A former mayor, city manager and city planner walk into a consulting firm....
And why aren't there as many concerts at CN Centre? Read to the end for a moose traffic jam
Welcome back to a more seasonal weather pattern. I stopped by the Vaisakhi celebrations Saturday along with hundreds of people, hit up the UNBC plant sale Sunday and spent part of yesterday figuring out how to set up a new canoe rack. I also saw Fast X which was a perfect movie, 10/10, no notes, yes I like these films, no I can’t explain it. Hope your weekend was good.
We’re starting today’s newsletter with a couple of stories from the Citizen. The first is about what former mayor Lyn Hall, former city manager Kathleen Soltis and former manager of planning Ian Wells are up to, which is they…
“Are all listed as staff members at Wellesley Consulting Group. Hall’s title at the company is associate, government relations and strategic partnerships; Soltis’ title is associate, stakeholder engagement, people and culture; and Wells’ title is associate, land use and development planning, government relations.”
That’s kind of interesting in and of itself, thought the Citizen also notes that all three were key players in the downtown parkade fiasco, “which saw the public kept in the dark about millions of dollars in cost overruns on the downtown city project.”
There’s not any direct link between the parkade, this consulting firm and the new jobs reported — as in, no reason to think anything nefarious is going on — but still it’s interesting that all three left city hall with this hangning over them and all three found work at the same place. The real reason, though, is probaly this: “The company was founded in Prince George by managing partner Ross Birchall.”
Arena musicians aren’t coming to town
The next tidbit is an interview with the manager of the CN Centre about the difficulty Prince George is having getting concerts to come to town post-COVID restrictions:
Everything from the cost of travel, the high U.S. dollar exchange rate, Canadian taxes on touring artists, and a shortage of skilled production technicians is leaving concert promoters scratching their heads wondering what they have to pull out of their tailspins and get back to booking shows like they used to do.
CN Centre entertainment manager Glen Mikkelsen says there is no easy answer.
“Prince George is not alone, all the markets like ours – Dawson Creek, Kamloops, Kelowna, Lethbridge, Red Deer, Moose Jaw, Regina – across the country have the same issue, there’s just not a lot of entertainment as far as concerts coming into our buildings,” said Mikkelsen.
“The Canadian entertainment industry is challenged right now to find acts that will play venues like ours.”
Lilac art
After my piece on lilacs, I received quite a few pictures of lilacs but also these notifications:
Send me more lilac art and memes, pls.
Quick news:
Good news: All wildfire evacuation orders in the northeast have been lifted! Less good news: The heavy rain could lead to some pretty bad flooding!
Heavy rain is expected here today, as well a cooling trend to end the month.
From Moccasin Flats, plans to resurrect a community garden and start building tiny homes (volunteers needed for each).
From Millennium Park, a half-million dollar security upgrade which includes completely fencing in the front lawn of the regional district. Here’s some other budget decisions from the regional district.
A judge has found the man accused of starting a deadly motel fire in 2020 not guilty, noting that the Crown’s case was pretty circumstantial — there was security footage of him in the area around when the fire started but nothing indicating he was actually responsible for starting it.
The former school board chair has written an op-ed criticizing the current one over all the same things that have been dominating school board news for the past few months. Meanwhile, I’ll note Hanna Petersen at the Citizen has started writing profiles of the people running in the upcoming by-election, which I’ll start to compile and share here when more are done but if you want to get started here’s her author profile page.
Apparently there’s been a big increase in vehicle thefts but almost all of them involve people leaving their keys in the car? So don’t do that, I guess.
Should Tourism Prince George be open on long weekends? Here’s a thread of people who think so.
Western Canada rallying to help terminally ill Prince George man complete bucket list.
UNBC research group hosting off-grid water sanitation panel.
Little feature on how Community Futures can help small businesses.
Here is the moose traffic jam:
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while I have no lilac pics or memes to share (not yet, anyway), I appreciate the roll up of interesting and intriguing local news. Did I read correctly that the Regional District is going to *sole source* their half million dollar security upgrade?? I'm going to have to go read the RDFFG meeting agenda/ minutes now for more details. Thanks, Andrew, and keep up the great work!