Prince George 2015 city budget highlights

Last night’s budget meeting began with a moment of silence for yesterday’s events in Ottawa.

In the first of two budget sessions, the city worked through approving a 2015 plan based on a 2.5% tax increase that reflects increases in costs of doing business, and a $500,000 dollar injection into the chronically underfunded snow removal department. Snow removal was $463,000 overdrawn last year and has been in the red for 8 of the past 10 years.

Prince George’s contract with the RCMP was first on the agenda, and attracted the most debate with crime in the downtown core a hot topic.

City council agreed to work with the RCMP to help them fill temporary vacancies created by injuries and maternity leave; vacancies that leave officers off Prince George’s street. They’ll be bumping up the contracted limit on the number of officers in the city to give the RCMP more flexibility while staying within budget.

But councilor Krause was quick to point that more police won’t solve this problem on its own;

“We need to start dealing with the systemic issues. I think too often we just wring our hands and say ‘the sky is falling’. We need to start as a community, as a city, province and country start dealing with the real root causes of these issues.”

And with so much focus on the downtown core, Krause says Prince George should remember the mistakes it made trying to control the sex trade;

“We moved the sex trade out of downtown Prince George, that was the push. But we warned the RCMP at the time that it will just move elsewhere, and what happened was that the sex trade just moved into residential neighborhoods. So we have to be very careful of what the ramifications are of our efforts”

In addition to hearing presentations and approving annual budgets for Initiatives Prince George, and Tourism PG, City Council heard from the Prince George Public library last night, who attracted a large crowd in support.

After 3 years of zero increase budgets, the Library will be seeing a two percent increase in funding, but it was clear what they really wanted was a new entrance.

Chief Librarian Janet Marren says the existing one is dangerous;

“We feel that it’s not particularly accessible; we don’t have any street level accessibility for people with mobility challenges. Those stairs are open to the weather and often icy and treacherous and need to be closed at times.”

The library presented its petition with over 1500 signatures calling for funding for a new entrance, something that will be discussed again at next week’s meeting with all the other capital projects.

Next week’s meeting will have windows for public input at 330 and 6pm.