Spreading out from the City Hall Head Office; the evolution of Prince Rupert Inc.

One segment of Monday evening's Council Presentation commentary from the city's council members, took residents viewing the Zoom presentation of the night into a marked departure from the past and a glimpse of an ongoing evolution of how the City is operating these days. 

That as Councillor Reid Skelton-Morven made note Monday of a few of the expanding list of enterprises that the city is involved in.

For the  most part, the mantra of new corporate activism and partnerships has been created during the tenure of this council membership and the one previous, much of it done without any explanation to residents as to what they were doing as they created the new portfolio of commercial interests.

During the course of the Council Zoom session this week, Mr. Skelton-Morven departed from the actual discussion of the Budget overview of Monday to dwell on and offer comment on civic salaries.  

With the Councillor seemingly suggesting that the level of compensation that Prince Rupert provides its staff members is required, that owing to the growing roster of entrepreneurial adventures the city has come forward with. 

"I think that  for us as a municipality, I've always been very admired and in awe at just how entrepreneurial  and enterprising our staff are, very progressive and very forward thinking.  

This is the future of good governance, is joint ventures and all these other partnerships that we're been able to form, to kind of outsource other revenues from a very, very outdated and archaic kind of tax model that's kind of has  left us with some decrepit infrastructure that we're not able to service. 

So for us to kind of think outside of the box an not only that, but very, very much so not have increase taxes for yet again another year and it's pretty, pretty impressive 

A lot of folks you know there's a lot of chatter on social media, or have headlines that are published out of context regarding staff compensation.  

And I just want to put some things into perspective for folks that are watching at home. 

That you look at entry level jobs for industry that are clearing six figures just at that starting point and for us to have competitive rates to be able to do that, this is just basic economics and staff retention, is to maintain the quality of staff that we have, and I firmly believe that we have some of the best staff in the country working with us and able to do the things that we're doing, is that they are compensated fairly and I think that, that's super, super important.

And to publish some things out of context, you know not necessarily doing an apples-to-apples comparison with a municipality that is of equal size, but does not have nearly as much as we have going on here in Prince Rupert.

With import/export operations, we have a telecommunications company with multiple municipal enterprises and counting and just having the forward thinking staff  that we have and continuing to see first hand how blessed we are, andI just want to thank the staff and the team ...

You can review Councillor Skelton-Morven's  City Council symposium on civic economics from the City's Video archive, starting at the thirty two minute mark of Monday's session.

As he notes in his expansive review, the Councillor observed of CityWest, the grand-daddy of civic investment that dates back a century and once was a city department, before becoming a stand alone corporation with a heavy City staff presence on the Board of Directors.

CityWest has been notable for its expansion plans of the last few years, extending their footprint from outside of the Northwest, into Bulkley Valley and now the Nechako Valley.

However, as the company has grown, the return to the city has seen some retraction, the days of the 1 or 2 million dollar pay back to the city from a decade ago, now a more moderate amount in the hundreds of thousand of dollars instead.

The Councillor did not speak to the most high profile creation, though still one somewhat mysterious to most of us outside of the City Hall drawbridge. 

That being Prince Rupert Legacy Inc., a financial instrument that the city created in April of 2014 during the Jack Mussallem era  and a program which has been used for a number of infrastructure initiatives, a salary top up from the past and the funding instrument for a range of civic projects, vision planning concepts, or just there to lend a hand when things may go sideways.

Yet the city offers few glimpses by way of a public update on the workings of its financial instrument, and for the most part the City councillors rarely make mention of it during the public council sessions twice a month.

Mr. Skelton-Morven did make note of the city's import-export business, a nod we assume to the Watson Island Logistics Terminal, which celebrated an introduction in 2017  and word of a significant Tennant in the Pembina energy company; however if there are any other tenants putting down roots at Watson Island, the city and the Economic Development office has not shared the roster.

In fact much like Legacy, there have not been any updates on the Watson Island revival in a number of years, any financial information a one item line in a monthly variance notice. 

The topic offering no questions from Council, or explanation from staff as to whether the world of import-export is delivering profits to the site and how the city is using that revenue stream, nor as to how much the city may be spending towards ongoing work at the location.

Both Legacy and Watson have been noted in the past as instrumental in helping cushion some of the financial challenges the city has seen, with the City's Chief Financial Officer Corrine Bomben praising the city's initiative towards both last year, Councillor Cunningham at the time calling Legacy the city's saviour.

"We are fortunate that council's foresight to create a municipal enterprise to diversify the use of city assets such as Watson Island are providing us the cushion needed during this global crisis." -- City of Prince Rupert CFO in April of 2020

Though while the city clearly makes use of funds through them to address its needs, there has yet to be any actual public presentation to council as to how these two elements work on a day to day basis, or any comprehensive list to follow as to how they have been used by the city in the past.

In the case of Legacy Inc., there hasn't even been a Financial report posted to the city website since 2016.

Councillor Skelton-Morven stopped at those two in his praise of the new spirit of civic entrepreneurial spirit, a zest for business which mostly seems to be launched with seed money from the city's financial sheets.

However there are other ventures of note, some of them that probably few in the community even know that they currently own, or operate.

There's the Cow Bay Marina, which the city introduced in 2016, with COVID clearly the last year has been a challenging one for the facility.  However, even with a budget presentation to review this month, none of the councillors asked what kind of financial hit the marina took and how that may have impacted on its financial situation or its forecasts for the future.

Last year the city became a property maintenance operator of sorts in the Rushbrook Floats area of the city, taking out space at the Canadian Fish Warehouse, which they now sub lease out, their first customer the Prince Rupert Gymnastics Association, a second the Wheelhouse Brewing Company. 

The actual plan to take on the warehouse was never discussed in a public session of council prior to the arrangement with Canadian Fish, the discovery of the project only coming after a land use notice was published in public notice advertisement. 

A rather curious way of informing residents that they were becoming land barons of sorts and one that provided no real details on why the city chose to take on the warehouse operations other that to serve their Rupert 2030 vision.

In an after the purchase note in January of 2020, Mayor Brain did note observe how the new space was part of a plan for a revitalized Rushbrook area.

"Council and staff saw this unexpected opportunity as a way to obtain a new strategic waterfront asset and protect the community uses that currently benefit that area ... We believe having a new indoor space next to the revitalized Rushbrook Trail, the boat launch and Cow Bay down the road will be a great addition to the waterfront and fits into our newly formed 2030 Vision" -- Mayor Lee Brain on the city's interests in a warehouse on the east side waterfront

On the theme of land, as the City has launched its work on the Official Community Plan and hoped for plans to develop more housing in the community, Council has noted that they own parcels of land across the city, though trying to find a listing of the property assets on the city's website is going to yield no results.

Since the City seems to be interested in becoming joint participants in property developers to a fashion, the time may be at hand to provide a land inventory of all of the holdings that we have in our version of a municipal MLS system. 

That so residents can have some kind of an idea as to what the collective portfolio looks like and who knows, maybe one of those scouring the list may even wish to explore development possibilities.

With a grant in hand for redevelopment of the waterfront near the Kwinitsa station and the Rotary Park, the city is set to move forward with an ambitious redevelopment plan and will become a landlord for tenants of the CN Heritage building, having sought out proposals late last year, though Council has yet to discuss that remediation project at any length in a public session.

Councillor Skelton-Morven and most if not all of Council team have clearly endorsed the new vision towards partnerships that the Mayor and others on council and senior staff have been steering the city towards, and if they don't, they have kept their comments to themselves. 

The only thing is, no one seems to have consulted the share holders as the journey continues, or called an investors meeting to let us know how the return on investment is going, or who, if anyone, is providing oversight on all the investments and any new adventures that may lay ahead.

It's too late for informing the public prior to this Budget consultation period, but sometime in the near future Prince Rupert Council should probably consider having the subsidiary members of Prince Rupert Inc. provide for updates for the community.

Providing for someone representing each of the individual ventures to check in, one after another, presenting at a pubic council session to share of the challenges, successes and financial bottom lines for each element of the city's growing entrepreneurial portfolio.

If they do, maybe the council members may even ask a few questions for us.

More on Monday's Council session can be reviewed from our Council Timeline here.

Past items of interest from City Council can be reviewed from our Council Discussion page.