I hear you on that one there Kurtz, unless you know the secret hand shake or have someone lobbying for you with the employer, those high paying and oft mentioned dream jobs seem hard if not impossible to come by.
It does seem that those that have them seem to be a tad pretentious as well, which considedring the way that some of them acquired those jobs is just a bit rich.
Not everyone is sharing that dream of ajaye’s, more than a few seem to have been left behind on the trip.
I have been boycotting the rec facilities especially the pool ever since I found out that city employees get a free ride there simply because they work for the city.
yea replace them when they retire not when a job is aquired from a defunct mill
Good points ajay and the aging workforces is also going to be a big concern for CityWest as it’ll be difficult or impossible to attract the type of telecom talent here when Telus is going in and hiring all graduated from the few schools that train linesmen.
It’s precisely the not in my backyard syndrome and loud special interest groups that makes it so difficult for politicians to make the hard decisions and why a good public debate is needed. The town has shrunk considerably and as kurtz has said… can we afford our present standard of living here. Some good observations are being made here and while our politicos are a wee bit shy with one exception… I’m hoping they are listening.
LISTEN folks if you cut the rec department i will almost
guarantee you 95% of RCMP and any outher folks who are
looking to locate here will go some were else,i know this
with my 33 years of expertise with our dept head mike
curnes you will see our dept will shine,we are the Jewel
of the city.
So, you are saying that the RCMP would turn down a transfer to Rupert if we did not have the rec. centre that we have now? I somehow do NOT think that was any of our criteria for moving here. Mine WAS a job and that is the reason I am here, my job not because there is a rec. centre that I don’t have time to go to anyway. If it is such a great facility, how come there is never anyone but kids hanging out at the outdoor “elephant”?
[quote=“ajaye46”]
LISTEN folks if you cut the rec department i will almost
guarantee you 95% of RCMP and any outher folks who are
looking to locate here will go some were else[/quote]
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!.. http://imgur.com/CYQor.gif
thats one of the most rediculous things ive heard 
. . .
without recreation faciilities our city is no where people
want hockey basketball so don’t fool your self.
The vast majority of Rupertites would fall under the “Use Rec Facilities Once in a While”–not too too many people can claim they use the facilities on a regular basis.
that’s because we have to many people sitting in front
of a TV with there PS2 and facebook crap we need to get our kids
out of the house and get there blood flowing at the rec center we
have a great green gym and its free to use if cant afford that then
theres no help for you.
Yep, tonight would be a LOVELY night to be pushing the weights, or working the resistance machine, the sleet/snow blowing in your hair, the windchill dropping, ah yes, all while the Rec Centre staff watch from the heated enclaves.
Whatever it is you drink, you need to do a testimonial on that, now there’s a job for you.
who said the rec centre would close?
[quote=“ajaye46”]
that’s because we have to many people sitting in front
of a TV with there PS2 and facebook crap[/quote]
Including someone who’s kind of obsessed with posting la-la-land stuff on HTMF. =.=’
what I’m saying is the rec center is the piler of the city
the taj mahal of our town we need to be thankful for
such a blessing.
You must use this"blessing" quite often or are you just friends with the Director? And, um, that would be " pillar"
Hi Ajaye;
You’re making some interesting and valid points. I can’t agree more with your pay to play comment and it’s up to our council and concerned citizens to determine what the taxpayers are prepared to pay to have a good quality of life here on the North Coast. Building a viable community involves juggling a dizzying number of priorities with confusing and conflicting signals from the citizens. Special interest groups are often able to sway our politicians at all levels in the absence of any arguments from other groups. Let’s be clear that it’s taken more than one Mayor or Council to get Rupert into the pickle it is now and unless the community pulls together and sends a very clear message to the present Mayor and Council, we’ll continue to blunder our way into bankruptcy. We all need to make decisions in our personal lives to live within our means as we spend limited funds on Food, Shelter and, Transportation. If there are monies left over to pay to play then Recreation and Entertainment is also nice.
Your postings are great examples of advocating on behalf of a service. While certainly there may be some self interest in your position as a 33 year veteran of the department, I agree that parks and recreation are a key part of making a community attractive. However, it was not on my list of must haves when I made the decision to move to Rupert, rather it was on my list of nice to haves. I was more concerned with finding employment and finding an affordable and safe place to live and raise my family. In short, my view is that what’s more important to people that want to live in Prince Rupert is the availability of employment and affordable housing. However that’s merely a personal viewpoint and I don’t have any survey information on what people consider as must haves when moving to a new community.
With a 90 to 100 million dollar backlog in roads, water, sewer and waste services, and our council should be making some tough decisions as to where to spend the City’s limited monies. High property and business taxes are a known deterrent to attracting industry and business and Prince Rupert has some of the highest taxes in BC. One of the most effective things our council can do to attract and support industry and small business is to reduce our tax rates to at least the median of municipalities in BC and redirecting monies to must have infrastructure improvement from nice to have services.
In 2007 our expenditures per citizen were $2,039 versus the median for our peer group of $1,643 per citizen. Further if we were serious about repairing and improving the basic city infrastructure such as Water, Sewer, Roads and Waste management, we should have spent at least $523rather than $103 per citizen . Continuing this line of thinking, to reduce taxes to the middle of the pack in our peer group and to work on reducing our 90 to 100 million backlog in needed capital expenditures, we have to reduce expenditures by $396 ($2,039 - $1,653 = $396) and reallocate $420 per citizen from other services to capital expenditure ($523-$103). Looking at it in this manner leads me to question whether we can afford to continue to spend $375 per citizen versus the $193 other communities spend on maintaining a “taj Mahal”.
In addition to the above list, I’d add privatizing waste management. Other municipalize in BC have done so and we have privatized our commercial pickup. Spending $152 per citizen versus the median of $42 per citizen would seem to indicate room for improvements in efficiency. Transportation and transit is obviously another place to take a hard eyed look and privatizing the airport ferry may be required to reduce our expenditures from $442 per citizen to the median of $187. Given the lack of real development that’s gone on in Rupert recently, I have no idea on why our development costs are reported at $79 per citizen versus the median of $34 per citizen. With one of the highest crime rates in BC we may want to tread carefully on protective services where we spend $458 per citizen versus the average of $331 but we should take a hard look at how these monies are being spent and the value we are getting for our money.
I’m not as agreeable to paying Jack more as we have a professional bureaucrat as City Manager whose job it is to manage the day to day operations of the city. If he isn’t doing the job, that is council’s job to deal with that situation.
Speakuppr. Do you have the figures or link on what the Digby Island Ferry costs the city per year? TIA
Go to 2008 audited statements on the City Financials page: princerupert.ca/page.php?id_ … _section=4
In 2008 the city spent $1,678,993 on the Airport Ferry (page 2 of 29) but collected $932,961 in fares (page 24 of 29), so there was a $746,032 loss. In other words users paid 55% and Rupert taxpayers paid 45% of the cost.
The loss on the airport ferry is greater than the entire amounts the city contributed to the Lester Centre and library ($634,000 in 2009). Yet the council is saying that those services may be cut by 25%.
By my math, if the city increased ferry fares so that users paid 65% of the cost and taxpayers 35%, the council need not cut the Lester Centre and library - leaving aside that there may be other areas they can cut instead.
And now here’s a really radical idea. The council gave out $1,658,000 in community grants in 2009. They are considering cutting that by 25%, which is $414,500. If the council made the airport ferry user-pay, they would have enough money to increase community grants.
But who on council is about to argue for making frequent flyers and other ferry users pay their own way to Digby and back? Cutting grants to the library, Lester Centre, the museum etc is a far more popular idea apparently.
Maybe this will change after a revolutionary government is installed, although money will have to be set aside to repair the rocket damage to City Hall and other costs resulting from the insurgency.
