2023 was a foundation-building year for the City of Prince George according to Mayor Simon Yu.
In a year end interview with My PG Now, Yu said some of the significant events for the city were signing the Memorandum of Understanding with the Province, the decampment of Millennium Park, and purchasing the Knight’s Inn.
“[This] enables us to include that piece of property in the downtown core design, which is important for all sort of logistic reasons,” Yu said.
“I think we made the right decision, and a good financial decision as well to have that property under the city’s control.”
“We are very encouraged, through the work of council, that we have multiple large projects potentially coming to town to replace, if not to enhance the current economic situation of Prince George,” he continued.
“I think these events for last year is significant for the city of Prince George, the coming year, these events, taking place over 2023 will be the foundation piece for the [Official Community Plan] to take effect, and put a better structure to deal with the downtown situation, so the groundwork has been set to move forward.”
According to a report from a Standing Committee on Finance and Audit meeting on December 4th, Prince George could be in for a 5.88 per cent tax increase, which could be driven higher with some service enhancements.
“During the campaign, I always said, Prince George, we need to grow ourselves out of this difficult situation, because a city of our size really needs approximately 50,000, if not 100,000 more people to make the tax base stable to provide many services the citizen relies on on a day to day basis,” Yu said.
“We need to take a look at the weather in terms of 2023 to see if we can tweak a little bit the upcoming snow budget, we need to work together with the RCMP and to see if there is a more efficient way to deal with some of the safety issues for the hotspots.”
Included in the upcoming budget are service enhancement requests for more RCMP officers as well as more firefighters and bylaw officers.
“These are the significant enhancements we, as a council, we need to make a decision on,” Yu said.
“We also need to take a look at some of the capital expenditures, whether we can kick the can down the road for one more year, or we have to start executing them for the long-term saving.”
Yu said these are the tough questions, because of tremendous inflation.
“The good people working for the city, they are facing financial difficulty as well, so we need to balance all interests for the entire community, and to see if we can put in foremost a platform to grow,” he explained.
“Prince George needs to be bigger, Prince George needs to be a bigger city in many respects, we need to see more development happening, and we need to see more industry moving here to set up shop, we need to see the airport get active more. The university is doing quite well, but I would still like to see their enrolment increased by another thousand or two, and we are so looking forward to working with the province to make sure some of the medical facilities get upgraded this coming year, which will provide a lot of construction jobs for the City of Prince George as well.”
Some of the projects already announced include a 471-space parkade at UHNBC, as well as a 200-space long-term care facility.
“They [Ministry of Health] definitely realize our needs, they definitely, during UBCM we had a good discussion with Health Minister Adrian Dix, and he had a pretty good grasp, and we are very fortunate to have Shirley Bond, our MLA as the opposition Health Critic,” Yu said.
“The province realizes all the medical needs for this area, senior care, mental health and addiction issues, acute care, they’re aware of what we need, as a place, as a people, the issue is of course is allocation of capital priorities. I just hope this coming year, there will be further announcements to address the need of this region.”
Yu also noted he would like to see more daycares built, a new DP Todd school, as well as developing with mixed densities while protecting green space.
“There are many irons in the fire so to speak, it’s going to be a busy year.”
Yu said he thinks the Bowl area would be good for further development.
“Any existing zoning that has a back lane, so I can see we can build quite a lot of carriage houses and perhaps even secondary units on those properties, in some areas,” he said.
He added he hopes the city’s Engineering department will get an updated engineering software for modelling sewer water, so council will be able to make more specific decisions on density for specific lots.
“We need to take a look at where the major sewer and water pipes, the infrastructure, we would like to maximize all of their usage first, to increase the tax dollar before we open up some new areas, because the infrastructure costs money,” Yu said.
“We also would like to see the federal and provincial funding for the infrastructure coming, so we can get infrastructure upgraded if nothing else, because we are facing quite a lot of old infrastructure that requires substantial maintenance and upgrading.”
Additionally, Yu said he would like to see more student housing built at both UNBC and CNC.
Something Yu said during his mayoral campaign was he wanted to bring more people to Prince George and to retain them.
“Anybody who wants to raise a family in any place, they need to have good medicare, they need to have daycare, this foremost, and then they need to have a very good recreation, entertainment venue to go to,” Yu said.
“Prince George, from a sport point of view, we’re very well stocked with two swimming pools, all sorts of facilities, where we are perhaps lacking a bit, is to maybe have a downtown mixed use entertainment kind of venue to go to.”
According to an online survey conducted by the City, shops and cafes with housing, a performing arts centre, and an ice arena were top of mind for Prince George residents when it comes to the Civic Core District.
“I see a 4,500 seat new arena, and I see a new convention centre that can do 2,000 person gatherings,” Yu said.
“Right beside the existing Civic Centre, I see in between them, a nice performing arts centre, perhaps in the form of a symphony hall as well. I see 2880 moving downtown as well. I see a permanent setting for the farmers market downtown. I see some streets perhaps turning into a walking street only to encourage more people for shopping, for restaurants experiences, I see a lot of things.”
Yu said his message for Prince George residents for 2024 is to have patience with the city but to have confidence as well.
“Take time to enjoy the beauty of Prince George that a lot of us take for granted, the trees, the lakes, the beautiful neighbourhoods. We as a people, we are lucky ones, above everything else, we are still the lucky ones to live among such abundance,” Yu said.
“I would wish everybody a prosperous, healthy, happy 2024.”
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