If Prince George City council was planning on using the Canada Winter Games to rationalize raising taxes yet again, the application to host the Games should have gone to a referendum to see if the citizens were willing to accept such a trade-off.
City council seems to think they can make irresponsible financial decisions without any consideration for the opinions of the average resident.
Most people will also notice that their utility bill has gone up this year. We are paying more money but getting exactly the same services, so we can only assume that this money is going simply to provide pay increases to city staff whose salaries are already inflated beyond what is earned by most of the harder working people who live in this city.
With so much of the city budget going to pay for the RCMP, the public are still not being protected from being robbed by their elected officials.
City council seems to think that every time they want to spend more than they earn, they should be allowed to do so.
The city needs to get the message that just like the average working person trying to manage a household budget, they need to live within their means, and if their revenues are not enough to cover their spending, they need to reduce spending.
The city clearly does not get the message that they need to balance revenues and expenditures by cutting some of their ridiculous staff salaries and wasteful projects, not by raising taxes and/or threatening to cut funding for snow removal.
Voters will have the chance to send that message loud and clear when the elections are held in November.
We need to vote out the irresponsible people who have been running our city, and vote in people who are willing to make responsible decisions about the management of our money.
Sincerely from a fed up taxpayer of P.G.
S.Popovic
Prince George
