[0:00] All right, we're getting the other one.

[0:05] A couple minutes past six apologies for the late start. Before I move into the agenda this evening, just a couple of things. I want to wish everyone a happy new year. And we're certainly looking forward to 2017 and Ms. Late Liston. If you could, don't be half of council pass on to our crews out there who I know have been working 24 hours shifts over the last couple of days to get to roads in our road system.

[0:32] up to, up to power with all of this snow, so thank them for us if you would, thanks very much.

[0:39] With that, if I could get a motion to adopt the amended agenda, it would be great.

[0:44] Councillor Puzzle, Councillor Scott, all those in favour?

[0:47] Please, Chair, unanimously, and we have the minutes Council of December 19.

[0:53] Thank you, seconder.

[0:55] Councillor Puzzle, all those in favour?

[0:56] Polescare unanimously.

[0:58] Our first delegation this evening is the 20th Avenue Victoria Street Business Improvement Area Society. Better known as the Gateway VA. Good evening.

[1:08] Do you want to go back to your seat?

[1:11] I'm going to go back to your seat.

[1:12] I'm going to miss something.

[1:13] Just a reminder that Councillor Everett is attending my phone.

[1:17] Thank you.

[1:17] Councillor Everett.

[1:19] Good evening.

[1:21] It's okay.

[1:21] Mr. Unmark.

[1:22] Feel free.

[1:24] I forgot Councillor Everett is in by phone.

[1:28] So the is the bar in front of you there?

[1:31] Yes.

[1:32] The microphone and the floor is yours.

[1:41] I'm Johnny Hemark. I've had the privilege of being the chair of the Labor Day for 22 years now.

[1:50] And it's pretty hard.

[1:53] All is our fifth merit, we've come and done it.

[1:57] And Council, Mr. Groves, your Council of Eric Groves, is on the first council that I made a presentation to all those years, but it seems so here.

[2:08] The fact is the gateway of the BIA was the first BIA in the city of Prince George.

[2:16] We are also the first BIA in Northern British London.

[2:20] And so with that, we've been very quiet through our years and not said very much, you're

[2:25] just growing.

[2:26] And there's a lot of people that don't know who made the improvements in the gateway.

[2:29] We started in 1995, we have 17 members of the BIA business owners, and we collect $100,000

[2:39] in a year to improve the city properties.

[2:43] We worked hard to keep up and changes.

[2:47] Today, we put $2.2 million of our own money into the gateway on city property.

[2:53] We started the Flower Bastic Program in the city.

[2:56] We installed underground water for the trees and the upper street lights for the flower baskets.

[3:05] We installed, we helped fund the, sorry, the mayoral on the Cannot Youth Center and helped fund that as well.

[3:15] Well, we were building the gateway park with the corner of 17th Victoria.

[3:19] We've created four and paid for the artwork that 20 of Victoria commotion.

[3:24] We've done that.

[3:26] And these are just a few things that our volunteers have done.

[3:30] And we can run a BIA in volunteers.

[3:32] You do not have any office or payton for it.

[3:34] It's all done by volunteers.

[3:38] First few people actually know,

[3:40] other than you people,

[3:42] that the BIA has done it.

[3:44] He can buy it.

[3:44] My business is like,

[3:46] Sun's done it.

[3:47] Is the city done it?

[3:47] Great job.

[3:48] Look at that.

[3:49] He's a neighbor.

[3:51] But the BIA is a small,

[3:55] Well,

[3:58] is this a smaller area from 17th of Victoria to 20th?

[4:02] We go along Highway 16 or 20th Avenue up to the cross and the ground crossing to the school

[4:09] kids.

[4:11] And there's, as I say, 17 members of the B.I.A.

[4:16] We are here today to tell you about a few things we've done and I have to apologize, we

[4:23] We're not photographers, but in this picture, this is looking from the island across

[4:30] some of the key up, looking east, and this is before, the one on the left is before, we

[4:36] put in our trees, and the red light posts, and the brick sidewalks we've done that.

[4:42] And then we look here, looking directly the opposite way, and you notice on the left

[4:51] that there is no Northland, Chrysler, Northland, and this then, they came in after we started to be I8, and they joined us.

[5:03] Also joining us during the time is the gateway lodge.

[5:09] And now we have a new person coming in, the River Bend, the senior citizen's home, all coming into our district.

[5:14] So our work in growth is pretty done.

[5:18] This shot is from McDonald's, looking west down 20th Avenue again.

[5:23] We never thought we'd send a huge passage to the Council again,

[5:26] but this was a long time ago, there's a lot of changes.

[5:31] And this one shows the Gateway Park,

[5:34] which I mentioned earlier, commotion and the street vanners

[5:38] and the flower baskets on our trees, trying to beautify the area.

[5:44] Twenty-two years into the gateway, we are now coming to council and we're this year planning

[5:50] on putting new signage into the gateway and this is a mock-up of what the new sign for

[5:56] look like.

[6:01] We are also proposing for 2017,

[6:07] up lighting of our street trees. So far we've been

[6:10] putting streams of lights in the trees every second year. They come back down, so a bit of

[6:15] and Trim and Trim and Trim and Trim and Trim and Trim properly.

[6:18] We were losing a lot of the lights

[6:20] to the people in the district

[6:21] and wanted the copper out of them.

[6:24] And it was very, very expensive.

[6:25] So we developed the ways with working with the city,

[6:30] to put this underground base on the ground.

[6:33] Now these lights are the LED lights,

[6:35] which you're gonna cut the cost of electricity.

[6:37] They're also heated lenses,

[6:39] so they will be able to work during the winter.

[6:43] The second thing we're going to do is put in new street patterns this year and get that moving.

[7:15] Okay, we have some new other programs.

[7:18] I mentioned the new sign for putting in that we're spending $92,000 on goals.

[7:24] We're also enlarging and working with the city in the new gateway park between the River Bend Seniors Hall and Victoria Street.

[7:34] We want to uplight the park for safer at night for them.

[7:38] We're looking at maybe putting some pieces of art in there.

[7:41] We're not sure exactly we've got to work with the city's planning

[7:44] proper for that.

[7:45] And then we have $10,000 and $750 to give for repair and maintenance

[7:51] this year as to go along.

[8:09] We are proposing and asking for the city's help in putting in new land

[8:15] into the gateway. Our red ones keep turning pink, and the city has said that we can do this.

[8:22] We would be following the George Street example of putting in black holes.

[8:28] Which is not the sunlight does not affect them. It will stay black. And we're looking for $372,000 put in the new lightposts.

[8:38] In these lightposts will be LED lighting as well, which is a cost saving to the city of over the years that they're installed.

[8:50] So I guess there's any questions I'm rising now.

[8:56] Thank you Mr. Annemarka, I do have Councilor Kohler.

[9:00] Thank you.

[9:00] Thank you, John.

[9:01] And thank you for everybody who's working with you.

[9:04] I have something we have guests coming from other cities and even from other countries.

[9:09] And usually we drive into town from college highs because we live there.

[9:14] And then it certainly hit the gateway area.

[9:17] And the first comment is always, this is nice.

[9:20] This is really nice.

[9:21] So it's a gateway toward us.

[9:23] It's a gateway to our big city of Prince George.

[9:25] So it's great what you are doing.

[9:28] And each time every day, I drive in from there.

[9:32] I'm happy that it looks so nice all over the place.

[9:34] Thank you.

[9:35] Thank you very much.

[9:36] Thank you.

[9:36] Councillor Fuzzell.

[9:38] Thank you, Mayor Hall, through the mystery and mark.

[9:40] And please pass on our gratitude to the whole the BIA, because I agree with Councillor

[9:46] Kohler.

[9:47] In particular, the art installation right at the corner has really added a feel to that

[9:54] community, and I don't want to

[9:56] we're talking earlier about the

[9:57] twoks that have suddenly shown up.

[9:59] It shows that the communities

[10:01] embraced and are interacting with the

[10:04] art as well.

[10:06] These plans that you've brought

[10:07] forward are really interesting.

[10:09] Look forward to looking at that in

[10:11] more detail.

[10:13] I hadn't realized the pulls had been

[10:14] turned in pink.

[10:16] I hadn't gotten that.

[10:17] We've had them painted once.

[10:19] And now it's just, they've come

[10:22] We've working with public works and they said the best thing to do is change them and put

[10:26] in black holes and that's why we're changing our signage and giving another new look to

[10:31] the gateway.

[10:32] Well, congratulations and keep up the good work.

[10:35] Thank you.

[10:36] Thank you very much.

[10:37] Councillor Cose.

[10:39] Well, thank you.

[10:40] Yes, it was a while ago and I'd like to thank the DBI as well for the reference over 20 years.

[10:46] certainly probably many people around the room would remember what it looked like 20 years ago

[10:53] and certainly there has been a vast improvement. So thank you very much for all your effort.

[10:59] I think Jonathan, excuse me, it probably would be appropriate if you introduce the fellow

[11:03] that works as tirelessly at this as you do, who's with us here this evening.

[11:09] Yes, Mr. Kent, leave over. Yes, we worked together since then. They actually brought me in Tom Griffiths

[11:16] And again, we're starting the idea, and then they, oh, here's a guy we can haul in.

[11:21] And we worked tirelessly over the years, just to beautify print storage and areas.

[11:27] And we spent a lot of money on our own buildings.

[11:30] You know, print storage motorsports is coming in, and they've read, damp, north and this end is,

[11:35] we've done the Chrysler building.

[11:37] So we're very proud.

[11:38] We're attracting businesses to our area.

[11:41] And we even have the ladies that's run from the wide coming through the gateway now, running

[11:45] and it's a peeling each of them.

[11:48] So that's what we tried to do,

[11:50] and we wanted to keep our businesses up from.

[11:53] Good, thank you.

[11:54] Councilor Nürick.

[11:56] Thank you, Richard, and thank you to Mr. Annemark

[11:57] for the presentation.

[11:59] Learned a lot today.

[12:00] Didn't know much about the Gateway Business

[12:02] Provinist Association, and the Commissioners

[12:04] probably wanted my favorite public art pieces,

[12:06] because it continues to take on new life every season,

[12:08] and continues to evolve.

[12:10] So thank you for that.

[12:12] I do have a couple questions this year on the history,

[12:14] and maybe precedent for the business association.

[12:17] You've earmarked about $329,000, almost $330,000 that the BIA proposes to spend in 2017.

[12:24] Is that an exceptional year for you or is that a part for the course?

[12:30] No, that's the exception.

[12:31] We've been waiting to get the Shuffle Lighting done, and we want to get a bunch of things

[12:35] now done together.

[12:36] We've been planning this for three or four years, and now we're just trying to get to everybody

[12:42] you'll, and we can get the city to move at the same time on the street lighting as

[12:47] granting us the $302,000, we're looking at possible cost savings by doing both the

[12:53] electrical jobs at the same time.

[12:55] This is what we're trying to do is tie with the city and work together.

[12:59] And we've been very successful in the past, really, that.

[13:01] But these are billing says individual items now.

[13:05] And if we have cost savings because part of our underground lighting and street lighting,

[13:09] we have to supply extras, this can't feel the number that you need some in public works for

[13:16] you know, accidents or repairs to the lighting that they stand at, but that's all involved

[13:22] as well, so it's just not a matter of just this project of that material for the new

[13:26] new projects. And thank you for that. And the second question I had is just around what looks like

[13:31] a bit of a branding change. So you're looking to do a new science, got new colors, new logos.

[13:35] So do you maybe want to provide some insight into where your members wanted to go with

[13:39] What was the impetus behind changing the look of what the gateway sign is?

[13:46] It is.

[13:47] It is.

[13:49] The thing that I found is we don't acknowledge ourselves a lot.

[13:54] We don't advertise who we are.

[13:56] We just quietly go around and do this and it looks good.

[13:59] And people do appreciate it.

[14:01] But they're not aware of who actually is to get the start of it all.

[14:06] And one of the new like commotion, we were talking, I still don't know the lady who built the tutors and make the tutors to put on the motion figures around Christmas night for people to pick up.

[14:16] I'm really thrilled.

[14:17] You know, that's the type of thing you'd like to see happen in the gateway, you know, lots of fun and people are safe.

[14:24] Great, thank you.

[14:25] Great, thanks very much, John, and Ken, thank you to the ability to view and the team that you have quite often.

[14:31] I know it's just the two of you that are out trying to get things done, so thank you.

[14:36] Council, what I'd like to do is I'd like to put a motion on the floor that we refer this

[14:40] back to administration.

[14:41] They're working closely with administration now, with Ms. late-Liston, I think, and others.

[14:47] So I think if there's a seconder for that, we'll see what we'll thank you, Councilor Scott.

[14:52] Is there any questions, all those in favour of referral?

[14:57] Opposed.

[14:58] Thank you very much.

[14:59] Thank you, Councilor Robert.

[15:00] John, thank you very much.

[15:01] Thank you very much.

[15:02] Thank you.

[15:07] So, Council, what I'd like to do now, if we could as take reports at D1 and D2 and meld them together a little bit, I'll start with off by a report that I have submitted 2016 interview and I look forward to 2017, and I'll just take a moment and highlight some of the areas that we've been through this year and some of the things we're looking for in 2017.

[15:34] at the back of the document is our strategic plan, strategic plan is 2016 to 2018 and we've gone

[15:43] through that earlier this year, a couple days of work not only with administration but also

[15:49] counsel in developing the strategic plan for the next couple years. So if I could, excuse me,

[15:57] for the last several years planning at the city has been in print storage has been based on the

[16:03] Community Sustainability Plan on us by PG was completed in 2010.

[16:08] We used that particular plan and incorporated into our strategic framework, and we've

[16:15] done that since, well, for a few years, but more specifically since this Council came in

[16:20] and, in the late 2014, early 2015, and we've developed the my PG plan into,

[16:31] as I say,

[16:32] want to go as a city and in this case I'm going to talk a little bit about where we've been

[16:36] and what kind of highlights we're going to see in 2017. Just to quickly give a snapshot around

[16:44] the 2016 highlights around social development, the reconciliation initiative and we had an application

[16:52] submitted to the Canada 150 Infrastructure Program for some funding around a picnic shelter

[16:57] likely to today. Work was done by a committee comprised of numerous community partners towards

[17:03] establishing the cities of background organization to provide support and complex social issues.

[17:08] I know Ms. Boone isn't here, but I want to thank her for the work that she's done since

[17:11] she's come on board back to the city and the social planning department. She has done great work.

[17:17] Smoke and VATE free bylaw was recently brought to council, a parent-mauristic international

[17:22] championships are a reality. We announced there was not long ago for 2019. A world

[17:29] event, environment around active modes of transportation, connected networks supported by investing

[17:37] about a quarter of a million dollars a sidewalk rehabilitation and a quarter of a million on

[17:41] new sidewalks, bicycle routes and of course, concert America was very involved in this.

[17:46] The downtown renewable energy system is brought on Plaza 400 and the courthouse.

[17:51] This is the city's water management program and a park strategy that we're going to talk about this evening.

[17:59] Economic development goes without saying that economic development is really tied as well

[18:04] with the remedial action that this council has embarked on.

[18:07] When we look at remedial action of the cannot,

[18:10] lumbarity, other locations throughout our city,

[18:13] a couple of locations in downtown Prince George.

[18:15] I think really lends to the economic viability of our community.

[18:19] Selected advisory committee on economic development that I'm going to have a moment to talk about.

[18:24] Shortly, city government facility condition assessments, which are an important piece of what we're doing in the next couple years.

[18:33] We've heard a lot of clear and about half of our facility assessments.

[18:37] The position that we're in and none are more highlighted than when you talk about the four seasons pool.

[18:42] and fire hall number one, standards of cover review is done for the fire department.

[18:50] That really is what's going to drive our look at fire hall number one,

[18:57] October, second year we've had talked to over 2015 and 16, about 230 people attended those events,

[19:04] and I think that we hear loud and clear from talk to over events about what people want to see in their city,

[19:10] what they want their city to be.

[19:12] And we take those, those away with us,

[19:15] and we meld them into our budget discussions

[19:17] that are going to happen in late January and early February.

[19:22] So many of the 2016 initiatives described

[19:24] the bubble of carry on to 2017.

[19:27] As I mentioned, there's a number of things,

[19:31] the hosting of the 2017 Tell Us Cup,

[19:33] celebrate Prince George Winter at Summer Festival's

[19:36] Procreation will continue for the 2019 Parinore to get our national games, the Park and Economic Development Strategies, if approved, will be implemented.

[19:47] In addition, these many other program initiatives during 2017, we're going to focus on infrastructure investment.

[19:53] That infrastructure investment we've heard loud and clear is going to be a huge topic of conversation for this council and administration.

[20:01] Massage Stadium Project will start their construction 4.2 million dollar project at Massage

[20:09] Place, and it will certainly give an opportunity for teams like UNBC men and women's

[20:15] soccer programs, a home, a much-needed home.

[20:19] So that's a huge project that will start in the spring of the year.

[20:23] So it's being funded by various categories from federal gas fund money from the city as well

[20:30] as $250,000, or Northern Development Initiative's trust.

[20:34] And as part of the aquatic services review,

[20:36] the four seasons pool received a facility evaluation.

[20:39] I've talked about it.

[20:41] And we've really taken a look at evaluating a number

[20:44] of our facilities within the community.

[20:46] And I can't stress it or not.

[20:47] That will be really a core part of the work

[20:49] that we do this year as a council.

[20:52] So during 2016 Council Administration

[20:54] accomplished many of the priorities identified

[20:56] in the city's 2016-2018 corporate plan and I certainly look forward to what I know council

[21:02] and administration do to be equally as positive and productive in 2017 as 2016. We have

[21:09] seen an unbelievable year. I don't want to steal anything from Ms. Barsalus, our manager of economic

[21:14] development, but we've seen record investment in our community. I got a number today of about

[21:21] $127 million in building permits for 2016, and we see 2017 the start of it being a very good year as well.

[21:33] Another few numbers that will throw out in a moment or two, but with that council, if there's any questions, I am the surface would certainly be happy to answer.

[21:46] Councillor Merrick. Thank you, Bishop, and I always appreciate sort of these one page

[21:51] as your plans because the reality is we get paid to sit here and read through long documents,

[21:58] but the rest of the public doesn't have time for that and they want to know exactly what we

[22:01] need to be held accountable for a year to year to a simple one-page strategy. And so this document

[22:08] is essentially I think the most important document of the year for the public in terms of knowing

[22:12] what city council's up to and what they've achieved in the last year.

[22:17] And I apologize because I missed the last council maybe a year, so I didn't get to talk

[22:20] about some of my favorite things, but even just looking at this list of accomplishments,

[22:23] there's a few things that, you know, there's many, many things that didn't make the list, but, you

[22:28] know, a couple, not only the bike lanes issue, but also transit this year, you know, we had

[22:32] a first statutory holiday transit service this year, and then we're looking at significant

[22:39] So, that was a big thing for me and the celebrate print storage function with all of the festivals and events and public fun that we're trying to do downtown.

[22:48] When this mayor program, I mean, that was one of my favorite days of the year was having young girls ages six months through to 36 years come and sit in the mayor's chair and talk about what was important to them in their communities.

[23:01] So lots of great stuff, but I just can't stress enough why

[23:04] it document like this is so important both for us

[23:07] to keep us on track, but also for the public

[23:10] to know exactly what it is that we're prioritizing

[23:13] and where they can lend their efforts to helping.

[23:16] So thank you.

[23:17] Thank you, thank you very much.

[23:18] And if I can just point out as well,

[23:21] the strategic planning doesn't just stop at one year.

[23:25] We had a strategic planning 2015 again in 2016.

[23:28] And certainly when we take a look at 2017, I know we'll have some strategic planning opportunities then but it was the idea of this

[23:35] Council to continue year after year with a strategic planning as opposed to setting one in 2015 and then not coming back to it.

[23:42] Things change in our city and it was really important for us to make sure that we were aware of that and that that strategic plan had an opportunity to move and make sure that we move it to fit the current needs of the community.

[23:54] And many of the things that we see visually as we drive around, whether it be John indicated,

[24:01] River Bend Housing Project, the Merriot,

[24:05] the Western, I'm going to get this wrong Mr.

[24:08] Wells Highway 97 South in Ann Kenworth.

[24:14] You see these big developments, you take a look at the Crossroads Brewing Company,

[24:21] But tell a burning restaurant, construction along Highway 16, the best Western hotel at Highway 16 and Westgate.

[24:28] You take a look at these are very large visual projects that it's easily identifiable.

[24:35] But there are things within this report and thank you, Councillor Merrick, for commenting on the fact

[24:40] that it's a simple one-page review.

[24:42] But there are things embedded in here that people may not recognize, may not see every day.

[24:47] and there are things that we as a council and administration have been working on for quite

[24:51] some time.

[24:52] So I don't have anybody else in the queue.

[24:55] I have a motion to receive all the, look for us.

[25:00] Thank you.

[25:01] Councillor Ebert, Councillor McConaughey, all those in favor of receipt of co-host

[25:05] carried unanimously.

[25:06] Thank you very much, everyone.

[25:09] I'm going to call his Barsala Stone, our manager of economic development, and also a few words, and then, as I like to do, turn it over to Ms. Barsala's to comment on where we're headed.

[25:29] Good evening.

[25:32] Are you?

[25:33] Good.

[25:35] So council, if you go to D2,

[25:42] I'm just going to comment a bit on this and then turn to Ms.

[25:45] Barcelona to give us an overview.

[25:47] But I just want to speak to the work that was done.

[25:50] As you know about a year and a few months ago, we established the economic development arm within

[25:56] city of Prince George from there. We created an economic development advisory committee. We've met a

[26:01] number of times over 2016 and I had the fortune of chairing that particular group and I want to

[26:08] thank the committee members that participated in that and there was a real cross section of people

[26:16] from our community that were involved in that and the intent was to get a good cross section of

[26:22] community to talk to us about what they felt about economic development.

[26:27] So we had an opportunity to talk about social planning about economic development.

[26:31] It was just a perpory of groups and individuals that we relied on to talk about our community.

[26:39] And from that we came up with the strategy that Ms. Varsales will speak to this evening.

[26:44] The thing that I want to point out is that the strategy that was really developed as a result

[26:48] of those meetings with the Advisory Committee, also forms part of the City Strategic Plan.

[26:54] These are not, even though there are two separate documents in the agenda, the two documents

[26:59] work side by side and they parallel and they intertwined with each other to set really

[27:06] our strategic plan and also our economic development strategic plan out of Ms. Marcelo's office.

[27:12] So those are two very important things to mention.

[27:18] The committee itself was really an opportunity for us, not only from an economic development

[27:28] perspective, because we had just moved that function into the city, but it was an opportunity

[27:33] for us to take a look at and learn about the major companies, major players in our community.

[27:40] And, for example, the airport was represented, the airport does unbelievable work in our community to try to attract economic development, and they have done this for a number of years.

[27:52] So to have them at the table really was a benefit for us. So again, I want to thank the committee for the work they've done. There's a recommendation here, but I think we'll get to that in a bit.

[28:00] And if I haven't left anything out, Ms. Bursalis, I would like to turn it over to you.

[28:05] And I have a release here that we're going to put out shortly that talks about private sector investments.

[28:11] So I'll give you an opportunity to talk to that as well as the building permit piece and what that means to our city.

[28:18] So Ms. Bursalis, welcome.

[28:19] Great, thank you.

[28:21] So as Mayor Hall mentioned, I'm going to present an overview on the economic development division and the work that we did over 2016.

[28:28] And then I'm going to go into a really brief overview of the strategy and leave some time for questions on that.

[28:36] So reading, since reading economic development in-house, a lot has been accomplished.

[28:42] So to start with, we hired four staff members, including myself.

[28:46] And we eliminated redundant positions, cutting the total staff in half compared to IPG.

[28:52] So this actually allowed us to say 500,000 dollars per year in the annual budget.

[29:00] And we found many ways to work closely with several divisions within the city and work

[29:07] very collaboratively with hiding in developments.

[29:11] So over the course of 2016, we really worked in four main focus areas.

[29:17] So business development is really working

[29:21] to support existing businesses to grow and diversify

[29:24] the local economy.

[29:26] Workforce development, again, is to support existing businesses,

[29:31] but to focus on population retention and attraction of workers.

[29:37] So this focus area really move up

[29:40] from storage is what you would recognize the most from that area.

[29:44] And business attraction is trying to attract new businesses

[29:47] to set up infant storage and finally marketing and promotion which over encompasses all of the three focus areas that I mentioned.

[29:57] This could include keeping online content of today attending trade chosen events and spending the word about storage.

[30:05] So I'm going to go through each of those focus areas starting with business attractions.

[30:12] And the mayor had mentioned this, but we're really happy to announce today that we've achieved

[30:19] an all-time high of private sector investment, increased storage, so this graph shows the

[30:27] investment breakdown by which type of permits residential commercial industrial and institutional

[30:34] that highlights the private dollars that were spent in the community.

[30:38] And right now, we're working with external relations to promote these results, so there's

[30:43] news release going out on social media posts and tomorrow morning there will be a video.

[30:53] Day to day, we monitor inquiries from investors, site selectors, businesses that are looking

[30:59] for support in expansion of their existing businesses or to open a second business.

[31:06] And that takes a lot of time over the course of the year.

[31:09] So we measure everything that we do.

[31:13] And we chalk two different types of inquiries.

[31:15] So we receive cosmic increase and general inquiries

[31:18] and prospects are the ones that are most likely

[31:21] to results in new business in the shorter term.

[31:26] Generals could be anything from someone calling

[31:28] about general stocks.

[31:30] They're still looking at locations

[31:31] and don't even know if print storage is going to be considered

[31:36] thoroughly.

[31:37] But we do spend a lot of time with them.

[31:39] as well so we we measure that. In 2016, we saw an increase in the number of new inquiries

[31:46] over all we maintain relationships with 99 investors, 57 of those are new and 42 of them

[31:53] would have carried over from previous years.

[31:57] We keep track of the origin of the prospect

[32:00] inquiries and I think it's interesting to note that there was an increase in increase coming from

[32:06] print storage compared to 2015. And this is consistent with feedback that we got when we

[32:13] met with different businesses. And as well with those building permits that we just saw that

[32:17] there is a confidence in the local economy now and moving forward. Open costs that increase by industry

[32:26] are listed. You can see that manufacturing as well as real estate, excellent leasing are the two

[32:32] leading categories, residential kind of real estate kind of speaks for itself, but if we look at it.

[32:38] That manufacturing some examples of the ones we received were about LNG, chemical plants and breweries. Those are some examples.

[32:51] We keep track of the number of winds and losses. So the number of businesses that decide to locate here as well as those who don't.

[32:59] And we have about a 21% success rate.

[33:02] So that's pretty good, 12 out of 15.

[33:05] 12 out of 57 inquiries were confirmed wins in 2016.

[33:10] And this is pretty consistent year over year.

[33:13] We first started tracking this in 2013.

[33:18] We host inbound delegations every year.

[33:21] In 2012, we hosted 12 versus 11 in 2015.

[33:26] So again, it's fairly consistent.

[33:28] And this is when a site's left

[33:29] their contact system is intending to visit Prince George, so we might host them, we'll give

[33:36] them a presentation on the economy, give them a tour of the city, set up meetings with

[33:40] potential partners or customers that need information from CNN, and put me with CNN.

[33:47] We customized it for everybody who contacts us.

[33:51] We also measure the length of relationships.

[33:54] Typically, we don't see winds or losses until 6 to 12 months.

[33:57] We call this the incubation period and we are continuing relationships with different

[34:03] site selectors have been for more than two years for some of them.

[34:13] Within this focus area of business attraction we compile a lot of statistics and do research.

[34:20] One of the reports that we worked on was with the conference board of Canada and it was the

[34:31] Prince George was the fastest growing economy in that report in terms of GDP and was actually

[34:37] recorded as growing a faster rate than both the provincial and national averages. So we were

[34:41] really happy with those results. We also produced monthly economic update reports that

[34:48] lists a variety of stats that investors and site sectors and local businesses are often

[34:54] interested in. We post those on social media and our website and we do an annual downtown

[35:00] occupancy study.

[35:05] In 2016, our biggest research report or project that we did was in this

[35:11] focus area was the business attraction strategy. And I was able to identify areas that we

[35:16] need to focus our efforts on in bringing new businesses to print storage. So through that report,

[35:21] we did a SWAT analysis, a situational analysis. We consulted with businesses and many sectors,

[35:27] industries, government, and as well as our advisory committee members.

[35:33] We had identified seven opportunities that we should could focus on, but we decided that

[35:40] the top three of the most worthwhile, and those are first re-innovation engineered with products

[35:45] and green goddess centers.

[35:50] The next focus area is business development, so again,

[35:53] focusing on the existing businesses. And we know that 80 to 90 percent of new investment

[35:59] development and a community comes from existing businesses so this is a major

[36:04] priority for us. In 2016 the biggest value of work within this focus was our

[36:10] business outreach program and we went out and met with 65 local businesses to

[36:16] get feedback about the business climate and identify opportunities or threats

[36:22] that they might be facing. So you can see that we interviewed businesses from a

[36:28] sectors and we've decided how many businesses in each sector based on employment representation.

[36:40] From immediate opportunities or redfigs were identified by some of the businesses that we

[36:46] met with. So that gave us the opportunity to set up follow-up meetings where we could address those

[36:52] concerns. So in addition to the 65 meetings we had 38 meetings where we were able to support those

[36:58] businesses in a variety of ways.

[37:06] One of the questions that we ask the businesses in the interview

[37:10] is around the local business climate and how they feel that it is at the time of the interview

[37:16] and it was rated high for, um, constituents by the participants and, again, it's consistent with

[37:22] feedback that we keep getting from the building permits,

[37:28] from the GDP results that continues to show

[37:32] that brings sort of things up.

[37:35] Through the interviews, we asked for suggestions

[37:38] for improvements, and we received quite a few.

[37:42] They're listed on the side.

[37:45] A lot of them aren't directly related to the city,

[37:47] so it is an opportunity for us to advocate

[37:51] to other organization or government to address these concerns, but some of them are improvements

[37:58] that we could make internally.

[38:00] And we always want to be able to generate results and make these interviews worthwhile for

[38:06] the participants.

[38:07] So one of the programs that we're starting in 2017 or this year that you'll see in the strategy

[38:12] is a new Concierge service to support new businesses through the development process or building

[38:21] from its business licensing, new businesses specifically reported that if they're only doing

[38:27] this process, they're going through this process once, it can be intimidating and they

[38:32] like someone to go through it with them. So that's something that the economic development

[38:35] department will be assisting with.

[38:42] We also asked participants if they could pick one priority to make a storage of better place

[38:47] do business, what would it be on this side? It shows the top dancers and I think after

[38:55] hearing the report from Mayor Hall on the corporate plan, you can see that we are doing

[39:00] a lot of this and the city is really focusing a lot of these. So that was that's encouraging.

[39:09] Business Advisory Services is a new program that we started in 2016 and I briefly mentioned

[39:15] that if we hear of red flags or challenges or opportunities that businesses might need to

[39:21] public, they can come talk to us and we don't get directed by some what they should do for

[39:26] their business, but we do make referrals to experts who can. We did 64 advisory meetings in 2016,

[39:35] and that doesn't mean about half of the year, so about six months. With 34 unique businesses and

[39:42] were 40 referrals from that. So that shows that people were happy with the service that they were getting.

[39:51] Moving on to Workforce Development. In order to retain local business and attract new business,

[39:58] the city must maintain the current population as well as attract a diverse workforce that is

[40:03] able to support a growing economy. That's exactly what we do with Workforce Development and our means.

[40:12] So we have the website, social media, and advertising campaign. Obviously, if we spend dollars on a certain

[40:22] focus area, we're going to measure results to make sure that we're doing the best that we can. So these

[40:29] some of the metrics that we use. You can see that traffic to the website has increased in 2016,

[40:39] and that shows that continued advertising is working. You can see that a lot of the viewers

[40:45] to the site are local, and this is good because we're trying to use the site from local job opportunities

[40:52] as well as what is going on in and around for storage. When we initially started the site,

[40:57] we were focusing externally to other communities

[41:01] to get people to move to Prince George for work.

[41:04] But we're still doing that.

[41:05] We want locals to have the first opportunity.

[41:11] Our target audience for the website

[41:15] and to talk to people to Prince George

[41:17] is 25, 45 years old, young families

[41:21] are the most likely to stay in Prince George

[41:25] once they're set up here.

[41:28] We really promote quality of life and affordability to get them here, but we are expanding

[41:34] the content on the site to appeal to seniors and baby boomers.

[41:38] You can see the website traffic does show that we are getting those demographics to the

[41:44] site as well and we'll be acting that up in 2017.

[41:50] We count the number of jobs that are posted to the website, so there are two ways to post jobs.

[41:55] you inspire us to either post directly to the site, which is what we really encourage, and we

[42:01] post jobs from Indeed as well. So we can't measure the results of those jobs that are

[42:07] pulled from Indeed. We rely on the employers to give us feedback about whether or not the site

[42:12] is working for them. So currently there are 193 employers registered to post jobs to the site,

[42:19] and a hundred and twenty six jobs were posted in 2016. So you can see that there was a decrease.

[42:28] It could be due to a change in the number of available job force, but mostly we believe it's

[42:33] because the workforce development officer position was vacant for almost the entire year.

[42:41] So she does a lot of work to engage with employers and get them posting on the site and we've seen an

[42:46] increase since she's been in her position and we're expecting that was dropped

[42:51] post-instinct increase for 2017.

[42:55] We measure the results of the hiring process as

[42:58] well as we ask employers what the average salary that they paid to those

[43:02] positions that they felt. You can see that that's paid pretty consistent between

[43:06] 2015 and 2016. We have about a 20% rate of employees who relocate to print

[43:14] for those positions and fund those employers that responded to us when we surveyed them.

[43:23] In the PowerPoint presentation, I included three testimonials.

[43:29] We have a hard time getting measuring the impact that the website has on people who are using it for their relocation research.

[43:38] The way that we have got feedback with them is directly contacting them and asking what they think of the site and we've got a few testimonials here.

[43:47] In 2017 we're going to add a survey to the websites we can get some better information and hopefully we can get people using the site to complete that.

[44:02] So the first focus area is marketing and promotion and as I mentioned this encompasses the previous three focus areas.

[44:11] We're currently managing content and driving traffic to three websites, who have up

[44:17] print storage, invest print storage, and a business directory. Currently we're migrating

[44:23] the invest QG website to the new city website, so they will be one and are adding a

[44:29] business directory model for module to the new website as well. So this will create

[44:33] efficiency and reduce some of the work that it takes for us to maintain and manage

[44:39] many of those sites. Move up print storage will remain a separate site. It has a different purpose

[44:45] with its own branding. It's meant to be separate from the city with the concept, get to

[44:51] no print storage from the locals perspective.

[44:56] The community members are selling a community

[44:59] to newcomers.

[45:04] This fraud shows the traffic to the invest print storage website, which we measure,

[45:10] in Google Analytics. This is from 2015 compared to 2016. So we've seen a slight decrease in traffic

[45:20] to the website in 2016, but it's been more of a cut in half since 2014.

[45:27] This is mostly likely due to not having social media platforms or a newsletter to direct traffic

[45:33] to the site as well. Search engine optimization may have been affected by the change in

[45:38] on sent on the website, following the transition from IQG.

[45:41] So the main URL that was previously

[45:47] initiative's QG that is not being used anymore.

[45:51] We're using investment storage, which had existed,

[45:54] but wasn't the one that people initially look for.

[45:57] So we're building that brand.

[45:59] And now that we have social media in place,

[46:01] we'll be able to drive more traffic to the site.

[46:05] This, these are some dots or a graph showing activity on the move up from George Facebook page.

[46:13] This is 2015 and this is 2016.

[46:19] So activity on the page increase significantly after we initiated an advertising campaign.

[46:25] You'll see there's one really tall spiked there that was as a result of this fun infographic

[46:33] that we put out and had a lot of engagement from people in Vancouver and Prince George.

[46:39] So that was probably our the highest reach that we've seen on one post on on this Facebook page.

[46:47] And it reached 30,000 people organically and about 12,000 paid.

[46:55] These are some more stops on the move that puts George social media. So it shows a number of Facebook likes and Twitter followers.

[47:02] as well as the male female ratios on the sites which are fairly equal.

[47:10] We also can monitor where people are visiting the website

[47:14] from by country and city, but this is my favorite graphic.

[47:19] This is a world map that shows that we're seeing traffic all across the world.

[47:27] We just launched investment storage social media pages on Facebook and Twitter,

[47:35] so like us and follow us and we'll be watching

[47:38] A new e-news letter when the new city website goes live, so we'll be able to communicate directly with businesses, potential investors, and do different advertising online as well.

[47:55] We do paid advertising. These are some examples of the move up print storage advertising that's done online in print.

[48:03] The top 10 ad appears in the top 40 under 40 magazine and in 27 it will be in a new relocation guide.

[48:12] The photo on the top left left of Jess and her family were printed in the BC business,

[48:18] best cities to work in BC magazine and the bottom left is an online ad.

[48:23] Let's face with Twitter and Google.

[48:27] This is an example of an ad targeting site selector that was printed in a program

[48:32] of the foreign-directed investment fund that we attended, an editorial, that was in the FBI Alliance

[48:40] magazine.

[48:43] And sometimes we partner with other organizations to share costs, so this is a joint

[48:48] ad in an editorial that was placed in the business in Vancouver Magazine.

[48:52] Crazy ads are a lot harder to measure the results of them, so we really try to spend more

[49:01] resources online. We attend quite a few trade shows and events over the course of the year and

[49:07] these are some examples of events that we went to in 2016. So that's the end of the year

[49:15] in review. And then I can, I'm going to go quite quickly over the 2017's and of 2019 economic

[49:24] development strategy and work thanks. I know you all have it in front of you and then we

[49:27] I can answer any questions you have.

[49:31] So, actually, Merrill Hall introduced the advisory committee pretty well.

[49:35] So, I'm not going to go into a kind of detail on that, but I will tell you that the mandate

[49:40] was to advise the development of the strategy.

[49:45] And we met over the course of the year, I think it was six times, and when we had our initial

[49:52] discussions about the strategy and the four missions or focus areas that we were going

[49:57] to really focus on. The committee didn't really want to change those areas, so you'll find

[50:06] that the four missions are similar to what they were previously. The committee was really interested

[50:13] in focusing on the action plan and the work plan for 2017 and how we could work together,

[50:18] which I thought was a really good opportunity because there are lots of organizations focusing

[50:22] on economic development, we can find ways to work together.

[50:27] So the first focus area is to facilitate current business retention and expansion.

[50:36] There are three goals and nine metrics that will use to report on this.

[50:44] The second is to attract business to expand and diversify the economy.

[50:49] In this area, we have three goals and five metrics that will be reporting on, grow the

[50:56] workforce by retaining and attracting residents.

[51:00] Again, they're eight metrics that we're going to be reporting on and I'm sure you'll

[51:04] have questions around that.

[51:06] And then finally, market pretty storage to facilitate the retention and attraction of business

[51:11] and population, both metrics on this one.

[51:16] And that brings me to the end.

[51:18] Good.

[51:18] Thanks very much.

[51:21] I was remissly and not introducing Colleen Dunmook who is from downtown Prince George and

[51:26] Colleen heads that organization and she was a big part of the advisory committee along

[51:32] with Owen Foley, who is a president of that organization.

[51:35] So welcome Colleen.

[51:35] Thanks very much for that.

[51:38] So, questions.

[51:39] I have a couple of counselors in the queue.

[51:41] I think I just want to add to what Ms. Barcell said when we talk about the four strategies

[51:47] in the metrics behind it are very important as well, but very important to tie this particular

[51:52] strategic plan from an economic development perspective to our council strategic plan as

[51:57] well.

[51:58] I know I've said it before, but I just want to reiterate that.

[52:01] So councilor Fresel.

[52:06] Thank you, Mayor Hall.

[52:07] And through to Ms. Barcelona.

[52:09] Thank you for the presentation and great to have that as a follow up at the first meeting

[52:14] of the year when we've heard such excellent results.

[52:17] You know, we're all aware that Article of Section 25 of the Community Charter prohibits us from giving any assistance to business in a wide variety of different ways.

[52:30] But on the opposite side, it's while it's not the express regulated goal of councils to encourage economic development.

[52:38] It's what we all want to be able to achieve, so by having your division doing the work that it does.

[52:45] that's fantastic. And I like that you started off by talking about the cost savings that you've

[52:51] been able to bring about just in the first, first, a whole year of being able to report.

[52:58] Very excited with it. Now, you're probably expecting I'm very pleased to hear about the

[53:03] direction on the Green Data Centers. Can you elaborate on that? That's that's really exciting to hear.

[53:08] Yeah, so the business attraction strategy identified as that is one of the opportunities

[53:16] in one of the areas that we should be focusing on because we do have a lot of requirements

[53:22] that companies that are setting up data centers require.

[53:26] So seismic stability, cold temperatures, cooling of data centers is very expensive.

[53:31] So, cold location is better.

[53:35] Fiver redundancy, which we have.

[53:38] So, we're able to attract to your one, two, and three data centers.

[53:43] And moving into 2017 will be promoting that more widely.

[53:48] And hopefully we'll get some results.

[53:50] That's great to hear.

[53:51] And I noticed in the survey that you presented tonight,

[53:54] when we were talking about favorable reasons for locating businesses here.

[53:59] The third one was the local business climate, but above that there was the university and then there was the low price of residential properties and I imagine the low price of industrial also figures into the opportunities for the data centers too.

[54:13] They take up a large land base, so having land available as well.

[54:20] Another advantage is green energy, so you see hydro counts, so that is good.

[54:26] Fantastic.

[54:27] And just to close off the Pulse glad you, you've focused a lot in the end of the report about metrics, because we're all economic development is so intangible and difficult to tie a result to a program that was done years before.

[54:44] So to hear that focus on the metrics that you're going to be collecting to show that what you're doing is generating the results in the future and helping make those business decisions, that's essential.

[54:54] So I'm looking forward to that as it rolls out.

[54:57] Thank you.

[54:58] Thank you, Councillor Fuzzell, Councilor McConaughey.

[55:02] Thank you very much, Mayor Hall.

[55:04] You know, I listened to your report.

[55:06] I was reminded that earlier on in this council.

[55:08] When we made that decision to bring economic development in-house, I really do see the results of the positive aspects of that.

[55:19] The factors of that ability for a corroboration, communication within key departments within city hall, I think, has absolutely been enormous.

[55:29] And just that opportunity, as Mayor Hall had touched on, that opportunity to closely align

[55:36] goals between economic development and council, I think it's been tremendously important.

[55:42] And I think we've achieved, you've done a lot of work this last year.

[55:48] It's really impressive.

[55:50] And no questions, just want to say thank you so very much.

[55:54] Great dog.

[55:55] And please share that with your team.

[55:57] Oh, well, I know they're all loving it here, so thank you.

[56:01] Thanks, folks.

[56:02] We've got a key.

[56:03] Councilor Mirick.

[56:07] And I think Councilor McKinney sent it up quite well, but I just have a couple questions.

[56:11] One was a question that I get asked fairly often was in the transition into the city,

[56:17] a lot of folks start getting the newsletters.

[56:19] They were used to.

[56:20] So how do they do that now?

[56:22] There was sort of an economic update, a newsletter that regularly came out to a lot of people

[56:27] in the community.

[56:27] and they never figured out how to get it again.

[56:30] So how do they do it now that transition is not bad?

[56:32] Yeah.

[56:33] So we have continued creating that newsletter

[56:36] and it's on our website.

[56:38] So every month we have one on the website.

[56:41] Sorry, the update report.

[56:43] I mean, I couldn't tell if it was one.

[56:45] I couldn't tell you which one they were asking about.

[56:47] But I think what you're talking about

[56:49] is economic update report that we did monthly

[56:52] and we sent it out with the newsletter.

[56:54] And that was probably one of the most popular

[56:58] statistical reporting documents that we put out,

[57:01] I think that's when you're referring to,

[57:03] we do have them all listed on the website,

[57:05] but because we didn't have an E-newsletter,

[57:09] over the course of last year, it was hard to get it to the people

[57:11] that were interested in it unless they went to the website.

[57:14] We did share it on the city social media pages,

[57:17] but you have to be looking at the right time in order to get it,

[57:20] doesn't go to the rest of two people.

[57:22] But moving forward, we're working on a new E-newsletter,

[57:25] that will be started with the new city website.

[57:29] And we'll be able to send those updates directly to the people

[57:32] who are interested again.

[57:34] Great, thank you very much.

[57:35] And I know I said I had a second question

[57:37] but now I've lost it.

[57:39] So, I'll pass it on to the next goal.

[57:40] Hey, thanks, House from America.

[57:42] I have anybody else in the queue.

[57:43] Ms. Barcelas, I want to take the opportunity as well to thank you

[57:47] for the work that you're doing and for the work

[57:50] that you did during the advisory committee meetings.

[57:52] It was exceptional and we're very, very pleased.

[57:55] that you hear where this will thank you so much for that, and with that council we have a

[58:00] recommendation at D2. Thank you, Councillor Scott, seconder, Councillor Colour, all those in

[58:06] favor. The poll is carried unanimously. Thank you very much.

[58:12] Okay, if we could move now to D3 and the Mr. Whitlam is microphone working or you've got a lot of enough voice.

[58:47] Thank you, Your Worship and Counselors.

[58:54] So yes, this will be an overview of some crime stats, calls for service, arts for

[59:00] teaching priorities, where we're at, and some of the highlights, and some of the challenges

[59:06] we've had, including a transition into some prospect for the upcoming year.

[59:14] The first slide here is a file count for 2016 in comparison to the previous eight years.

[59:23] You'll see that this year we've spiked and had far greater files than we've had in the past.

[59:31] It's too early at this time to suggest or analyze why that's been.

[59:37] We've had some grind types go up.

[59:40] I would suggest with some of the programs we have.

[59:42] We've encouraged people to call the police, and so I think that's positive.

[59:48] For instance, we've asked a neighborhood in the community of the Clean's Way neighborhood to report things and look out after each other.

[59:57] So we've had an increase in some calls for service in the area.

[1:00:01] So that could suggest why we've had an increase in calls tomorrow.

[1:00:08] Next you slide, I've just broken down some of the more significant files that we've had.

[1:00:13] Again, we've ranged from 2013 up to 2016.

[1:00:18] So this year we've had four homicides, four murders,

[1:00:24] and we have a missing person right now that we are concerned

[1:00:28] with, and we think that there's likely some sort of fall

[1:00:32] play attribute to that.

[1:00:35] We can see that robberies have gone up.

[1:00:37] Robberies would include anything from financial institutions,

[1:00:40] So stick them up type robberies to give me your cell phone at at a local convenience store.

[1:00:47] So it's a wide range of different offenses for the actual robbery.

[1:00:53] We see that sexual assault has increased but again because of some of the programs we have,

[1:00:59] including a more robust domestic violence program and a little bit better outreach

[1:01:05] in the community.

[1:01:06] differences are car 16 and mental health.

[1:01:10] We also say that we believe that we've built better relationships with the community partners,

[1:01:15] including urban, Aboriginal, Constable.

[1:01:17] So I'd like to think that people are coming more comfortable and trusting with the police

[1:01:21] and for that reason we've seen an increase in that regard.

[1:01:26] We've had a slight decrease in break and enters, but you can see that still high from previous

[1:01:32] years.

[1:01:32] We'll continue to focus on our priority and chronic and

[1:01:39] productivity offenders in that regard.

[1:01:41] And again, the vehicles, again, aren't significant

[1:01:45] rise of the increase.

[1:01:50] Just a different graph to show you now, just a

[1:01:52] color coat of graph from 2013 to 2016 for those

[1:01:55] defense types.

[1:01:59] These next group of the fences we have, these are

[1:02:04] high file drivers just because the volume of the numbers.

[1:02:07] So, a mischief that could be anything from spray painting to broken windows to kick down fences.

[1:02:14] Our theft under could include shoplifting.

[1:02:17] Our cause to servants is also mainly attributed to addictions, so folks who could be intoxicated

[1:02:25] and acting violently or disrupting people, and we see the majority of those coming from our downtown core.

[1:02:33] LCLA, that's provincial offense, that's liquor control, licensing act, so again, that deals with alcohol.

[1:02:39] That's a health act, you can see a route there, but again, I attribute that to a success or a car 60 working in conjunction with Northern Health.

[1:02:48] I'd like to think as well that the people who suffer from mental health issues that come to attention are getting a better quality service because of that program.

[1:02:59] I don't want to be confusing on that, so we don't have 315 missing people, missing people

[1:03:07] or those most significantly from high-risk group homes, who simply don't return or run away

[1:03:13] for a night and quite often those people just go missing for a short period of time, so that's

[1:03:19] what missing person follows the 40.

[1:03:21] Again, just a graph to show you from a color-coded perspective that looks over the number

[1:03:27] years.

[1:03:32] Prison account.

[1:03:33] So we still have a high volume of Prison account.

[1:03:36] Majority of the Prisoners, we house are there for alcohol related offenses.

[1:03:42] So again, those are your liquor control licensing act, those are your cause disturbances.

[1:03:46] So that's the majority of our Prisoner account.

[1:03:49] It's very high.

[1:03:50] I'll get into a social chronic offender program where we're working with stakeholders

[1:03:53] and hopefully have better alternatives to a place enforcement for those folks.

[1:04:00] So, that equates to roughly 12 prisoners a day.

[1:04:06] So, this next slide is our strategic initiative for the year or annual performance plan.

[1:04:11] So, in the very center, you'll see that we strive for excellence in policing,

[1:04:15] and we want to do that in a respectful way.

[1:04:18] So, we have our core values despite that we're busy and pressure detachment

[1:04:23] that face a high volume of violent offenses.

[1:04:27] I still expect that the men and women who serve the public

[1:04:30] do that in a respectful way. As we go around we have road safety so the previous years we've

[1:04:36] had a high volume of pedestrian fatalities. So this year we focused on ensuring safe roadways

[1:04:42] for people with quite a heavy accent component to impaired driving may recall just before Christmas

[1:04:49] we had this again roadblock a check stop program at highway 16 and 97. So again although we didn't

[1:04:57] I think we catch many people at that location.

[1:05:00] That time, it certainly did put out a good message to those.

[1:05:03] The police are out at about and we'd encourage folks to have alternatives

[1:05:07] to driving under the influence.

[1:05:10] And we can say that this is the first year in a number of years

[1:05:12] that we actually didn't experience any significant

[1:05:16] serious motor vehicle accidents or facilities of the holiday.

[1:05:20] Going to the bottom, we have harm reduction.

[1:05:23] So that's working with our domestic violence program.

[1:05:25] We have a new section that I'll get into a little bit further to give a better rapper on

[1:05:31] care for not only victims and families of the messing bonds, but also some follow up and

[1:05:35] support for those who are before the courts.

[1:05:40] I touch on our social media.

[1:05:41] Well, chronic offenders, so we actually have individuals that are coming, that will come into ourselves

[1:05:45] on about 150 times a year. So there has to be a better way to work with these individuals. So again,

[1:05:49] that's influencing other stakeholders in the community who have some contact with these folks,

[1:05:58] and hopefully changing environment and encouraging them to provide a healthy lifestyle. So we work

[1:06:04] with none of the courts and that but a number of other stakeholders. At the top of the list,

[1:06:11] We should have crime reduction, so yes, we in Prince George have a number of people who are simply just bad bad people who continue to commit criminal offenses, break an enters to law and auto's robberies.

[1:06:25] And those focus, the focus on those focuses to target them, provide them opportunity to change an environment through a politically offender management program and if they don't choose that support.

[1:06:35] And it's hard core enforcement and at least we can give our community a reprieve from those individuals while they're in jail.

[1:06:45] Some of the human safety programs, some of these, we started a couple of years ago, but again, the downtown safety unit.

[1:06:51] You recall that we took members off our general duty watches to devote three people downtown for police presence to ensure the safety of everybody who uses downtown area.

[1:07:01] And we continue that program and enhancing it with our general duty patrol during some of the warmer months on bikes.

[1:07:09] You know, a car 60 program in the center there, you'll see our Northern Health nurse flanked by our two police officers at work together.

[1:07:19] We have the integrated domestic violence units, so I touched on that.

[1:07:23] That's a collaborative response with Ministry of Child and Family Development.

[1:07:28] Any fresh society where we have victims service worker working with the police officer.

[1:07:32] Again, that's to provide better wraparound care and safety for a vulnerable victim, women, families and again to ensure that the offenders have that support and ensure that they're complying with whatever conditions they're imposed upon them.

[1:07:51] We have a high-risk use session, so under a community policing, we have a session that work with the group homes to ensure that some of the chronic runaways have our support.

[1:08:04] as well as working with them to make sure there's alternatives for high risk behavior.

[1:08:10] I touch upon a social chronic offender program, so we have dedicated employees and members who work with those who come to attention.

[1:08:18] Most of the chronic users, not only of the criminal justice system, but also the health system.

[1:08:24] They are chronic users of social services, whatnot.

[1:08:27] So what we try and do is provide them

[1:08:30] wrap around support to those alternatives to what

[1:08:34] alesum and then brings them to our attention.

[1:08:38] We created a new position.

[1:08:39] You see a missing person session.

[1:08:41] So that's not only to revisit the files from the past

[1:08:44] where we continue to have people outstanding,

[1:08:48] where we don't know the whereabouts,

[1:08:51] but ensure that we provide the adequate first attention

[1:08:55] those folks so we continue to leave with family and then make best effort not only for a robust

[1:09:02] and thorough investigation but to ensure that we can assist these people and their families.

[1:09:09] We have an Aboriginal council program again. We have a police officer who works with

[1:09:14] Aboriginal people in the in the core area downtown, often who are lost within their city for a

[1:09:19] reasons to build trust with the police and ensure that they are able to live in our community

[1:09:26] safely. And due to the high volume of bicycle thefts we have here in the warmer months

[1:09:30] we've come up with a bike program through garage 529 to ensure not only are we tracking bikes

[1:09:37] that are stolen but also working with the city and a nonprofit right now to ensure that when we

[1:09:42] come across bikes we can get them back to the owners.

[1:09:47] We had a number of significant incidents

[1:09:49] over the year. I'm going to touch on a few of them. Here we go back in June. We had a number

[1:09:57] of drive-by shooting. So these were targeted offenses. We say that they are related to the drug

[1:10:03] trade in our community and people buying for power as a result on June 15th. We had homicide

[1:10:10] and we have very good direction on that file. So we anticipate that in the near future we could perhaps

[1:10:18] begin to make some arrests on that file, and hopefully deter and prevent this from happening in the future.

[1:10:25] So again, UNI or SAFE where it concerns me is when people are caught the crossfire, when

[1:10:31] incident last year, and one of these shootings that very innocent people, children at home,

[1:10:35] at a boat go through the window. So that's why it's important for us not to lose sight.

[1:10:40] I've not only working with the folks down town who are vulnerable and addicted to drugs,

[1:10:46] because there are users of this system but as well to ensure that offenders are brought

[1:10:51] to before the courts.

[1:10:55] Again, I remember showing you in presentations of the past. This is just

[1:10:58] a picture we took a couple weeks ago. This is just one of our gun storage lockers. We see

[1:11:03] thousands of guns a year in our community and these guns are often possessed for illegal purposes.

[1:11:12] Once you have an event, we have this year as a neighborhood group in Queensbury,

[1:11:16] came to us and asked for help and support. We heard stories from people saying that it was

[1:11:24] a high crime area. They were afraid to walk at night. They had items stolen. There was heavy

[1:11:29] prostitution. There was drug trafficking. There was needles. So we met a couple of times over the

[1:11:34] course of the year with these folks. We listened to the concerns. We used data from analyst. We then

[1:11:40] strategized on how to combat that. So what you can see from 2013 to years end is the significant

[1:11:47] drop in crime in that area because of some folks getting together and then coming to our attention

[1:11:53] as a community and then collaborating with us and finding solutions. So what's interesting about that,

[1:12:02] despite we've had a decrease in crime, we actually encourage people to fall in the police

[1:12:06] will often so that it contributed to higher calls for service.

[1:12:12] Again, this is just a statement of mission and values to increase safety through consultation

[1:12:17] the collaboration.

[1:12:19] So, and with our stakeholders, it wasn't police parachuted problems.

[1:12:22] We met with the committee, both business and home orders and the area and came up with

[1:12:27] solutions.

[1:12:31] Again, earlier, we did a press release this year about the cannot, but again, I bring this

[1:12:37] to your attention because I say this has to be one of the better highlights of the year.

[1:12:42] So we have a location here and over a number of years we were overrepresented for calls

[1:12:48] for service to that because of some delinquent behavior.

[1:12:52] The police together with Bailaus and the city looked at some of the issues and inspections were

[1:12:58] done and as a result that business license was suspended and the residents in the area

[1:13:06] the businesses now enjoy a quieter, more tranquil community.

[1:13:11] I'll say that with certainty that we have not displaced the problem, we have not seen a spike in crime in other areas, because of this. So it was just, it was just good attention and again, good leadership from the city and this regard to, to hold people accountable. And that's what, first time we've done this, but I'll just say from 2016 it was one of the victories that we had.

[1:13:35] This is an area, again, a small area in the community third in George, that is again on our

[1:13:41] sites.

[1:13:42] It's overrepresented for crime.

[1:13:44] We spend far too much time there, dealing with a host of criminal element.

[1:13:50] This is a breakdown here of some of the crime types that we see.

[1:13:56] A lot of these crime types are resolved because of very vulnerable people who need to

[1:14:04] for court and for other support, including homeless shelters, unfortunately because vulnerable

[1:14:12] people with addictions required to attend this area for those services, we also find

[1:14:19] individuals who prep on those folks, we have a higher volume of drug trafficking in that

[1:14:23] area, a higher volume of violence, a drug collecting and dead collecting, we have a

[1:14:29] volume of theft and a higher volume of crime over all. So there's an area where I think

[1:14:37] there's room for improvement with collaboration and more innovative ways to police all

[1:14:42] while ensuring that people who need the services can continue to do that and in a safe

[1:14:47] fashion.

[1:14:51] Success, you recall back in November there was a cell phone repair business that was

[1:14:56] the city of Third and George. Again after concern from some of the people who use the area

[1:15:03] including business owners,

[1:15:06] we conducted a search warrant under the control drugs and substances

[1:15:09] act and a result of the investigation and working with the city that business license was removed

[1:15:15] and it now provides a safer environment for individuals who use the area. And I say that again

[1:15:26] not from a threatening gesture, but I said in the past that if individuals feel as though that

[1:15:34] they can work in our community and deal drugs, illicitly, and make a living from that, the

[1:15:43] police are going to find you, and your door is going to get kicked out, and you're going to

[1:15:46] go to jail.

[1:15:49] Now, lots on, I say that's a significant occurrence in our community as a result of fentanyl,

[1:15:56] the significant opioid overdose, where we've seen a high volume overdoses and deaths in our

[1:16:03] community across PC. We now as the police carry an aloxone, it's an anecdote for for that drug

[1:16:12] and there's been a couple of occasions where we've actually brought people back to life in the last few

[1:16:16] weeks as a result of an overdose. So again, I bring this to your attention because the police are just

[1:16:24] there to enforce the law, but it's to work with people and

[1:16:27] sure can when you say to you overall.

[1:16:31] Other high risk investigations,

[1:16:35] we, albeit we,

[1:16:37] feel we have a good thumb of the Paul's here in the community.

[1:16:39] We had a couple coming to our community back in October.

[1:16:45] And as a result of a crime, three of these are two people who are

[1:16:48] before the courts, one just recently was convicted, received five years in

[1:16:52] jail.

[1:16:53] Two is actually out on parole at the time and hey,

[1:16:55] from our parole and committed a number of break-in enters and enough to the vehicle on a high speed

[1:17:00] pursuit here. The other co-ocuse, the Mr. Lard, he's before the courts right now. But again,

[1:17:06] we're seeing a high transient population, many people from Alberta coming here right now in Prince

[1:17:11] George. So not only do we have our own home-grown criminals here, we're seeing a high volume of criminals

[1:17:16] from outside the community come in and really influence our crime stats. So that was quite a key victory

[1:17:23] in a solid investigation, as well we did an undercover drug operation this year.

[1:17:29] We've not made that public yet to the media, however, as a result of a deliberate

[1:17:37] targeting effort against some of the known drug traffickers in the downtown core in the

[1:17:42] Queensland area, we're able to successfully apprehend approximately 30 people for that

[1:17:48] operation.

[1:17:52] I would say again, one of the better initiatives we had this year was through our

[1:18:01] community policing and victim service effort to hold the trauma and form practice conference.

[1:18:06] So again, that was a three-day conference where we had over three hundred attendees. We had some

[1:18:11] very high-end keynote speakers, Kamal Dylan, who suffered extreme domestic violence in her life shared

[1:18:19] story we had feel flurry the hockey player come and many other keynote speakers. But at the

[1:18:26] end of the day it was best to see other stakeholders and network those individuals to listen

[1:18:33] to better practices and ensure that we're meeting the needs of the public from a more strategic

[1:18:42] perspective than reacted.

[1:18:47] And not always doom and gloom, we occasionally get to have a

[1:18:51] good time as police officers and insert our influence. And so this year we got to a second

[1:18:57] in a row work with our special Olympic athletes here in BC, Prince George. And we did the

[1:19:03] law enforcement towards skate. We worked with the Prince George Cougars and raised awareness

[1:19:08] and had a good time back in October.

[1:19:11] We raised just over $6,000 for the special Olympic athletes here in our community, so

[1:19:16] and that money comes back to Prince George.

[1:19:19] So that was a win-win, not only for the young men who play on the coupers, but also

[1:19:23] for those athletes who aspire to compete at a high level.

[1:19:31] Pack a PC.

[1:19:32] So we parked a number of police carers in front of Savon Foods, a very good community partner

[1:19:36] just before Christmas.

[1:19:37] And we feel over 20 police cars, it's filled two secure bays that are detachment and raise

[1:19:44] over $3600 in cash, and that went to the senior folks in our community who need that

[1:19:52] help and support.

[1:19:53] So again, we're very appreciative that we work in a community that allow us to engage and

[1:20:00] connect with our community stakeholders outside of a traditional enforcement matters.

[1:20:08] This is a membership strength, so you can see over the years, we usually average anywhere from about 110 up to the most 117 police officers.

[1:20:20] That's actually the members we're billing for. However, our roster is up to 135 over last year you put us to 1.38.

[1:20:31] Due to attrition, we're just simply not able to meet that roster.

[1:20:39] We've had a number of people promote out.

[1:20:41] So the good work that police officers do in Prince George bodes well for them, unfortunately, not for us as a detachment, because they're

[1:20:49] talents are recognized. So we've had a number of very senior police officers who really, the backbone of our detachment from a leadership perspective,

[1:20:57] get rewarded for their good work and move on through promotion. We also see that at lower ranks as well, moving on into other areas, the province.

[1:21:05] And those people are getting replaced many times with cadets and internal promotion throughout.

[1:21:14] So the bad news I have is albeit counsel was gracious enough to give us an increase for roster last year.

[1:21:23] We weren't able to meet that through attrition and we're seeing that in other communities in the RCMP and that's attrition nationally.

[1:21:30] the difficult we're having retaining members. We're retiring at earlier ages. We're a pressure

[1:21:36] detachment, so we're not a desirable place to come for transfer. However, we're certainly

[1:21:45] a very good detachment for gaining skills and abilities. Unfortunately, both well for other detassments

[1:21:53] because again folks get recognized for their skills and talents and they move on. So we're in a

[1:21:59] good place right now we do have bodies here marked we've got a majority of cadets coming to fill

[1:22:05] these positions so anticipate if all goes well in the status quo that we don't lose any more

[1:22:11] people through promotion I anticipate will be up to full Roth to come springtime.

[1:22:18] Those are the

[1:22:19] highs and lows if I can just go back if there's two areas of focus that I see for the upcoming

[1:22:28] year. Again, it's to engage with our community stakeholders around social chronic offenders

[1:22:32] and provide other methods and traditional law enforcement. And again, the third and

[1:22:38] Georgia area, I hear from not only tenants and business owners, visitors who come to the

[1:22:46] city that visit downtown core, that's simply an area that's overrepresented with crime and

[1:22:52] a focus point for the upcoming year. So thank you.

[1:22:54] Thank you Superintendent, Councillor Crosse.

[1:22:58] Thank you.

[1:23:00] Superintendent, I just want to acknowledge the urban

[1:23:02] Aboriginal Constable Program.

[1:23:06] Thank you to Constable Gillis.

[1:23:08] He's very responsive in his work.

[1:23:11] His efforts are of great assistance.

[1:23:14] He's absolutely perfect for the job.

[1:23:16] So again, thank you to the detachment for creating that position

[1:23:19] and I guess some recognition to Constable Gillis.

[1:23:23] Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Ever, did you want him to kill? Go ahead.

[1:23:31] Well, thank you, Superintendent,

[1:23:43] for the job that they

[1:23:49] do.

[1:23:49] Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Everett. Councilor Kohler.

[1:23:54] Thank you, Bishop. Thank you. Thank you for the wonderful report.

[1:23:59] As always, numbers that are certainly very informative.

[1:24:03] of some of them would like others.

[1:24:06] We don't.

[1:24:07] You mentioned, again, the corner of the area of third

[1:24:12] and a judge, the street, and many discussions,

[1:24:17] certain organizations, and the crosshairs

[1:24:20] when it comes to these discussions,

[1:24:22] we know there's a fire pit, we know there's a need like change,

[1:24:26] and some people think, you know, something could be done.

[1:24:29] And I do not know that, but my question to you now,

[1:24:33] and so I'm going to put you on the spot.

[1:24:35] We know the media is here and to be listening to your answer.

[1:24:40] So I'm quite sure you will have a balanced answer to that.

[1:24:43] What would be your recommendation the city could do to have with this issue?

[1:24:54] Well, I think the city's demonstrated over the last year and previous years that

[1:25:00] bylaws through action that we have, repatriated some locations in the community that have fallen victim

[1:25:10] to high crime, rate and volume. So again that would be your canot, your lombardies,

[1:25:19] some other businesses and all their like buildings downtown. So I think the city continues to

[1:25:25] support by ensuring that by-laws are adhered to, ensuring that landlords are responsible

[1:25:37] to their tenants through applicable by-laws. The third injury, that's a challenge, although

[1:25:47] we can recognize that it's a high-crime area.

[1:25:52] We have to balance traditional law enforcement.

[1:25:54] It's very easy. I could put police officers at the corner and hammer everybody for every

[1:25:59] every infection they do. But there's also a need for folks to come to that location because

[1:26:04] services are offered. And we have to be mindful and respectful of that. These are our most

[1:26:12] marginalized vulnerable people in the community who suffer from addictions mental health issues.

[1:26:17] So again, we have to work and collaborate more efficiently and innovative with our stakeholders.

[1:26:24] However, having saying that, having said that, we can't tolerate crime, I cannot tolerate

[1:26:30] people dying from drug overdose because that's where drug traffickers can come and find

[1:26:35] their victims. I can't tolerate vulnerable people who are drug dealers money and then get beat up

[1:26:41] because they can't pay their drug gets in a location. I cannot tolerate people getting their businesses

[1:26:46] broken into and feeling unsafe in the area. So that's a fine line. So there'll be

[1:26:54] opportunity and I'll continue to continue to engage the city and locations where I

[1:26:58] think there's some ownership. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[1:27:03] Thank you. Councillor Merrick. Thank you.

[1:27:06] Thank you. I just wanted to add for one final thank you to Superintendent Brown and

[1:27:10] the whole team. Especially just because of the transparency I think and the

[1:27:14] I'm sure you've got 14 levels of filter on what you're saying, but I think for the community some of it is pretty out there.

[1:27:20] And from what I've heard from police chiefs all over Canada is that transparency is the best.

[1:27:24] Even though it makes easy pickings for the media, especially we've had lots of Vancouver papers,

[1:27:28] loved her report on French George crime statistics.

[1:27:31] Putting the numbers out there gets the community involved in understanding what's going on.

[1:27:36] And enables them to spot behavior that might not be normal and start to think about it more,

[1:27:42] to understand some of the dangers that might be out there for their kids, if they get into

[1:27:45] some trouble.

[1:27:46] Some of the really bad stuff that does happen in our community and engages the community

[1:27:50] more and everybody kind of doing their part to, you know, observe, report, witness, and

[1:27:56] protect and serve the people that are vulnerable.

[1:27:59] So I'm not suggesting I'd be able to go there and do the vigilantes job.

[1:28:02] That's the police job.

[1:28:04] But ultimately, I think shocking statistics like this do us all a favor in terms of reading

[1:28:09] them and understanding them.

[1:28:10] and uh

[1:28:11] While we hope that they go down, the reality is we need to know that they're there. So always appreciate

[1:28:15] how candid you are, and I think the community does as well.

[1:28:19] Well, thank you. And if the media was asking me why our crime rates high and overrepresented,

[1:28:23] I would tell them that we're a very safe community overall. Whoever a very small percentage

[1:28:28] of people in our community continue to be victimized by a very small people in our community. So again,

[1:28:33] we have segments, and we have a very small population, like, you know, that really misrepresented.

[1:28:37] I would say, overall, we're a very safe community.

[1:28:45] Thank you.

[1:28:46] Thank you very much, Mayor Hall, and Exon comments on Councillor Merrick, thank you for

[1:28:53] those.

[1:28:54] And thank you for posing the question, Councillor Coor, and to you Superintendent for your

[1:28:58] very frank answer.

[1:29:00] So, there was a filter there, but you know, was very well delivered, so I appreciate it.

[1:29:04] And I think it's just important for folks who are listening to know that we do hear from

[1:29:09] businesses downtown, and that we do hear from folks that care about our downtown, and what

[1:29:14] they need to know is that Council is working on this. We recognize that we do have an

[1:29:20] issue. There's no doubt about it. And as Councillor Merrick said, the only way to solve something

[1:29:24] is to talk about it, get the community involved and find these solutions. I would probably have

[1:29:41] So I realize those steps would be taken, but wouldn't it be great to be part of a council that actually really move forward with some of these concrete issues and getting these, these, some of these things actually moving forward.

[1:29:58] So, to wrap up, a very long sermon, is to say that I think folks need to know that we do work very closely with the RCMP and our community partners and with our administration and that we talk amongst ourselves and that we do recognize that this is something that we need to move forward.

[1:30:15] is our issues downtown. Otherwise it's been said before, but it's going to keep chasing hotspots and

[1:30:21] one thing. It just closes here and just keeps, it's like, whack them all. You know, things

[1:30:24] just keep popping up. So in closing, I just want to thank you very much for everything that

[1:30:30] you do. You do a lot of work for us in our community. And please share our appreciation, sincere

[1:30:36] appreciation with your force, with your team. You do all the work that none of us want to.

[1:30:43] and but we're just grateful that somebody's doing it so thank you.

[1:30:48] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming from

[1:30:50] Bacadak and Celsar Scott. Thank you, worship and through to

[1:30:54] Superintendent Brown. As has been said by everyone, thank you. I had a question

[1:31:00] when you mentioned an influx of people perhaps from Alberta. When we spoke a

[1:31:07] go you were flagging people that were coming our way from the west part of British Columbia.

[1:31:14] And I'm wondering where things are at in that regard this year.

[1:31:20] Well, I'd have to say the trend that we've seen

[1:31:26] is people out of the peace area.

[1:31:31] So Northeastern BC and Alberta, we've seen certainly a higher volume of people involved in

[1:31:39] and that regards, well, I'm not suggesting for one minute if you're from Alberta or the

[1:31:43] piece you're going to commit crime in print storage, but certainly we've seen a higher

[1:31:48] volume of a folks from that area committing some of the war of serious criminal offenses.

[1:31:54] We've had a real increase in stone vehicles and break an entered over the last month and we've

[1:32:00] apprehended a number of people and many of those people are from that region. We had a counter

[1:32:04] fitting spree again people operating in the Western Alberta and the peace area. So for whatever

[1:32:11] reason that we seem to be attracting that criminal material. And perhaps we can find a way

[1:32:17] to work more collaboratively with you to get the message out that that's not tolerated in our

[1:32:23] community. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Scott. Superintendent, thanks very much,

[1:32:29] I've got a couple of comments, and thank you for your candor, has been set around the table.

[1:32:37] We've got work to do.

[1:32:38] One of the reasons we embarked on this remedial action program is to take care of some of these hot spots.

[1:32:44] And in collaboration with our Biola Services Department, you, with your team,

[1:32:50] we've managed to look at places like the Willow, the Cannot, the Lombardy, and other locations throughout our community.

[1:32:55] And thank you for talking about downtown.

[1:33:00] We're seeing a redevelopment and a resurgence in our downtown.

[1:33:04] People are interested in building downtown.

[1:33:07] People are interested in developing.

[1:33:09] We're going to see more of it over the next four or five months.

[1:33:13] And we need to ensure from a city and an RCMP's perspective that it's a safe location.

[1:33:19] But people can commend a print storage and do business downtown.

[1:33:22] They can shop downtown, they can invest downtown, and when you identify locations throughout the city,

[1:33:29] particularly when we talk about downtown, you talk about third and third in George.

[1:33:33] We need to work with you, and it is not just the city of Prince George and the RCMP.

[1:33:39] There are either stakeholders, and we have met. There's a lot of work being done, so that work needs to continue.

[1:33:48] But we, I think, as Councilor McConaughey and others have said, we need to leave the charge.

[1:33:54] And we need to be there.

[1:33:55] We need to be there with the other organizations that are working diligently trying to resolve some of the issues.

[1:34:01] Appreciate your comments.

[1:34:02] As always, as Councilor McConaughey has said, thank your team for us and we hope in the spring.

[1:34:09] You see another dozen boots or so on the ground.

[1:34:12] Thank you. Thank you.

[1:34:13] So,

[1:34:25] Council, we have the recommendation, the presentation provided by Officer and Charge.

[1:34:32] We receive information.

[1:34:34] Thank you, Secretary.

[1:34:35] Councilor Kohler, I will always in favor of receipt.

[1:34:38] The post-charid unanimously.

[1:34:39] Thanks very much.

[1:34:41] If we can go to D4, Mr. Wells. Thank you, Your Worship. The purpose of this report is to introduce the solar removal deposit by law number 8772.

[1:34:55] His file I would replace the existing by law, existing solar removal and deposit by law from 1999.

[1:35:02] The intent of this bylaw is to regulate the removal and deposit of large quantities of soil in the city in a manner that will not create an administrative burden be

[1:35:14] enforceable in the courts and in the field. Protect the interests of surrounding land uses and the natural environment and not place unreasonable financial demands and conditions on the persons removing or depositing soil.

[1:35:27] It's the best practice by all your worship, schedule the areas that are defined, will be updated at a later date and that will be through a public process and hearing your worship.

[1:35:37] Thank you very much.

[1:35:39] Councillor Merrick.

[1:35:41] Thank you, worship, and may have been concluded already, but there was recently a city application for an amendment for a specific site.

[1:35:48] Has that gone through the full four readings?

[1:35:50] We have any active applications on the table?

[1:35:52] No, you worship.

[1:35:53] Okay, thank you.

[1:35:55] We'll have anybody else in the queue and if we can deal with recommendations one and two separately, I'd appreciate that.

[1:36:02] So, thank you. Second on one is Councillor McConaughey, all those in favor, recommendation one, opposed, carried unanimously.

[1:36:10] Very Councillor Merrick.

[1:36:11] Good, thank you. And recommendation two. Councillor Scott, Councillor Fresel, all those in favor of recommendation two, opposed carried unanimously. Thank you, Councillor.

[1:36:23] 27. Additions to the City of Constraught Heritage Register. Good evening. I wasn't quite sure who to introduce from the staff group there, but Sheryl and Hillary, and I see you two more.

[1:36:41] I see you've got some help in the audience this evening.

[1:36:48] Before we, or I turn the microphone over and I should have done this early on this evening because I try to do it all the time and Councillor Fizzell give me a bit of a nod.

[1:36:59] We have freedom of the city recipient with a this evening and pass council member and has spent numerous hours in the chambers and we see here at every event.

[1:37:10] doesn't surprise me that we're seeing her here this evening and that's

[1:37:14] Council Shirley Gratt and Shirley very nice to see you once again here at

[1:37:17] Council Chambers. Thank you.

[1:37:21] Okay, did I turn this over to you or Cheryl or

[1:37:26] Good evening, New worship.

[1:37:28] I felt so many members and I didn't have to.

[1:37:31] My name is Cheryl. I mean, it's still leaving and I just

[1:37:33] happily a song for the fifth or eighth of commission.

[1:37:36] Cheryl, if I could just interrupt if you could just move the

[1:37:39] microphone over a bit. We're having a little bit of difficulty.

[1:37:43] That one does work, there we go.

[1:37:46] Thank you.

[1:37:48] Well, good evening, Your Worship.

[1:37:50] Council members and senior administration.

[1:37:52] My name is Cheryl Livingston Lehman,

[1:37:54] and I'm the staff liaison for the Prince George Heritage Commission.

[1:37:58] It's exciting to be back here tonight.

[1:38:00] You may remember, back in June of 2016,

[1:38:03] we are here to provide you with an update of our work

[1:38:06] around the education and awareness of the heritage register

[1:38:10] With our goal to add properties to the heritage register,

[1:38:14] well tonight we have great news.

[1:38:16] With two properties we would like to add to the register,

[1:38:20] the Monroe Muffet House and the Pittman House.

[1:38:24] Before I go any further, I'd like to introduce the two people to my right.

[1:38:28] On my far right is Hillary Morgan, she's a city planner,

[1:38:32] and Caroline Ross is the chair of the Heritage Commission.

[1:38:38] The work that we'll be discussing tonight

[1:38:40] has been carried out by the Heritage Commission's Heritage Register Working Group, a not-working

[1:38:46] group consists of Caroline Ross, Deaf Adder, who's in the audience, Kurt Gable, Traumelo,

[1:38:53] who's also in the audience, and that working group has been supported by Hillary Morgan.

[1:39:01] All of the decisions made by the Working Group were brought forward to the broader Heritage

[1:39:06] commission for discussion and approvals.

[1:39:10] Before I pass the microphone over to Hillary, I have a very special announcement

[1:39:14] tonight.

[1:39:15] Back in October, the Heritage Commission nominated Hillary for a Heritage BC Award for

[1:39:22] her outstanding work on the Heritage Register.

[1:39:25] We found out today that Hillary has won this for 30 prestigious provincial award in the

[1:39:42] So this is already so well deserved.

[1:39:47] The Heritage Register work has truly taken off

[1:39:49] under Hillary's guidance and leadership.

[1:39:53] And it's been a great honor to work with her

[1:39:56] and work with the whole commission on this initiative.

[1:39:59] And it's a privilege to be able to share this news

[1:40:03] with you tonight.

[1:40:04] So congratulations, Hillary, and thanks for all

[1:40:06] the work you've done on this initiative.

[1:40:09] Thank you.

[1:40:16] Thank you for the men of applause. Your worship and counsel. Yeah, totally did not expect that. I had no idea that the commission was up to nominating me for that

[1:40:26] So thanks very much to Cheryl and the commission

[1:40:29] They've been very supportive and patient over the past year that we've been working on this and we've come a really long way and

[1:40:36] Yeah, I'm really proud of the work that this group has done and I'm excited to share the rest of this presentation to you. So

[1:40:42] I want to start by providing a reminder of sort of what the heritage register is and what its purpose is.

[1:40:49] So it is an official list of properties with heritage value and any additions to the heritage register need to be approved to the Council of Resolution.

[1:40:58] It's really a great tool for raising awareness about the history of Prince George and building civic pride in the history that has contributed to making Prince George wood this today.

[1:41:11] It also allows the city to flag properties so that the planning department is aware that

[1:41:17] property has heritage value if someone is proposing alterations or in case they want to

[1:41:23] demolish the building. However, it does not allow the city to withhold or reject demolition permits

[1:41:29] or have a lot of control over the alteration of the building. That's achieved through higher levels

[1:41:35] protections such as heritage designation and this table, which is included in the council package,

[1:41:45] sort of lays out the different tools that local governments can use to protect their heritage

[1:41:49] resources and highlights that the heritage register is relatively low on the spectrum of tools that

[1:41:57] are available, whereas designation is a really firm level of protection that allows cities to

[1:42:03] control any alterations and reject demolition permits to

[1:42:07] encourage buildings.

[1:42:11] In terms of how properties are added to the register, as I mentioned, the council of

[1:42:15] Resolution is required.

[1:42:17] Another requirement is that municipalities justify why the building has a

[1:42:22] historical value, and this is done through a statement of significance,

[1:42:26] which we will refer to all the time as an SOS.

[1:42:29] So the SOS is a document that tells the story of the building why

[1:42:33] significant what architectural features should be retained, who was involved in building it,

[1:42:39] who was in the building, and for the Pittman House and the Monroe Muffet House, there are

[1:42:44] SLS documents in the Council package. In order to add a property, the municipalities are not

[1:42:51] required to get a property owner's consent, however, for the properties that we're proposing

[1:42:57] to add tonight, we did get the property owner's consent.

[1:43:04] And just to provide a bit of a review

[1:43:06] what we have done in 2016 since we were here last year.

[1:43:11] The first thing that we did with the working group

[1:43:14] was prioritize a list of historical properties.

[1:43:18] So, the commission had been sort of compiling a list

[1:43:20] based on the context study that was done in 2009

[1:43:24] to Heritage BC, as well as a lot of other work

[1:43:28] that's been done over the years going back into the 90s

[1:43:30] and even before then.

[1:43:32] And we put that all into a database

[1:43:34] that is easily sorted and managed, and we looked at properties that were built before

[1:43:39] 1960, and then we worked as a group to narrow it down to properties that the Commission

[1:43:44] had information on,

[1:43:49] and then we used this past years a bit of a pile.

[1:43:52] The project to develop a procedure for managing the register. And the procedure is still in the works, but it lays out the process for the commission to nominate or accept nominations to add properties to the register, as well as lays out how the commission will go about evaluating the heritage value of a property. And it lays out the steps required to add a property to the register. We're also working on a procedure that will help planning and development manage records for properties that are on the heritage register.

[1:44:22] We also developed the Heritage Register brochure, which is in front of all of you, and created a web page so that there's information out there for people to learn more.

[1:44:31] Myself and Caroline did a CKPG interview, and the Commission and Cheryl played a huge role in consultation with property owners to make sure that the property owners consented to be added to the register.

[1:44:48] So we do already have a heritage register that was adopted by a State of Prince George

[1:44:53] Council in 2007, and it has four properties, so the two additions were proposing tonight

[1:44:59] will bring it up to six properties, and now I'm going to pass it over to Caroline to give

[1:45:04] you more details on the history of the two buildings that we're proposing to add tonight.

[1:45:12] Thank you, Philery.

[1:45:14] The first property that we're proposing to be added to the heritage register is the Pitman

[1:45:18] House and that's located at 2 3 8 7 McBride Crescent at the northeast corner of the intersection with 10th Avenue.

[1:45:27] This house was built in 1926 and is called the Pittman House after its original owner.

[1:45:33] W. Pittman, a pioneer citizen who established and operated the Pittman music store on 3rd Avenue until 1940.

[1:45:41] Pitman was also a city alderman, a school trustee, and a long-serving organist for Knox United Church.

[1:45:49] The Pitman House looks today much as it did in the 1920s.

[1:45:53] The house is built according to the Dutch colonial style that was popular at the time.

[1:45:58] In some of its character defining elements include its gambrel or barn style roof,

[1:46:03] Georgian style entry with a porch and columns,

[1:46:07] The medical window pattern on the front facade and beveled exterior sighting typical of the period.

[1:46:15] The Pittman House is a pioneer home and it remains a well-tended example of the type of architecture that characterized the early crescent neighborhood.

[1:46:23] And that's the reasons why we were putting this property forward as our first proposed addition to the heritage register.

[1:46:29] The

[1:46:33] second property we're proposing be added to the register is the Monroe Mothet House and that's a log home located at 1-5-3 Mothet Street North at the intersection with Hammond Avenue.

[1:46:46] This home is steeped in Pioneer History and is associated with two prominent individuals who helped shape the development of our city.

[1:46:54] The House was built in 1914 by John Monroe, who had traveled to South Fort George in 1910

[1:47:01] to open the Bank of British North America.

[1:47:04] In 1920 Monroe sold the House to Alex Moffitt, co-founder of Northern Hardware, who lived

[1:47:09] in it until 1968.

[1:47:13] The House itself is a log structure built in the prairie style of architecture associated

[1:47:18] with Frank Lloyd Wright.

[1:47:19] Some of its character defining features include the unadorned logit exterior, the original diamond shape pattern on the windows, which you can see in the row of tech of second story windows in the photo.

[1:47:33] It has a large veranda and overhangs and rich interior with detailing and decor dating from the original construction, some of which you can see in the photos on page 2 of the SOS document.

[1:47:46] This level of detailing actually far exceeded the standard of the day.

[1:47:51] So, with the exception of a wood frame extension that was later added to the rear of the house,

[1:47:57] the exterior of this home remains much as it did when it was built.

[1:48:01] In several aspects of the original interior detailing are also intact.

[1:48:07] And we are putting this property forward as our second recommended addition to the register tonight.

[1:48:12] and I'll pass the microphone over to Cheryl to summarize our recommendations.

[1:48:21] Your leadership tonight, we are recommending that council pass a resolution to have the

[1:48:25] Pippman House and the Monroe Muffet House to the city of French George Heritage Register.

[1:48:31] The Heritage Commission has passed a motion to support the addition of these buildings to the

[1:48:35] Register and we also have property owner consent.

[1:48:42] In conclusion, I would like to once again thank Hillary and Caroline and the rest of the

[1:48:48] registered working group for this outstanding work.

[1:48:52] On behalf of the Heritage Commission, we shout out a very special thank you to Troll Moro

[1:48:56] for his vast knowledge of the history of our community.

[1:49:00] Troll has played a key role in preparing and researching the statements of significance for

[1:49:05] many of our heritage properties.

[1:49:08] Last but not least, we would like to excuse me to thank the property owners of the Monroe

[1:49:12] off at House and the Pitman House for their consent and enthusiasm moving this initiative forward.

[1:49:19] And this concludes our presentation.

[1:49:21] Great.

[1:49:22] Thank you very much.

[1:49:23] I turn to Councillor Crosse.

[1:49:25] Well, thank you.

[1:49:26] I really appreciate the effort to have the committee and the staff on bringing this forward.

[1:49:31] And I certainly will support the recommendation that comes forward.

[1:49:36] And I think that we, I just had a visitor from out of town today, we had a long conversation

[1:49:39] about heritage values, some print storage, and how we need to preserve what we have. And especially

[1:49:46] whilst still as a historical merit, because we know that many of the buildings in our community

[1:49:51] have been changed so dramatically, they don't hold the same value that they used to have, but

[1:49:56] certainly these two houses are being brought forward today, certainly due. So thank you.

[1:50:02] Thank you, Councillor Crosse. Councillor McColnicky. Thank you very much, Mayor Hall,

[1:50:06] And just to build on Council across, I do want to thank the presenters and the entire Heritage Commission.

[1:50:12] I know how hard you work.

[1:50:14] It was such an honor to sit with you folks and I see how hard everybody does work and they have a heck of a lot of fun at the same time.

[1:50:22] So I know Jeff Elder did. He was always having fun.

[1:50:26] So I have a very quick question though.

[1:50:29] Just please explain to me, I should know this.

[1:50:32] But what is the difference between these two homes now being put on the heritage register?

[1:50:37] What does it designate the other homes at the Gores Street, how houses and so the other heritage homes?

[1:50:44] What in what manner are those homes recognized and is this stepping out from that, to some clarity?

[1:50:52] Well, as far as I'm aware, the only legally protected recognized buildings are those four that are on the register.

[1:51:00] So, other houses in Miller edition and the Crescent's aren't actually recognized or protected formally.

[1:51:08] Okay, so it's more of an informal, I think, recognition.

[1:51:12] I see Mr. Elder nodding in the back there.

[1:51:13] Thank you, Mr. Elder.

[1:51:15] Yeah, no, just teasing.

[1:51:16] Thank you very much for once again for all the work.

[1:51:19] I know Shirley is die hard, she doesn't.

[1:51:22] Great amount of a work for that commission as well. So thank you very much. Keep on trucking, keep it up.

[1:51:28] Thank you, Councillor Fuzell. Followed by Merrick.

[1:51:31] Thank you, Mayor Hall. And congratulations on the award tonight. It's great to hear a nice, nice timing for that to come out right now.

[1:51:40] Also nice timing for this whole agenda because as the, as the evening's gone on, we've heard about how this is a record year for construction and for new changes and new directions.

[1:51:49] And so it was nice to get a small dose of what you live in that's reconstructing the history

[1:51:55] and getting pieces of that put down on a paper, make it accessible on the web.

[1:52:01] I mean, by protecting these, by putting these on the registers and recognizing what they are,

[1:52:06] we're great retaining a piece of our history and a really valuable that we're doing that.

[1:52:11] At some point, does the commission look forward to coming back with proposals on increased

[1:52:20] protection, like we've seen in the documentation tonight, our covenants or beyond something

[1:52:26] that's on the radar?

[1:52:33] Your worship through the counselor for Zell, right now they're pretty focused on the register.

[1:52:38] I think if somebody approached us instead, I'm interested in designating my property or putting

[1:52:42] and covenant on title, then we would be happy to facilitate that.

[1:52:46] But right now that you're focused on building the register.

[1:52:49] Yeah, and that's good work.

[1:52:51] Well, thanks for bringing this forward, and I'll be supporting it too.

[1:52:53] Thank you.

[1:52:54] Thank you, Councillor Merrick.

[1:52:56] Thank you, we're shipping it.

[1:52:56] And I just want to see if my understanding is correct here in terms of the register.

[1:53:01] And I'm trying to wait the pros and cons.

[1:53:03] And to my mind, there really are no cons for the register.

[1:53:05] You're not required to do anything.

[1:53:07] But by putting your house on the register, you get access to potentially alternative

[1:53:11] building code standards, the BC building code,

[1:53:14] there are potentially grants for non-profit building owners.

[1:53:18] And of course, you have that extra little spark

[1:53:20] on your house that you get to have a little bit of history

[1:53:22] in public knowledge about where you live.

[1:53:25] So I just want to make sure I reiterate that to the public

[1:53:27] that there really is no con to getting your house

[1:53:29] on the register, and there's nothing but benefit

[1:53:31] to be had, so I'm hoping you'll have the work.

[1:53:34] I'm hoping that we'll get more people to come forward

[1:53:36] and look at whether they're home or commercial building

[1:53:39] fits their registries.

[1:53:40] So thank you very much for bringing this to and the pressure is great, so thank you very much for bringing this to our awareness.

[1:53:46] Great.

[1:53:46] Thank you.

[1:53:46] I don't have anybody else in the queue.

[1:53:48] We have a recommendation the following properties identified by the Monroe Moffat House and

[1:53:53] Pittman House.

[1:53:55] You added to the Prince George Heritage Register.

[1:53:58] Council across.

[1:53:59] Councilor Scott.

[1:54:00] Seconds.

[1:54:01] All those in favor.

[1:54:02] Post.

[1:54:02] Carol.

[1:54:03] Thank you.

[1:54:04] Thank you very much.

[1:54:06] Thank you very much.

[1:54:10] Move to DEA, Mr. Dyer, 2017 Park Strategy. Your worship, we have a park staff here tonight to present the park strategy.

[1:54:23] And I'm going to pass this over to our director, public works, this late.

[1:54:29] Good evening, your worship.

[1:54:35] I would like to introduce.

[1:54:40] Maybe we'll just wait a minute.

[1:54:41] I'll start

[1:54:49] that again.

[1:54:51] Good evening, Your Worship.

[1:54:52] I would like to introduce Sean LeBron, Manager of Parks and Solid Ways, L'Oriant,

[1:54:58] Kosek, Strategic Parks, Planner, and Robin Maconkey Community Coordinator, who will be presenting

[1:55:06] the Parks Strategy and Action Plan to Council this evening.

[1:55:10] I'd like to take a moment to thank all the staff for the hard work on this important project,

[1:55:15] especially Laurie and Robin, who's hard to work has created this final product.

[1:55:22] Thank you, Gina, and good evening your worship.

[1:55:25] On behalf of my colleague, Sean LeBron and Walden McConke,

[1:55:28] we're pleased to provide you with an overview of the park strategy

[1:55:30] and its potential implementation through an action plan.

[1:55:54] The 2017 park strategy is a tool that provides direction

[1:55:57] for the strategic investment of parks.

[1:56:00] The strategy was developed in house by city staff

[1:56:02] by assessing what we currently have, working with residents to identify potential priorities

[1:56:07] of what should be improved, and finding ways to pursue the potential investment.

[1:56:15] There are essentially three reasons why parks strategies needed at this time.

[1:56:19] Residents value parks and would like to see a number of improvements.

[1:56:23] The prioritization of infrastructure has been identified as a key focus area of council,

[1:56:28] and administration has challenged to keep up with the increasing demands for park resources.

[1:56:32] Due to a continued growth and unstructured recreation, with demands for infrastructure such

[1:56:38] as trail, skate parks, and bike parks, existing park infrastructure that is near or at the end

[1:56:43] of its life's service life.

[1:56:46] A number of deficiencies in park lines such as a limited supply of larger destination parks

[1:56:50] and a growing inventory of undeveloped parks, as well as a service delivery program that

[1:56:56] is app capacity.

[1:57:03] The development of the park strategy began with an assessment of parks, and the determination

[1:57:07] of potential priorities that were presented to the community for feedback during the spring of 2016.

[1:57:13] Residents were also invited to review and comment on a draft park strategy during the 2016

[1:57:18] Tauktober sessions in October. The feedback from these sessions was considered in the ultimate

[1:57:24] development of the final park strategy that is being presented today for your consideration.

[1:57:30] At this point I'd like to hand off the presentation to Sean LeBren,

[1:57:34] Cool provide you with a brief overview of carc separations

[1:57:42] Good evening, so no only gave me two slides to speak to so I got a really make a with my two slides here

[1:57:49] The graphic in this slide. I think is great because it really does illustrate the distribution of carc operational expenses

[1:57:57] Which store of close to $4 million and represent approximately 2.8% of the cities overall operating budget

[1:58:04] as you can see

[1:58:06] on the list of the right-hand side of some of our more specific sites and the costs of maintaining those parks and sites.

[1:58:16] The high profile sites, such as the major parks, sports fields and boulevard's come for close to half of the overall operating expense.

[1:58:24] With the city's premier parks cost in an average of $140,000 annually to maintain, so it's a big expense for sure.

[1:58:32] Around 11% of these expenses include the operations within nature parks, urban forestry and trails,

[1:58:38] about 7% of the operational expenses are dedicated to this smaller neighborhood parks

[1:58:43] that are in large quantity and dispersed throughout the community.

[1:58:47] You know, things like mosquito control, we can try or combine it for only a total of 2% of these expenses.

[1:58:54] So the pie chart is quite tall and I think it's a great graphic of where the money is.

[1:58:59] They spent the parts of the apartment.

[1:59:08] And I go, Lori, let me do all the good stuff here.

[1:59:12] This is another great slide that represents, basically, this past year, we took part in a bench-marking exercise.

[1:59:22] It's a company called Yard Sticks.

[1:59:24] And what it does is we enter in our information and it compares us to other municipalities in Western Canada.

[1:59:30] And you can see in this slide, Parks and Prince George, we have a large inventory of

[1:59:39] maintain parks, comparatively our operational cost per hectare are very low, but our annual

[1:59:46] budget for construction upgrades is also low comparatively across the board from municipalities

[1:59:52] like Camlubes and Lathbridge.

[1:59:57] That's it, that's my two slides, so at this point I'm going to hand out the lab with

[2:00:01] McCarthy who's going to finish law first.

[2:00:06] Thanks, Sean.

[2:00:07] I get the really great stuff because I get to talk about the great work we did.

[2:00:11] So I just wanted to talk to you about the assessment, so we did do an extensive research

[2:00:16] in analysis of our parts, so we were looking for potential priorities for investment,

[2:00:21] so we looked at about 109 with a primary focus on our neighborhood parts.

[2:00:24] So given the large number of smaller neighborhood parks and deficiencies in some of our park line provision.

[2:00:30] So when you did this assessment, we evaluated first of all inventory.

[2:00:34] So what do we have?

[2:00:35] We looked at standards.

[2:00:36] So how our parks measure up to standards.

[2:00:39] We looked at community demand.

[2:00:40] We're always hearing about emerging community demands and then challenges.

[2:00:44] So trying to identify any challenges or opportunities for investment.

[2:00:47] Each park was scored based on location, infrastructure, neighborhood context, safety and security.

[2:00:55] And this was really a cooperative work we had, a GIS spatial analysis done on each park,

[2:01:01] to assist with the scoring, to give us other detailed information.

[2:01:05] So we were able to get a really good idea and an inventory each park.

[2:01:10] And we were able to visually represent that through our individual park score cards in our neighborhood assessment cards,

[2:01:16] which residents could be online and we also presented during our community consultations.

[2:01:22] We did find, we did do and need for, there was a need for reclassification of some of our city district and neighborhood parks.

[2:01:30] It emerged from the assessment with a girl to clearly represent the, to identify the vision and operation of parks.

[2:01:37] So after talking to the public,

[2:01:39] Talking internally to staff, we realized that we just wanted to make it really clear, simple language, so we had some reclassifications into major parks, athletic parks, nature parks, downtown parks and community parks.

[2:01:52] Just to make it clear, this reclassification is a simplification of terms, recognizes our priorities that we heard, as I mentioned from the public and just provides that consistency.

[2:02:04] So the community engagement was actually, it was a really critical piece of the park strategy.

[2:02:09] We proceeded in two phases over the spring in the fall of 2016.

[2:02:13] We were really excited from all of our assessment work to get out to the public.

[2:02:18] We went, we held out six public open houses in the spring.

[2:02:22] In addition to various stakeholder meetings, we had feedback forms and information

[2:02:27] at our civic facilities and we just really tried to get our message out there that we wanted to hear from the people on our assessment.

[2:02:34] We then brought the draft, we worked on a draft strategy over the summer, and we were able

[2:02:39] to bring that to our five talk to our community meetings this fall.

[2:02:43] So we had over 700 residents and stakeholders, participated in the engagement, we had

[2:02:49] almost 300 people through our feedback forms, and then we had 1500 people visit our online

[2:02:56] part strategy apps. So, overwhelmingly, we heard how valuable

[2:03:01] Pinstorch parts are to people. Residents were supportive of our strategy and

[2:03:05] our goal to improve parks. The feedback identified residents generally agree with

[2:03:10] our most part parties. That part see the number of improvements and the

[2:03:14] understand limitation of resources and the reason that we were doing the part

[2:03:18] strategy.

[2:03:21] So, we had a number of key themes that really came through

[2:03:25] out and clear when we're talking to people through our feedback forms and our stakeholder meetings.

[2:03:31] The themes were supported and lined with a feedback received through our past engagement

[2:03:35] sessions.

[2:03:36] We didn't want to lose that feedback that we had done through our community service community

[2:03:40] recreation master's time.

[2:03:43] In 2014, where we heard from 2,000 people also, so we kind of tried to pull that all forward.

[2:03:48] The feedback and comments made in the past, we coincided perfectly with this plan.

[2:03:52] So we heard these four key themes, and they include more riverfront parks and trails,

[2:03:57] improvement to a number of neighborhood parks, the development of destination parks in

[2:04:02] every community area of the city, and its connected city-wide trail system.

[2:04:08] So if any move down to our priority setting, so once our analysis was done, and our

[2:04:13] community engagement was summarized, the priority setting began, so we didn't exercise

[2:04:18] where we scored each part's ability to meet the key themes expressed by our residents and stakeholders,

[2:04:24] while also considering our policy direction,

[2:04:28] conditions, service gaps, and then our potential resource allocation.

[2:04:32] So with the diagram in this slide, it illustrates that strategic priority investment,

[2:04:36] by part classification, with the highest investment at large destination parks,

[2:04:41] such as major parks of letter parks and riverfront parks.

[2:04:44] In addition to our high profile downtown parks,

[2:04:46] are well-used trails. So the specific investment priorities for these parks are listed and actually

[2:04:54] mapped in the park strategy for ease of reference. So in all your spare time you can read

[2:04:59] our park strategy and it's really well laid out and listed in that. So it's easy to kind of see

[2:05:05] where those are. So after a number of months of research and associations scoring and identifying

[2:05:12] priorities we are ready to put together some potential options. So I'll let Larry finish with

[2:05:17] our potential focus area's next one.

[2:05:21] All right, thank you Robin and Sean.

[2:05:26] The park strategy identifies 10 key focus areas to help

[2:05:29] advance prioritized park investment. These focus areas provide direction to help meet a number

[2:05:35] of the emerging community demands, fill gaps in service delivery, consider creative options

[2:05:41] scenarios and to invest strategically in parks.

[2:05:51] The implementation of the park strategy is being

[2:05:53] proposed within the framework of an action plan that builds upon the direction provided

[2:05:57] through the 10 key focus areas. This includes six options that were being initiated through a

[2:06:03] number of tasks over a two-year period following the potential adoption of the park strategy.

[2:06:10] A playground plan is proposed and is based on the priorities identified in the park strategy,

[2:06:14] which included an audit of playgrounds against the Canadian Standards Association and an assessment of the distribution of playgrounds against an 800 meter radius of residents.

[2:06:25] The five year investment program proposes the replacement or addition of 25 playgrounds, the retention of 23 newer playgrounds, and the complete removal of 20 playgrounds for provision of 48 total playgrounds.

[2:06:37] between four to five neighborhood playgrounds would be replaced or added every year.

[2:06:43] In addition to major projects such as the replacement of the rainbow park playground.

[2:06:48] The plan also includes the development of the CSA compliance maintenance and inspection program

[2:06:53] as well as a tiered level of investment based on the park classification.

[2:06:59] Park service delivery would also be formalized through a service level program

[2:07:02] With the ultimate development of a Parks operational plan that will explore efficiencies and fine potential opportunities to fill gaps in service delivery, such as trail maintenance, weed control and urban forestry.

[2:07:21] The Parks Investment Program would begin with an inventory update followed by capital budget planning for the investment priorities identified in the Parks Strategy.

[2:07:29] This would be followed by the development of a ten-year park asset management plan that would strategically advance service delivery and the investment parks of parks.

[2:07:38] over a long term.

[2:07:41] Park partnerships would continue to be explored on an ongoing basis to advance park investments,

[2:07:46] such as the collaboration with the Clayton A. First Nation for enhancements to Clayton A. Memorial Park.

[2:07:53] A bad time in a sport field strategy is proposed to review the delivery of these facilities

[2:07:58] and to find potential efficiencies that would benefit both users and the city of Constorge.

[2:08:04] Additional partnerships such as those with school district 57,

[2:08:07] Community associations and committees of council, such as the Heritage Commission, an accessible advisory committee, would be explored further to help advance a number of objectives such as inclusivity, accessibility, heritage and beautification of parks.

[2:08:23] Enhancedments to park visitor services and communications would be advanced through initiatives such as

[2:08:29] improved signage programs, promotions, and external communications in addition to potential

[2:08:34] accommodations for event hosting and age friendly parks.

[2:08:39] Parkland Disbursement Ever Purposing would be considered by first developing a formal parkland

[2:08:44] disbursement policy for potential adoption.

[2:08:48] The policy will consider the guidelines provided through the park strategy, which includes

[2:08:52] criteria to determine potential disbursement sites, the incorporation of a public consultation

[2:08:58] and rezoning process, and the redistribution of money is from the sale of land back into

[2:09:04] parks.

[2:09:04] Once the policy has been developed and approved, lower-

[2:09:09] Priority sites such as underutilized areas, smaller parks, and playground removal sites would be considered

[2:09:16] for repurposing. This repurposing could take a number of forms, such as maintaining open

[2:09:21] lawn areas for informal recreation, plan to naturalization of sites with wrapping roofs to provide

[2:09:28] access to natural areas within neighborhoods, as well as the consideration of potential

[2:09:33] their disbursement sites with resources

[2:09:35] reallocated to higher priority parks.

[2:09:39] To conclude the monitoring of the six proposed actions

[2:09:42] is suggested in the form of an annual report to council

[2:09:45] with updates on progress and revisions is required.

[2:09:49] The website will be used as the primary communication

[2:09:51] tool with detailed information for residents

[2:09:54] and stakeholders on the various initiatives

[2:09:57] and potential investment programs such as the playground plan.

[2:10:01] The policy direction within the parks strategy will also continue to inform other city

[2:10:06] strategies that are currently under development, such as the age-friendly plan and community

[2:10:11] collective impact.

[2:10:16] This concludes our presentation.

[2:10:18] We thank you for your consideration of the parks strategy and welcome to the questions.

[2:10:23] Great.

[2:10:23] Thanks very much, Lauren.

[2:10:24] I'm going to call on Councillor Merrick, followed by Councillor Forzell.

[2:10:28] Thank you, Worship, and I think it's worth acknowledging that this is perhaps a tier process

[2:10:33] in the making, maybe your presenters could clarify when this process actually started.

[2:10:38] We began with a presentation at Council in July of 2015.

[2:10:42] So here we are in 2017 and I think a lot of us have been waiting eagerly for this and there's

[2:10:48] no shortage of words I could just describe how much work and creativity and effort has

[2:10:52] been put into this and how many great things have come out of it.

[2:10:54] One just the data, I mean I love data and there's a great deal of it, but to the app that was made available that allows residents to go and check out all the different neighborhood parks and what amenities they have through the app and just being able to inform a major public function of the city in terms of better planning.

[2:11:11] And if you've been to talktober in the last year, you know, the residents are talking about parks and got to hear Mr. Librun's very plaintiff cry for better investment in this sector.

[2:11:25] And I'm really proud of a strategy that's coming forward. It's gone through the finance audit committees coming to budget to reallocate, I think, a million dollars more to parks capital this year or in 2017.

[2:11:35] so exciting for me. A couple of high notes I think are nature parks. So in that

[2:11:41] pie graph that was shown to us, I think they were only 3% of the budget, but I did a

[2:11:45] little calculation here, 77% of the actual land mass of parks, and certainly the ones that

[2:11:50] provide access to our riverfront in many cases. So a very high value to our community.

[2:11:56] And just I guess the volume of neighborhood 66 major neighborhood parks all over the city and in

[2:12:06] So I think there's probably a few more, there is at the total, there's a few more parks in that.

[2:12:12] Okay, so there's a lot of parks and there's just so much in this report.

[2:12:18] One of the things that we've dealt with this past week has been a large volume of letters from some folks concerned about

[2:12:24] the specifically the future of North College Park and College Heights.

[2:12:27] And I think unfortunately there's been a bit of misinformation there and that they're directly

[2:12:32] tying the strategy to the future of that park.

[2:12:35] And this is not that at all.

[2:12:36] The reality is there's no proposal on the table for Nurse College Park and the strategy

[2:12:42] gives us no more or less legal tools to do anything to the college park.

[2:12:46] If we don't pass the park strategy, Council still has the same tools that it's disposal

[2:12:52] to sell or retain that park piece.

[2:12:54] But the reality is there's no proposal on the table.

[2:12:56] And so, I know some of the residents who are very concerned and I apologize that it was

[2:13:02] confused with the strategy because the strategy itself is actually very good.

[2:13:05] And what you've done is presented us with a number of options of how we move forward with

[2:13:08] funding our parks.

[2:13:09] And we're not going to take an option off the table for you.

[2:13:11] We want to know that administration has the leeway to look at all the options moving forward

[2:13:16] and present that council for their decision in the end.

[2:13:19] So, thank you for a comprehensive body of work and looking forward to great new parks investments

[2:13:25] in 2017.

[2:13:27] Thank you.

[2:13:27] Councillor Forzell.

[2:13:30] Thank you, Mayor Hall, and following up on Councillor

[2:13:33] Merrick's comments.

[2:13:34] I just wanted to ask a first of all,

[2:13:36] great work to see and thorough and methodical,

[2:13:42] But can you comment on the dispersion policy?

[2:13:45] What does it look like?

[2:13:46] What are the steps that happen when a park is identified

[2:13:51] as potentially being served

[2:13:54] What goes on from that point forward and how many time would we see it back at Council

[2:13:59] Friends?

[2:13:59] Can you just walk through that for us?

[2:14:01] You're worshiped to Council for Zell.

[2:14:03] So at this time we only have Parkland as person in guidelines and so that has been used

[2:14:08] most recently with the Ron Brent portion of land that was subdivided.

[2:14:13] And so what happened in a process very similar was start with community consultation where

[2:14:17] we'd host a meeting and talked to residents about what is being proposed.

[2:14:21] Part of that, we'd even make sure that the lands in question would align with the criteria

[2:14:29] for a potential disbursement site that is in our guidelines as well.

[2:14:33] Once a community consultation has occurred and it appears favorable to move forward,

[2:14:38] at that point it would enter into a formal rezoning process where again there would be an

[2:14:43] opportunity to comment through a public hearing and after such time should have passed, it

[2:14:48] would move on to a public land sale.

[2:14:49] So there are multiple times that Council would be involved in those processes, but at this time we only have guidelines.

[2:14:56] We do not have a formal policy, and so the goal is to, as if I would come, and the action line is to create a policy for adoption.

[2:15:05] Well, thank you for that, and in addition to coming back to Council, I'd like to hearing about the community consultation that would take place through each one of those steps as well.

[2:15:13] Thank you. I also wanted to acknowledge that the peace on the riverfront nature parks and the

[2:15:22] wake of the rezoning back in April of this year. One of the things Council did was asked to ask

[2:15:28] administration to look at protection of the riverfront and similar note seeing it in the park strategy was

[2:15:35] reassuring and especially seeing that it was among the high priority items. So glad to see that and looking

[2:15:42] forward to outcomes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Fuzzell.

[2:15:47] Councilor McConaughey. Thank you, Mayor Hall. And I just want to thank Councilor

[2:15:52] Merrick once again for bringing up that part about the concerns that are

[2:15:57] come forward with the eating park. I think it's important. Folks know that they've

[2:16:01] been heard and that we all recognize they're up to need to reach out. But I think

[2:16:06] Councilor Merrick lay that out very clearly that the strategy is not tied to any

[2:16:11] to development. That's a whole other process and to itself which consists of public hearings. There's

[2:16:17] a whole other public process that would go with that. Lastly, and more importantly, to, I think,

[2:16:24] the three presenters. This is an enormous body of work. This is really a lot of, a lot of heavy

[2:16:30] lifting's been done, and just show my appreciation. You guys just do a great job. And it's

[2:16:42] Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Scott. Thank you, worship and thank you to all those who emailed us and extended their questions, comments, concerns.

[2:16:55] I found the report to be quite comprehensive and it clarified a great many issues for me. I'm very grateful for all the work that went into it.

[2:17:04] and I look forward to the continuing unfolding of it all.

[2:17:08] Thank you.

[2:17:11] Thank you, folks, across.

[2:17:12] Sure, we're ship, and I too would like to acknowledge

[2:17:15] the great report that we had in front of us

[2:17:17] long, long time in coming, and we know a lot of effort

[2:17:19] went into it.

[2:17:20] So thank you for that.

[2:17:24] I commented in an earlier meeting,

[2:17:26] and maybe this is the time for the place,

[2:17:28] but just how the comments I got from visitors

[2:17:31] from at a town this last summer,

[2:17:33] Just how great our parks looked and really lots of people thinking that we are on the right track and so I guess

[2:17:39] I'm it's great to see the report because it's broader than just the neighborhood parks

[2:17:43] It's all of all of our parks and all the work that needs to be done and I guess for me

[2:17:49] It's it's yes, they look wonderful, but how do we sustain that and how do we make them even better?

[2:17:54] So I'm looking forward to

[2:17:56] To that future discussions about that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[2:18:01] Thank you, Bishop. I can pretty much copy everything that has been said already, and thank you for the tremendous work that went into this paper.

[2:18:10] And yeah, two years, and a current report that was for me, and not just comprehensive, very educational. I didn't know what we had there, and it's good to know.

[2:18:23] I love it as being said already, which I want to say, but I would like to pull up on who's

[2:18:28] me with Council of Council said, many visitors come visit all family here from other cities

[2:18:35] and we see and also in Canada, and even from overseas, and they actually, just like you

[2:18:42] say, you know, this is a clean city, you have really a nice city here, everything is

[2:18:47] orderly, and when you think about it, it comes not necessarily down to cast a pack orderly.

[2:18:55] It comes down that we have a clean city.

[2:18:57] It comes down to our green space and comes down to our parks.

[2:19:01] So, it good to know, good to have these numbers.

[2:19:04] And also certainly, a wake-up call that we have to look at this into the future and maintain it.

[2:19:12] Thank you.

[2:19:14] Great. Thanks very much.

[2:19:14] I just got a couple of comments, I saw the park strategy as something very similar to what we're doing and thank you to administration for doing it.

[2:19:23] That's the work that we're doing around the standards of coverage, which involve our fire coverage, rotor community.

[2:19:29] So the health and safety matter, we're going to a better idea, particularly with all one, and a facility assessment.

[2:19:37] But we've talked a lot about infrastructure and infrastructure is not just as I said a few

[2:19:41] times the pipes underground, it's our buildings, it's our parks, it's everything really

[2:19:46] that we own.

[2:19:48] And so when we take a look at the park strategy, the standards of coverage, the facility

[2:19:52] assessment, those are all really mainstays of what we're going to be dealing with as an

[2:19:57] administration and council over the next couple of years.

[2:20:00] It's important work to be done so that we can identify where shortfalls are, what work

[2:20:05] we have to put into it and has, as Sean has asked many times, more money, and that's just

[2:20:12] the way it is.

[2:20:14] That's the way it is, so I think that I've had a couple of things that I wanted to touch

[2:20:20] on, but I think they've been covered off.

[2:20:21] I want to recognize the folks that are in the gallery this evening.

[2:20:24] These are folks that contacted us regarding eating place, I'm assuming, and I recognize some

[2:20:30] that are from that neighborhood.

[2:20:32] But for me it was a boat, Lori, you talked about it, I think it was you, Lori, or Robin that talked about 20 playgrounds who talked about in the document that I read, it looked, take a look at the surplus land that we have.

[2:20:48] But I'm pleased to hear that there is an absolute process in place that we will deal with and you set it yourself, you've got guidelines.

[2:20:55] And now you're going to start to work and move into that policy piece where that will come back to council.

[2:21:01] And when we're looking at the, if we're looking at anything to do with surplus or playgrounds, whatever it might be,

[2:21:09] that's going to come back to council for us to deal with.

[2:21:12] And I think that's the safety net piece that I like.

[2:21:15] It's no different than what we did a few years ago with tennis courts, tennis courts that were really in bad repair.

[2:21:22] The Asheville was heaved, it was cracked, yet we were attempting to try to maintain them.

[2:21:28] And so Council had an opportunity to participate in that process.

[2:21:31] Also, please, that in Council of America indicated, and Council of Council of McConaughey,

[2:21:36] that this process is separate from anything else that we're talking about tonight.

[2:21:40] So, appreciate that.

[2:21:42] So, with that, I have nobody else in the queue, and I just want to thank you for a great work you've done on this for the last year and a half.

[2:21:49] We have four recommendations and I'll do each one of those separately.

[2:21:56] If I could, and recommendation one is to receive for information, the report, December 28th,

[2:22:03] 2016, Councilor Everett, moves that, secondary councilor, color levels and favorite.

[2:22:08] Opposed, that's carried unanimously.

[2:22:10] The second recommendation is approved of the 2017 Park Strategy as attached to the report,

[2:22:15] dated December 28th, 2016.

[2:22:17] for the General Manager of Engineering and Public Works.

[2:22:21] Councillor Conecky, Councillor Crosse, all those in favor.

[2:22:24] A closed, carried unanimously.

[2:22:26] And the third one is approved of Park Strategy Action Plan

[2:22:29] as attached to report data December 28, 2016.

[2:22:33] From the General Manager of Engineering and Public Works.

[2:22:37] Thank you, second on three.

[2:22:40] Councillor Coneck, all those in favor of three.

[2:22:43] A closed, carried unanimously.

[2:22:44] and to direct staff to completed amendment to the City of Prince George's official community plan by law number 8383-2011 in alignment with the reclassification of parks within the 2017 park strategy.

[2:22:58] Thank you, Councillor Frasal, Councillor Crosse, all those in favour?

[2:23:02] Pollosed, carried unanimously.

[2:23:04] Thank you very much.

[2:23:05] Folks, for that greatly appreciate it.

[2:23:06] Thank you, Councillor Robert.

[2:23:08] So if we can move now to D9, and I'll turn to Mr. Value. Thank you. We're ship in December of 2016, we updated our comprehensive fees and charges by laws in quite a few different areas, but predominantly community services.

[2:23:24] And doing so, we realize there are the clerical errors specifically in the Civic Center fee schedule. And so this report is strictly to continue the December 2016 work and ask that council approve what they're basically doing.

[2:23:38] and in concept already have a 3% increase to the existing 2016 Civic Center fee rates.

[2:23:45] Great. Thank you, Councillor Fuzell.

[2:23:48] Thank you, Mayor Hall, and through to Mr. Dalio, it just generally did the rates that we

[2:23:52] have fallen in. We're pretty competitive with other facilities in the city.

[2:23:59] You're speaking specifically to the Civic Center, compared to other facilities.

[2:24:04] to others. Ladies, perhaps Mr. Whitball may be able to answer that part better.

[2:24:15] Ladies, so we have a group of care communities that we jack out of all of our facilities.

[2:24:22] Okay, this is back. Thank you.

[2:24:24] Thank you.

[2:24:25] Now, there's speakers. We have the recommendation that Council Grant Fristler

[2:24:29] meetings comprehensive fees and charges by the number 755-72004 amendment by

[2:24:34] the number 8-839-2017.

[2:24:37] Thank you, Councillor Forzaile, Councillor Scott.

[2:24:39] Seconds, all those in favor.

[2:24:41] Close, carried unanimously.

[2:24:44] Well, I'm sorry, Councillor Colour, opposed.

[2:24:46] My apologies, still passes.

[2:24:48] Thank you.

[2:24:53] Section E, by law, spinal reading, introduction E1. Thank you, seconder on file, Councillor Crosse, all those in favour?

[2:25:02] Coz, care unanimously, and E2, final reading.

[2:25:07] Make it Councillor Scott, Councillor Mary, call those in favour?

[2:25:11] Poes, care unanimously, and we move to correspondence.

[2:25:16] Yes, for responses was the amendment.

[2:25:18] Thank you, second on receipt.

[2:25:22] Councillor Cows, Salas and Favor of receipt.

[2:25:25] Opposed, carried unanimously.

[2:25:27] Motion to adjourn.

[2:25:29] Thank you, seconder.

[2:25:31] Councillor Scott.

[2:25:32] Opposed and Favor.

[2:25:34] Opposed, carried unanimously.

[2:25:35] Thank you very much, Councillor Levitt.

[2:25:38] Greatly appreciate you're connecting with us this evening.

[2:25:41] Take care.

[2:25:43] Good evening.

[2:25:44] Thank you very much, Councillor.

Jan 09, 2017 Council

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