The city went to the core review and spent some $300,000, which I'm sure does not include all the staff time, etc; to try and find some ways of saving money. So far it seems all they have come up with are suggestions to sell off some of our assets.
On the other hand these same people are in the process of setting aside $500,000 to upgrade the Civic Centre Plaza for the Winter Games, spend $400,000 to change 4th Ave into a two-way street between Winnipeg and Victoria, with I believe, a roundabout at Winnipeg. Then they want to spend a further $1.2 million on bringing back paid parking downtown. So at this point we will spend some $2.5 million dollars for a bunch of things that we could very easily do without.
The downtown parking project is nothing more than an attempt to collect more revenue from Prince George citizens under the guise of solving a parking problem. To make matters worse Councillor Stoltz has been musing about implementing the new parking system in areas like the hospital and CNC, which reinforces the sense that this is a cash grab by the city. Pay parking, or off-street parking will cost downtown workers some $1,200 per year. I doubt that low-income earners can afford to pay out this kind of money. In addition, we have many volunteers who work downtown, and it seems to me that if we charge them to park, we may very well lose their expertise. Perhaps those who are in favour of pay parking would like to fill in the volunteer hours that will be lost because of this huge cost increase.
Who knows what other expenditures of tax dollars lurk in the files at city hall. A $45 million dollar performing arts centre, with the cities portion being some $15 million perhaps.
Closing the Quinn St. transfer paper apparently saved the city some $260,000 (on paper), however it did not save the taxpayers of P.G. a red cent, as those who used to use the landfill for free will now pay $6 per trip at Foothills and those who used Quinn St. will now pay extra gas to get to Foothills. In addition a $1 million plus asset will sit idle, unable to be used by those who paid for it.
Its time to end the madness, and get serious about stopping spending and taxing.
Eric Allen
Prince George
