The City of Prince Rupert will be well represented on a new Board of Directors for the City owned telecommunication company
This is kind of bizarre. Why didn’t the city just say “we are going to stop pretending Citywest is an at arms length company and we’re taking it over.”
I guess, at least this way, they’ll now know if they’re going to get that annual dividend. Or maybe Bob Long will have to chastise himself for not letting him know earlier!
I suspect that the Town as the sole shareholder made some demands of the CityWest Board and the result was that all or most of the existing the Board members either resigned or were terminated by the municipality in one of its famous closed meetings.
Hopefully, the mandate of the new board is to arrange for the sale of CityWest. The Town needed to be in the telephone business back in the early days of Prince Rupert as there was not anyone else to take on the role. 100 years later, there is no reason for the town to be operating a telephone/cable company. Indeed, the lack of payment of a consistent dividend shows that City West has not been able to compete with the bigger telecoms.
What surprises me, is that there does not seem to be any mention of City West amongst the candidates for municipal election. It is probably the biggest elephant in the room that needs to be addressed by the community.
On the other hand, perhaps their ability to ignore this issue demonstrates that the candidates are all more than qualified to sit either as Council Members or Mayor as the case may be.
Hmmm. A very valid angle , good post
[quote=“Pantagruel”]I suspect that the Town as the sole shareholder made some demands of the CityWest Board and the result was that all or most of the existing the Board members either resigned or were terminated by the municipality in one of its famous closed meetings.
Hopefully, the mandate of the new board is to arrange for the sale of CityWest. The Town needed to be in the telephone business back in the early days of Prince Rupert as there was not anyone else to take on the role. 100 years later, there is no reason for the town to be operating a telephone/cable company. Indeed, the lack of payment of a consistent dividend shows that City West has not been able to compete with the bigger telecoms.
What surprises me, is that there does not seem to be any mention of City West amongst the candidates for municipal election. It is probably the biggest elephant in the room that needs to be addressed by the community.
On the other hand, perhaps their ability to ignore this issue demonstrates that the candidates are all more than qualified to sit either as Council Members or Mayor as the case may be.[/quote]
This is why I say the media panel at the forum buried Shelly Gordon Pain. They should have asked her about what to do with CityWest. Her husband was just on the board. She could have told us about the pillow talk and how she would act differently than Jack. Instead she was asked about small business? Like, who wants to shop in Rupert anyway.
Sheila Gordon-Paine’s husband is Bob Payne. It is her brother-in-law who was on the Board of City West. His name is Jack Payne.
I can’t imagine the sale of City West any time soon as I have noticed that they are expanding into the Bulkley Valley.
[quote=“TerriblePerson”]
[quote=“Pantagruel”]I suspect that the Town as the sole shareholder made some demands of the CityWest Board and the result was that all or most of the existing the Board members either resigned or were terminated by the municipality in one of its famous closed meetings.
Hopefully, the mandate of the new board is to arrange for the sale of CityWest. The Town needed to be in the telephone business back in the early days of Prince Rupert as there was not anyone else to take on the role. 100 years later, there is no reason for the town to be operating a telephone/cable company. Indeed, the lack of payment of a consistent dividend shows that City West has not been able to compete with the bigger telecoms.
What surprises me, is that there does not seem to be any mention of City West amongst the candidates for municipal election. It is probably the biggest elephant in the room that needs to be addressed by the community.
On the other hand, perhaps their ability to ignore this issue demonstrates that the candidates are all more than qualified to sit either as Council Members or Mayor as the case may be.[/quote]
This is why I say the media panel at the forum buried Shelly Gordon Pain. They should have asked her about what to do with CityWest. Her husband was just on the board. She could have told us about the pillow talk and how she would act differently than Jack. Instead she was asked about small business? Like, who wants to shop in Rupert anyway.[/quote]
Let it go. You’ve been slaughtered on this point. She should have been able to answer those easy questions. And if you don’t care about small business in Rupert, then just leave. I mean, you can’t even get her husband, right.
Yes, on the strength of a $31 million dollar investment by the City, over $21 million of that by way of an interest free loan. Hopefully there with be a “re-think” about that under-performing investment.
Think about it this way: when Citywest didn’t do so well last year, who paid the price? The customers in Terrace, Kitimat or Hazleton? Did they have to pay $1.00/month more for their service or something like that?
Nope, they raised Prince Rupert property tax to cover it.
Somehow “Prince Rupert’s” telephone company seems to be for the benefit of Terrace, Kitimat, Hazleton, etc. With Prince Rupert taxpayers are more than happy to subsidize.
Sure, there will be people out there screaming that Prince Rupert doesn’t subsidize Citywest. But the fact is that property taxes went up in Prince Rupert because of Citywest’s performance. Did service rates go up for customers outside Prince Rupert? That’s a subsidy, no matter how much they keep saying it’s not.
Did you vote to buy a cable company? Did any of the current candidates vote to buy a cable company?
There is a subsidy to Citywest in that it gets interest-free financing from the City, which is a significant benefit. Meanwhile Prince Rupert taxpayers pay higher taxes than they would if the $31 million currently invested in Citywest was invested elsewhere for a competitive return.