Thursday, December 14, 2023

Will CityWest be next up for the City Council Speaker's tour?


After a rather expansive discussion on Port themes on Monday night, Prince Rupert City Councillor Nick Adey clearly liked the format and opportunity for Council to advocate for community with the Port officials.

So much was his enthusiasm for the night's engagement, that the councillor is now seeking to expand on speakers night at City Hall. 

With the first subject of interest for his list, an invitation for the City of Prince Rupert owned CityWest to send a representative for some information sharing and hopefully for customers and residents of the city a question and answer session.

"Building off the presentation that we had with the Port and what I think was a broad conversation that was worth having. I'm wondering  if a similar opportunity might be presented to us in terms of CityWest. -- Councillor Nick Adey at Monday's Council Session

The Mayor turned the request over to City Manager Rob Buchan for follow up on, Mr. Buchan indicating that staff could make that request.

The Port Presentation from Monday, makes for a solid blue print for such engagement projects for Council.

The format of a twenty minute corporate overview, followed by some forty minutes of expansive questions on a range to topics, did seem to cover a lot of the areas of note for the community.

That would work for CityWest for sure, with many questions that could come up. 

Among them the rather limited return on investment that the communication company delivers back to its owners by way of loan repayments, a topic that did not make for any of the Council Budget discussions of November or December.

Towards themes of note for CityWest customers,  there could be questions asked towards the path forward for the Local Fibre to Home program and items related to service in the community.

Council may even want to advertise the presentation and seek out questions from the public to ask of CityWest officials. 

But here's hoping that once they get into the mindset of seeking out information for the public, that they take it even further. 

Calling in whomever has oversight for Watson Island to update the community on the current level of investment in that industrial space.

The same could go for the operations of Legacy Corp, offering up some details on how the instrument is used by the City, along with how much is left to call on from that LNG era driven cash windfall.

Hopefully, if those engagement opportunities come along, City Council members will bring the same zeal  and lengthy list of questions for the civic officials as they had at the ready on Monday for the Port.

More notes on Monday's Council session can be reviewed here.

You can explore some of the latest themes from CityWest through our archive page.

6 comments:

  1. One question I would like to ask, Bob Long was installed on CityWest board of directors as city rep. Now Rob Buchan is on
    CityWest board of directors as city rep. One should go.

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  2. Rory Mandryk and Bob Thompson are also former city management staff who for reasons unknown are still on the CityWest board. I wonder what they are paid for those positions?

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    1. Keep wondering taxpayers are not entitled to know what CityWest is up too. Not only in Prince Rupert but right across the province.

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    2. CityWest acts like it's a private company and that what it does is nobody's business, but being owned by the City it's a "local public body" (FIPPA Sch.1) and is no different than Legacy Corporation, which does make reports. It's good that the city council appointed Rob Buchan to the board. Hopefully more appointments will be made.

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    3. Taxpayers aren't entitled to anything, that pretty much sums up Citywest's attitude.

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    4. It would be nice if CityWest contributed to city coffers rather than being a drag and requiring taxpayer support.

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