Tag: city of prince george

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Why the heck did I remove staff expenses from public reporting?

Skewer me if you want, but at least be informed when doing it.

Some members of the public seem to be very angry over a motion I recently moved and have made the assumption that I have removed very important public reporting – removing quarterly council expense reporting – this is not true so let me clear up the confusion.

What happened?

Every year in June, council reviews our Statement of Financial Information colloquially referred to as the SOFI report. This report contains all legislatively required reporting on things like salaries and expenses for employees earning over $75,000. Every employee that meets this criteria are listed on this report for the public to review and provide comment on. This report also includes things like council expenses (including who did and who did not go over their allocated budget), contracts over $75,000 and much more. It typically receives much attention and if you’ve never reviewed it, I’d recommend checking out the 2024 version here.

At the June meeting, while reviewing the SOFI report, a member of council, without a notice of motion, put forward the following resolution:

That council directs administration to report to council on expenses in the same manner as the council currently reports of the city manager, directors, the manager of legislative services, and the deputy corporate officer on a biannual basis.

Council is a governance board, not an operating board, and by legislation, operational duties of the city are delegated by council to the city manager, which includes oversight of employee expenses. Under the one employee model, council reviews the city managers expenses and the city manager reviews employee expenses. It’s a pretty straight forward governance practice.

I opposed the original motion because I felt this was redundant due to the SOFI reporting already providing this information, and also, this to me is overstepping our governance role and delving into operations. I felt that with only 9 employees identified in the motion being required to do additional reporting, this would create some public criticism into things like professional development training these individuals are taking; it would impact morale due to public scrutiny of only some employees receiving additional twice yearly criticisms over spending that has been approved in the budget set by council. Finally, as Prince George is the only municipality in all of BC to adopt this practice, I also worried that this would impact our recruiting efforts and succession planning. Despite my objections, the motion narrowly passed.

Fast forward to Monday’s meeting – where we for the first time reviewed the actual reporting that came about as a result of councils motion. I found some red flags and discrepancies in the report. For example, members of council attended the FCM conference in May bringing with us the city manager and our Director of Development Services. While the City Manager and Director had these expenses listed publicly in this report, it does not show the full picture and is very misleading to the public because there was also another employee who attended the conference who was not required under this reporting process to report expenses. For the record, all employees earning over $75,000 already have their expenses publicly reported in the SOFI report.

Why are council expenses shared on an open meeting agenda?

Let me explain it this way: if you were to review the organizational structure of the city, you would see that employees report to the city manager – who reviews employee expenses; the city manager reports to council – who reviews the city managers expenses; and council reports to the tax payers – who review our expenses. I want to state for the record that I firmly believe that it is important for the public to be able to review our expenses as members of council and I have not removed this reporting – this is still in place. I think it is important for you to see which of us is over and under on our expense budgets because we ultimately report to you. That is transparency and accountability in action and all members of council report our full quarterly expenses on the quarterly report – not a subset of members unlike the motion which asked that only 9 specific staff members share their expenses in addition to the already public reporting in the SOFI report.

I do want to add some commentary around transparency because this word is thrown around a lot and sometimes even weaponized. I know full well that residents want full transparency on every single decision we make, and the rhetoric in this era of distrust typically indicates that you don’t have full transparency unless you yourself get to delve into the general ledger lines of every single dollar we spent because seeing is believing. The reality is that council from time to time has to deal with confidential information as any business does. There is an extraordinary cost to the taxpayers if the city were to not keep information confidential when appropriate. New businesses looking to come to the city wouldn’t trust us, our position on certain matters could be strategically jeopardized, the province would very likely stop giving us grant funds, special and major events would be jeopardized, and we could potentially open ourselves up to a lawsuit – these are just some examples that come to mind.

So how do we ensure the public gets accountability when they don’t fully see everything? For me, this is my role as a councillor. You have elected me to be your eyes in the open and closed meetings and I greatly enjoy being your little truffle pig, sniffing out the goods and getting what I believe is the best outcome for residents.

Getting back to the motion. It should be noted that if council wants to discuss an individual line item in the SOFI report, it must be moved to the closed council meeting because it then becomes subject to PIPA and is considered personal information protected by legislation. I would opine that this additional redundant report could potentially breech PIPA and put us at risk.

So what exactly did I change that was supported by a majority of council?

I reviewed the report on staff expenses for Q1 and Q2 and determined that it was very lacking because we already get a more fulsome report with so much more information – and hey, everyone who is supposed to be on it, is on it. I still wanted to respect the original motion that was put forward so I suggested a change in council direction that upheld our position as a governance board. Rather than reviewing this secondary report in an open meeting with only 9 staff, I proposed that we review the city managers expenses in the closed meeting and direct the city manager to review staff expenditures regularly. This maintains good governance ensuring council is not delving into operations, and still gives council the opportunity to review expenses and ask pointed questions – your elected eyes doing their job.

To sum it up: the public already gets a much better report publicly sharing information on staff expenses. The new additional report that didn’t really show anything and was quite misleading has been removed and instead, the city manager will share his expenses in a closed council meeting regularly with council.

If you have questions or need further clarification, please get in touch – you can find info on my contact page. I am more than happy to discuss and clarify to ensure you feel as confident as I that this decision was in the best interest of the city.

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Provincial Budget 2025

Today I had the priviledge of attending the Provincial Budget Speech at the Legislature as the UBCM special guest for the Honourable Minister Brittny Anderson. Before I delve into my insights and thoughts on the provincial budget, I wanted to give an update of activities since January.

January

The first two months of the year have flown by so quickly. In January, the City of Prince George hosted the Natural Resources Forum with amazing turnout. Roughly 1,300 participants descended on our community which included many local and provincial government colleagues from across the Province. I was pleased that Premier Eby was able to join us to deliver remarks in person. Additionally, a number of Cabinet Ministers were also able to attend and give remarks.

In January the City of Prince George also deliberated our municipal budget. This was a lengthy debate of almost 18 hours on top of the additional hours each of us spent on our own time reviewing operating and capital budgets. Council settled on a 6.21% tax levy increase. I did write a draft blog on this but couldn’t find time to finalize and publish so I may still try to get that out.

February

February was just as busy with a UBCM executive meeting discussing local government advocacy priorities. Additionally, Council kicked off discussion of first and second reading for our Official Community Plan with the first public hearing scheduled for March 19.

March

This brings us to this first week of March. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of joining the FCM BC Caucus to discuss regional issues and hear from our local government colleagues. Many local governments are concerned over the tariffs and discussing how to prioritize local/regional/Canadian spending.

Provincial Budget

Today, I attended the Provincial budget as an observer from the members gallery. I have never been to a budget announcement so I wasn’t sure what to expect. First, UBCM staffers were included in the Budget Lock-Up – something I feel shows the importance of the relationship. This gave UBCM staff early access this morning to review the budget prior to the announcement which allowed them to publish The Compass immediately following the announcement. The only caveat was sacrificing phones and all technological devices until after the announcement.

I listened intently to Minister Bailey give her remarks and all the while wondering how each aspect of the budget she announced would impact local governments across the province.

Of note was the increased funding for HEART/HEARTH to support communities experiencing homelessness, funding for addiction, treatment and recovery, funding to address the healthcare shortage, as well as funding for community safety to address street disorder and repeat violent offenders. All these items are supported by UBCM resolutions many local governments have been advocating for. Finally, tariffs were a huge topic within the budget and we do not yet know how this will impact the province.

One item I do applaud Minister Bailey for advancing is investment in our tech sector which she has a strong background in. There is a great opportunity to advance tech and open up opportunity across the province (and yes, northern communities still have broadband issues which we bring up often). I am hopeful to see how this evolves.

The opposition was critical of the provincial deficit while also criticizing the government for not putting aside more than $4B in reserves to deal with the tariffs. The opposition also called upon the government to delay the budget given the tariff announcements today.

Following the budget announcement I was able to connect with Premier Eby, and Ministers Bailey and Anderson. I look forward to working with them all and others over the next year in my position on UBCM and on council to make progress on our collective and individual advocacy efforts.

How budget actually shakes out for local governments only time will tell. I for one will be keeping a close eye on the UBCM Compass and the Province to see what happens next.

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Why do elected officials go to conferences?

This week, many local government elected officials converge on Vancouver for the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) Convention & AGM. You might be asking why do our elected officials go to conferences and what value does this provide my community? This blog is intended to answer that question, and also provide an update on the work being done this week by council.

Resolutions

Resolutions is by far one of the biggest draws for convention and this year there are 267 resolutions being considered by the membership. These resolutions are broken down into several categories such as Special Resolutions, Endorse Block, Not Endorse Block, No Recommendation, and Late/Emergency Resolutions. Within each of these, topics for resolutions include Health & Social Development, Housing, Community Safety, Environment, Regional Districts, Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, Finance, Land Use, Taxation, Transportation, Legislative, Assessment, Community Economic Development, Elections, and Selected Issues.

A resolutions states a problem and an enactment clause with a proposed solution. The membership debates resolutions under these topics which could include resolutions like Mental Health Supports from the Kootenay Boundary RD, or Incentivizing Non-Market Housing from Maple Ridge, or Management of Fireworks from Mission to name a few. The debate is lively and the resolutions that are passed will form UBCM’s advocacy efforts.

There is immense value in being able to debate, support, and oppose resolutions that would benefit the City of Prince George in our priorities as well as our residents. To view all 2024 resolutions, click here.

Minister Meetings

Throughout the week at UBCM, there will be several opportunities to engage with provincial ministers and their staff. Each community has the opportunity to request meetings; some are approved and some denied. This week we will be meeting with the following to bring forward concerns, requests, thanks and more:

  • Minister Osborne, Energy, Mines, and Low Carbon Innovation
Minister Josie Osborne
  • Minister Fleming, Transportation and Infrastructure
  • Premier David Eby
  • Minister Kahlon, Housing
  • Minister Whiteside, Mental Health and Addictions
  • Minister Ma, Emergency Management and Climate Readiness

The access and opportunity to advocate for our community is unmatched. To be able to meet with these individuals will greatly help to advance our municipal priorities.

Educational Opportunities

UBCM is kind of like the first week of classes at university. There’s a lot going on – in addition to the many panels, workshops, clinics to choose from, there are also many colleagues to meet and learn from.

The start of convention offers incredibly interesting study tours and topics I’ve attended so far include What’s Next For Housing, Communities in Transition: Responding to Change in BC’s Resoirce Sector, and Women Electeds: Finding Solutions Together.

Joel McKay, CEO NDIT

Each day there is something new to choose from including concurrent clinic topics, concurrent workshop topics, keynotes, panels, and the list goes on. Many of these panels consist of colleagues from other local governments sharing solutions they’ve found, programs they’re trialing and expected outcomes, etc.; we also see the province and community partners presenting and sharing updates. We also will hear from provincial party leaders on their priorities for the upcoming year; there are also typically lots of announcements that can impact our communities drastically and being able to hear these announcements in full first hand rather than get drabs from the media is also incredibly beneficial.

UBCM Elections

The UBCM Executive has an incredibly important role. The membership might meet annually, however, the board meets quarterly, has special meetings, advocacy meetings and actions the advocacy priorities determined by the membership. Each quarter, the board meets with the Minister of Municipal Affairs, and at the April meeting, does Advocacy Days in Victoria at the Legislature.

During convention, elections for the board take place and like last year, I will be seeing a second term on the UBCM board as Director At Large to advance our collective priorities.

UBCM President Trish Mandewo

Conclusion

This week is huge for local government and UBCM provides many opportunities to learn, connect, advocate, debate, and more for our communities. The result is strong advocacy from 180+ local governments and First Nations Partners pushing forward for the communities we represent. To me, this is the work we were elected for and I’m incredibly proud of my council as well as local government and First Nations colleagues from across the province on all that we are doing together. So, if you ask me why elected officials go to conferences, I would say we are really there working for you, our residents to build communities you both deserve and desire.

Questions about this blog? Contact me and get in touch and I’d be happy to provide a response.

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Here’s the Tea about the AAP…

You might have heard some tea about the AAP (also known as the Alternative Approval Process). Essentially, the City needs approval to borrow funds for a capital project which would allow for preventative maintenance for the PG Aquatic Centre. This maintenance will help extend the life of the pool. In this blog I’m going to provide an overview of the project, our financial position (and why we’re borrowing money), as well as why I supported the Alternative Approval Process (AAP).

The Project

In 2016, the Prince George Aquatic Needs Assessment Report was completed. It found that the PG Aquatic Centre has been well maintained over its life by staff, however, at the time there were several items not to code and there was also an issue with the building envelope. Here’s what the report had to say: “Constructed in 1998, the Prince George Aquatic Centre is structurally, mechanically, and electrically sound. A pool audit report of the facility was recently completed by Councilman-Hunsaker and can be found in Section 11.2.4. Overall, the Aquatic Centre is in good condition. It is obvious that a well trained staff has taken care of the pools and their associated mechanical systems. There are certain items that are not code compliant. These items should be addressed immediately for safety concerns” (p. 11).

The report goes on to say that the PG Aquatic Centre is “performing as required, but has the following drawbacks: The mechanical system is not performing well and should be revamped [and] There is significant building envelope issues at the roof-top parapets that must be dealt with in the immediate future.”

In 2019 (aka the immediate future), Council approved the building envelope and mechanical project with a (class C estimate) budget of $8.58M, and in 2020, the city was successful in a grant application for $6.3M from the Investing In Canada Infrastructure Program’s Green Infrastructure Stream (note that when you apply for grants like these, you cannot start work prior to the grant being awarded otherwise it becomes ineligible). This increases the project budget to $14.88M and allows for – in addition to just the envelope and mechanical works – some insulation and air tightness work to better the buildings greenhouse gas emissions. Construction was supposed to start in 2021, but we put some projects put on hold during Covid and we also hosted the BC Summer Games which further delayed this project.

This brings us to April 4th, 2024 when council received a tour of the facility to highlight additional concerns that were found when the Project team reviewed the scope of work, all of which are listed in the April 22 Council Report. We also have the high level energy analysis from a Professional Engineer which articulates how upgrading some materials would result in energy efficiency savings and also help increase the life of the asset. It’s kind of like replacing the windows in your house with high efficiency windows – that and additional improvements (metal cladding over EFIS) will extend the life of the Aquatic Centre by roughly 20 years as indicated in the Engineers Analysis.

So what exactly are the upgrades being completed?

  • Phase 1 – Replacement of the building envelope, glazing, roof system, exterior doors, entry columns, leisure pool tiles, acoustic baffles and DDC (Controls) system. Addition of a dehumidification system and new electrical transformer with electrical system upgrades.
  • Phase 2 – Repairs to the structural steel/columns and dive tank sparger system. Replacement of main entry soffits, curtain wall and air handling units cooling coils. Addition of energy recovery on air handling units.
  • Phase 3 – Replacement of health/life safety items including deck, lobby and visitor area tile, handrails, plumbing fixtures, fire alarm system and sprinkler heads.
  • Phase 4 – Replacement of moveable bulkheads, change room tiles, overhead and underwater light fixtures and emergency system lighting, in addition to interior repainting, hydronic piping reconfiguration, increased access controls, accessibility improvements, and reconfigured reception desk.

At the April 22 meeting, Council voted in support of the $22.15M for additional works for the Aquatic Centre Envelope and Mechanical project which are listed above and a photo below also shows how much each phase costs. Here’s the voting summary in case you were wondering how each of my colleagues voted:

This brings us to the May 6th Report where council decided on the process in which we would seek elector assent. More on that below.

Financial Position

Before we get into the elector assent process, I want to highlight a change that we have made in our sustainable finance policy. In 2023, council approved changes to the finance policy and added in clause 1.3 which states: “To address infrastructure reinvestment needs, an increase of 1% to the tax levy per year shall be added at the conclusion of all other budget deliberations and transferred to infrastructure reserves.”

What this means is that once council has gone through the budget and made cuts or approved enhancements and lands on a tax levy, an additional 1% will be added for future infrastructure reinvestment needs. This equates to a little over $1M per year being collected to assist with our reinvestment funding gap.

Additional considerations: the debt for this project would not come on the books until the project is complete which could be 1-3 budget cycles from now, meaning under the new policy, we could have set aside roughly 3% between now and then. Overall, the total impact to the tax levy to cover the entire debt would require an increase of 1.24%, 1% of which we have technically already collected.

Finally, if you review our Consolidated Financial Statements you can see in Schedule 5 – Debt – General Capital Fund Debt, you can see that we have a number of debts coming off the books in 2025. This reduction in debt obligations could also offset the incoming debt obligation for the Aquatic Centre Building Envelope and Mechanical project. All of this really to say that if we receive elector assent and this is supported, and we do borrow, the impact of this specific project could be minimal to tax payers.

Borrowing Rates versus Deposit Rates

So, why do we borrow at all? This is a valid question that we get from time to time. In our own households, the rates we pay on debt is typically higher than what we earn on deposits so it makes sense to question if borrowing is financial the best option. In the world of municipal finance, municipalities are required by legislation to borrow funds (excludes investments) from the Municipal Finance Authority (MFA). Essentially, when the City of Prince George borrow funds, it gets pooled with other municipal loans in our Regional District and then with those in the province from other Regional Districts/Municipalities and because of the pooled amount being borrowed, the borrowing rates are very favorable.

For example, last month the Hospital Regional District Board received a report which showed MFA borrowing rates to be sitting around 4.18% for a five year borrowing term. Current market rates for deposits are around 4.5% (and higher if you have larger pools of funds) meaning that our Reserves are currently earning more in interest than what we would pay to borrow. This is very backwards from how household debt works.

From page 138 here (https://pub-rdffg.escribemeetings.com/FileStream.ashx?DocumentId=14253) showing low MFA borrowing rates.

Another consideration is that when it comes to debt, the individuals paying for the debt are typically the users of the asset. Think of the Canfor Leisure Pool – we could have saved $36M over a period of 20 years and then built the new pool but it would have resulted in users paying for something they might never get to use. Debt has a purpose in municipal finance and it can be used in an effective way to the benefit of the tax payer – and in my opinion, that’s what we’ve done here.

The AAP

First, let’s overview the two processes available to us for gaining elector assent. The May 8th Council Report details the process well, but here’s a quick overview. Option 1 is to run a Referendum in which we appoint a Chief Election Officer and set up voting stations and are required to have advanced polls and have people working those polls, and we also have a mail-in ballot. In this case, the majority of the votes cast determines the outcome. It is very similar to an election; however, voters answer a ‘yes OR no’ question on a ballot voicing their support or denial for the borrowing request. This process cost $91,000 in 2017 and would likely cost more in today’s dollars.

Option 2 for gaining elector assent is the Alternative Approval Process (AAP). In this process, electors would only vote ‘no’ by submitting a form to City Hall. The cost to run this is minimal as electors would fill out a form either at home or request one at City Hall and submit it to City Hall between July 5 – August 9, 2024. If the number of forms the City receives is more than 10% (5,512) of the total number of electors in the city (55,126) as determined by Elections BC, the vote would fail. At this point, council could consider denial of the project, or wait six months (as required by Community Charter) and choose to go to a referendum or try the AAP again.

Conclusion

This project has been in the works since 2016 and a great deal of work has been done. Overall, the Aquatic Centre has been well maintained by staff but it is now 25+ years old and in order to extend its life, we need to do some preventative maintenance. Remember that EFIS that was falling off the PG Playhouse? It’s the same material they used to build the Aquatic Centre. The option to fund this work is to borrow and the market is in our favor, we’ve got debt coming off the books in 2025, and under the new sustainable finance policy we’ve been putting funds aside for infrastructure reinvestment. Should this be approved through the alternative approval process (AAP) it saves us $100K.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end if you made it through – if you have questions, please let me know.

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Let’s Talk about Short Term Rentals

There have been many questions this week about the decision to opt-out of the short term rental legislation by council and I’m going to do my best to share my thoughts on the matter. Before we delve in, let me clear the air – the question has been asked about whether or not I own or have any partial ownership or financial stake in short-term rental properties which might have influenced my decision. So for the record, no, I do not own or have a financial stake in any short term rentals (STRs).

Why are we considering opting out of the STR legislation?

In December, Councillors Skakun and Klassen brought forward a notice of motion for council to consider opting out of Bill 35, the Short Term Rentals Accommodations Act. Staff prepared a report which you can read here at item D.11 and after much debate council directed staff to ask the province to opt-out of the STR legislation. Below I will highlight some of the factors that influenced my decision.

Vacancy Rates

In the staff report, it states that Prince George currently has a vacancy rate of 2.8% and we are ineligible from opting out. I questioned this data for a couple reasons, the main one being that I am very familiar with the CMHC Market Information Portal and understand its limitations as I use it for work as a Marketing Analyst and have used the data in this portal since 2015 to calculate the living wage for Prince George.

One of those limitations is that the CMHC Housing Survey only includes data from privately initiated structures with at least 3 rental units, which have been on the market for at least 3 months. Now, this automatically excludes single-family detached houses (17,995), movable dwellings (2,170), semi-detached houses (1,285), and apartment or flats in a duplex (2,305).

Essentially, right off the get-go, CMHC excludes a significant number of properties – 23,755 to be exact – from the Housing Survey which looks at things like market rents and vacancy rates. This is important because from our own Housing Needs Assessment, we can see that only 46% of renters are living in apartments meaning that 54% are living in dwellings CMHC does not consider in its survey data.

Now, let’s look further into the vacancy data. When we look at the vacancy rate for row/apartment, we can see it says the rate is 2.8 and has fallen from 3.7 in 2022. I automatically ask why the vacancy rate fell over 1% from the previous year.

Row housing is defined as “any building containing 3 or more rental units, all of which are ground oriented, side-by-side, with common walls dividing each rental unit. Owner-occupied units are not included in the rental building unit count. These row units in some centres are commonly referred to as townhouses.”

When we look at row housing, we can see that the 3 bedroom + category contained a vacancy rate of 1.8 in the following year and instead has ** listed for 2023 which is overall bringing down the row house vacancy rate from 1.9 to 0.5. The reasoning from CMHC is that the data is suppressed to protect confidentiality or the data is not statistically reliable. Given that it was listed in the previous year, I believe there to be a strong likelihood that the data is not reliable rather than being omitted due to confidentiality. We can also see from the Housing Needs Assessment that only 9% of renters are living in row housing.

To me, it is reasonable to exclude the row house vacancy rate due to the low number of renters living in this housing type as well as the 3 bedroom rate being omitted from the data.

What this leaves us with the the apartment vacancy rate of 3.0 which means if the row housing is omitted, council does have the authority to make the decision on whether or not we can opt-out this year of the STR legislation.

Affordability

There are a significant number of factors that impact home ownership affordability. Housing stock availability certainly plays a part but there are other factors that come to mind:

  • Your Total Debt Servicing (TDS) ratio. TDS is your total debt obligations divided by your total income in the form of a per cent and the industry standard cutoff is 42%. If you have any other debts – a car loan, student loan, debt consolidation loan, etc. – this is going to impact your TDS and if it’s over 42% you will not get approved by a lender.
  • The Stress Test. The stress test was implemented in 2018 and applies to anyone purchasing a home with less than a 20% down payment. The stress test ensures that you can still make mortgage payments should rates change. Basically, you have to get approved at either the minimum qualifying mortgage rate of 5.25 per cent, or their contract rate plus two percentage points, whichever is higher.
  • Rates. The Bank of Canada has increased rates to slow inflation, this is resulting in higher interest rates sitting currently around 5%. With the stress test, this means that individuals need to get approved at around 7%.
  • Amortization period. If you have less than a 20% down payment, the maximum amortization period for an insured mortgage is 25 years. In the market, 40 year mortgages are available to those with more than 20% down payment; however, those with lesser down payments are required to pay their homes off almost twice as fast as those who have a greater then 20% down payment. This is meant to regulate $1M+ mortgages and I have questioned why there isn’t a threshold in place for insured mortgages under $1M. The answer is that if policies were to change individuals would be taking on more debt and interest in the long term. My response was shouldn’t that be an individuals choice?

Does more housing stock equal affordability?

I was recently at the UBCM Housing Summit and a panelist said: “It’s just basic economics, the more stock we add, the more affordable housing will become.” There are so many other factors contributing to affordability that I have to ask the question if this is actually true?

The Province seems to think so and in fact, they hired Jens von Bergmann of MountainMath Software & Analytics in addition to UBC Sauder and Sociology staff as well as a professional from Terra Housing, to provide an analysis on how adding density will achieve affordability. One line that stood out to me was this: “The additional 44,000 to 54,000 net growth in dwellings over 5 years estimated by our model would result in 6% to 12% lower prices and rents than what they would have been without the provincial legislation.”

bc_ssmuh_toa_scenarios_finalDownload

The issue I have with this is that the opposite of ‘adding density betters affordability’ is currently happening in Victoria. They have implemented zoning that allows fourplexes on single family lots and up to twelve-plexes on corner lots. They’ve added a great deal of density and since the new zoning implementation, their vacancy rates dropped 0.01 while their rents increased by over $200 per unit since the previous reporting period.

Why should we keep Short Term Rentals?

Based on the information from PG Realtors, there are 259 active Airbnb’s in Prince George. Searching actively on Airbnb and removing principle residences, about another hundred residents are excluded meaning overall, we are looking at roughly 150 STR properties likely being impacted. 150 of 31,793 dwellings according to the most recent Statistics Canada Census data. This is 0.4% of our total dwelling count. Long term rentals are still an attractive investment option and eliminating the 0.4 STRs in our community converting them to long term rentals is not going to influence the market enough to change market rental rates and immediately make things more affordable.

Health Considerations

In 2021, I chaired a panel at NCLGA with Cathy Ulrich, then CEO of Northern Health. Housing availability was among the most challenging barrier to recruitment for health professionals. According to a CTV article, “in 2022 [Northern Health] has spent $37.7 million on [externally contracted] agency nurses, technicians and other allied healthcare workers. The five-year total is at least $105 million. Every other health authority combined spent at least $102 million in that time on private staffing to keep public health-care facilities running.”

We know that Northern Health is spending more than all the other health authorities combined in order to provide basic care and the reality is that many of these health professionals do utilize short-term rentals. We also have a number of individuals from outside of Prince George who come here to give birth, receive cancer treatment, utilize hospice services to name a few services because not all of these critical health services are available in all communities. Short term rentals emerged in the market because they met a demand – a demand that still exists today and eliminating them will have consequences on rural, remote, and northern communities.

Tourism Revenue

I’ve seen some comments that STRs do not contribute to Tourism Prince George through the MRDT hotel tax and I want to comment that council has asked Tourism PG this question. CEO Colin Carson has confirmed that STRs do contribute to the MRDT and infact in their 2024 budget we do see their revenue increasing by $250,000. So not only are these properties contributing by paying property taxes, they are also contributing to marketing initiatives and supporting a great non-profit.

Conclusion

You might not agree with my decision to support the opt-out of the Short Term Rental Legislation and that is okay. Disagreement is part of a healthy democratic society. Whether or not you agree, I hope that at least you can better understand my reasoning for coming to this decision. Regardless of where you stand, know that this decision still needs to be approved by the Province. They might not agree with the logic of excluding row housing which puts us back to a 2.8% vacancy rate. They might agree with us and approve the opt-out, in which case we will have to have this debate annually as long as we have a representative vacancy rate above 3%. And if the vacancy rate does fall below 3%, it will be 2 years before council can reconsider.

Do you have questions or comments about STRs or perhaps there’s additional information you think I should consider. Send it my way. Thanks for reading!

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The *NEW* Downtown Strategy!

The #BeDowntown campaign

A couple weeks ago, the City launched the #BeDowntown campaign, a video campaign which shares authentic stories about our downtown. It’s real people sharing stories that aren’t sugar coated. It acknowledges the issues but also reminds us that there are a lot of good businesses downtown that need our support. I shared this campaign on reddit a few weeks ago and it wasn’t well received. People wanted more than a marketing campaign and I’m happy to share that after a significant amount of work, Downtown Prince George, the PG Chamber of Commerce, Tourism Prince George, and the City of Prince George have launched our new Downtown Strategy. These four groups will be leading the Downtown Strategy Team in consultation with many different user groups as it relates to each of the recommendations.

The Strategy & The Team

Spring last year, council did an info session with the consultants that Downtown Prince George had hired to work on a downtown strategy. They walked us through their process for consultation and asked us questions in a focus group type setting about what we envisioned for our downtown. This was one of many focus groups ran as they worked to better understand what our collective vision is for our downtown. The strategy that was shared at council last night feels like a true representation of our collective vision.

The strategy starts by sharing it’s objectives: develop a unique positioning, identify future trends, establish growth opportunities, action recommendations. It then proceeds to go into a situational analysis of our opportunities and challenges, shares the vision, target audiences, and recommendations.

When looking at the current perception of downtown, I can say that I’ve heard all these things listed below and it rings true to me. Many go downtown to eat, shop and work but would agree with it having low livability. A personal hope of mine is that rather than developers targeting seniors for downtown housing projects who might not want to live right downtown, they instead target young people and help them start building equity in an affordable multifamily developments – but that’s another convo for another day when the OCP consultation is done.

Vision

What does the vision for downtown Prince George look like? The first statement in the vision states: “Downtown Prince George is the city’s cultural and business heart, a destination and gathering place for local and visitors and a preferred location for businesses.” When I personally think of our downtown, I think about a kitchen with a big table where family sits to share a meal, play games, work on business proposals or plans or just do work or homework – and so this idea of downtown being a gathering place for culture and business resonates with me deeply.

Recommendations

Before we get into the recommendations, the consultants have identified six downtown development principles which I think are worth mentioning because the downtown’s that I love exhibit all of these principles. Mixed-use downtown is something many residents have called for so it’s no surprise to see that in there. A Thriving Arts, Entertainment, and Cultural Hub – last term former Councillor Terri McConnachie and myself did a public art tour while at the FCM convention in Quebec City. This tour was amazing and they really showcased how public art, entertainment, and culture is an attractant for young people to a city. The point often gets brought up that we don’t do a good job of keeping graduates in Prince George despite having a university and a college. Investing in arts, entertainment and culture is something that I firmly believe will change that (in addition to other things like affordable housing options).

Under each of these principles, we see associated recommendations:

Next Steps

The Downtown Strategy Team is launching as the first step of this strategy and they will be bringing an update to council at the end of Q2 (June) so please stay tuned for that. Some will buy-in to the new strategy like me, but I also know that others will likely be more hesitant and that is a very natural response to change. What I ask is this: Please read through the plan, see it’s intentions, and give it a chance to transform our downtown. The work will likely be slower than you want mostly because changing opinions is the hardest type of change to bring about (at least in my opinion) but I am confident that supporting this strategy will result in positive change to our downtown.

If you want to send your thoughts on the new downtown strategy, feel free to send an email to Mayor and Council or a letter of correspondence for our next council agenda. You can comment on this blog or get in touch with me as well. Thanks for reading!

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Budget 2024: How we got to 6.78%

I wanted to write a blog on budget last week but then I had the Regional District budget and regular meetings so unfortunately it’s a little delayed but hopefully you find the information helpful.

I’ll start by saying that there is a lot of work that goes into the city budget and the process for the 2024 budget kicked off in August 2023 at the Finance and Audit (F&A) Committee which I chair and consists of Councillors Bennett, Polillo and Klassen. At the August meeting, F&A reviewed the budget consultation approach and made a recommendation to council (committee’s do not have the ability to make decisions on their own so we make recommendations to council and they can choose to adopt, amend, or halt a process) on the process which was approved.

Budget Consultation 2024

Our budget consultation included a number of engagement opportunities. The City of Prince George ran five satisfaction surveys on: roads and sidewalks, parks and trails, events and recreation, snow and ice control, and protective services. Each survey had between 200-300+ responses. We also ran 24 social media posts asking for feedback on various topics which generated hundreds of comments. Citizen Budget, which some might be familiar with, is a survey we run every year as part of our budget consultation and saw 1,500 visitors in 2023. Finally, council also put on three public input sessions in the Hart, Downtown and in College Heights to hear feedback in-person from residents. Budget consultation runs throughout October every year and there are many ways to engage and tell us what you think. Members of the public can also email council or send letters of correspondence. Overall, I think we have a robust engagement process that considers feedback from different mediums and sources. If you think this process can be improved upon, please let me know your thoughts!

What We Heard

There’s a lot of information and feedback to sift through but below shows the Citizen Budget survey results (keeping in mind that there is a lot of info collected in addition to this like the other surveys and social media comments but this does summarize for the sake of a blog a general idea of feedback from the public). You can view the entire results of the budget engagement here at item D.1.

Looking at the table below, we can see that residents have asked for increases and decreases in specific areas, but overall 83% asked that service levels remain the same. Considering inflation was at 3.4% in December, to keep service levels the same, we are automatically without changes looking at the inflationary increase. Now, 3.4% is much different than the 6.24% which includes some increases, but it equally important to note that the 3.4% inflation rate is based on a basket of goods that includes household items, not things like construction materials and asphalt so the inflation rate for municipalities tends to be higher.

There are other factors that require us to consider differing from the feedback in the Citizen Budget results. An example of this is Fire Protection Services which saw five new firefighters and one new admin added as an enhancement. This was due to a report council received in March 2023 which you can view here at C.1 which can be summed up as: “Following through on the 5-year staffing plan will bring the Fire Department within compliance of NFPA 1710, ensuring the appropriate number of firefighters on scene to fight residential structure fires in the recommended length of time.” So that for me was a very good reason to differ from the public recommendation of ‘keep the same’ given that not following this recommendation could have liability issues and impact life saving measures by our fire department.

The Financial Plan

The financial plan – which is the operating budget – is very complex and sometimes it’s not the easiest to understand so I’m going to try and break it down in what I hope is an adjustable format. Essentially, this is a $166.4M budget and a 1% increase is equal to $1,292,482. The $166.4M amount excludes the additional $59.7M we collect for other agencies such as the School District, the Regional District, 911, the Regional Hospital, BC Assessment, etc. which you will see on your tax bill.

Over all, the tax levy is made up of four individual levies:

  1. The first levy is General (operating) which consists of the operating funding for all city services except for off street parking, snow, solid waste, sewer, water, and district energy because they have their own fund which collects their operating monies. The general levy collected $110,398,156 in 2023 and saw a 4% increase in 2024 bringing it to $116,396,345 for 2024.
  2. The second levy is General Infrastructure Reinvestment Fund (GIRF). This levy was started in 2016 when council realized we had a significant infrastructure funding gap we needed to close. Since 2016, this fund has grown to $2,950,000 but with minor contributions of between $50,000-$75,000 over the past several years, we know that it is not enough to fund future capital projects. Earlier this year a recommendation was passed in our Finance Policy that would see 1% of the tax levy will be set aside to fund GIRF. Within the tax levy you will see that 1%, or $1,292,482 which brought GIRF from the $2,950,000 to $4,242,482 in this budget cycle. Now we might not need to fund GIRF at this level forever, but several years at 1% until the funding gap is closed will be necessary to fund our future infrastructure reinvestment needs.
  3. The third levy is Snow. We collected $9.8M in 2023 and the 2024 budget saw a recommended increase of $1M ensuring we keep a healthy reserve of 25% of the snow budget so that if we have a snowpocalypse event (or many) we can use the reserve to cover any overages. This recommendation, if approved, would have brought the snow levy to $10.8M in 2024.
  4. The final levy is Road Rehabilitation which collected $6.1M in 2023 and had a recommended increase of $600,000 in 2024. This lets us complete 50 lane km’s in the city every year. At F&A we did hear that asphalt is seeing a huge inflationary increase meaning that the city could see the $141 per ton rate increase to $200 per ton for smaller jobs. F&A passed a recommendation that council consider an enhancement in the amount of $300K which would bring the overall levy with the proposed increase to $7M. This would still bring us short of our infrastructure funding gap by $1.2M.

With all that, not including the enhancements, the proposed tax levy was at 6.24%. Council made some changes to the proposed budget from staff. Rather than increase snow by $1M, we chose to increase by $500K which would still fund the levy but have us rely on the reserve in 2024 should we see significant snowfall activity. Service levels to snow removal have not been changed so this means using the savings we have in the bank to fund the bill if we go over the $10.3M budget. We also saw proposed changes by colleagues that did not pass.

What does 0% look like?

As we go through the 2024 and previous budgets, thinking about that 1% = $1,292,482 (in 2024) is an important consideration, for me at least. People often ask the question, why can’t we have a 0% increase? To get to 0% would require council to cut $8,065,087.68 in the 2024 budget. To cut that amount would mean residents would experience significant impacts to service levels across multiple divisions.

But we had a 0% in a covid year? Yes, we technically had a 0% tax levy in 2021 followed by 3.00% in 2022 and 7.58% in 2023. Now we have 6.78% in 2024 and likely several years of mid-5-6% increases where we are recovering from the 0%. This is because to get to 0%, council did not cut services and instead used a one-time funding source (the COVID-19 Safe Restart Grant), to fund the inflationary increase meaning that once the one-time money was no longer available, we had to fund it through the levy. I did not support the 0% for this reason and it is my opinion that we will be recovering from the 0% for quite some time.

Capital Plan

In 2024, we see a capital plan for $46.8M with $15.2M for new/upgrade projects and $31.7M for reinvestment type projects. When looking at the capital plan (which consists of funded projects, unfunded projects, and future years projects), I like to reference the reserve balances because while GIRF does impact the tax levy (remember that 1% we collected above for our infrastructure reinvestment gap?), there are ways we can fund capital projects where it doesn’t impact the levy, like if we get grant funds or gas tax money from the feds/province.

Let’s start off by addressing ‘what is a funding gap’? This is the amount of money we need to collect to replace our current infrastructure. Looking at the next ten years, there are civic facilities that need reinvestment in order to remain operational. For instance, if we look at the PG Playhouse, we can see that in order to keep it functioning, it will likely require $2,142,299 within the next ten years (and if we ask the other question, it’s much more than $2M). Overall, just for the facilities listed below the reinvestment amount is $46M and requires $4.6M per year to get us there. Keep in mind that this is just for 7 facilities and doesn’t include other reinvestment that is also required like for parks, trails, roads, etc. Remember that GIRF levy that was at $2.95M? That’s why we need to fund GIRF at 1% of the levy per year – so that we increase it incrementally rather than all at once to have the funds necessary to reinvest into our infrastructure (Google Osoyoos 39% increase if you want to know how bad it can get).

Next, let’s look at the two funded capital projects. The first is project #3274 which would see the cardio equipment at the Aquatic Centre pool gym replaced. We can see that this is funded at $175K in 2024 from the Capital Expenditure Reserve.

This is where referencing reserve balances comes in handy. If we look at the Capital Expenditure Reserve balance (this reserve does not impact the tax levy as it is funded by an annual contribution from our gaming revenue (money we get from the province from the casino) as well as interest we get on our endowment reserve) we can see it has a balance of $2.8M on Dec 31, 2022 and also would have also received the 2023 gaming contribution as well, so the balance is likely somewhere in the ballpark of $5.8M.

Then we ask the question, is it necessary to fund in 2024 – what advantage does this provide? Well, we heard that the equipment is at the end of its life and this is a decent revenue stream for the Aquatic Centre, so funding it would ensure that revenue stream remains in place. You might look at the $175K and think that’s a lot for 6 treadmills, 3 bikes, 1 should press and 1 stair climber. It’s important to note that city staff will look for ways to find savings and if we do save, they will return the unspent savings to the reserve which can be used for future projects.

The second capital project is #3417, the Aquatic Centre bleacher replacement project which sees the replacement of the bleachers at a cost of $205K from GIRF. Now this is a project that does impact the tax levy. Choosing to not fund this project could see the tax levy reduced but we could also choose instead of reducing the tax levy to fund the GIRF reserve to ensure we’re maintaining that 1% for the infrastructure funding gap. We did hear that regardless of funding this project or not, the bleachers are at end of life and need to be removed due to safety issues so funding this project made sense.

Council went through the capital plan project by project asking questions, and getting more information and then we went through the capital project again for approval and decision. At the end, there were projects that were funded, projects that were moved to unfunded, as well as projects from unfunded and future years that were forwarded to Committee of the Whole for more information.

Enhancements

Enhancements are things that are changes from the status quo budget or things that residents or council ask for throughout the year. This year we had a number of enhancements for consideration. Without making changes to the budget and approving the enhancements as is, this would have put us at a 8.23% tax levy. Basically we reduced the levy by 1.45% or $1.87M. Here’s how we did it:

RCMP asked for four new officers at $883,128, this was instead funded for four officers starting July 1 at $441,564 shaving off 0.34% from the 8.23 levy. Next was police support which asked for two municipal staff in the amount of $160,960. Council approved one of the two positions for $77,923 shaving another $83,037 off the levy.

Next was an increase to the fire department which asked for 5 firefighters and 2 support staff. Council approved the $594,220 as well as $76,519. The full enhancement request was for $907,327 so there was a further reduction here. We also saw that by delaying the hiring of the new firefighters, we could fund the Phase 2 Fire Training Feasibility study without increasing the levy which was Councillor Sampson’s idea and passed.

The REAPs request of $100k was not supported and the Exploration Place saw their request partially funded at $25k + $25k rather than the $25k + $75k they requested.

Finally, the roads enhancement of $300k that F&A put forward did not pass. I would have liked to see us try and increase this to decrease the funding gap but I understand why it was unappealing.

The 6.78%

My hopes in writing this blog is to give you a different perspective on the budget process and share my opinion, learnings, and understanding. Budget is a balancing act and I do believe that council did great job finding ways to reduce that initial 8.23% down to 6.78%.

Thanks for reading! If there are any questions, comments, considerations, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

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Conferences – A year in review

My expense for a conference in Ottawa was called into question this week and rather than let that sit there unanswered, I thought it best to provide more info about all the conferences I attended this year and what I learned so that you might judge for yourself the value it brings to my role on council.

UBCM Housing Summit

In February of this year, UBCM reached out to me inviting me to participate in a panel discussion on rural and northern housing challenges and opportunities at the upcoming Housing Summit. I need to preface my answer to their request by saying that I am a housing nerd. I love reading and learning more about our housing market. I did a TEDx talk on the living wage and poverty reduction and have calculated the living wage for Prince George since 2015. In addition to this, I work for a local credit union reading many reports on housing. All of this is in addition to the reading I do for council so I would consider myself well informed on the subject. Needless to say, I was still shocked and excited when UBCM asked me to speak. I said yes.

I was able to speak about Prince George’s experience and provide advice to other local governments and answer questions many newly elected officials had. I also got to ask Ministry of Housing and Ministry of Health why Prince George had 10 complex care beds announced in the previous year that were still not operational despite being fully built. The answer I was given – and I’m paraphrasing here – was basically that it was the other ministries responsibility. I didn’t like this response and so I brought it up at our next meeting with the Premier and within three weeks of mentioning it, the issue was resolved and the housing was brought online.

NCLGA

At this year’s AGM I was the Past President of the North Central Local Government Association (NCLGA). This is an incredibly important conference in my opinion because it comprises of our northern local government peers – it’s 39 local governments who experience similar issues and lobby/advocate together on those issues.

Example: Remember when the Feds wanted to remove our air tower at the airport? Well, City of Prince George and other municipalities got together and sent NCLGA letters and we wrote a response to NavCanada who ended up reversing their decision.

This year, NCLGA AGM & Convention was held in Dawson Creek with the theme of ‘Northern Communities Leading Together’. It was an opportunity to connect with new and returning elected officials and hear a full agenda with sessions on:

  • Community Risk Assessments and Community Risk Reduction Plans
  • Northern Leadership Through Collaboration: A home-grown climate action network
  • UBCM: Canada Community Building Fund Renewal
  • MIABC
  • NDIT
  • NCLGA Strategic planning session
  • EMBC Elected Official Orientation- What to do in the event of a local emergency
  • Mental Health Crisis Continuum
  • Strategies to meet the new Accessibility Requirement legislation

I also had past president duties and ran the election for the new 2023-2024 board, my last act after four years with this organization.

GGCLC 2022

To explain how I ended up at this conference in 2023, I first have to share how I ended up at it in 2022. Sometime in 2018, a resident told me about this conference hosted by the Governor General and given my council experience they thought I should apply. I read through the info on the website, thought it was a cool opportunity as it focused on government, union, and business sectors and worked to expose conference attendees to different perspectives to broaden their leadership abilities. Organizations needed to pledge to support for an applicant by covering airfare and the conference would cover the remaining expenses. I verified with then city manager Kathleen Soltis if this was an allowable expense under the council remuneration bylaw which it was – so I applied. I found out I was shortlisted sometime in the summer and had to go through an alumni interview process. On Christmas Eve 2019, I found out that I was accepted to the GGCLC conference for the summer of 2020. I should say that about 2,500-5,000 people apply to the conference every intake and only 250 people are accepted – I did not know this at the time I applied.

Then covid-19 happened. And the conference was delayed. And they ran online zoom meetings for our cohort bringing in incredible professional speakers monthly for us to learn from – like we’re talking the Chief Economist of Scotiabank. Eventually, I actually got to go on the conference and it was one of the most incredible experiences of my life.

The conference started with three days of plenary in Huntsville Ontario. We heard from amazing speakers like Anil Amora, Chief Statistician of Canada, John Stackhouse Sr. Vice President, Royal Bank of Canada, Siobhan Vipond, Executive VP, Canadian Labour Congress, Naheed Nenshi, former Mayor of Calgary, Dr. Jane Philpott, former MP and Federal Health Minister, Glen Pearson, ED, Canadian Aid for South Sudan, Dr. James Niigaan Sinclair, Head, Department of Native Studies, University of Manitoba, Wes Hall, Chairman and Founder, BlackNorth Initiative, Mark Tewksbury, VP of the Board, Canadian Olympic Committee. And that was just the beginning.

We were then split into study tour groups and sent across Canada (one tour to every province except 2 to Quebec and 3 to Ontario) to learn about leadership over 9 days so that we might make a presentation to Her Excellency Mary Simon.

We stayed in the GTA for 3 days meeting the Mayor of Mississauga, touring the Amazon sortment facility, hearing from the Cocoa Cola plant leadership, visiting Blue Door, meeting with the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, visiting Steam Whistle, the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund, Oak Ridges Moraine, Toronto Film Festival, a panel discussion with the Ontario Nurses Association, hearing from Peter Slowly (yes, that one), meeting and touring around with the Toronto Police Marine Division. We also got to see cool research that is happening at the hospital in Toronto and hear from a Masters student on Alzheimer’s research they are undertaking with speech recognition software. Somewhere in here we also toured CANMET.

We then toured the tank museum in Oshwa, spoke with wineries from the Prince Edward region, visited Queen’s University Faculty of Medicine. We met with the Kingston Economic Development team and they toured us around showing us how they were tackling homelessness, we met with Lionhearts a group that had revitalized the food distribution system for struggling families, and also toured Collin Bay Penitentiary. We went inside and toured CSIS (the security protocols were intense). We met with the Grand Chief of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne. Finally, we made our way to Ottawa meeting the Clerk of the Privy Council, met with the National Gallery ED, the River Keepers.

And then we had the closing plenary where each of the groups presented their findings to her Excellency on what we learned about leadership. This was a life changing leadership experience and I am so grateful for the opportunity to have attended.

That brings us to 2023.

GGCLC 2023

I received notification that the alumni network was organizing a one-off conference and it was open to any conference alumni. I verified with the City Manager on whether or not my council expense could be utilized for this conference and received confirmation.

The conference started with a visit to the parliamentary lawn for the National Indigenous Day Celebrations. We kicked off the conference with a land acknowledgement from Elder Claudette Commanda, Chancellor, University of Ottawa. We then headed into plenary with a panel from Jesse Dame, Registered Nurse and Indigenous Gender and Sexual Health Lead, Vancouver Coastal Health. Next, we had a panel on Indigenous Leadership and Reconciliation in Action with the following speakers followed by some study group work:

  • Kory Wilson, Executive Director, BCIT (Moderator)
  • Peter Johnston, Grand Chief, Council of Yukon First Nations
  • Victoria LaBillois, Vice-Chair, National Indigenous Economic Development Board
  • Jessy Dame, Registered Nurse and Indigenous Gender and Sexual Health Lead, Vancouver Coastal Health
  • Aluki Kotierk, President, Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated

The next day we started the session with a panel on Collaborative leadership in Canada hearing from:

  • Cathryn Andersen, Vice-President, Office of Indigenous Affairs, Memorial University
  • Isabelle Foisy, President, Cambre de commerce et d’industrie de la Rive-Sud and President, Point Cardinal (for this I needed my translation device)
  • Mohammed Hashim, Executive Director, Canadian Race Relations Foundation
  • Jacqueline O’Neill, Canada’s Ambassador for Women, Peace and Security, Global Affairs Canada
  • Lana Payne, President, UNIFOR

We then headed into group discussions with the ability to choose from 12 different topics – I chose Decline of Public Trust in Institutions: Is Democracy in Danger which was facilitated by Mehrdad Hariri. We ended the day with a powerful tour of Beechwood Cemetery called the Reconciling History Program.

The final day of the conference we started the day with a panel called Leading in a Constantly Evolving World and heard from the following speakers:

  • Yves Pelletier, Associate Vice President, Francophonie Univeristy of Ottawa
  • Nadine Duguay-Lemay, President, Cohesia
  • Brendan McCracken, President and CEO, Ovintiv
  • Natan Obed, President, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (honestly one of the most incredible speakers I’ve ever heard)
  • Sussanne Skidmore, President, BC Federation of Labour

We spent the afternoon in study tours visiting Senate of Canada with Senator Woo who was giving us a tour of the 100 Years after the Chinese Exclusion Act Exhibition. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the bell rang while we were in the middle of the tour and he had to RUN into senate chambers for the vote of Bill C-18. We were invited to the gallery to watch history in the making. I knew immediately that this vote would drastically impact northern communities including Prince George.

Our second tour was with the Ottawa River Keepers and it was great to connect with them again a year later to learn about watershed projects they were working on and learnings from the previous year.

We finished with a tour at the Global Centre for Pluralism and this was very influential for me. For a while now I have felt like polarization is degrading democracy and pulling us a part and not really known what the answer was – now I know it is pluralism. I applaud the work they are doing here because it really is spectacular and I use these learnings in particular when I approach debate and in how I choose to lead.

So some might say this was not relevant to my council work, I beg to differ.

UBCM

At the beginning of September, UBCM reached out and asked me if I would be interested in speaking at Convention on a housing panel. They were interested in the top housing issues we were experiencing, our infrastructure needs for anticipated population growth, and examples of what is working well in our community. I eagerly agreed to participate.

At convention, I attended a morning session on Decriminalization and Public Use. The session had Bonnie Henry on the panel and was naturally packed with probably 200 people in a small conference room. My panel session was in the afternoon and I assumed it would be in a similar sized room – and I was wrong – it was in a ballroom with probably between 500+ seats, most of which were filled for the session. I shared about our experience and received really great feedback from a number of individuals.

The rest of the conference was business as usual with community workshops, resolutions, panels, and more. We had a series of Minister Meetings that our council attended advocating on issues for our community. I ran for Director at Large and was elected.

Learnings, networking, advocating, and more!

All in all, I would say 2023 was a successful year of conferences, learning, networking, advocating for Prince George. I’ve made many connections that I know I can call on to ask questions, advice, feedback or experiences. The learnings and experiences I take away from these conferences will help inform my decision making moving forward.

I know this was a long blog, so thanks for those who made it to the end. Should you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please reach out. And if there’s something you think I should know that will better inform my work, please get in touch!

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My (lack of a) public comment on Mayor’s spending

There was an article published today in the CBC by Kate Patridge and you can view it here regarding the Mayor spending over his allowable expense limit. Yesterday, I was sent the full extent of the FOI package and asked if I wanted to provide comment on its contents. I didn’t feel it was appropriate to comment on another council member’s spending until the item comes before council for consideration (read to the bottom to find out when); however, there are some things I want to comment on to provide additional clarity/perspective.

Upon reading this article, one might ask who or what governs council spending – and that is a good question. The what is the council remuneration bylaw which sets out guidelines for council expenses and is very clear on what they can be used for. You can find the excerpt below or read the full bylaw here which was updated and came into effect on January 1, 2023.

That brings us to the who – who is responsible and accountable for our expenses? The answer is simple. We are. It’s not our staff. It’s surely not an executive assistant. It’s definitely not the city’s communications department. While they can support us in providing an update as to where we’re at if asked, the responsibility lies with individual council members – at least in my opinion which has been informed by five years of governance experience and orientation sessions.

All of council receives extensive orientation and training at the beginning of the term and we also receive additional information sessions throughout the year on things like the council remuneration bylaw, the council procedures bylaw, the community charter, the local government act, conflict of interest, and more. And there’s even conferences like the Local Government Leadership Academy (LGLA), NCLGA, and UBCM which add additional educational opportunities to learn about our role and ensure we are performing business in the interest of the public.

Accountability doesn’t stop there. Every year, the Statement of Financial Information (SOFI) report comes before council which lists all of the council expenses, and we as a council get to debate and make recommendations or referrals back to staff based on those findings. So while this article is letting you know of this now, there’s also a mechanism in place for this to be reported to the public once all the year end financials are finalized.

You might also be wondering why council has an expense limit at all and this is a very normal practice for all municipalities – and that expense limit is very prescribed and is meant for attending conferences which is where a lot of advocacy and minister meetings takes place. Some might not find value in this, but I personally find it an incredible opportunity to learn about key issues, to endorse or oppose resolutions, advocate on behalf of my community, and meet and learn from other leaders experiencing similar issues in their communities. This year in particular was also an opportunity for me to run for and get elected as Director at Large for UBCM providing even more opportunity for advocacy.

There are sure to be many questions regarding this article, and council will have the opportunity to raise those questions when the SOFI report comes forward to report on council spending for the 2023 fiscal year in 2024.

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Let’s talk about codes of conduct

I said I’d blog more, so here I am, with another blog, this time on the code of conduct.

There’s been a spattering of interest regarding the vote outcome on the council code of conduct (from here referred to as the code) from the Dec 4, 2023 council meeting at agenda item E.2 here that saw Mayor Yu and Councillor Klassen opposed citing concerns over the code being undemocratic due to the city manager playing a role in the complaint process and asking instead for an ethics commissioner.

Let’s perhaps first start with why we undertook this work in the first place. Our old code was written in 2013 and has not been updated since. It contains no provisions for how to actually bring forth a complaint, nor does it contain how to handle a complaint should one be brought forward. Given that its purpose is to help us navigate a complaint, this is a pretty big issue that needed to be resolved.

So, why is this important? Some might not know, but council members are not employees of the city, therefore, WorkSafeBC and other provincial rules that apply to ‘employees’ do not apply to council. Yes, it’s odd, and many municipalities have filed resolutions with NCLGA and UBCM asking the province to fix this issue. Until it is fixed, having a code is the workaround – which until this term when the province mandated councils consider implementing a code – keyword is considered… was not mandatory.

So that brings us back to our code. On Monday, lawyers from Anderson Young, who drafted our code presented to council, a code for first three readings. Council was able to put motions forward for amendments and a few were adopted making some minor language changes. It’s important to note that UBCM formed a Working Group On Responsible Conduct in 2016 and this group has done important work making resources available to local governments around the formation of codes. You can review more info on that here. Our code, in my opinion, follows the resource laid out by the Working Group and fixes the gap that existed in the previous version. It is in effect an upgrade.

So why was there opposition? Despite the fact that there are very few municipalities with an ethics commissioner, some believe this is more appropriate than utilizing the city manager (whose role is limited and who mostly acts as a facilitator between a complainant and an investigator) for this administrative function. A Google quick search shows that Ethics Commissioners earns the same salary as a Federal Court Judge which is around $314,300. And to hire an ethics commissioner, you need to hire a law firm which means likely a retainer fee meaning it would cost even more.

Here’s the point I made that I thought resolved the issue: White Rock submitted a resolution to UBCM in 2022 asking that the province create an ethics commissioner office for municipalities – a resolution that was endorsed meaning this office could become available to municipalities in the future without us having to fund the position.

Not all were swayed by this argument however, and the two that disagreed cited the code as being undemocratic due to the perceptive nature of requiring the city manager to delve into a council conflict. It should be noted that the code of conduct is not just for council but it is also for employees who could lodge a complaint against a council member – and by chain of command standards, taking said complaint to our highest ranking emoloyee is appropriate.

So that the gist of the code of conflict debate. What do you think of codes in general or of ours specifically (it’s linked in the report above and attached in the bylaw)? What choice would you have made regarding an ethics commissioner? And do you think a code of conduct is undemocratic?