progressive, harsher place than it was when it went to bed on May 9 those three years ago. As Rogers said that night, ``If you`re going to lessen the burden on light industrial, where are you going to put it?" Green's answer has been to spend three years looking everywhere else for dollars - from the elaborate show of her $350,000 core review of city services to jacking up user fees to massive increases in utility bills to declaring war on the city's unionized staff.

In the mayor`s defence, unless you`re of her moneyed constituency, the benefits of her philosophy are less tangible: a more generous tax regime creates a more favourable climate for investment leading to businesses hiring and spending more until prosperity trickles down to the general populace. Unfortunately the sharp end of her policies are all too clear. By reducing city services to individuals and families and asking all of them to pay more for buses, the sewer system, water, the sports their kids play and the pools they swim in - heck, through the storm water fee, she wanted residents to pay for the rain - those who can afford those costs the least - single mothers, seniors - got hurt the most.

Her foremost target has been the city`s unionized staff; the two central hallmarks of her single term in office - the core review and her bitter negotations with the city`s two unions - have both been blunt-force exercises in squeezing concessions from workers. Her vehemence helped secure a four year deal that saw wage increases of 0.5, 0.75, two and two per cent for staff but at the cost of city workers staging the first strike in the city`s history - a modest day-long walkout on Dec.14 - that had been a prelude to full-scale job action. It was culmination of a years-long process marked by the inquisitorial style of the core review process and the at times outright villification of city workers; mayor and council found their savings but at the cost of poisoning labour relations at city hall for long after all of them have left their seats.

What`s made all these policies - the user fee hikes, the hefty core review price tag, the utility bill increases, cutting the purses of city workers - more unpalatable has been the self-righteous right-wing rhetoric they`ve been wrapped in; it`s best exemplified by part-time Green booster and Canadian Taxpayers Federation pseudo-guru Jordan Bateman, who`s always quick to laud the mayor for putting `taxpayer interests first.` But it`s hard not to wonder what`s been dressed up as a noble campaign to put bloated bureaucracy and lazy unions to the sword hasn`t in fact been a game of three-card monte in which the true cost of government is shuffled under tables and up sleeves so the people who can afford it don`t have to pay too much.

That`s while the suckers keep chasing the queen for mythical savings and forking over cash they weren`t supposed to spend.

Regardless, the mayor`s name won`t be on the ballot this November but the direction she took this city in 2011 will be underlying theme of the campaign to replace her. Will the new mayor stay the course that was set on the Ninth of May? Or will they decide, like Shari Green did, that the time of the previous mayor is done?