In addition to needing an extra $5 million to hire more police a report coming before council says the city needs to hire more firefighters, too. Arthur Williams reports:

What strikes me as noteworthy is the number of medical calls. Firefighters are, of course, supposed to fight fires while paramedics should be going to medical calls. But paramedics say they are overworked and underpaid (disclosure: I am the child of a retired paramedic) and there have been multiple stories over the years about the lack of paramedics in the Prince George region compared to the city’s needs.

And let’s not forget: While the city pays for firefighting services, it’s the province that’s supposed to pay for ambulances and this is what is meant when people in local politics talk about higher levels of government downloading costs onto municipalities. Indeed, from the aforementioned police report:

It’s not a given that firefighters will attend medical calls. In some communities, the fire department doesn’t provide medical assistance for fear of mission creep. And that’s something Prince George may have to start doing, as well, with the director of public safety Adam Davey saying at a recent meeting: “The city may have to manage service level expectation… I am not sure how long we can retain the current service levels.”

The budget is being set out over the course of next month, meanwhile there are talks between the province and the paramedics union over coming up with a new contract.

“I did not give you f#%&!@* permission to print my house photo and address”

Also in the Citizen an… odd… followup to their writeup of the ten most valuable properties in the city. The addresses, which came via a media release from B.C. Assessment, were compiled in a short writeup along with publicly-available photos from the same site. However, the owner of most-valuable-house number nine was not, too pleased:

They also wrote to the National NewsMedia Council which some organizations voluntarily are parts of in order to have outside eyes making sure they are following journalistic standards when such a complaint is made. They noted that all of the information the Citizen printed is public and found no breach occurred.

Support the news!

I’m gonna remind you here that while I write pithy summaries, it’s the folks at the media outlets I’m linking to who are doing the legwork so it’s not a bad idea to look into how you can support them if you value local news. Here’s a link to the Citizen’s support page and here’s a couple of other original stories they’ve put out in the last 24 hours:

• The B.C. government has not given up on its effort to collect more than $220,000 in allegedly foregone tax revenue, interest and penalty from the sale of "coloured fuel" at a Prince George gas station.

• WorkSafeBC has slapped Conifex Mackenzie Forest Products with an $83,622.72 fine for a "repeated high-risk violation."

This stuff doesn’t come from nowhere — it takes people doing paid work. For your consideration.

OK, here’s what else is up:

• More blame game on forestry job losses: No surprise, B.C. Liberal leader Kevin Falcon sis focused on the NDP’s role role while his jobs critic Todd Stone gets ratioed on Twitter by people recalling Liberal policies that contributed to the current problem. He was willing to admit that maybe some of his party’s past policies weren’t the greatest but, still, it’s the NDP’s problem now. At the Natural Resources Forum in Prince George a panel of forestry professionals talked about the industry’s future while at the Truck Loggers Convention in Vancouver panelists looked to the past on how they feel we got here.

• Another comprensive lookback, this one from outside the industry but with lots of background, from Ben Parfitt of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

• UNBC’s research income hit a decade-long high, to more than $15 million.

• An email blast sent out yesterday says the Prince George Iceman is in desperate need of volunteers, if you want to sign up. If you’re not familiar, here’s what it’s all about.

• January may be crazy warm but winter isn’t over yet.

• And finally: Zellers is back but Prince George will not be getting one, for now. 25 shops are setting up inside Bay locations, including Vancouver, Surrey, Abbotsford and Kamloops but not here. It’s actually quite something when you consider that of all the depratment stores we used to have — Sears, the Bay, K-Mart (or something similar? Someone remind me), the Bay is the last one standing. Here’s their 1997 newspaper advertisement for their grand opening at Pine Centre Mall (prior to that they were on 3rd Ave., where City Furniture/Ashley HomeStore is now):Northern Capital News is a free, daily newsletter about life in Prince George. Please consider subscribing or, if you have, sharing with someone else.

You can shares your thoughts by hitting reply to this email, or you can follow me @mstdn.ca/@akurjata.