But is City West not a private company now? I have for the last few years been stuck with this impression. Now for my nasty part, do they have a budget which can provide them with good foot wear so they can hit the streets and walk among the people who may have cast their votes their way. I am still really confused as to how when it is time for an election we see them everywhere but once into their seats there is no movemnt from them,“no more shaking babies and kissing hands”.
There are no city employees at the pulp mill. They are contractors hired by the city to oversee the site.
By all appearances Citywest employees are NOT included in the City’s “count”.
City Tel employees were City employees, but in 2005 the City ‘sold’ its telephone assets to Citywest and the telephone employees were seconded to the new company. The cable employees never were on the City payroll. They previously worked for Monarch and Skeena, which Citywest bought.
See Notes 1 and 2 of the 2008 Citywest statements for background. Note 9 (Related Party Transactions) does not show reimbursements to the City of wages and benefits.
Also, go to the list of City employees making over $75,000 a year:
princerupert.ca/images/edito … .pdf
Scroll down to page 42. Do you see any Citywest employees listed there?
There is one share which is owned by the City, so I would say that it is ‘municipally owned’ rather than ‘private’. The council appoints the Citywest directors, so the company is ‘quasi-autonomous’ in that the council can appoint a new board if it doesn’t like how the company is being run.
Interesting that the City clawed back the power to declare dividends from the board of directors which is an very unusual move for a shareholder to make.
But the real question posed here is there is a very disturbing difference in the costs of running this municipality with others in BC.
If there are reasonable and defensible reasons for this, so be it but lets hear them from our elected officials instead of the deafening silence we become accustomed to between elections.
There is one share which is owned by the City, so I would say that it is ‘municipally owned’ rather than ‘private’. The council appoints the Citywest directors, so the company is ‘quasi-autonomous’ in that the council can appoint a new board if it doesn’t like how the company is being run.
Or someone is speaking their mind or the truth and maybe louder then the Band of Seven.
That was done in 2007 when Citywest’s articles were amended. In the latest amendments approved at the Oct 26 meeting the council (as the shareholder) continues to have power to declare dividends, rather than the Citywest board.
Citywest is not quite the money maker that it is sometimes made out to be. Citywest planned to pay dividends of $2 million a year between 2006 and 2008, but ended up paying half that ($2 million in 2007 and $1 million in 2008). A $1 million dividend is planned for 2009. (See notes in 2005-2008 Citywest financials.)
I think that there should be discussion about selling Citywest. Turn its net worth into cash and invest that sensibly. Bring in Telus and/or Shaw so that customers have the same levels of service as in much of the rest of the province.
That’s ‘fair comment’, by the way, about a municipal company of public interest; not a ‘defamation of goods’ or an ‘injurious falsehood’ that should result in the thread being pulled.
[quote=“Justin Case”]
First of all did City West not go private last year or the year before? If so why do people call them city staff and if they are city staff then it would make for a hell of alot of salary. [/quote]
Interesting question Justin.
If they are indeed employees of a private company, it makes little sense that they would be receiving rec center passes as I saw in a recent report to council.
However, once again the fact is that the councillors and mayor some of who were not shy of posting on HTMF prior to the election remain silent on the main question.
Why does Prince Rupert need 15 permanent employees per 1,000 population but Kelowna needs only 6? Makes one think they simply don’t know or are too embarrassed to explain their mismanagement.
Kelowna is larger and to some extent enjoys an economy of scale with it’s employee count, has a climate that is not so hard on it’s infrastructure and the big one, they contract out more services, .thereby hiding their actual employee count.
Citywest is not a “private company”. It is 100% owned by the City. It is a municipal corporation. That is why it does not pay taxes on any profits made within City boundaries, and also why it is subject to FOI legislation as a “public body”.
The board of directors is chosen by the council as the legal representative of the City which is the sole shareholder. The council as shareholder also has the power to declare dividends whether the board agrees or not. How Citywest operates or even whether it continues to exist is ultimately in the hands of the council that the voters elect.
Ed Tel may provide a useful comparison. It was originally a department of the City of Edmonton (like City Tel here) and the second to last municipal phone service in the country (Citywest being the last). A municipal corporation was set up with all shares being owned by the City (like Citywest today). Due to financial concerns relating to the cost of new technology, Edmonton considered privatizing Ed Tel. If that had been done shares would have been offered to private individuals. Instead the company merged with Telus in 1995 with the latter taking ownership of all shares. The proceeds of the sale were put into an endowment fund managed by the City of Edmonton. Telus in Alberta was formerly a provincial corporation - Alberta Grand Trunk - which was privatized by the government.
Citywest employees having free recreation passes is consistent with its status as a municipal corporation, since the council decided earlier this year that passes would promote the wellness of public employees. The Mayor and one or two councillors voted against the motion.
[quote=“Creaking Door”]
… and the second to last municipal phone service in the country (Citywest being the last).[/quote]
A few seconds with the Google:
brucetelecom.com/governance.php
Good research there, Sandimas, interesting to see that Citywest is the only municipal telecom left west of Lake Superior.
Innuvik is west of Lake Superior: icewireless.ca/about-us/index.shtml
Are you trying to make the case that Citywest is alone in being an independent Canadian telecom owned by a small government? If so, that’s not the case.
Also, isn’t Dryden west of Lake Superior?
Inuvik is within Northwestel’s (Bell) operating area, see: nwtel.ca/about-northwestel/operating-map/
Icewireless was founded by Tom Zubko, by all appearances without municipal involvement. It is the #2 wireless provider in NWT after Northwestel.
Dryden, which is on Lake Wabigoon, is so far back there that I’m not concerned about its relative position to the end of Lake Superior. They’re both around 92 W longitude.
There is no “case” to be made about whether Citywest is the only or one of four remaining municipal owned telecoms left. That’s a matter of fact, not argument, and it really doesn’t matter that much.
The point is that municipal telecoms are mostly gone. At one time there was not always enough private capital available to afford the infrastructure costs of phone systems so municipal and in some places provincial governments (eg Alberta and Sask) stepped in.
But those days are gone. Government has been getting out of the telecom business in most places, eg AGT was privatized as Telus; Northwestel was owned by CNR when it was federal, but was sold to Bell. The private sector is leading investment in the telecom sector.
When municipally owned, Ed Tel was substantial, about a quarter of the size of Telus in Alberta. But financing the cost of technological change became unaffordable; questions arose about whether municipal taxpayers should be backstopping those costs. That it why it was eventually sold. Here is a U of A business case that may be of interest: apps.business.ualberta.ca/wcer/p … -39/35.pdf
Citywest is not “private”, it’s public, owned by the City. BC Ferries illustrates how characterizing publically owned companies as “private” just smokescreens or confuses issues that should be up for public discussion when concerns arise.
I think there should be discussion about whether City ownership of a telecom is the best use of civic funds and the best way of delivering local telecom services.
Yep, Dryden, pretty place, is NW of the lake between Winnipeg and Thunder Bay.
I certainly agree with Creaking Door that the use of a corporation, creates a smokescreen behind which there is little accountability to the public for the success or failure of the company. The former mayor and council created CityWest and purchased Skeena Cablevision in 2005 with the public statements that our taxes would be unaffected by this transaction.
Since Citywest is not paying dividends that were expected (2 Million per annum) and we’ve recently witnessed a substantial write down of assets at CityWest, normally shareholders would be looking at the original business plan and comparing actual performance to plan with a view to taking strong corrective action. Regrettably, I understand from HTMF that the directors refused to release financial records of the various companies and the original business plan. A perfect example of keeping the public in the dark when it comes to how taxpayer assets / money is being managed.
When it comes to taking corrective action, our much more well funded and astute competitors move quickly to changing industry trends and competitive pressures as witnessed by Roger’s announcement ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/0911 … rs_layoffs . Certainly, no one likes to see jobs lost but in the highly competitive environment that the telecom industry is, management and shareholder have to be prepared to make the tough choices or see the value of their businesses waste away. It’s my opinion that our politicians would prefer to stick their heads in the sand as they did with Skeena Cell rather than make hard choices before they have no more wiggle room and have to write off taxpayer money.
Again, I agree 100% with the caveat that a public discussion about municipal ownership of a telecom or how efficient our municipality is, needs to take place in a public forum where good information is freely available ahead of time. Sitting through a management powerpoint presentation and attempting to have a discussion about CityWest without their full financial statements for all of their subsidiaries or their original business plan is a waste of time.
Turning back to the thread about how efficient the City of Prince Rupert is, I note that someone posited that Kelowna may enjoys scale and contracts out work. This may be the case or it may not be. Unless our politicians make a real effort to dialogue with their citizens on this issue we’ll never know.
Certainly Kelowna is not the only municipality that enjoys a much lower per capita employee to citizen ratio and the real concern is why we are near the top of both the employees to citizens list and also near the top when it comes to taxes both residential and business. I strongly suspect there is a direct linkage and we simply are not getting the best value for our tax dollar. Again, I’d be pleased to see any of the council respond either here or if they only wish to use this forum during elections, perhaps they would hold a public meeting to discuss these issues after giving everyone proper access to the information needed for an informed debate.
Many posters have asked for a response from members of city council with regarding why, according to a study done by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, Prince Rupert has a much higher number of employees per capita than other municipalities.
While much of the information presented in the study is interesting and certainly makes one think, I have some problems with the study itself.
When it comes to statistics I am always skeptical, especially when details are not given as to how these figures were obtained and calculated. There are many people who warn us about how much value we should place on statistics. Consider this quote, for example:
“Do not put your faith in what statistics say until you have carefully considered what they do not say.â€
Well, here’s one comparison that should be easier to make. How much is a typical tax bill in Terrace? How much is a typical utilities/garbage bill?
the thing that added insult to injury is the city having to own that dam Pulp Mill…
it’s going to bleed us dry…
Thanks Hoser, that’s good information to have. Certainly if they are able to obtain services for their city at lesser cost than doing it themselves, that would seem to be a prudent approach.
Has anyone seen the 2009 service review of municipal operations report referenced by the Northern View in the following article? Anyone know if this is a public document?
City of Prince Rupert looking at deficit in excess of $900,000 in 2010
By Shaun Thomas - The Northern View published: November 24, 2009
im sorry i dont agree with you we as a city got shfted when dan miller
did not honer his deal that he would look after us the mill will be
sold and we will get out of this mess i am hearing that a billion doller
company that is 7% owned by bill gates is intersted in the mill site
prince rupert is going to be the next hong kong of canada why do you
think the first nations are buying into so much in prince rupert?keep
positve about our town because people like bill gates and jim pattison
want to see a positive city when they invest there money like canpotex
did.