On one of the darkest days of an already bleak year, Prince George city council has a dreary agenda Monday night.
But there is a little glimmer of hope tucked inside it
Mayor and council will have a close look at a disgraceful list of cost overruns on various recent projects, led by the new downtown underground parkade that is nearly $10 million over its original budget. It was supposed to cost $12.6 million but $22.5 million has already been spent on a structure that has yet to house a single vehicle.
The report on the project is a litany of oversights and errors from ground water problems (we’re building an underground parkade at the base of a hill on a flood plain near the meeting point of two major B.C. rivers – who knew?) to having to move a major fibre optic cable and remove some buried foundations and oil tanks that were somehow forgotten about.
With everything going so well and on budget, it was then decided to spend another $1.5 million to make the parkade slightly bigger than planned, so back to the drawing board.
And then millions more were needed to cope with external factors like American tariffs, a shortage of skilled labour and higher-than-anticipated costs for just about everything else that needed to be done, from mechanical and electrical work to building retaining walls.
Gosh, that never happens on major public works projects.
Except for the Haggith Creek bridge.
And the library entrance project.
And the new fire hall.
Any bets on the cost overruns of the new pool or the renovation and repair of the existing Aquatic Centre?
All of city council needs to shoulder some of the blame, for certain, but two in particular – Mayor Lyn Hall and Coun. Garth Frizzell, the chair of the finance and audit committee – need to own this mess the most. They had the best seats in the house to this disaster movie. Hopefully on Monday night, they offer some reasons for how this out-of-control spending happened on their watch.
Also on Monday, city council will receive the 2020 review of city management pay, a depressing read with a silver lining.
The external review found the City of Prince George pays its city manager on par with similar-sized municipal governments in B.C. The 2017 review found the city manager 15 per cent below the average rate, so city council approved pay hikes for the city manager to close that gap.
The 2017 review also offered an apple-to-apple comparison of not only the city manager’s compensation but also the entire senior management team by position. This time around, the review is far more vague, framed by “pay band” comparisons of various positions, from city manager to two senior executive levels and three manager levels.
On the surface, that’s useless information to interim city manager Walter Babicz and mayor and council, especially when the 2017 review found that eight other senior managers at the city were all paid above average, some of them outrageously so.
For example, in 2017, Prince George paid its director of external relations $174,830 when the average for that position in five similar B.C. municipalities outside of the Lower Mainland was $113,205.
Prince George also paid its director of human resources $174,830 in 2017, when the average for that position in five similar B.C. municipalities outside of the Lower Mainland was $138,207.
The 2020 review doesn’t make similar comparisons but it does define the responsibilities of the various pay band positions.
Based on those definitions, the director of external relations is actually a Manager Level 1 position, which pays $121,688 per year on average, $61,000 less than the $182,657.58 paid in 2019, according to the city’s statements of financial information.
Similarly, the director of human resources should actually be a Manager Level 3, which pays $144,499 per year, more than $38,000 less than the $182,657.58 paid in 2019.
Both of those positions still exist at the City of Prince George at director-level pay.
And it’s entirely possible there are more city positions that are paid at a higher pay band than what they are at other B.C. municipalities.
Babicz has already made significant internal moves to streamline the management structure and save money on wages since replacing Kathleen Soltis in early October.
Seen in that light, the 2020 compensation review gives Babicz all the ammunition he needs to make further personnel and structural changes to increase efficiency and save money.
That’s not much to be happy about among those massive multi-million dollar project cost overruns and years of too many senior managers making too much money at city hall.
But amidst all the gloom, that little spark of opportunity to make things better shines bright.
