Council approves plan to establish citizen recognition medal program

City council has approved a plan to establish an annual citizen recognition medal program.

The award, which will be limited to no more than five recipients each year, will recognize individuals who have made significant contributions to the community in areas such as arts, sports, volunteerism, philanthropy, social services or heroism.

City employees and council members will not be eligible.

Councillors Kyle Sampson, Tim Bennett and Cori Ramsay, in a letter to council, said the Freedom of the City award is the highest honour council can bestow on someone, but it is rarely bestowed, reserved for unique circumstances.

“That doesn’t mean there aren’t folks who are regularly making our community better in all sorts of ways that shouldn’t be meaningfully recognized,” said Sampson, in a report presented at Monday’s council meeting.

“An annual recognition medal program would give the City of PG the opportunity to consistently celebrate and acknowledge the extraordinary efforts of those who go above and beyond, often without expecting anything in return. This program would be designed to shine a spotlight on those folks who truly embody the spirit of Prince George and inspire others to get involved, make a difference, or simply excel at what they do.”

Council directed administration to establish a select committee that includes four council members and three members of the public to develop a framework and plan for an annual City of Prince George citizen recognition program. Administration is to provide a draft term of reference, and the committee will present a report to council by the third quarter of 2025, aiming to launch the program in 2026.

Council also passed a vote asking staff to review and enhance its existing employee service recognition awards for long-serving city employees.

Mayor Simon Yu and councillors Trudi Klassen and Brian Skakun voted against both proposals.

Yu acknowledged that it’s important to recognize “the silent heroes of the community” who volunteer their time because they want to and not for the recognition. He said the city already has awards programs established by previous councils to recognize outstanding youths, and major contributors to recreation, sports and cultural programs as well as the Freedom of the City award. But those awards have not been handed out since 2018.

He also mentioned he sits on the board of the Prince George Community Foundation that annually selects a citizen of the year, but has yet to do so this year.

“Shouldn’t we just find out how the existing programs are going right now before we try to reinvent another medal program?” said Yu.

“Second of all, the recommendation that council directs administration to review and enhance existing employee service recognition awards program, I thought we already have five-year, 10-year and 15-year service awards already. To enhance something that already exists, I feel it’s overreaching by the council.”

Skakun was concerned about the amount of staff time that will have to be devoted to administering the awards program and pointed to the frequency of notices of motion from each council meeting referred back to an already overloaded administration task list.

“At what point when we start talking about all of these notices of motion and directing staff does staff decide what falls off the table to satisfy the requirements of these many notices of motion?” said Skakun.

“There’s a lot of people in this community that do not want to be recognized for the work they do. They quietly go about their tasks . But there is staff time taken for these. We can’t simply ignore it and say there’s no dollar value on it, but there’s a value on what staff does and the workload of staff with the committee.”

City manager Walter Babicz responded, saying the council’s strategic plan will be returned to council in December which will help determine priority items to help administration build its workplan. The notices of motion council approves will be the priority of administration and the leadership team will discuss how much is possible with the current staff resources. After that, if resources become too strained within defined timelines, staff will make suggestions on what programs and projects will be dropped from its list.

Santa Claus Parade funding approved

In other city news, council approved up to $1,750 in funding from the council contingency fund to help support Spirit of North Healthcare Foundation’s Santa Claus Parade on Sunday, Dec. 1.

Organizers of the parade require a Level 2 safety plan and permit for the event to ensure the health and safety of the participants and spectators and money council approved Monday will cover that cost.

Sponsored by Kopar Administration, the parade starts at noon on Second Avenue, will head south on Brunswick to Seventh Avenue and continue north on Quebec to end at Second Avenue.

The parade will run in conjunction with the 31st annual Festival of Trees at the Civic Centre, Nov. 27-Dec. 1, the largest annual fundraiser for the Spirit of the North foundation.

A portion of the $7,800 cost of the parade will be offset by sponsorships and registration costs from businesses and organizations to enter their floats in the procession.