Pete McMartin asks the needed question in The Sun:
So far the No side is making the most noise with dumbed down but effective campaign
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Question: Where is the Yes side in this fight? When is it going to fire up the boilers? If it were a train, the unkind thing to say would be it was being run by TransLink. At this rate, it might never reach the station.
So far, the No side has dominated the conversation. It’s put the Yes side on the defensive. It’s got its message out more forcefully and coherently; it’s self-proclaimed messiah, Jordan Bateman, B.C. director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, has been attacking TransLink with a zealot’s fervour; and the CTF already has a website set up asking for volunteers and donations for the No campaign. …
The reality is TransLink is a much leaner organization than the bloated bureaucracy it was in the last decade. It has responded to the criticisms of waste from both government and the public, and pared away a lot of the fat.
None of this, however, matters to the No side, which is driven by spite more than fact, and which puts more stock in sending a message — however inarticulate and unfounded on fact it may be — than getting more public transit in place. The No side wants to reform TransLink’s corporate environment? It’s too late. That reformation is already underway. …
As a taxpayer, and as a suburban commuter who uses public transit, I support the Yes side. But the Yes side has been slow off the mark in making its argument to the public, and time’s a wastin’. With every passing week, it’s going to be harder to get this train up to speed.
Just so you know:
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That’s the amount of time left until the ballots go out.
My sense is that there’s an unhealthy level of complacency, particularly in the development community. Has anyone heard from a prominent spokesperson in the real-estate sector, for instance, who believes that the future of real estate is not about ‘location, location, location’ but ‘transit, transit, transit’? (It would help if they were a strong supporter of, say, the Premier, and could persuade her to make the case for yes as well.)
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Or perhaps this is really all about something else, as intuited by Barbara Jaffe, also in The Sun:
Congestion tax proponents must deal with their image problems
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The transit and transportation plan was crafted last year by mayors representing 23 Lower Mainland governments, known collectively as the Mayors’ Council. And it is this council — led by Gregor Robertson — overseeing the Yes campaign.
The mayors are not the best Yes proponents, given criticisms levelled about municipal overspending.
In recent years, several business groups, alarmed at their property tax bills, have complained about municipal budgets soaring at rates well beyond population growth plus inflation.
Their grousing was subsequently legitimized by an eyebrow-raising Ernst & Young report, commissioned by the province. It revealed unionized municipal staff received 38 per cent pay increases between 2001 and 2012, compared with 19 per cent received by provincial staffers. Inflation was 23 per cent.
And this group is asking the average household to cough up an additional $258 per year, according to the No campaign, on top of the bountiful taxation already paid to fund a new transportation plan?
The reality is, these days, you do not hear much about governments in Canada raising taxes. That is because a collective realization took hold back in the Jean Chretien era that Canadians were sufficiently taxed, that it was time for governments to revisit their spending.
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It’s not a far-fetched scenario: the referendum fails, and the reason, it is argued, is because the voters want to send a message not only to TransLink but to their municipal leaders that they must “revisit their spending.”
The provincial government, having neither to administer the discipline directly nor take responsibility for subsequent cuts, can say (or imply) that it has effectively limited municipal expenditure. It also has relief from having to match the region’s contribution to transit, so it may still be able to fund selected projects – the Massey and Pattullo Bridges certainly, light-rail in Surrey possibly – while gaining sole political credit in a supportive part of the region.
Why, it’s almost as if that was strategy in the first place.
“None of this, however, matters to the No side, which is driven by spite more than fact, and which puts more stock in sending a message — however inarticulate and unfounded on fact it may be — than getting more public transit in place.”
Then what the hell is the Vancouver Sun using anything he has to say in their ‘news’ stories. In what other scenario does a ‘news’ paper consciously publish the opinion or statements of an individual or group when they know and readily admit that opinion or statement is ‘inarticulate and unfounded on fact’???
Facts are:
Vancouver needs more public transit.
Roads are congested.
Property taxes are very low in Vancouver per 100,000 of assessed value.
Commercial property taxes are 4-5 times that of residential property taxes.
Many houses or condos are empty and are used as investments only.
Many houses or condos are foreign owned.
Municipal civil servants’ salaries and benefits have grown above provincial employees’ salaries and benefits.
Municipal employees and civil servants, incl TransLinks’ salaries and benefits are well above private sector norms.
Driving a car in Vancogver is not as expensive as diving a car in Europe.
Parking rates are far too low in residential neighborhoods, often free even.
Voters do not like higher sales taxes.
Many immigrants pay little or no income taxes yet consume many provincially provided or municipal services such as education, roads, transit or healthcare.
As such I conclude, and have published elsewhere, that Plan B for funding transit exists without raising sales taxes.
a) lower expenses through lower civil servants’ salaries and benefits or slower than inflationary growth.
b) tax parking far more
c) raise land transfer taxes by 1% per $1M, up to 15%
d) raise property taxes by 100%, 10% a year for ten years, and rebate the difference to BC residents that pay income taxes. That would effectively tax non-residents far more, as well as immigrants that are wealthy but chose to not pay income taxes as they generate income abroad.
e) borrow money at 1-2% as interest rates are super low to build necessary public transit
MetroVan has options beyond the proposed referendum that make far more sense.
Interesting. Some good ideas in here
Obvious to me that immigration to Vancouver is causing congestion ie need for more public transit, yet the connection between immigration and funding of schools, healthcare or transit is not discussed anywhere.
What do immigrants ( those with ample cash, anyway) buy first: a house or condo. What do they buy next: a car. Yet the funding of necessary infrastructure of schools, healthcare or public transit. falls primarily on those already here. This discussion has to happen .. and is related to, but goes far beyond, transportation.
[Disclosure: I am an immigrant, too .. having moved to Canada in 1986 and to Burnaby in 1988]
The monetization of ( excessive ) immigration to the benefit of Canadians has to be discussed, then implemented. It can’t be that ( rich ) immigrants come here with cash, buy the fanciest houses or condos, drive fancy vehicles yet pay next to nothing in income taxes, healthcare, school support, transit, land transfer taxes or property taxes.
Ask yourself, how would you behave if you had a networth of $20 or $100M ( and many have far more than that ) and came to Vancouver. Would you not also arrange your income such that you pay minimal, if any, Canadian and BC income taxes, buy the biggest house and the biggest car and purchase much abroad that you bring on your trips between your 3 or 4 houses elsewhere ? This is correct, expected and actual behavior, yet our tax system doesn’t recognize it. Vancouver is leaving hundreds of millions of $s annually on the table that it could collect with the strategies (“Plan B”) shown above.
The BC, and especially Vancouver, tax mix has to shift away from income taxes or PST to property and land transfer taxes to monetize this fairly recent phenomenon of ( wealthy, excessive ) immigration for the benefits of Canadians !
The timing cold not be worse; beginning in January 2015, prices for gasoline on an inflation adjusted basis are actually lower than they were during the Depression.
http://inflationdata.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Inflation-Adjusted-Gasoline-Jan-2015.jpg
Unfortunately, the Yes side seems to be having trouble coming up with a co-ordinated effort. A number of coalitions – http://www.movinginalivableregion.ca/, http://www.getonboardbc.ca/, Better Transit and Transportation Coalition, … – have been established, all with the same goal. This diffuses the Yes side’s message. To Jordon Bateman’s credit, his regular criticisms of TransLink, have established him as the media go-to guy on TransLink issues with quick, easy-to-comprehend (even if patently silly) sound bites.