The folks that won't sign the Alternative Approval Process petition forms often resort to a series of questions to defend why borrowing more than $32 million to pay for 11 infrastructure projects is a good idea.
Are you against infrastructure spending? Are you against a roof over civic buildings and traffic lights? Don't you know it costs money to have and maintain essential city services? Don't you know we have aging infrastructure that needs to be fixed? Do you want to spend the money now or wait until later when it will cost even more?
The questions are relevant but they miss the point. Worse, they actually deflect from the real issue. There's no question that hundreds of millions of dollars are going to have to be spent over the next 20 years to replace, repair and maintain essential local infrastructure and the sooner that work starts, the better off everyone will be in both the short and long term. Yet that reality shouldn't translate into supporting this dog's breakfast of a borrowing plan being foisted onto local taxpayers.
City council would have local residents believe this proposed spending is only about infrastructure but it's not.
It's about fiscal responsibility.
It's about taxation.
It's about debt and the ongoing costs to service that debt.
It's about open, transparent government.
This mayor and council have talked about fiscal responsibility but their decisions have made most of their talk worthless.
Significant annual increases in property taxes and utilities with no end in sight.
Significant annual increases in the number of employees at the City of Prince George with no end in sight.
Significant annual increases in property taxes for years to come to service those borrowing costs with no end in sight.
Significant increases in the number of senior managers and the wages of those managers over the past five years.
Significant overtime paid to senior city managers during the 2017 Cariboo wildfire evacuations, despite the fact those same city managers already receive two weeks extra holidays per year in lieu of overtime, on top of their regular six weeks holidays.
Did those same managers collect more overtime last summer when wildfire evacuees from west of Prince George came to the city?
The city won't say.
That information will be inside the Statements of Financial Information that has to be released by the end of next month, never mind that it took Freedom of Information requests last summer to uncover both that the senior administrators received overtime at all and careful analysis to figure out who got how much.
Let's not forget the millions of dollars in extra "oopsie" spending needed to fix the problems with the brand-new Willowcale bridge. What is being done to remedy this situation and to avoid a similar problem in the future?
The city won't say, except to say that it isn't pursuing cost recovery lawsuits (and, when asked, it refuses to provide the legal justification for that decision).
And all of the proceeding is just background to this latest raging dumpster fire of an idea from senior city staff to borrow more than $32 million to fund 11 projects.
Note the language.
The 11 projects are all, to varying degrees, worthwhile and necessary endeavours.
It's the borrowing plan that's ridiculous.
First of all, omnibus bills like this one are the epitome of government cynicism. Lumping in 11 unrelated expenditures, from vehicle and equipment replacement ($2.9 million) to Ron Brent Park redevelopment ($1.7 million), from replacing two culverts on Goose Country Road ($1.1 million) to street light and traffic signal replacement ($5 million), is legislative tomfoolery. It puts people opposed to one or more of those expenditures on the defensive, forcing them to explain how they support some of the initiatives but not others.
This particular omnibus bill is particularly abhorrent because it puts the people behind the Alternative Approval Process at a huge disadvantage. Instead of needing one signature to oppose the borrowing plan, it requires 11 signatures from the same person, one John Henry for each of the 11 projects, and the entire package - 15 double-sided pages - must be returned to city hall to count as one vote against the proposed borrowing.
The political cynicism doesn't stop there.
Why wasn't this borrowing plan put forward as a referendum question during last October's municipal election, when the incumbent mayor and councillors could have campaigned defending the proposal and leave the final decision in the hands of voters, instead of springing it on taxpayers mere months into a four-year term?
The city won't say.
What will the city do to get these essential projects done if enough residents (5,546 or more, to be exact) sign the AAP forms?
The city won't say.
Want some answers from the city on that and a host of other issues?
Want some action, not just talk, about fiscal responsibility from your local government?
The cost is your signature, 11 times.
And you've got until 4 p.m. today to get your completed form to city hall.
-- Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
