It’s been over a year since Simon Yu was elected as mayor of Prince George. A political newcomer, the local engineer was sworn in on November 7, 2022.
Yu ran an enthusiastic campaign with bold promises to solve the city’s issues downtown and grow the city’s economy.
Reflecting on his first year in office Yu admitted the mayor’s job came with a steep learning curve and with a huge sacrifice on family time.
“Because I was not involved on the city council before, I needed to know the working style of the councillors, on top of trying to learn the procedurals and all the legal aspect of the mayor's duty,” he explained.
“During the campaign is one thing, you will you try to understand the politics and to try to understand the issue as an outsider. But once you're inside, you try to dissect all the issues in detail and it's a little bit more complicated than I thought.”
He said a lot of the problems facing Prince George need to be coordinated between multiple levels of government and First Nations, which takes time.
“It is a process. It is consensus building,” he said. “These are the things that I knew I had to do but I did not know the extent of the time that had to be devoted before getting any file moving along in the direction that I think citizens expect of me.”
Yu said his two biggest moments as mayor so far was signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the province for homelessness supports called Heart to Hearth and advocating for Prince George issues at the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention in Vancouver.
“I will say the MOU, that was a pretty big moment for us,” he said. “It puts Prince George and the province in the direction of a commitment to end encampments, not to move encampments but to end homelessness in Prince George.”
Millennium Park
However, following the signing of the MOU the city closed down the Millennium Park encampment, which was met with criticism from both local advocacy groups and housing minister Ravi Kahlon urging council to reconsider its choice.
“Closing down the park, fundamentally, is a safety issue,” said Yu, adding they made a tough decision as a council. “if I look back perhaps we should have had a much, much better advanced consultation with the First Nations, with Carrier Sekani and with the people that were directly affected down there.
“Like everything else it takes effort and time when you have all sorts of things going around, you know, sometimes we just did not spend enough time on some of those files but there was an urgency, in a health and safety issue.”
He said the city needs to find a proper structure to deal with encampments but added there is a two-way dialogue between the city and the province to address every single piece of these issues.
“So, can we solve the problem? In a short one-year time, I was relatively naive, I saw, you know, I can make huge strides within one year. But it looks like it's going to take a few years to even put a structure around it.”
Downtown explosion
The city also saw a catastrophic event this year when a building on Fourth Avenue and Dominion Street blew up on Aug. 22 sending three people to the hospital and blowing out store front windows.
Fire investigators later determined there was evidence of copper pipe theft, which resulted in damage to at least one natural gas line in the vacant building.
The source of the ignition is believed to be caused by the activities of someone who broke into the building and was unaware of the build up of natural gas in the structure.
“It was a gigantic wake up call to the city,” said Yu. “It puts the problem we are having in downtown Prince George much more into focus. While we are doing the downtown core design for the future, we need to look at how do we protect local businesses and have them thrive in the downtown area.”
He said they need to work more diligently to address the long term health of downtown.
“It's difficult, no question because I have to balance the interests of downtown, the city interests, as well as the interests of all the citizens, I repeat all citizens in Prince George. I do not want this community to be divided to become a you versus me. You versus us.”
Going forward
Yu said he is confident in the growth of the Prince George economy, especially with the burgeoning energy industry alongside the lumber and pulp mill industry.
“Prince George is geographically too important,” he said. “We are halfway between Asia and America. We are right in the middle. I cannot see a better place for future development while we adjust to the climate change. Prince George is going to be important for the province, for Canada and for the world.”
In September, Australian company Fortescue announced its intention to establish a major green energy hub in the city and last year Hydra Energy broke ground on its hydrogen refuelling station on Sintich Road, which will be operational in early 2024.
“To that I'm still very much confident and that has not changed because of my first year in the office. As a matter of fact, my confidence in Prince George has strengthened because of it.”
Yu said his vision for his next three years as mayor is to have a 3D model to visualize the future of Prince George development and to see more investment announcements and housing developments.
“I'm still committed to be to be the 3A mayor: I want to be most accessible, most accountable, and action oriented. I just wish I had more resources to get to some more things more quickly. That's is my frustration.”
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