By Tommy Osborne

Awards Debate

City Council engages in spirited debate over potential Citizen Recognition medals

Nov 22, 2024 | 4:49 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – A motion brought forward by Prince George City Councillor Kyle Sampson to explore the idea of establishing an Annual Citizen Recognition Medal Program. While some may have expected a relatively quick discussion around the topic, it was anything but, as the City Council meeting turned into a lengthy debate.

“Recognizing excellence, recognizing amazing achievements, recognizing great volunteerism or community participation really helps foster positivity in a community. It helps foster more folks getting involved and generating growth for our city,” Sampson said, when explaining why he brought the motion forward.

Councillors Brian Skakun and Trudy Klassen, as well as Mayor Simon Yu, all stood against the motion. Skakun expressed concerns about creating more of a workload for city administration, as he said administration is already busy enough as is, on top of the idea that some people would prefer to work behind the scenes bettering our community without being recognized. As for Yu, he was concerned that having so many awards may diminish the meaning of being recognized, as well as the fact that some award programs stopped due to covid and haven’t been restarted since.

“A lot of people put in a lot of work in the past to put these programs together, I thought that we as a city council foremost should find out what is really required to reinitiate some of the programs,” Yu said.

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“Celebrating amazing achievements in our community shouldn’t be controversial. So it’s great that others have unique views. But from my perspective, there’s nothing but good news here that we’re going to celebrate amazing achievements by folks who live in our community,” Sampson said.

Yu also spoke on the importance of tradition, as he worries a new award may diminish past award winners of awards like Citizen of the Year for example, and questions if a new medal would actually enhance the community.

“It’s like somebody in the movie industry, you have an Academy award, and all of a sudden you have another award that is maybe more popular. Would that make sense? What will happen to the people who received the past award, do we compare the two, which one is more valuable?” Yu said.

The motion brought forward by Sampson speaks to this idea, acknowledging that while awards already do exist, “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.” As for concerns that this new medal would diminish other awards or reduce the significance of being recognized, Sampson doesn’t believe this would be a problem, as the motion goes on to explain “the idea is to recognize a limited number of recipients each year, with a suggested cap of five. A restrictive annual allotment would ensure that we celebrate an array of folks annually, but that there’s a special significance or prestige attached to being one of the few selected.”

“This is direction to go from here and develop what this looks like. At this point, it’s an idea. It’s a starting point, but this is the launch pad to take it and make it something special made for Prince George that’s going to celebrate people in Prince George. And I think that’s really exciting news,” Sampson said, when explaining his motion.

The motion passed, with Skakun, Klassen, and Yu voting against it. This means the City will begin to explore what this medal could look like and how it could be implemented, and it will come back to council once a plan is in place.

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