The City of Prince George will not be putting its public notices back into print newspapers.
Council voted down a pair of motions after an hour and 40 minutes of debate at tonight’s (Wednesday) meeting.
Mayor Simon Yu put forward a motion asking city administration to come back with an amendment that would amend the city’s public notice bylaw which would require local newspapers as a required means of publication for public notices, in addition to posting them on the city’s Public Notice Page on their website as well as their Facebook page.
In June of last year, the previous city council voted to stop advertising public notices in print media, with it taking effect in November.
“During the campaign, one of my four pillars that I campaigned was transparency, to ensure we conduct the city’s business in the most transparent way,” Yu said.
“I look at recent events, in particular Bill C-18 which passed in parliament last month. It will have some implication into how news will be delivered to our local citizens.”
Yu said he and many others still receive their news from print newspapers.
City Manager Walter Babicz added the definition of newspaper in the bylaw reads “means of publication or local periodical that contains items of news and advertising that is either distributed in print format or is published in digital format on the internet.”
The debate quickly turned to the importance of local media, as well as journalism and advertising.
“We shouldn’t be debating, it’s not our place anyways to say the Citizen or any other local media is not valuable or not, that’s not what we’re here for,” said Councillor Kyle Sampson.
“The motion in front of us and the topic at hand is how should we be disseminating this information, which is our public notices, and how we can do that in the most effective way for our residents to get that information.”
City Director of Finance Kris Dalio noted it was around $100,000 they took out of the advertising budget.
He added digital forms of advertising are more “economically efficient” and there’s data to suggest the city is reaching more people through their digital means than print media.
The City’s Manager of Communications Julie Rogers said how they advertise depends on what the issue they want to get out is.
“Sometimes it’s a little bit of information, it can go on Facebook,” Rogers explained.
“If we really want to reach every adult in our community, which is about I think 59,000 adults in Prince George, then it’s a ‘pull out all the stops’.”
Councillor Trudy Klassen said this was a matter of transparency.
“By being forced to publish [public notices] in a consistent way, which includes land sales, which we know our staff has sometimes forgotten to do, that’s an incredibly important thing,” Klassen said.
“If we want to get talking about the stats, our local newspaper, the Prince George Citizen, has, according to Google Analytics, has 1.6 million views monthly average, from 360,000 unique monthly users.”
Sampson disagreed about this being a transparency issue.
“Trying to tell the public that we’re not transparent because we won’t buy ads in the Citizen is wrong, we need to get the information in their hands in the best way possible. If it’s through the Citizen, then so be it, if it’s through Facebook or anything else so be it,” Sampson said.
“Saying we don’t support local journalism simply because we’re not going to buy ads in their paper is absolutely insane, saying we’re not transparent because we’re not going to buy ads in their paper is insane. This is a ridiculous debate at this point, we’re not talking about that, we are transparent, this information is public.”
Councillor Tim Bennett put forward the following motion:
“That Council directs administration to return for Council’s consideration a report that includes the financial and operational benefits and implications on amending the “City of Prince George Public Notice Bylaw 9329, 2022″ that includes local newspaper and other opportunities in local media as a required means for publication for City of Prince George Public Notices in addition to the existing means of Public Notice Page and Facebook page.”
That motion was defeated.
With that motion defeated, the original motion put forward by Mayor Yu was put back on the floor, which read:
“That Council directs administration to return for Council’s consideration an amendment to the “City of Prince George Public Notice Bylaw No. 9329, 2022” that includes “local newspaper” as a required means of publication for City of Prince George public notices in addition to the existing means of “Public Notice Page and Facebook Page.”
That motion was also defeated.
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