Posted on 18 November 2014

Who says nothing good comes of reading the comments? In the comments of 250 News, regular user Eagle One has parsed some interesting numbers for us. They took a look at the Prince Free Press survey sent out out to all the candidates, in particular the section where the candidates were asked to rank the importance of 13 issues.

“If one is to take the ranking selected by each council elect and total for the council as a whole each issue can rank from a low of 13 (meaning the number one priority of all in council) to a high of 104 (meaning it was the lowest priority of every councilor). Of course Susan Scott went rouge and selected three #1 priorities and no #4 and #8 priority, bringing into question her math skills… so I rounded up all her selections by one to factor for the discrepancy.”

The list is as follows, ordered from most important to least:

• 1. Infrastructure (22)
• 2. Snow Removal (29)
• 3. Road Maintenance (32)
• 4. Safety (38)
• 5. (tie) Transit (62)
• 5. (tie) Economic Development (62)
• 7. Crime (64)
• 8. (tie) City Image (65)
• 8. (tie) Recreation (65)
• 10. Social Housing (66)
• 11. Parks (68)
• 12. Population Increase (71)
• 13. Downtown (79)

Eagle One also adds this observation:

“the only two councilors to get elected by the majority of voters Skakun and Krause each had nearly polar opposite rankings… meaning potentially that the voters in PG actually voted strategically, rather than through a partisan lens”

I’d also note that for the most part, this list is fairly in-line with Lyn Hall’s personal list. He put infrastructure at number 4 and safety at number 1, swapping with the consensus. He ranked transit at number 9, rather than the consensus of 5, and downtown at number 8, instead of last. Other than that, his list is within 3 point of the consensus.
Of course, who knows? This is a list that chose 13 things and asked potential candidates to rank them. Being 13 doesn’t mean they don’t care at all… or it could mean they don’t care at all. But it’s an interesting lens to view things through, at least until we get a better sense of how the next four years will play out.

Filed under: Prince George