Prince George City council decided to defer the new disposal fees for trucked sanitary sewer waste at the city’s Shelly Lagoon at tonight’s (Monday) meeting.
Prior to the meeting, the city’s acting director of civic relations, Blake McIntosh recommended the proposed $45 per cubic metre disposal fee set to come into effect on January 1st be postponed until January 1st of 2022.
The decision was supported by 8 council members, most of whom agreed that more information backed up by financial statistics should be available prior to the implementation of the fee.
During the meeting, Prince George Airport Authority CEO, Gord Duke touched on the most recent update on passenger rates, which showed passenger rates have dropped 71% from November of 2019 to the same time this year.
“The pandemic has had a brutal impact on the aviation industry,” explained Duke,” and Prince George is no different, we have really been hurt.”
The air travel industry initially expected to have a surplus of around $251-million, however, according to Duke, there was instead a total net loss of $1.5 billion.
“When we look at this long road to recovery, a big concern is the amount of debts airports are going to have to take on, for 2020 revenues are expected to be $2.2 billion lower than what we thought we would have,” explained Duke.
Duke explained that the Airport Authority isn’t expecting a full economic recovery for about 4 or 5 years.
NavCanada is now conducting a study to possibly reduce services in a number of areas across the country, including Prince George.
“The study is designed to support reducing services in places, initially Prince Goerge was not on the list but we have been added in,” said Duke.
This study is a result of NavCanada dealing with economic challenges from the pandemic, however, the council has since written a letter advocating against the reduction of services for YXS.
During the meeting, Duke also announced that Central Mountain Air will be providing service again at YXS.
Following Gordon Duke’s presentation, Lindsay Taylor, Manager of Government Relations of BC Transit touched on the status of BC Transit services within PG.
“We’re still in the recovery phase now, but we’re starting to look into the rebuilding phase to ensure our transit systems are stable and sustainable for the next few years,” said Taylor.
Initially, there was an expansion plan for September 2020 to increase services to UNBC and CNC on the frequent transit route, however, Â those were put on hold in the spring.
In response to slowly increasing ridership in September, BC Transit implemented two ‘flex buses’, one was for Spruceland Mall and the other was for Pine Centre Mall.
Taylor explained that the addition of these flex routes was so that the Transit service could maintain any capacity limits set in place by the Provincial Government.
Province-wide, there was about a 44% decrease in ridership in BC Transit services in 2020, in PG, there has been a 46% decrease.
Additionally, the council noted that despite the pandemic, the numbers of building permits remain relatively high, Councillor Garth Frizzell said, “we are only slightly behind where we were last year and way ahead of what we were two years ago.”
The next regular council meeting is scheduled for January 11th, 2021.
To conclude the meeting, Mayor Lyn Hall passed a resolution declaring both Santa and Mrs.Claus are essential workers that will not be affected by any travel bans.