As Budget moves towards adoption, Mayor Brain brings his Facebook followers on a tour of success

Fresh from a few weeks of praise for his efforts from his fellow councillors and on the cusp of a 75K a year salary confirmation, Prince Rupert Mayor Lee Brain took a bit of a Facebook Page Victory Tour on Wednesday.

With the city's top public official posting a string of good news proclamations for his avid followers now that the 2019 Budget process is all but complete.

The Mayor's themes delivered through Social Media, perhaps offer a glimpse as to what will be featured as part of the City's Annual Report when it is released later this Spring.

For his Facebook faithful, Mr. Brain, opens his update seemingly declaring that his notes serve as the answer to those that may be trying to convince residents that Prince Rupert is not moving forward.

And from that declaration,  the Mayor's notes indeed do move forward, covering a range of recent news that City Hall wants to get the word out on.

Some of the news actually delivered thanks to the financial distributions of the provincial or Federal governments, but still making for an integral part of his narrative of a community blazing its trail forward.

The entries of the Facebook posting actually channelled a lot of the discussion from the Council chambers of the last few weeks, as the City's Councillor's saluted the work of the Mayor over the previous four years and now well into his second term.

Calling the road  to revitalization that of a marathon and not a sprint, Mr. Brain makes note of recent Port related industrial arrivals such as AltaGas and the Raymont Grain facility on Ridley Island, as well as the city's efforts with Pembina on Watson Island as signs of transformation.

Though when it comes to the city's re-investment and focus on Watson Island there's no mention if any other new tenants have been lined up for the Watson  Intermodal Trade and Logistics Park, since the Pembina announcement of almost a year and a half ago.

Mr. Brain calls attention to recent partnerships on local trails and ballparks, as well as the arrival of affordable housing, though the latter comes without mention of the province's funding which brought those projects to life.

He also makes mention of the recent Burger controversy with A &W, noting that while the restaurant won't be supported by the city at the mall parking lot, that talks apparently continue on the proposed eatery.

With the Budget set for final approval today, yesterday's post to Facebook highlighted some of the elements of the Council's decision making.

Though again, it should be noted that some of those decisions became much easier to deliver with the addition of 8.1 million dollars of one time funding from the province and an additional $600,000 from the Federal Gas Tax revenues, with the latter earmarked mostly towards an expansive paving project this year.

In his missive to the masses, or those at least who follow along on Facebook, Mayor Brain looks to address those who may not share quite the same view as he does on the state of the city's success so far, with a clarion call to his most devout of Facebook followers to  "Please share if you are a true Rupert booster and believe in our future"

Something which seems to leave open the question of the loyalty status  as "True Rupert Boosters" for those residents of Prince Rupert if they don't click on the share button on their Facebook pages ...

You can review Mayor Brain's check list of success from this link.

For more background on the work of City Council see our archive page here.

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