Prince George City Councillor Trudy Klassen is seeking to put public notices back in the Prince George Citizen.
Klassen put forward a Notice of Motion on the agenda for this week’s meeting, with support from Councillor Brian Skakun.
The notice of motion directs the City’s Chief Administrative Officer to:
- Reinstated public notice advertising in the Citizen with a budget of up to $100,000 (effective Q1 2026),
- Reduce advertising on American platforms, such as Meta (Facebook), by 50 per cent, redirecting the funds to the Citizen and other Canadian media,
- Publish a transparency report by Q3 2026, detailing advertising expenditures by platform and public notice reach to be shared on the City’s website and in the 2026 annual report,
- Engage residents via a Q1 2026 town hall to explain the return to Citizen advertising, “highlighting its archival value and gathering feedback on notice accessibility
The notice of motion also calls for quarterly updates on advertising compliance, costs, and archival access be provided to Council, starting in Q2 2026.
Since then, the City has been posting public notices directly on the City website’s Public Notice page, as well as on Facebook.
An example of a public notice posted on Facebook is here:
The City’s Communications Coordinator, Kendall Johnston, confirmed to My PG Now that these posts are just regular posts, and the City does not pay to boost them.
Klassen said she’s bringing this now because of a new-found appreciation for buying as local as possible.
“I think it’s important to consider that and the fact that we’re relying on American Meta is, I think, a real loss to our community,” Klassen said.
“To me, the major issue is the issue of needing to advertise and put our public notices into the paper of public record, and in our city, that is the Prince George Citizen, and it is a massive loss to our collective knowledge when these public notices disappear after a year as they do on our city website.”
For the $100,000 budget, Klassen said that was a “ballpark figure” based on previous budgets.
“That number I based on the fact that the previous budget for advertising in the Citizen had been $150,000,” she explained.
“I just thought I would put that number in there just for consideration, it’s not meant to be a statement of ‘this is how much we’ll spend,’ but knowing that the previous budget was $150,000, I thought I would put in $100,000.”
As to why the Citizen was the only local news outlet directly mentioned in the Notice of Motion, Klassen said they keep the most of those records easily available to residents.
“It was, until very recently, the paper of record and treated as such by the Public Notice Bylaw in the City,” she said.
“So I’d ask the question, why was the paper removed from that position? If you look back at the timing, there’s an opportunity there to maybe consider why that change was made.”
Klassen added she doesn’t intend this as a “hinderance” to other outlets.
“I just want to say, I totally value all of our local media’s inputs and efforts at covering local news,” she said.
“This isn’t meant as a hinderance to any of our other organizations but simply the matter of having that collective of public notices in one location is incredibly beneficial to our city and our city’s economic development because it is used as a resource for investors.”
Klassen added she hasn’t had any recent conversation’s with the City’s Communications department on the issue.
“I just know from previous comments that rather divisive statements were made towards the Citizen, which was unfortunate because I don’t think any journalist organization should be treated that way,” she said.
The Notice of Motion will be discussed at the June 9th Regular Council meeting.
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