And defend his fiscal record as mayor of Prince Rupert. Where we pay twice the taxes as Terrace for half the service.
We have to remember simple economics people, who ever has the most gold, make the rules.
That would be banks.
It does not matter who is in power,
just what they do with the money available to them.
Follow our debt.
I know that Mr. Coons would not “lose” five million on his watch, since he used to teach math.
And, he does care.
I know Mr. Pond does not want people to suffer, but I question his motives, all the time.
I will vote for the party that protects our collective future, and that was not the NDP in the 90’s, or the “Liberals” now.
And no matter who you support, vote. People have, and are dying for that right.
Political parties evolve, but when they use names like “Liberal” and they are not affiliated with the federal Liberals, I wonder who they really are?
Keep asking hard questions and go with your gut people.
Always worked for me.
I may not like the NDP but Gary Coons did an awesome job representing our region, so therefore I prefer the guy with the mustache over that slick smiley guy.
But can the slick smiley guy even grow a mustache. Never trusted his smile for a second. I believe that he does not have a very good track record from most other places he has worked, but can he ever cut ribbons.
Your just talking out your ass justin, and you know it. Herb and Sandy were friends of my parents so I know them well enough to know herb was highly respected by his employer, do you even know who that is? Your “I believe that he does not have a very good track record from most other places he has worked” is just character assasination and your just making it up, I am not defending herb with any political motive, I didnt vote for him but I do know him enough to know what your trying to say is a lie.
I agree.
You don’t have to bash Herb or Gary in order to make political points. They both have political records, let those stand for themselves.
I’ve always found both Herb and Gary to be friendly and honest. So let’s hope that if Herb does run, it won’t be about smearing.
I’ve had some interactions with Herb (usually me disagreeing with him) and I gotta say, he handled it a hell of a lot better than Belsey did. Not that Belsey wasn’t a nice guy either, but he certainly didn’t know how to handle people who disagreed with him.
I think the difference is that Belsey gave the impression that you were the enemy if you disagreed with him. The impression I got from Herb was that I was someone who disagreed with him. No more no less.
Of course, I know Gary a lot better, and I think he’s an awesome person.
I like Gary and Herb but I choose to vote for the party and not the person. None of these elected individuals represent their consituents in Victoria or Ottawa, it’s the other way around. They are here representing government.
I don’t like alot of what the Liberal Party has done but I will vote for them. BC has been “open for business” since they were elected. There is a reason that The Liberals took 77 of 79 seats in 2001. People forget too easily.
Yeah…but they didn’t take 77 of 79 seats in 2005. 
Does misleading the townsfolk on the purchase of the old Skeena Cablevision assets by CityWest qualify as a lie?
Hollywood Herbie, his axe man Victor the Kumar and the then band of merry councillors must have known that CityWest could not support continued dividends of $2,000,000 per annum to the city when they borrowed the money to buy Skeena. In addition to taking on substantial debt, both the cell phone business and Skeena assets were old and needed substantial investments to modernize them. Taking that amount of debt on requires at least a five year financial forecast. Despite these factors, Herbie was pretty adamant there would be no disruption to the city’s income from the new improved Citytel.
If you want to know how trustworthy smiling Herbie is, ask a council member what the original business plan and financial projections showed for dividends from CityWest to the city for the first five years and make up your own mind. Ask either Joy or Sheila as they weren’t part of the merry band of pranksters that bought into Herb’s folly and have nothing to hide. Drop them an email and ask them to look into it. Here is their contact info from the city’s website.
Councillor Shelia Gordon-Payne
Email: gordon@unbc.ca
Councillor Joy Thorkelson
Email: jthorkelson@citytel.net
Now mind you, the fact that a politician has wasted taxpayers money and then mislead the public about it is not a disqualification for running for the Liberals or any other political party.
Question: Is a business mistake to be considered a lie? If I tell a friend of mine that XX company will be doing well in 5 years, but it turns out I messed up and the company went bankrupt–is that a lie, or is that me making a business mistake?
I don’t know enough about the CityWest issue to make any more comments other than that.
Also, don’t assume to know Mrs. Gordon-Payne or Mrs. Thorkelson’s opinions.
And, to anyone actually looking to contact Mrs. Gordon-Payne, her email is wrong on the Prince Rupert website. It’s “gordonp@unbc.ca”. The website misses the ‘p’.
Thanks for the correction to the email address.
Making a business mistake when it involves a public asset that is worth some $50-$60 million is quite possible particulary in a highly compeitive and risky industry such as telecommunications. There are lots of examples of failed telecom’s in the past decade to realize this is a reality of that industry.
Mistakes don’t count as lies but if you told your friend that your projections showed he or she could expect a two million dollar dividend when your projections didn’t … than you would be joining Hillary as one who has mispoken. Unfortunately, the only way we will know is if our Mayor and counsellors come clean on what the original business plan and projections showed.
As for the opinions of the two counsellors, I would not presume to know them, I was simply pointing out that neither of them were on the past council. The one that bought into the reckless expansion of CityWest without allowing for much in the way of public debate save for the minimum notice as required under the municiple act or sharing the actual facts with the citizens of Prince Rupert.
We have municipal elections in November every three years, and 2008 is the year. The provincial election will be in May 2009, so it will be interesting to see if Herb chooses to run for mayor, or chooses to run for MLA. If he runs for mayor and is successful, I don’t think he would then turn around and quit a few months later to run as a candidate in the provincial election.
Both Terrace Mayor Jack Talstra and Kitimat Mayor Rick Wozney sought out the provincial Liberal nomination while seriving as mayor for their communities. If memory serves me correctly, Wozney did run for MLA but was defeated by Helmut Giesbrecht(NDP) . Both obviously stayed on in municipal politics but I believe were expected to resign if elected provincially.
Do people really think that Gary Coons hasn’t started taking action towards the 2009 campaign? It’s not really fair to act as if Mr. Pond is somehow abandoning his position as Mayor to run around getting ready to campaign–that’s part of the election process, and is his right as a citizen of Canada.