Mayor Yu reflects on “transitional year” for Prince George

Prince George Mayor Simon Yu says 2024 was an “adjustment, transitional year” for the Northern Capital.

“We’re not out of the woods yet in many areas,” he said.

“The key is some of the big projects we anticipated did not materialize for the time being, and the forest industry is down, so we are having a transitional year, to some degree, we need to adjust to a new reality in terms of to predict the future.”

However, Yu said the City is making progress on dealing with the issues of mental health, drug addiction and homelessness.

“We had a very successful symposium, and we are constantly working with all levels of government, trying to put a structure around the problem,” he said.

“We do have quite a number of supportive, temporary homes being built or renovated in Prince George, after we closed Millennium Park the year before, overall, the issue that we’re facing on our street, it’s getting a little bit better, but the additional problem, the number of people dying in homes is still quite high, so we’re still putting very active advocacy pieces towards the next level of government, try to get some supportive mental and drug addiction beds into the city.”

Yu said construction has started on 60 units of supportive units with ten mental health beds.

“We are advocating with the government to get more permanent mental health beds into this area,” he explained.

“We need to formulate, as I always said before, we need to articulate a future. To that end, I believe in our [Official Community Plan] exercise we have engaged the public as much as we can, and right now the draft is coming out, regarding the downtown core, as well as housing needs throughout the city, we are formulating this process, so this is the year we have been working towards that.”

Earlier this month, several wind power projects were announced by the provincial government, with four of them being built in the north.

“We do have another billion or two dollars of investment coming in, it’s slowed down, we cannot compare with the past decade when the Site C dam is going, LNG Canada is going,” Yu said.

“But we do have some smaller programs that are going ahead, a cedar program, as well as a couple smaller hydrogen projects might be happening in town, not to the scale that perhaps people anticipate, maybe in terms of a 50 megawatt range.”

Yu said forestry will be continue to be a part of Prince George, but not to the extent it has been. With a couple of mines coming online in the area, he said industrial jobs could be transitioned there.

“It takes time to adjust, but based on the investment activities coming into Prince George in the last year or two, I do believe there is still a tremendous confidence of the investment world to look at Prince George,” he explained.

“It is a future place to do business, and we will grow, and to that end we need to take a look at the situation right now to anticipate the number, perhaps it’s 30 per cent of forest jobs that we had previously, might have to be temporarily or permanently transferred to mining, or to other economies.”

Yu added that first and foremost is public safety, and this year, he created the City’s Standing Committee on Public Safety.

“We are going to implement some camera programs, as well as put more resources into the hot zones, getting better data, working with the RCMP, Bylaw to get this public safety file moved in the direction that people feel, whether they’re downtown, they feel safe.”

Yu said the City has been diligently watching the budget, something he’s proud of.

“With big inflation, we feel, we know the citizens of our city, we need a better, more efficient way to spend money in every quarter,” he said.

“To that, I’m happy to report back to the citizens that this year, along with the year before that, through careful management of our city budget and spending, we are able to build our reserve back up in almost the tune of 25-30 million dollars since I took over as a Mayor, so financially, we are in a better position in terms of dealing with the next couple years’ budget.”

Yu added City Council still has to look at some service enhancements for the RCMP and Fire Rescue in 2025.

“We as a council, we will be working very diligently to make sure the taxation structure is in a position that we are able to manage this economic transition period for this city and for this area,” he said.

“I do believe the future is bright, we need to do more work in tourism, to that end, the citizens can see, we’ve put in a lot of work and a lot of effort in our civic core area, we have some success, we did have our very successful first Santa’s parade to bring some energy into back into the downtown area, and we’ll continue in those efforts.”

City Council approved $40,000 in funding for the security camera pilot program earlier this month.

“Once we get that going, we’ll first try a few based on the crime statistic index and from the map that we have of all the crime incidents taking place and see if these cameras will help in certain areas to reduce criminal activities,” Yu said.

“Also now with the police now equipped with body cameras, I hope when we have the RCMP dealing with any particular situation in our city, we are better equipped to deal with it.”

Yu said with nine members, City Council have different ideas of what their priorities will be.

“I believe we still need to put a tremendous effort into drug addiction and prevention, and to that end, for me, personally I would like to see, I will bring forward a Mayor’s report, to get the Youth council going,” he said.

At the December 2nd Regular Council Meeting, the Young Politicians of Canada presented to City Council on establishing a Youth Council in Prince George.

“One of the tasks I will ask the youth to do, how they use the Council through their communications means to get the young people to understand the danger of drug use, these drugs out there are deadly,”

“I would like to see the more detailed design for the downtown core, how do we face that, which program will go first, and how do we bring the private industry in to help build these very necessary facilities.” (This interview was conducted prior to Council’s vote on the Civic Core Plan on December 16th.)

Yu added tourism needs be kicked into the next level in
Prince George.

“We need to take advantage of the BC Special Olympics games in the coming year with 1,000 people coming to town, we need to take advantage of 100 years of rodeo that’s taking place this coming year, we need to take advantage of all the entertainment, sports activities,” Yu said.

“Anything that will draw the visitors to our city, and I personally, I would also like to see us link our airport together with some of our arctic communities.”

A tourism topic that gained a lot of attention this year was a potential move for Mr. PG, but Yu wants the mascot to stay where he is.

“Tradition matters, Mr. PG stood there all these years, representing the City, and now he’s become such a big symbol,” he said.

“It would be wrong to take Mr. PG down, and then put a smaller version somewhere, I definitely would like to see Mr. PG stay, and then perhaps have another, smaller Mr. PG, perhaps in the form of a robot even, able to walk around our Civic Plaza to welcome people with an active voice, able to answer some of the history of PG, we have to think outside the box as a people.”

Yu said there are many advocacy pieces City Council needs to present to organizations such as the Union of BC Municipalities and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

“I feel we are very lucky, I have a good working relationship with the Premier, with Leader of the Opposition, with all the Ministers,” Yu said.

“So I will use my office to the best of my knowledge, to put Prince George front and centre for everybody to understand whatever’s good for Prince George, is always good for BC, and whatever’s good for BC, it’s good for Canada as a whole. To that end, I really want to ask the citizens for more patience, we cannot work in siloes to look at a problem. I do receive a lot of complaints, which are all legit, but sometimes we need to balance out the various interests, we need to look at Prince George as a growing city, as a whole, and whatever the problem we are facing today, if we work together, it will be an opportunity.”