What I don’t understand about Commissioner Robertson’s stance is that he voted with Vision to cut free programs to children under 6 years of age. Plus for Commissioner MacKinnon to align with Mr Robertson when he Mr MacKinnon voted against Mr Robertson on this critical issue seems odd. While I understand that Commissioner MacKinnon is part of an electoral alliance with Vision and COPE, it seems strange that Mr MacKinnon would not have chosen perhaps to a joint release with the 3rd party in the Alliance which is COPE Commissioner Loretta Woodcock who actually voted against the Vision cuts.

I’m confused as to why I was hearing Raymond Louie on the radio this morning saying “We’ve resolved the budget deficit through service-adjustments (is that different than cuts?) and have limited the property tax increase to 2%. ”
If the Park Board doesn’t yet know what its budget is, how can the City have resolved how much money it doesn’t have to give to the Park Board?

This is more of the same old. Last year @ this time it was, among other things: Bloedel, Farmyard, CC hours, programmes & staff jobs slashed. There is NO PARK BOARD PRESENCE in the communities around the City advocating for parks & recreation facilities. The list goes on.

Not cleaning washrooms. or closing them? That’s disgusting. Some of the money wasted on bike lanes should have gone towards this.

…by the way, if there’s any possibility (and I don’t know the answer to this) to raise money only from chain stores, or bigger businesses, etc., rather than small business, that would be even better.

An interesting idea Todd, could Chris Keam & co let us what they think about this tradeoff. Here’s the choices:

1] clean bike lanes but, a lot of un-snow cleared bike lane & no bike lane streets in a cyclist’s commute, in considerably more hazardous riding conditions &, with a very small user group who could use other transportation modes considerably more safely;

2] don’t clean bike lanes but, keep washrooms open, & clean, and cut the grass & cyclists take alternate transit more safely.

What do you think Chris?

@Bill McCreery

Rather a false choice Bill, we can afford to clear bike lanes and keep washrooms open and clean.

In cities like Copenhagen and Boulder Co., they clear the bike lanes before they clear the roads. In Copenhagen, 40% of cyclists continue to ride through the winter.

Even in Montreal, the snowiest major city in the world, they are starting to keep bike paths open in the winter by clearing the snow.

During the cold snap, there were still lots of people cycling on Dunsmuir Street. Sure, there are a few days when cycling is a big iffy due to snow and ice but the same can be said for driving.

@Tessa: the old “make someone else pay for the services I want” argument.
Never mind that the business rate is 5 times the residential rate. If you owned a business (or worked for one) you would know that , whatever the balance between business and residential rates, businesses don’t pay any taxes. None whatsoever. Taxes are overhead, like rent and salaries and insurance and heat. YOU pay the overhead through increased prices on all the things business sells to you.

Business doesn’t have a secret bag of money we can loot to continue the City’s out-of-control spending spree, any more than you or I do.

Look at Iceland or Ireland or Spain or Portugal. When governments bribe voters with borrowed money (in the case of Olympic Village $750 Million), the loans eventually have to be paid back. There are only 2 ways governments can do this: cutting spending on the things you need and raising taxes, increasing your cost of living. Both policies kill businesses and take services away from the poor old taxpayer and hand control of the City’s operating budget over to a bank.

Closed washrooms and higher community centre fees? That’s nothing. Thanks to Vision’s incompetence you’ll pay more and get less.
You’re going to see every City department cut way back on everything: garbage pick-up, policing, road repairs, fewer staff processing permits and licences, in short everything (what Coun.Louie likes to call “service adjustments”). No-one has suggested rolling back the salary and expenses of the Mayor and Council, but they will. Starting with me: if this Council wants to show real leadership and a willingness to share the voter’s pain, they should reduce their salaries by 10% at once and commit to a further 10% reduction in every year in which the property tax increases more than 2%.

Don’t hold your breath. When time are tough the peasants have to tighten their belts but the Visionaries do not.

@Todd

The dedicated lane on Burrard Bridge was cleared. Agreed that the bikeways should be cleared as well.

@Bill
The whole snow clearing budget is around $700,000 per year I believe. The cost of clearing bike routes is going to be a small portion of that. Not doing it will not save that much money.

@Bill #12,

That’s a bit of a false choice Bill. As I’m sure you know better than I, there are many aspects to the City’s budget for various different items. I don’t think a zero sum dollars for bike lanes vs. dollars for washrooms is a fair characterization.

Having said that, viewed as a whole, I think it’s fair to say that Vision has made separated bike lanes one of its major priorities and, rightly or wrongly, has allocated a good deal of resources for that project. Naturally, when you allocate resources for one thing, there are less for others.

In my opinion, that money does not seem to have been well spent and Vision’s insistence in proceeding with the Hornby Bike lane in the face of the available data is one of the reasons I will not be voting for Vision candidates again. No doubt, others feel differently.

“Bikes do not deliver goods, do not carry more than one nitwit at a time, and do not respond to accidents, fires or police matters.”

Just like the majority of Vancouver automobiles.

Mostly great comment from both solitudes. As you know I favour a safe bike lane system downtown. My ? was intended to suggest the City needs to prioritize the entire budget decision-making process so that it is fine tuned to a point it is sensible, cost effective & accepted by all stakeholders. Because of Vision’s ram it mentality that isn’t happening.

Evidently we can’t “afford to clear bike lanes and keep washrooms open and clean” or other Park Board services. LOL, even Aaron Jasper is finally starting to make noises about how far the cuts are going into the Pk Bd budget & their ability to deliver even their so called ‘core services’.

“The whole snow clearing budget is around $700,000 per year I believe. The cost of clearing bike routes is going to be a small portion of that. Not doing it will not save that much money.”

This is a Ms Ballem attitude Richard – whatever the cost, it doesn’t amount to hill of beans. Well, in addition to dealing with Pk Bd budgets I’ve run my practice for 38 years & know from experience the little costs do matter. They have a scary way of adding up & then biting you were it hurts.

Glissy,
you were bang on, when you said “You ask me about those lanes again, next snow fall? Sure, useless work on union wages during a financial restrained time.”
That’s how Vision keep some departments happy. Oh, yes Chris K, that’s wise!
Bill McCreery,
“This is a Ms Ballem attitude”
Absolutely! Someone needs to tell this not so lady, to bend over put her head between her legs and try to kiss her ass good bye, because she needs to go. Like, yesterday…

Chris,
“tens of thousands of current bike commuters” LOL
It’s a pity you can’t claim you have 14 fingers at your left hand, three toes a foot and one mile long Dingy. But you could always try!

@Chris,

Solar and wind power are not realistic sources of energy because there will be times when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow so you still need to build alternative capacity for those occasions and the subsidies they require can devastate an economy (see Spain). So why not skip a very expensive step and build the alternative capacity. Similarly bicycles are limited due to weather and not very practical for picking up your Billy bookcases from Ikea or visiting the relatives in Cloverdale or taking Grandma to see the doctor. I’m all in favour of spending tax dollars for bicycle pathways suitable for recreation such as on the seawalls but not for segregated bicycle paths. As for the “tens of thousands of current bike commuters”, would they not continue commute whether there are segregated bicycle lanes or not?

@CK: tens of thousands of current bike commuters? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Is there any evidence to support your assertion? It suggests at least 20,000 bike commuters. Is that per day in Vancouver, or BC, or worldwide, or just in Copenhagen? Who did the counting, when and where?

@Bill McCreery

Ironically you seem to be concerned about rising expenses yet at least in past comments, you have called for costly business impact studies for bike lanes without producing any evidence from the hundreds of cities that have implemented separated bike lane that there are negative impacts on businesses. Nor have you bothered to produce an example of such a study. It would not seem like a wise use of tens or even hundreds dollars of taxpayers for studies that would likely not even be able to quantify what the impacts would be with any degree of accurately.

Yes, I understand the temptation to undertake endless studies to avoid making politically challenging decisions, but in the end, these decisions still have to be made and delaying the inevitable on serves to cost taxpayers money in the end. Burrard Bridge, for example, took 18 years and millions of dollars of studies, including $2 million to figure out that widening the bridge was twice expensive as expected. The trial was actually less expensive than the planning work for the widening.

You also might be interested in the planned separated bike lanes in Ottawa. They have had a much lengthier process yet neither the businesses nor the cyclists are particularly pleased with the result of all that studying. http://www.ottawacitizen.com/travel/Bank+Street+business+association+fight+plan+Laurier+bike+lanes/3894002/story.html

You state “As you know I favour a safe bike lane system downtown.” yet you don’t think that money should be spent in the winter to keep them safe and instead the money should be spent for cutting grass. Might want to reexamine your priorities.

@landlord

Just trying to counter all the misinformation being spread around.

This statement is ridiculous, insulting and not true, “…Vancouver where everyone knows that the only reason people ride a bike is because they can’t afford a car and are too anti-social to take the bus.” Funny, other commenters accuse cyclists of being rich elitists taking money away from the homeless. Talk about flailing away.

You who the people who cycle in Vancouver a big apology.

Chris Keam said:

“Weather isn’t as big a factor as you might think.”
——————————————–

Hmmmm…. so it’s apparent that you are actually corroborating what someone posted elsewhere:

“BTW it’s snowing hard outside. Just saw Chris Keam crossing Burrard Bridge on his bike. He’s on a Burrard-Hornby-Dunsmuir loop marathon, one man show. He does it for the good of the Party. Back wheel is adjusted with an improvised ski. If that’s not a Vision I don’t know what is!”

Anyone who disagrees with you is a bigot? Like I said, it’s a hobby, not a religion. Get over yourself.

The City of Vancouver estimates 60,000 trips a day are made by bicycle in the city, with more than 3,500 cyclists commuting to work downtown. If all those people took transit, they would fill 65 to 75 transit buses.

Today’s Sun. If someone wants to call these numbers in to question, go for it. But you’ll also be calling in to question the professional ethics of the engineers who calculated them. It’s not something I would want to do without tangible evidence.

If the City were able to levy a tax on trolling internet forums, their money troubles would be over. This thread alone could have seismically upgraded a school, let alone kept a washroom open.

In the meantime, until we can tax them, I’d recommend not feeding them.

News today: Foreclosure on Millennium’s West Van development; shelter opens; the other Robertson blasts park board…

An increasing number of people read this blog because they enjoy the informed conversation on a variety of civic issues. Many of us are greatful to Frances for keeping it going. Indeed, when the site was down a while ago, one regular reader emailed me with a desperate plea to track down Frances and get her blog fixed since, as she put it “I’m so addicted to her blog, I can’t get through the day without it!”

However, I am concerned that streams such as the one that has developed here over the past 30 postings, with the incessant debate over bicycles, is becoming a turn-off for many regular readers. It certainly is for me.

So to the topics…. It is not surprising to see the receivers coming in on Evelyn Drive. It was a very bold undertaking by Millennium; approximately 58 lots assembled and rezoned at considerable cost. One day it should be a good addition to the housing choices in West Vancouver. It might be noted that Millennium had carried out ‘Water’s Edge, another large and very successful project nearby (It’s the one you see on your right as you head west into West Van from the Lionsgate Bridge). Millennium also built one of West Vancouver’s most exclusive and successful waterfront towers. It’s a shame that they will lose this one, but someone will ultimately pick it up and build it out.

I’m pleased to see another shelter open, but must note that shelters can be surprisingly expensive to operate. As set out in a previous posting, and on my blog, IMO there are many other ideas that should be explored to address the needs of the homeless and destitute. They include housing people in existing apartments; helping people to access suitable clothing and personal hygiene; helping people to find employment; and family/friend reunification.

As for the Park Board ‘cut backs’, I am disappointed by the judgement of some Commissioners.

Perhaps I don’t understand the issues properly, but to cut back on the cleaning of washrooms does not strike me as a very sensible thing to do. Just as one can judge a restaurant by the cleanliness of its washrooms, I think the cleanliness of public washrooms is an important reflection of a city. Just check out the public washrooms next to the Dundarave Festival of Lights at the foot of 25th Street.

Michael:

Agreed that it would be nice to talk about something else for a change. One way to facilitate that might be for people with significant influence in the city’s political sphere to take a stand on things such as publicly-declared candidates for civic office expecting private citizens to choose either/or false dichotomies. (Please see comment #12) I don’t think an individual’s choice to support one policy should be inferred to mean a blanket support for all decisions, nor should it be right for a candidate to demand individuals without a party affiliation answer for the decisions of his opponents. If we curbed the politicking and personal attacks going on around bike lanes there would be little to talk about.

cheers,

CK

@Chris #47,

I agree with your points re creation of false dichotomies, though I would characterize your post #27 as a pretty good example of one.

@Michael #48,

Your comments about the difficulties in setting budget priorities are a much better way of expressing what I was trying to state in my post #20. As a member of the voting public, I’ll never have access to all of the factors going into those priorities. Hence, as I suggested, the best one can do is assess what appear to be the party’s significant priorities and vote accordingly.