Let’s kick things off with some comments from readers, starting with two responses to yesterday’s Reddit thread on the bus simply not coming for people waiting at Costco.

Kathy writes:

On the more positive side, Phil emails to say:

Thanks for that perspective!

I also got this email from Paul Sanborn:

Send me pictures your river finds!

There won’t be a tree on the roof of the Coast this year

For those of you who are newish to the city, you may not be aware of the tradition of sticking a giant Christmast tree on the top of the Coast hotel downtown and having it light up more and more as more people donate to charitable causes associated with it. Here’s a pic I took of it going up a few years ago:

However, the rooftop tradition is off this year, as per an email from United Way, who took over the campaign a few years back after it briefly disappeared:

There will be a kick-off event this Saturday from 9 until 3.

Does the city need an ethics commissioner (and is it worth the price)?

OK, so as promised here is my write-up on the very long discussion about the new council code of conduct policy that was held during Monday’s meeting. Basically, the code of conduct — which was first adopted in 2013 — provides guidelines for how councillors and the mayor should conduct themselves, and measures for remediation and/or punishment if they don’t live up to that code. This can cover things like not going directly to staff members to ask for help with projects (because staff need to get their priorities from the city manager and having a councillor or mayor give them side quests can put them in difficult positions) to not repeatedly turning your back on someone everytime they talk (a real example given from another city during the discussion). Codes of conduct are getting increasingly popular as municipal government becomes both more professional and, in some cases, more divided than in the past.

For the most part, this was a straightforward, if in-depth, discussion. Various councillors had specific questions about specific parts of the policy, like whether a provision around avoiding political activity needed to be more clearly worded given that running a city is inherently political. There were also questions about if the code would apply to personal lives — the example given is, what if your kids go to the same school as a parks employee, is it ok to talk about city business if you run into them at a school function? The answer was probably, but not if it then turned into you giving that person more work to do.

A regular message from the folks who developed the policy — led by lawyer Reece Harding — was that “codes are not meant to be gotcha documents” but more lay out generalized terms for how councillors (including the mayor) can behave in a way that is professional. He also emphasized the desire to have lots of “off-ramps” — that is, ways for investigators, if they are brought in because of a complaint about misconduct — can find to resolve the issue that doesn’t immediately jump to punishment (punishments can include things like removing councillors from committees or the acting mayor rotation and could potentially escalate to docking pay).

However, where things got — and could be — interesting was when it came to the question of who should be making these decisions. The way it generally works, Harding explained, is that complaints are given to the city manager, as the most senior employee of council. The manager, however, only has a minimal amount to do with the complaints, instead passing them along, as needed, to outside specialists who have moved into these sorts of investigations as part of their practice — generally lawyers like Harding, although he would not be eligible because his law firm is also a client of the city — it would have to be another lawyer at another firm without current ties to Prince George.

And that’s what Mayor Simon Yu had a problem with. He argued that in order for the process to be truly neutral, the person handling every aspect of this thing should be outside of city hall — including the handling of complaints, which under the proposed guidelines would be the city manager.

Here are Yu’s comments, somewhat edited for length and clarity, on why he strongly feels the city needs to have an outside party involved at all steps (you can watch at roughly the three hour and fourteen minute mark here):

Coun. Trudy Klassen agreed, and asked if the job could go to someone else. Harding said it could technically go to anyone — the head of HR, the fire chief — but if the goal is to avoid having anyone employed by council involved, the only solution is the creation of a position of ethics commssioner.

What is an ethics commissioner?

You might not know because they aren’t very common. In B.C., only three cities have one — Vancouver, New Westminster and Surrey. Harding was actually the first ethics commissioner for Surrey, staring in 2020 and ending in July 2021. You can read his thoughts on how things went here, having been in the job during a particularly tumultuous time for a particularly tumultuous council.

Here’s the thing about an ethics commissioner that is different from literally every job at a city: They are completely independent. The city manager is an employee of mayor and council, and can be hired and fired by them. Every other position at the city is under the manager. Not so for an ethics commissioner — because of the nature of their work, the move by the very few city’s that have hired one has been to establish them as a neutral, independent office.

While all of that solves Yu’s desire to avoid any possible conflict of interest when it comes to disputes, it comes with a cost — literally, at more than $200,000 a year in Surrey and a similar price tag for the same job in Vancouver. Because of this, Harding advised very strongly against Prince George pursuing this model, instead encouraging them to stick with the more established, and cheaper mode that most other cities adopt and then checking in in a year or two to decide whether it’s working or not. If not, then they could go down the more expensive role.

Most of council was good with this. Cori Ramsay noted that the Union of B.C. Municipalities is looking into establishing a template for codes of conducts/ethics commissioners and said it would be worth waiting to see what they come up with prior to becoming one of just four cities in B.C. to create an ethics commission — especially since the others are far, far bigger municipalities with bigger budgets to burn (“democracy is expensive,” Yu responded).

In the end, the question was called and the code of conduct, as proposed was passed through first three readings with Yu and Klassen opposed (Skakun may have been for or against, I was unclear and the minutes haven’t been posted yet).

Quick news:

• Speaking of things that cost the city money, here’s more on the possible tax increases coming in the new year.

• GoFundMe named Prince George the fourth most generous city in Canada based on dollars donated to online campaigns.

• The Coldsnap Music Festival is adding late-night performances to its roster this February.

• A Prince George man found a 25-year-old bottle of homemade wine kicking around an old house he bought. Here’s his review (raisiny).

• Despite having some of the leading scorers in the WHL, no Prince George Cougars have been named to Canada’s World Juniors.

• Ukrainian refugree Iryna Derunets is the only pediatric ear nose and throat specialist in north-central B.C., but needs permanent residency status before she can see patients in Prince George.

• British Columbia is moving to reduce the export of raw logs harvested in the province by requiring that certain types of lumber from the Interior undergo manufacturing first. 

• Nearly 1000 self-storage lockers nearing completion in Prince George.

• It’s a good thing Mr. PG isn’t still made of wood or he would almost certainly be destroyed by northern flickers.

• Asking UNBC students — and one professor — if they have “rizz.”

I think I might finally be getting K-Pop, or else it’s just evolved toward 2000s-era sleze-pop music that I’m already predisposed to. Either way, here’s today’s song:

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