MORE STUDY THE CONCERNS Transit use is still subsidizing sprawl Political leadership Mayors council says 5 years out AC admires the GVRD model and called it “civic federalism”. He also warned of the penalties of amalgamation and the possibility of getting a Rob Ford instead of an RP champon We are at least now talking about this, which was not the case a few years ago. There is a lot of spadework needed but “the a nswer is staring us in the face” I have insomnia. I have had it for a long while. Recently the only way I have managed to get to sleep is to imagine a world where we have won the plebiscite, and the parties that failed to secure individual majorities have successfully combined into a coalition that prevents Stephen Harper from continuing his disastrous reign. My partner tells me I am dreaming in technicolour. The only one clear message all these heartfelt no votes can truly claim is: I cannot bring myself to support the only proposal on the table, backed by municipal, regional and provincial governments casino slots near me, endorsed by 130-plus organizations from all walks of life, that – in spite of its inevitable flaws – is guaranteed to strengthen the economy, spread costs evenly, clean up the air and save lives, reduce spending on costly automobile infrastructure and subsidies, improve social equity safe online casino payouts, reduce public health costs, give employers access to a wider range of employees, give tens of thousands of households a chance to save $10,000 a year in automobile expenses, speed up goods movement internet banking mandiri, and reduce congestion and commuting times. I think that in BC we need to see a fairer tax system which extracts more from large corporations and the exceedingly wealthy individuals who have done so well from the tax cuts of recent years. I would like to a general roll back of flat fees and charges for public services, to be replaced by a truly progressive income tax system. Those who can afford to pay should pay more than those who have little. It is time to reset the balance. Inequality has become extreme nearly everywhere. The few countries that have resisted the pressure of the Chicago school have done better economically as a result. UPDATE Breaking News – according to a paywalled story in the Globe and Mail this morning Todd Stone is now willing to consider tolls and regional road pricing in the upcoming referendum (Posted at 09:08 Feb 26) Bob Mackin is also the reporter who chose to list the cost impact of increasing sales tax. It is sometimes hard to tell when reporters are actually trying to influence their readers, since there is always an editorial process that leaves other stuff out. It is the absence of other information that gives the story its slant. This does not have to be deliberate “spin” but we do expect that all media will at least attempt even handed reporting. This in itself can result in spin. The way that mainstream media has given so much prominence to climate change deniers, for example, when there is hardly any real scientific disagreement. See that video clip above for another example. It seems to have been generally accepted in the mainstream media than “money is tight”. For instance, CBC tv news a few nights ago was looking at why school playgrounds must be paid for through PAC fundraising and not taxes. Money is not tight at all. We are so flush with it that we are paying over the odds for money borrowed for infrastructure projects. BC bonds would pay 4%: going through the P3 process means we now pay 7%. The Auditor General is not impressed. In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. - George Orwell The Centre for Dialogue at SFU has been consulting on this issue and found that citizens want fairness and choice. They also preferred that RP be distance based. She also observed that the The biggest objection is that prices are unfair to the poor. This is an income problem not a price problem. We do not in general try to fix the price of food which would help rich and poor alike. (This seems to ignore US and European food agricultural policies) Equity issues can be dealt with through tax credits and other transfer payments
The best thing for transit is take the subsidy out of driving If the use of referenda were more widespread and the questions more open, I might be more inclined to support them. But I do not think that it is a good way to increase participation in politics. The questions have to reduced to sound bites, and populism is more likely to win than policy analysis. Not that in our system politicians pay much attention to that casino en ligne canadien vs tampa, even when they have set up the system themselves (see BC Ferris above). Trying do social justice on the cheap I went out this morning to the new Anvil Centre in New Westminster. The Mayors’ Council held a public meeting to approve the referendum question which is based on a proposed 0.5% addition to Provincial Sales Tax levied in Greater Vancouver. The link takes you to all the material discussed at that meeting and for a very good summary, as well as copies of the distributed materials I recommend Jeff Nagel’s report in the Surrey Leader . There is already a post on this blog announcing the talk this evening and with my initial reactions. I have have attached my notes below. I have also assembled a storify from the tweets that used the #movingthefuture hashtag Richard Campbell: In this region there has been over optimism in tolls on bridges Clive Rock: we only have a weak regional entity, and provinces don’t do cities well. We need a As many people have pointed out, there was no suggestion of a referendum for the widening of Highway#1 internet slots canadian dollar coin, Port Mann Bridge microgaming casinos jean, SFPR package. Nor will there be one for the replacement of the Massey Tunnel. There wasn’t going to be a referendum on BC Ferries either, but I was very impressed indeed with the speed with which Todd Stone moved to quash the idea that the ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo might be cancelled. And that after the BC Liberals had tried to pretend that making the organisation a company rather than a crown corporation would reduce political interference. Which, of course, is still rampant at BC Hydro and ICBC which have both been used as (regressive) revenue sources to replace fairer taxes. He did concede that introducing prices on services now provided “free” like road space, hit poor people hardest, but that he said was simply an income problem. Easily solved by a commitment to give poor people more money. If anyone has ever come across a conservative politician who is actually willing to embrace this notion, please let me know. As far as I am aware the idea of the guaranteed income is anathema to every conservative and is no more likely to be introduced into Canada or BC than I am to be given a seat in the Senate. The time to submit your votes stretches out before us, but I have a worry that the convinced have already committed themselves – not that they were open to any suasion. They had already made up their minds, and cannot conceive of any circumstances that would persuade them otherwise. And the people who might be swayed don’t actually vote these days. Their ballot has probably been recycled, or simply lost. Or they never bothered to register and anyway they haven’t got a driver’s license. I do NOT support a referendum for transit. On the whole the move towards more direct democracy has been used by right wing ideologues who think that voters hate paying taxes and will vote them down. Seattle, of course, is now being cited as a success. Indeed of the transit questions on the US ballots in the most recent midterm elections, voters said Yes on 65% of them. That’s not bad, but I do not take a lot of comfort from it. We do not live in such a country. Our province has long abandoned such approaches no matter what it claims. The best we can do is make the adjustments that we can. And a half a cent on the sales tax – provided other levels of government match the funds – is at least a step in the right direction. The people who oppose it have (so far) failed to come up with anything better. Dense cities built before transit When originally published this article had no title. I have since inserted the title from the Business In Vancouver editorial by Peter Ladner that I quoted I found a bit more sympathy with the new Mayor of Maple Ridge who opposed the motion on the basis that the Mayors will have no say at all on how the money is going to be spent. Actually, if you look at the question itself you will see the other Mayors had this covered by insisting on independent audits. Lois Jackson managed to work in a sly dig at the amount of work the new Mayors must have had to do to get up to speed on the proposal. She was all in favour of it, the combined Mayors of South of the Fraser having got all they wanted into the proposals. 20% of the population currently lives within walking distance of the Frequent Transit Network. Once this plan is implemented that will increase to 53%, she said. The figures for distance to jobs are even better: from 31% now to 67%. (All these figures are direct quotes from her second speech which came just before the vote). Which shows the danger of partial solutions It also demonstrates that you c an’t be sure of how much revenue you will get, so that is another reason not to rely on RP to fund transit expansion As usual Translink came in for a lot of criticism about its lack of accountability (as though that were their fault) and their apparent reckless spending. No one mentioned the many audits, consultants reports and comparative studies that have been done over the last few years most of which came from independent sources, usually highly paid accountants, all of which found that Translink performs as least as well and in some cases much better than transit systems of similar size across North America. If this referendum does turn into a Translink popularity contest then I hope at least some of the money set aside for communications goes into wider distribution and publicisation of those studies. 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