Last Saturday was the final opportunity for residents of Prince George to voice their opinion whether to allow city Hall to spend up to $15 million on a fire hall to replace Fire Hall No. 1 adjacent to city hall and up to $35 million to replace the Four Seasons Pool.
With so much money at stake, and so many people seemingly concerned about the rate taxes are increasing in Prince George, one would think that nobody would want to miss an opportunity to finally tell city hall how they feel about such extravagant spending of our hard-earned dollars.
Wrong!
Only 7,875 people voted. That is a paltry 14 per cent of eligible voters. Why so few for such an important issue?
There are many theories.
One would be that while there are spending restrictions on elections for municipal, regional, provincial and national representatives of our various levels of government, there are no limits on spending by city hall to promote such issues taken to a referendum. Not only that but there is an unequal playing field. Sure, an organization of concerned city taxpayers could have formed, raised money to buy consulting time of aquatic facility and fire hall technical experts to prepare well thought out opposing positions but that costs time and money.
In some situations, such as was the case with some of the fluoridated municipal water referenda in several communities in B.C., the community provided a grant to assist such challengers.
In other cases, such as the proposal to locate a major public transit yard in a much-coveted green space near Ginter's field, people grouped naturally to protect a city amenity which city hall did not view as such. Then again, the public did not face an extraordinary effort by the city to promote their rezoning proposal.
I kept pushing the importance of this vote on my radio show. It felt like it fell on deaf ears. It didn't matter how you were voting but that you took the time to study the choices and do a bit of homework, then cast your vote.
The folks at city hall jumped through hoops with their opinion on the spending of your money. The voters were overwhelming in their approval of spending $50 million for the two infrastructure replacements. On the pool, 62.5 per cent were in favour, while 83 per cent were in favour of the fire hall expenditure.
The reason why these two projects went to referendum now rather than during next fall's election was because mayor and council wanted to get things moving quicker since both buildings are in unsound condition. Staff returned with a very forceful communications plan which was obviously successful.
The projects now have a long road ahead. I would expect a bidding process to start to select architects and engineers to design the buildings, followed by calls for bids by building contractors.
It will be interesting to see what opportunities will be provided for the public to be involved with the design decisions. The expectation is that construction will begin within a year for the fire hall, which could be completed in 2019. The pool processes will take longer with an estimate of completion by 2020.
The previous referendum, which was held in isolation was on June 19, 2004 for the natural gas revenue referendum, saw close to 1,000 more voters cast ballots.
I believe strongly that what makes a vibrant community is working together to make it better. When such important issues come up, more than 14 per cent of voters need to join in on the "conversation," both before the referendum when the question is being formulated as well as on voting day.
As we are often told, every vote is important. The notion that "my vote won't count" is ludicrous! Not everyone is happy in an election outcome, but it is much easier to accept knowing you did your civic duty.
