It’s becoming apparent what the ‘No’ strategy will be on the referendum question that aims to get increased revenues for TransLink – at least if the pages of The Sun are an indicator.
Last week, the editorial page staked out its position: Taking more money from cash-strapped citizens to pay for transit is non-starter
Embedded among the arguments, after quoting TransLink VP Bob Paddon:
” …the challenge we have is that people want more and, if we’re going to get there, how do we pay for it?”
The answer is, by achieving economies in regional government spending or reallocating existing public expenditures.
Mayors may want to examine the salaries they’re paying to their top planners. Vancouver, for example, pays its city manager more than $330,000 a year, its police chief earns $311,000; director of legal services, $255,000; general manager of financial services, $250,000. TransLink’s CEO earns more than $325,000.
Then yesterday, business columnist Barbara Yaffe: B.C. cities need to take close look at own spending habits before raising taxes:
Cities in B.C. are spending too much on their wages and benefits, and should do some serious nipping and tucking before tapping taxpayers for additional cash.
That’s the view of both the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and the public advocacy group Integrity B.C. …
The public is starting to notice this civic gravy train. And, as a result, they won’t be inclined to tolerate municipal tax hikes or special levies to raise additional revenue — like the road-pricing scheme Vancouver’s transit authority has recently proposed.
That scheme seeks to charge drivers for using various routes or bridges as a way of paying for new transit infrastructure, as though the taxes they are already forking over aren’t meant to cover such things.
So even before the question has been formalized or the trade-offs understood, The Sun is already framing the referendum as really about municipal wages and spending. If ‘none-the-above’ is an option among the alternatives, then the voters can use it as a way of sending a message to municipalities and TransLink to cut spending on wages to help pay for transit before asking us for any more taxes.
Another way to guarantee failure.
Another way to guarantee failure.
Hardened cynics might almost think that car companies and dealers bought a lot of ads in the Sun and that advertising revenue affects editorial policy. Good thing we are not cynical enough to think things like that.
I’m that cynical.
In related news, if all the people named in the first quote above were paid minimum wage, we could afford approximately half a new bus. Hallelujah!
These papers are writing themselves into irrelevancy. I feel very, very bad about the loss of employment to come, but in terms of the institutions… they’re the Party Newsletter of Boomer Selfishness, so to speak.
It’s all distractions. Save 30 grand here, 20 grand there, 10 grand here… BAM, you’ve got yourself a fully funded 30-year transit plan. There’s got to be $20 billion of efficiencies to be found, right?
“The answer is, by achieving economies in regional government spending or reallocating existing public expenditures.”
Hopefully the focus will shift to the latter – reallocating spending. A prime example for me is the Pattullo. We just dropped about $4 billion (including financing) for the new Port Mann, which doubled the number of lanes from 5 to 10, and associated Highway 1 expansion, and we’re not even going to wait and see if it has an effect? It’s entirely possible that we won’t even need to touch the Pattullo!
(Nevermind the uncomfortable question about where, exactly, additional traffic would GO even if the Pattullo were replaced and widened – New West and Coquitlam in that area aren’t exactly serene country backroads.)
It would be nice if we could just shift the conversation from ‘roads as default’ and start better allocating the EXISTING capital funding for transportation. Fully agreed on that count.
Aah, conveniently unspecified spending inefficiencies. Where we can magically find a billion dollars in cost savings from a million-dollar budget.
It would be nice if this could also be discussed in the context of both public and private costs that we must bear for our investment decisions. In addition to the infrastructure, our road-centric approach forces us to spend $10,000 a year on each and every vehicle we own. That’s money that could be spent on other stuff if we were better able to live our lives without having to depend on vehicles as much. Not to mention, we have no major auto industry or oil industry in BC. Much of this money simply leaves our provincial economy altogether.
Ah, media logic: “This senior public servant makes more than I do, therefore the world is broken.”
The big part of the problem here is that people/media are mixing capital costs and operational costs. In addition Translink is constantly mixing operational costs required to sustain operations plus inflation with operational costs required to accommodate future expansion. To make things worse Translink has been crying poverty for the last 10 years yet it somehow always ends up with a surplus. So people are skeptical The requests to look at optimizing costs are legitimate and there is nothing wrong there. After all, don’t we all shop around for our capital purchases (things we buy) and operational costs (cable, phone, insurance, etc). I certainly do…
Having said that it is obvious that saving found are not going to cover operational costs of future expansion. So we need to keep those two issues separate. As in, we can look at optimizations of service and relocation of funds separately from the need for extra funds needed to pay for future expansion.
Letter sent to the editor of the Sun:
Hi,
I agree with your article that the top people make too much money but lets be serious here when we are comparing this to the upcoming transit funding. Translink has had many audits in the past and inefficiencies were found and changes were implemented. Lets look at other major expenditures and ask the same thing? $4.5 billion on Gateway funding and what have we got so far? The worlds widest bridge and falling traffic levels with the Port Mann, new freeway infrastructure in a time when trends around north america show that everyone is driving less and less and even in Vancouver we are driving less as traffic into downtown is down to levels comparable to 1965 . Meanwhile we are spending over $10,000 per year to be able to travel in each of our vehicles and we are using up valuable public funds to support our driving addictions. In Surrey $67 million per year is spent on transportation with the vast majority spent on driving infrastructure. Spending more on transit means that we can spend less on roads as valuable road space is taken up with less vehicles. We will end up paying more to move people in vehicles than we would if they went on transit, walked or cycled.
Here is a recent quote from the Coquitlam mayor:
Stewart, the mayors should use the referendum to ask the public to decide whether it wants to increase transportation capacity through more transit or more roads. Stewart said the cost of expanding the road network would be double the price of transit improvements.
The Coquitlam mayor said the alternative to more transit is “double the number of roadways, to pave more and more of the Lower Mainland, and I hear over and over again that the public doesn’t want that.
“So our choice on a referendum has to be: Do you want us to keep paving and widening all the roadways? Or do you want us to find alternatives?
We should be supporting increased transit spending as ridership is going up and it is stupid that most families outside of Vancouver and Burnaby need 2 cars! We need more efficient transportation in Metro Vancouver. Its not a question of should we fund transit more but should we double our taxes to pay for more roads?
Thanks,
Tim
Surrey Resident
Every extra square metre of asphalt is a square metre that can’t be used to grow food or house the ever increasing number of people in this area. Building more roads makes our housing affordability problem worse, causing people to move even farther from work/school and, in turn, requiring even more roads to be built to handle their excessively long commutes.
Perhaps the reason why right wing governments continue to focus on roads is because the urban middle class tends to lean to the left. If the city gets too expensive for the middle class those left leaning voters will be replaced by wealthy right leaning immigrants. Suburban voters, even those in the working class, are far more likely to lean to the right than urban residents at the same income level. I don’t know why this is, but in pretty much every city in North America the inner city leans left while the suburbs elect people like Rob Ford.
I’m really conflicted now. I’ve written reasons why the BC Liberals should desire a No in the referendum, then a strong reason why they should support a Yes, but now I’m back with a good reason for them to prefer a No. I guess they’re going to sit on the sidelines and do nothing and then find a way to celebrate the outcome no matter what it is.
It still seems to me that a way around this is to make this about more than just a generalized referendum about more money for Translink. Make this about funding Port Mann, Pattullo, Massey Tunnel, Expo extension, Millennium extension and service increases. That is something to vote for.
I think the yes side needs to frame their side of the debate as being the adult side. Avoid talking about global warming, or environmentalism, or bikes, or livability or any other apparently fluffy, leftist academic ideal. We need to avoid being cast as airy-fairy urbanists with a desire to force our lifestyle preferences on others.
We should focus almost entirely on economics and finances.
A million more people will come to Metro Vancouver, we need to move them. If we don’t build trains, we’ll need to build roads, which are a lot more expensive. If we don’t build either, we suffer gridlock and the economy will suffer dramatically. If the economy suffers, your family will be a lot poorer and won’t be able to afford that trip to Hawaii.
Grow the economy, build our region, focus on tomorrow, be the adult and don’t waste our money – build transit.