Prince Rupert City Councillors, (most of them anyways) returned to their chairs at City Hall this week and the first public council session for 2023 on Monday evening provided for some significant discussion themes for the community in the days that followed.
What has become an ongoing discussion at City Hall on the impact Port land valuations and payments through the Payment in lieu of Taxes process, once again gained some strong attention.
That following the presentation of a report on the topic from from CFO Corinne Bomben and 25 minutes of discussion our the less than fifty minutes of the civic session on the night.
Such was the interest in the topic, that many of our follow up notes to the Monday Council meeting dominated the most read listings this week.
With only one item breaking that grip on the list of five and that, a letter from the province to the Federal Government was related to the city's water issues.
From the weeks review the most read of our pieces, was that of our notes on a statement from the Port related to the Monday night discussion and themes that the council members had explored.
Port response to City's PILT Report and discussion takes issue with a number of Council's findings -- A Statement from the Prince Rupert Port Authority on Thursday, provided the first indication as to how the PRPA viewed the City's findings from their report delivered Monday night. (posted January 11, 2023)
That article was followed by:
Port Property valuations, impact on PILT and Civic vexation from it all, make for bulk of discussion at Monday City Council session -- Not too far behind in the number of views from our PRPA notes, was our story on the Monday council session. With the discussion to the topic of Port property valuation and PILT made for more than half of the discussion from Monday's session, of significant interest. As well, our piece from Monday morning, which introduced Ms. Bomben's report also found a very large audience. (posted January 11 , 2023)
City's plans towards MacCarthy facility on Portage edging towards purchase option -- City Council members received an update on the progress towards a move into the old MacCarthy GM property, with Operations Director Richard Pucci providing councillors with some background on the renovation plan and indications of recommendation to come to pursue a purchase option (posted January 11, 2023)
Will City's path on PILT, become a Civic Pandora's box by Budget time? -- With what has been a growing theme of warnings towards a very challenging budget period for 2023, City Council's approach on their Port related PILT concerns, could also bring some attention and make for discussion towards their own past decision making as they explore how they will approach the Budget for the year ahead. (posted January 13, 2023)
Province offers to prioritize resources towards Prince Rupert water line woes, if Federal government partners up toward issue -- Almost lost in the week of focus on the Port and PILT themes, was some hopeful news out of Victoria. With a trio of BC cabinet ministers forwarding a letter to the Federal government seeking federal participation in addressing got waterline issues. As for the recent challenges from just before Christmas, as we noted this week, the City has yet to provide any further updates on the work underway since the end of the Local State of Emergency in December. (posted January 10 , 2022)
You can find our weekly Blog watching feature posted every Sunday morning by 9AM, making for a handy way to catch up to the week that was, at a leisurely weekend pace.
You can also review the full listings of the week just past, from our Blog Archive index page found on the right hand side of the page.
For updates on new items posted daily to the blog, we direct you to our CharlesMHays Twitter feed, where we post notification of new stories as we post them.
Our archive of weekly Blog Watching can be found here.
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