[quote=“Paper Pusher”]
What about your position regarding the pet bylaw? Have you changed your opinion[/quote]
Wasn’t so much about the pet bylaw, though that was important. It was more about their non-response to the e-mails.
You’re right. Thanks for reminding me 
I think some people misunderstand the amount of time you’re expected to spend on Council related business. I think it’s pretty safe to say that all the incumbent Councilors put in lots of hours–even if you don’t think those hours are well spent. With that said, the position of Councilor is not full time. You get paid a reasonable amount of money in compensation for your time, but I don’t know of a single Councilor who doesn’t have a job, or jobs, outside of Council.
What you’re saying, Wee-smack, is the same as saying Sarah Palin should never have run for Vice President because “how could she do good enough job while spread so thin, caring for her children.” I’m not saying I think she would have done a good job–lots of the stuff that surfacing suggests she could have been a disaster.
Again, I’m not suggesting anyone vote for Mr. Briglio–I’ve never met the guy. When I talked about the positions he holds at various organizations I was merely making the argument that, drunken brawls aside, he’s a very skilled, smart guy.
Well,the point you made of Hockey Mom Sarah,in the end is ,the guy who picked her,should have done his home work …and he lost on that mistake alone! Another Bush who Jumps before looking… But, as to the amount of time spent!!!I expect the amount of time needed to do the job right! And to give your time and being paid to do it I expect the person to give it their all sorta like ,Family,Work, and City… Not being part of a juggling show that gives a little here and there…Fair Answer? And for the Skills and such,out of all the Banks in town that responed to Entires start-up plans,He was the only one to say no, without even opening the folder…Saying Rupert couldn’t support 2 Tire shops…which we still have and didn’t they just Win small business of the Year for BC? But it’s as I said… many nails to look at…As there are so many bones to toss out…Next!
Tony is supposed to be this BIG financial whiz…how did he miss the $5,000,000.00?He DID not even read the finance package or he (and the rest of council)would not have missed it! 
Great point…little here,little there…lol
That money was $5 million more than the city should have had that year and would effectively replaced the lost Skeena taxes. If there was that much more money available what was the plan with it? I don’t recall hearing anything about paying debt down or infrastructure upgrades that had to be put on hold. When the budget was done for that year what was going to happen with this big surplus?
That was the problem…there was NO $5m extra…they counted it twice,was the revenue from city services,water&sewer
I understand that. What I am saying is that when they initially drew up the budget it had $5million more revenue included. This was before they discovered there was an error. If they thought they had all of this money what was the plan with it before they discovered the error? Infrastructure? Services? Debt? Obviously none of that panned out but somewhere, before they discovered they had made a mistake, there must have been plans for all of this cash.
It was probably spread out everywhere–I doubt that the 5 million was allocated for one specific thing. I could be wrong though.
On the mistake itself, I don’t think we can blame mayor and council for this. They’re not hired as accountants. It was a bungle–but I don’t think we can point the finger at a single person.
So can we hold them responsible for the latest cost projections that show even more of a deficit some 2 million dollars, mainly due to missed projections on the airport ferry and the alaska ferry dock?
Sometime the buck has to stop with somebody, council is supposed to oversee the way the city is run, if the projections are so off that they have to amend a budget eventually the need for hard decisions should arrive.
The last few years it seems the only options are to borrow more money and raise taxes, is that right or just covering up a probelmatic situations? Just wondering?
It’s a huge bungle and someone has to be ultimately responsible. Even if it were spread out everywhere wouldnt you notice a huge difference from the previous years bottom line? I think it was Rodin’s first budget though so I guess he gets a mulligan on that one
Nope, this was before Rodin.
Certainly the buck will stop somewhere. I don’t know who does the City’s accounting, but some measure of fault could be found there. As for Mayor and Council, I think it’s unfair to point a finger directly at a single Councilor just because he or she has experience in finance. If this issue is still in the minds of Rupert residents on the 15th, we might see a new lineup during the first Council meeting in January—that’s how we stop the buck in a free and democratic society.
Well they don’t actually need experience in finance, all they need is for someone to provide them with the correct information and then they have to make decisions, ie: sell off CityWest, layoff a number of employees, close the pool on certain days, restrict overtime, etc, etc, whatever it takes to balance your budget and claw your way out of debt.
That doesn’t seem to be the approach that successive council’s have taken, instead they chase after the shiny things, like the port bringing prosperity or someone taking over an aging and crumbling pulp mill.
The council of the day both this current one and the ones of the past need to be held accountable for their decisions, for instance they signed off on CityWest taking out loans to buy up the cable operation at a rather silly price considering no body actually wanted to buy the thing other than CityWest… couldn’t that money have been better used for all these things that seem to be crumbling around them at the moment…
Though you are correct, the election of November 15 will act as a referendum of sorts on the work of this group over the last three years, however I believe they take office right after the election and don’t have to wait until January…
I suppose that wasnt Rodins budget although he was the CFO when the problem was found.
If memory serves Mr. Rodin explained the 5 million dollar mistake as an error in logic that was difficult to detect (reported in the Daily News).
Correct. The error in the budget happened before Mr. Rodin assumed the position of CFO.
If memory servers me correctly, Mr. Rodin didn’t find the so called bo-bo, it was his assistant and the word was that she was escorted from the building shortly after she discovered the error.
Lets also not forget that Mr. Rodin was the Secretary-Treasurer for the School District and it is my opinion that he should have recognized something was definitely wrong when he compared the previous years revenue to the current year revenue.
I also find it quite interesting when Tony spoke in front of a room full of people at the PAC early this week and boasted about running a 90 million budget for NSCU, but yet it didn’t notice we had $5million extra to spend at City Hall…
Council Watch, do you have any accounting experience by any chance? You may very well–but it seems like you’re oversimplifying this a bit.
It can be extremely hard to find a mistake within a budget, looking through accounting documents, even if you know the mistake is there. The staff for the City of Prince Rupert found the mistake, and then found where and how they’d made it. As much as we all agree the mistake should never have happened, I think the City dealt with this quite well given that it’s such an embarrassing event.
Escorted out, eh? So–they escort out the person who discovered the mistake, then admit to it in the local paper–which subsequently hit much larger papers? Who escorted her out? The Prince Rupert City Hall security team? Mayor Pond by the collar of her shirt? Dog the Bounty Hunter? Cmon…
While there are those apologists for the present council that have provide many excuses why this council did not notice a Five Million Dollar “Logic” error, the fact remains it is their responsibility to understand what they are passing. This was not a small error.
In this case, hard questions about how a “Broke” city was suddenly projecting a 20% increase in Revenues would have been a natural question to ask. Certainly it’s reasonable to expect the self promoted financial whiz boy on council should have picked this up.
It is really not that difficult to find budget errors if you are alert and use your common sense to question discrepancies between previous performance and projected performance. That is if you actually read the documents.
It is also the responsibility of the City Manager to provide them with correct information. Neither of these responsibilities were met by management or council. As Rodin was not in office during this time, I won’t speculate why he did not catch this during his initial review of actual results and budget performance when he took over as the city CFO.
However, Howie was responsible in the first place for bringing this budget forth with assistance from his contract accountants. He should have picked this up even before it got to council. The fact he didn’t raise the obvious question(s) is unsettling.
As for the present budget “Revision” it is not just the Alaskan dock and Airport Ferry issues, the city has also overspent $192,000 in Administrative expenses due to supplies reallocation and hiring corporate officers. Apparently we are starting to see the price tag associated with the Doug Jay and Gordon Howie drama.
While Hollywood Herb Pond is handing out Vancouver Sun articles on Mr. Jay, I understand he should have looked to see if the Sun later published a retraction. A wiser man may also have reflected that it was on his watch that Howie originally hired Doug Jay. If public reports are now of concern to the city, why were they of no import when Jay was hired?
Regarding the retraction of the article–it doesn’t change what Doug Jay did. I don’t want to bring this up because I don’t want another thread needlessly locked because someone didn’t like seeing a legitimate news article posted–but I will say that it’s pretty laughable that there is still a thread containing Vancouver Sun articles about Gord Howie that are still in public view. I guess it shows the character of the Howie camp that they didn’t send a lawyer in to have the articles removed.