Frances Bula header image 2

Transportation group campaigns for TransLink plan to get transit expansion going

September 12th, 2011 · 40 Comments

A scary headline on my Globe story today says the Sustainable Transportation Coalition is campaigning for property-tax increases to kickstart the $700-million transit expansion that TransLink has proposed.

Are they really? No, people like former NPA councillor and Business in Vancouver founder Peter Ladner are not in favour of permanent property-tax increases to pay for transit expansions. What the group really wants is a vehicle levy, road pricing, or a carbon tax whose revenues are turned over to transit.

But are they advocating that mayors pass a plan with a theoretical tax increase for 2013 in order to provide the security needed to get financing right away while the province figures out which other funding mechanism to put in place by then? Yes.

And that argument is the confusing kind of debate you’re going to hear more of in the next three weeks as mayors prepare to vote. (North Vancouver District Mayor Richard Walton is trying to organize a vote for the last week of September or first two weeks of October on what’s called the TransLink supplemental plan, which is the last kick at the can to try to get transit expansion funded and going in 2012.)

It’s hard to follow these transit-funding stories because of what seems like hair-splitting arguments. But it comes down to this, as you read your allotted quota of TransLink stories in the next month.

No mayors or advocacy groups are really supporting a property-tax increase. Every one of them says it’s the wrong way to fund transit and it’s a hardship for already overloaded municipal taxpayers.

But some mayors are willing to vote for a 2013 tax increase in order to show the province some good faith.

TransLink can’t go out and borrow money unless it can prove to lenders that it has a way of making the monthly payments. Just like us when we borrow money for a house. We need to show we have an income that is sufficient to make mortgage payments.

So the approval of the property tax is like collateral.

The promise from the province is that it will look for other mechanisms than the property tax, to be put in place by 2013.

The problem for a whole ‘nother set of mayors is that they are worried the province will jam out when crunch time comes. It’s happened twice in the past. (And then there are those, like Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan, who thinks there wouldn’t be such a demand for extra funding for transit expansion if the mayors had control over TransLink’s base budget. But it doesn’t. The TransLink board, appointed by the province, can pass that on its own.)

And Premier Christy Clark scared all of them when her own minister pitched using a two-cent gas tax for part of the funding and then she came out sounding like she was not in favour of the idea and that it’s hard for people to pay new taxes. She was quickly brought back into line and issued a letter saying she supported it.

But it gave many of the mayors the willies imagining what would happen to their own political necks if they pass this new plan, with gas-tax hikes and commitments to property-tax increases, and then she goes around saying people can’t afford it.

So this is a nervous bunch, these 22 mayors. Vancouver, Surrey, the District of North Van, and Greg Moore over in Port Coquitlam appear to be solidly prepared to support this plan. But it’s not completely clear how the vote will go among the others.

Some think there’s enough to carry the plan. Others think it’s closer to a 50-50 split.

 

 

 

Categories: Uncategorized