Stephen Rees’s blog

This gets top billing in today’s Province news section, although it concentrates on the power lines issue. There is also no coverage of anything that was actually said at the rally itself. However a turnout of 2,000 people is not to be disregarded lightly.

The big feature in that paper today is on housing affordability.

The thing that caught my eye in the Delta Optimist was the design charrette for the Southlands run by Andres Duany and an opinion piece on the development that is not against Smart Growth so much as the removal of the land from the ALR twenty years ago.

Of course people who live next to open land are against its development. That is always true in the suburbs. Not so much “after me, no more” but “don’t spoil the view I now have”. If you are lucky enough to own a home that had all the advantages of an urban area but you can kid yourself you live in the country, naturally you do not want that illusion spoiled. And much of the opposition to growth or density in the suburbs is fear of the growth of traffic, although traffic has been growing rapidly in areas which have seen very little development. More trips are being made, and those trips are getting longer - so the VKT increases would happen anyway even if the population wasn’t growing. And of course those terribly expensive large single family homes often have stay at home kids, or grannies in the basement, if not mortgage helpers in “secondary suites” (see Province article cited above). And those big houses have multiple car garages, and plenty of parking spaces too.

But what get people really out of sorts is that not only is transit in this area poor but it is going to get worse, not better, as a result of Translink’s expansion program.

It seems to me that all this is the inevitable result of allowing the region to be developed not in accordance with a well organised, up to date regional strategy that is designed to create a sustainable region (in other words what should have grown out of the LRSP long ago but still hasn’t) but rather in reaction to all kinds of business interests - ports, developers, private sector power providers, private sector transportation companies - who are more concerned about making money than anything else. The people of Delta are upset because no-one is listening to their concerns, and all that is happening in their community seems to be for the benefit of someone else. The consultation and environmental assessment processes are now a very obvious sham - merely a PR exercise to make it look as though someone is consulting and listening, when actually it’s always a Done Deal.

Straight

We have heard from more than one  group that population increase in this region is going to be our greatest challenge. Matt Burrows talks to Richard Balfour

“20 to 30 million people” could be living in the Georgia Basin in the next 15 to 20 years.

Now of course that is a much bigger figure than we are used to hearing - but that is because the “Georgia Basin” is not an administrative unit - any more than “Cascadia” is.

Earlier this month, Balfour gave a presentation to the Metro Vancouver land-use and transportation committee about applying strategic sustainable planning to the region. This would involve creating new towns in the mountains and partitioning farmland into self-governing areas so that municipalities cannot expand into them. He also urged regional politicians to develop more rail capacity, including high-speed rail, “because the highways will not be running”. He also advocated using “run-of-the-river–powered villages for B.C. rather than for export to California”.

But the railways are private entities - and they are making money - and are a very good stock pick right now. And they are not in the slightest concerned about the sort of things that Richard Balfour is or Metro Vancouver should be. And of course our provincial government thinks that highways are a great idea - and will be running on biofuel or hydrogen for ever. And Metro cannot organise its own waste disposal - liquid or solid - so expecting them to take on railways as well is a bit pointless, in my view.

I have been around the strategic planning business for most of my career. And what I have noticed is that very little of what actually happens is at all strategic. We argue about what is happening and what our response should be, but meanwhile the development process seems to be relentless, and very little of that responds to any strategic concerns. Not that the long term trends are hard to determine, or that we are fairly sure of what is needed. But somehow the short term, silly things get done - and not much happens to the big deal items. For example, the City of Richmond is dealing with the Olympics and the Canada Line. Most of its current spending is at the Oval and on Number Three Road. And on the dykes - critical to our survival - vulnerable to the inevitable seismic event and rising sea levels - nada!

We know that oil at $118 per barrel is not a short term flash in the pan but a long term problem, for an oil based economy. But all the transportation planning is concentrated on road building. And policies for low speed electric cars - well we will leave that up to the municipalities! For railways we will just flog them - and then try to keep the process out of the courts as long as possible or at least past the next election.

Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic seems far sighted by comparison.

Sun

There is so much wrong with the South Fraser Perimeter Road that anywhere else this would be the issue that stopped it. In the Ontario EA process for a site search project I did - admittedly some years ago now - we decided to go for a site that was so comprehensively disturbed and so far from streams that there was no chance of archaelogical remains. Indeed one of the first EAs I worked on here at Bamberton on Vancouver Island, it was the First Nations concerns that made the proponent give up, because they realised that mitigation was simply not possible. Sacred sites are like that.

But the SFPR has impacts on existing communities, on a unique and fragile ecosystem, on farmland - but all of that is not enough to get the MoT to even consider the available alternative route, let alone the flawed case that it is needed at all. And the presence of a line in an old plan (which had not examined any of these issues) should have no effect on the appraisal. By any measure, the SFPR has failed to meet any reasonable standard of evaluation.

It amazes me that Metro Vancouver has not joined the fight. How can you talk about a future sustainable region and have the advocates of the Gateway on the platform? There is nothing about the Gateway that is even remotely connected to sustainability. And the government’s claim that it will reduce local air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions has been shown to be false. Use a flawed set of assumptions (there will be no induced traffic, there will be no change in land use)m and you get forecasts which no one with any understanding of the history of urban growth can accept. Indeed, I am certain that both Gordon Campbell and Kevin Falcon know that, but regard their indebtedness to the business community as being more important than their responsibilities to the wider community.

The most depressing aspect of all this to me is the attitude of the First Nations. But these are their concerns - and I understand that they feel that a newcomer like me has no standing in this discussion. It is not my story to tell. I just wish that they would tell their story more forcefully and publicly. The lack of comment in this Sun piece is distressing, for this was an opportunity to take and possibly make some change. The Juggernaut of the Gateway needs some obstacles thrown in its path, to slow its progress before it flattens us all. We know this government does not care about the environment, or the community. But there are some groups that have to listen to - and that is not the farmers, or the defenders of Burns Bog, or the people who live along the present chosen route. They can expect to be ignored - and have been. But the reality of the present treaty process does give the First Nations a voice. And a voice that has power.

It needs to be heard along the Fraser.

NOW

and ensuring room for industry – key issues in regional development
This dialogue series will explore the linkages between transportation and density, as well as the need for mechanisms, such as a designation for industrial lands in Metro Vancouver.

I won’t be going to the Morris J Wosk Centre for Dialogue on May 1 at 11:30am even though it is usually a nice free lunch. There’s a limit to how much of this stuff I can take.

The panel is:

Ann McAfee
retired Director of Planning, City of Vancouver and Principal, City Choices Consulting

Sheri Plewes
Vice President, Planning and Capital Management, TransLink

Bill Tucker
Director, National Association of Industrial & Office Properties

Bob Wilds
Managing Director, Greater Vancouver Gateway Council

This does not seem to me to represent even a pretence at “balance”. It is the elite telling us what is good for us. The audience, being mostly business people, will lap it up. There may be a few greenies, and even fewer genuinely interested ordinary citizens. But the “discussion ” is you ask a brief question and all four on the panel will be allowed to pontificate at length, usually just restating what we have already heard.

Metro has teamed up with the Board of Trade to run these things, so it is not as if they are actually trying very hard to hear anything but business interests.

They do not even give poor old Rafe Mair a credit any more. And he is about the only person on the platform who will cast doubt upon the Gateway, or any of the rest of the “even more business as usual” message.

Lois Jackson writes

While Metro Vancouver has earned its reputation as one of the most livable places in the world, now, as we shift our focus to the longer term sustainability of our region, some of the challenges we face and opportunities available to us are crying out for attention.

New and innovative approaches to regional issues and attention to the growing impacts and opportunities of globalization are fundamental if we are to sustain those things that make our region special. Therefore, your opinions and participation at these sessions are vitally welcome and important.

And if you think she really means that you can register by sending an email to RegionalDialogueWoskCentre (at) metrovancouver.org - just make sure to take out the spaces and replace the at with the right sign

One of my online correspondents recently wrote to me that she hangs out on facebook to absorb the energy and enthusiasm of young people. I have been really impressed by some of the work being done by students, and thanks to the internet, this no longer just languishes in neglected folders, but gets shared. Paul Hillsdon, Ryan Longoz and Erika Rathje are all great examples.

An exercise in cartography (in pdf format) at UBC by Michael Kushnir has recently been completed and is doing the electronic rounds thanks to Richard Campbell (who does not blog but posts compulsively to email lists, thank goodness).

This map neatly illustrates where the density is in relation to railway lines, and tends, in my view, to support the thesis that we can better link to existing dense places by using the mode which actually brought most of them into existence. That is, as opposed to building even more infrastructure for a mode which we know has brought mostly misery and ill health in its wake. For if you are going to cross large areas of no people at all much better that you do it with trains that do not stop than roads which inevitably bring development with them.

The failure of the road system in the 1930s was due to what was then called “ribbon development”. New divided highways built in Britain as part of the unemployment relief efforts were not like the German autobahns (limited access roads). As a result, development sprang up along them, greatly reducing their utility as longer distance routes due to the number of accesses onto them. And covering some prime agricultural land in the process. At that time farming was in a slump due to the use of “Empire Preference” (which meant grain came from Canada, lamb from New Zealand and beef from Australia - and Argentina, which wasn’t in the empire) and the lack of need for horse fodder due to the mechanisation of road transport. A similar pattern afflicts the Fraser and King George Highways here today. Across the US the “defense” interstate highways enabled longer distance commuting and produce the freeway on ramp cluster that has made much of the country into a corporate clone of parking lots, fast food, gas stations and motels - ringed by big box retailers and outlet malls. And was eagerly copied by Doug McCallum in South Surrey.

The idea that you should use government investment as a way to shape growth seems to be anathema to our present provincial government. They even go so far as to claim that widening the freeway will not influence growth - even though they have been promoting development at highway interchanges in this area. They are even better at it than Judge Doom. The map also shows mode share - and how, at present, transit does not meet much need in the exurbs. That is because the distances to be covered are too great to be covered in a reasonable time by a bus that stops at every hole in the hedge. Assuming there is a bus service at all, which usually there isn’t. So speedy rail cars stopping only at centres will encourage transit oriented development there - provided the municipalities zone it properly.

It requires some concerted effort, by all three levels of government to create a framework whereby we will stop doing what we have been - since we know that doesn’t work - and try another approach, which has been demonstrated many times to be effective. And which will serve us all much better in an oil starved future.

Gov Parris N Glendening at SFU downtown April 17

The former Gov of Maryland, he is now the President of the Smart Growth Leadership Institute, which he founded.

He opened by remarking that there is a new interest in sustainability: “everyone is talking about it - even Walmart!”. However he acknowledged that it is not happening at the federal level: “Only 10 people do not understand climate change. Unfortunately they are all in the White House.”

He described how the term “Smart Growth” was arrived at. A package of bills were to be resented in Maryland, and it was essential that people did not cherry pick among them. So a term was needed to show that it was a coherent program that needed all of them. The term is in fact interchangeable with a number of others used in other places.

The population of the US is at 300m now, and will be 430m by 2050. This raises the question “Can we continue to grow the same way as we did for last 60 years? He offered Einstein’s definition of insanity: expecting a different outcome from continuing to do the same thing. The status quo does not meet any of the challenges we now face. Even a place like Vancouver is not sustainable. If every city on earth was like Vancouver we would need four planets to support it (source: Brent Toderian). That is, of course better than the Las Vegas or Atalanta models which would require 20 planets.

The problems are multiple - traffic congestion, gas prices. It started with the building of Levittown, the post war suburbs which have given us sprawl, based on the belief that you could always build more roads and keep on expanding. It is inevitable that gas prices will continue to rise and scarcity is likely sooner rather than later until many people will find themselves unwilling and unable to drive long distances every day. We have also seen the health impacts of a lack of physical activity: obesity is directly correlated to sprawl. This is due to a sedentary lifestyle imposed by the urban form that favours cars over walking and biking. In the US cars are used for 75% of trips that are of less than one mile.

It has been established that one way commutes of 12 to 15 miles cancel out the economic advantage of lower priced homes. It is aid that people have to “drive till you qualify”: in other words the size of the mortgage you can support depends on your income so you have to find the house priced at what you can buy.

His commitment to the idea of conservation stemmed from his early experiences while a student seeing the effect of development on the Florida everglade. The loss of natural environment, caused by road widening and subsequent urban expansion has now caused sever problems of water supply and drainage. In Maryland it was the widening of US Highway #1, which made it easier to buy a farm and build on it than redevelop the declining urban areas. Land use and the development pattern needs a regional framework. The conventional land use and transportation planning model is a pattern for disaster. He showed an animation of a series of maps showing development at ten year increments “The Amoeba that Ate Maryland”. As the suburbs aged the development continued to spread out because the development playing field was “tilted to subsidise sprawl” There were a number of interrelated policies - the construction of the interstate highways, the GI loan plan which guaranteed mortgages and the banks use of a “red line” for existing communities where ethnic minorities lived and mortgages would not be granted.

Some states tried an Incentive based approach to change the rules of growth. Washington and Oregon tried regulations. Maryland tried the “carrot and stick” of both. He said that while you need both regulations and subsidies, regulation alone is more efficient bit is not politically doable. In 1977 Maryland designated Smart Growth areas which would have priority for state funding which steered investment to already developed areas. “The State will not pay to subsidize sprawl” and this changed the bottom line for developers. For example, the state would not fund new schools on greenfield sites: if the developer proceeded he would have to pay for the necessary schools. The plan was not against growth - and he noted that many environmentalists are against growth altogether. The policy ensured that over 400,000 acres in Maryland have been preserved as farmland.

The policy allowed for growth and but also promoted preservation. For example there is a tax credit for rehabilitating historic buildings, which can be seen to have worked in Baltimore and its inner harbour. He acknowledged that implementation is difficult. For example, the regents of the University of Maryland wanted to build on a greenfield site outside Hagerstown. The Governor directed them to the centre of the city where the Baldwin House (an old department store) stood empty. The rehabilitation of this building and bringing students and faculty to the centre of the city created an economic stimulus of activity. The state had to rewrite the code for building reuse: like most codes it had assumed that all activity would be new build. The use of this code was tied to a requirement that there must be an increase in density.

“People don’t like sprawl and they don’t like density”

It is essential to intensify development. In cities you can use the parking lots, not green fields. However, not all density is created equal: it must be well designed, walkable, livable and fun. He illustrated this with images from Detroit ( Ugly density) and Boston to show his conviction that “it is all about design.”

He recommended the book “Visualizing Density”from which these two images have been taken.

Regular attenders at these lectures or readers of this blog will be very familiar with the material covered at the end of his talk, which emphasized design paired with density and making the connection between density and climate change. For example he talked about Green Buildings and how significant it is to replace LEED with LEED ND. It is he said, crucial to think beyond emissions for vehicles - as VMT yearly increases negate all the improvement gained by technology.

A useful source (new to me anyway) is Growing Cooler published by ULI

Chart of impact of VMT - Center for Clean Air Policy

Even if every state adopted the California emissions standards for CO2, which would have a limited impact on improving overall fleet economy for the next ten years or so, the increase in VMT more than offsets the improvement. “Why do we have to drive so much anyway?” The important thing is that the places we live in be compact, walkable - and affordable. He then cited a recent NPR program “I just wanted my life back” about a woman who moved to Atlantic Station in Atlanta GA in order to live closer to her job. He said that for most people there is an “undersupply of options” and he spoke approvingly of Sam Sullivan on EcoDensity. He recognized that this would be controversial but found a very powerful quotation.

Discussion

Q - A lady from White Rock wants to replace her house on its present site with 4 townhouses but the City council won’t let her

A - Montgomery County in Maryland had faced the same issue and essentially it comes down to political will. Remember that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” and they have to “connect the dots” In the long term the only option may be to “toss out the current leadership”.

Q - How have things continued since you left?

A - There have been mixed results. About ¼ of the residential development is outside the designated growth area, so we have still got sprawl but not so much as before. Basically some developers were prepared to pay for schools. His immediate successor was not a supporter, but the new governor is. Maryland’s start has stimulated 27 states which now have got Smart Growth program - even Arizona - which “wrapped it in the water supply issue” - and Wyoming! Local governments must implement the provisions or the state must take stronger action. He noted that Canadian provinces have more power over municipal governments than states do.

Q - The “metropolis expands at the cost of the hinterland” how do you prevent the “loss of farmers from land” We now have the most expensive homes in Canada. How can growth serve the people?

A - Your points are valid - agricultural land is now so expensive, it has become the farmer’s retirement account. In Maryland they transferred the development rights from the farmer to the state. Essentially the state used its windfall from the tobacco court cases to buy out the development rights of farmers but they also imposed the condition that they could not continue to grow tobacco. It is, he said, essential to protect well being of farmers.

Smart Growth can be a gentrification issue: for example in Washington DC one development was for $800,000 homes on what had been a “no go” area. He said the states must aggressively pursue “inclusionary zoning” to provide a range of alternatives: for instance the requirement that 20% of the development be what is now called “workforce housing”.

Q - What is the “mesh of priorities between the state and municipalities”. The questioner was interested in the “conversations between levels of government”

A - This is critical “how do you make this work?” Transportation drives development patterns but transportation plans are rarely linked directly with land use decisions. For example the Washington DC subway system - a very significant investment - had no linkage to land use around stations.The state must be the link between transit and land use and insist on a minimum of mixed use and density - e.g. New Mexico LRT Albuquerque where “stations must have an overlay base in place”. It is a “matter of right” - to have the station there you must have land use plans that are adjusted to reflect the change in accessibility. “If you want a station, you must meet the requirements.”

Q - Affordable housing - displaced families - requests from the community for on site relocation have been ignored (the questioner was referring to Little Mountain in Vancouver)

A - A range of tools are available - the regulatory framework adopted by Montgomery County MD was inclusionary zoning 20% of workforce housing, with the first preference of its allocation to existing residents . In Maine there is a checklist for policies which is tied to state grants: if municipalities want state funding their chances of getting it are better the more boxes on the checklist are ticked. There is no one answer. The recent collapse of the housing market will force more action in future.

Q - public education

A - yes - lots of examples - direct impact on their lives

Q - We wanted to plan for “live, work and play in same place” (LRSP). You seem to be promoting a fascist system - its is elitist like Dubai which has created a slave economy. We must talk about cheap reasonable transportation and free parks. “Everything these days is user pay”. We need development for human beings

A - There is nothing magic about the term “Smart Growth”. We do outline the type of place we want: we do see need for play, space, transit. In the US we don’t pay for roads but we raise the price of transit - that’s wrong. Living, working and playing in a community accessible to everyone is the objective. “I don’t disagree with any of your desires”. The old “projects” were concentrations of poverty, where segregation stigmatized poverty.

Reaction

I must admit that I was surprised that BC is the only province of Canada to have a SmartGrowth chapter. Perhaps that reflects our view that we are not American so we cannot join an organisation called “Smart Growth America”. While much of his talk concerned US governance, there really was not a huge amount of difference in outcomes. For example, Britain did not have guaranteed mortgages, but that did not stop the Wimpey housing estates leaping over the green belts and covering farmer’s fields. The sprawl in Britain may have been railway based but it was still low density.

It is notable that affordable housing may have been renamed, but it is still a state obligation, now imposed on developers, and producing more integrated communities. Canada seems to have completely abandoned the field, and the results in Vancouver are possibly the most apparent anywhere. People may object to the term “workforce housing” - but we do not have any - and that has had and is having a very definite impact on our workforce. One of the reasons transit expansion is slow is that CMBC cannot hire enough operators.

It struck me that the audience were bringing their local issues to air in public rather than seeking knowledge but perhaps that is to be expected. Since I have now attended rather a lot of these, I am beginning to hear the same things repeated both from speakers and audience.

Jeff Nagel, BC Local News

A longish piece, but worth reading and apposite, given what I have already posted today. Kevin Falcon’s imposed structure on Translink was always going to be a bit awkward to handle. Because the only reason it was created was that Kevin did not like a decision the previous Board had taken some time to consider. They were not too keen on the Canada Line and had some very real questions to ask. I would like to be able to write that they had their doubts about the Gateway too, but if they did we did not hear about it. And what we have now is more like the Port and the Airport which were formerly federal institutions and are now supposed to be local but are completely unaccountable, and operate more like companies than public authorities. Except there are not even the equivalent of shareholder’s meetings.

Jeff has been using the FOI process to get hold of the sort of stuff that the previous board used to put on its web page. Now the previous board did not go out of their way to make it easy to find stuff. There were pdf files of board reports, and they were filed by the date of the meeting. And I could never find anything I wanted by using search engines - but usually somebody knew which day the relevant meeting had been held. Of course, minutes of meetings and decisions were somewhere else, but there was a “Board in brief” that was not the official minutes but was reliable and accurate. And of course the old Board wasn’t directly elected so I am not claiming it was adequate - but it was better than what we have now.

But the point Jeff is making is that this Board is not listening to its own staff. And what must also be remembered was that this Board was not selected for its expertise in transportation, or planning, or public accountability.

The FOI request generated 223 pages of material from the January and February board meetings.

Most of the reports would have been routinely released by the former TransLink board of mayors and councillors, who had counselled continued openness.

The information obtained details numerous decisions made secretly in recent weeks but shielded from public view – including the recent adoption of a whistleblower policy that sets rules for TransLink employees who report misconduct.

Much of the material has been blanked out and it is often impossible to tell what recommendations were made or actions taken.

What is thoroughly unsatisfactory about all this is the inevitable conclusion that since they are hiding, there must be stuff they do not want us to see. Why not? It is not as if this stuff has huge privacy or security concerns. The old Board used to meet in camera, when it had to. It also used to have premeetings, that were not official but “briefings”. So did the old Vancouver Regional Transit Commission. There were no public records of those meetings either.

The instinct of most officials is to keep things quiet and keep their heads down and avoid scrutiny as much as possible. It is not hard to find politicians who get caught up in that ethos. It is profoundly unhealthy. It is not about trying to embarrass people, or make them look any sillier than they are. It is about understanding how our money is being spent. It is about accountability and process. We deserve to kept informed and consulted. We elect governments - they are not appointed by kings or dictators. They serve at the will of the people, who can remove them if they fail to perform.

This is an important principle that has been lost sight of in the rush for efficiency and business like decision making. But public authorities - ports, airports, ferries, transit, road builders and maintainers - are not just about the bottom line, like most companies. They deal with huge issues of public significance, and most of them are more important than the financial rate of return on capital employed, which is all most PLCs care about.

Oh and one other thing before I forget - who are these “whistle blowers”? I never met one in the seven years I worked there. I was aware of people who had been got rid off , who every so often popped in public and pointed out some of the sillier things they were aware of, but they were generally ignored as eccentrics with a personal axe to grind. I do know that the people I worked for were terrified about some things that I knew about would become public. When I was terminated I was made to sign a contract which comprehensively prevented me from talking about anything, with all kinds of dire consequences. It seems that it was standard boiler plate and not specially created for me. But I have never had to keep quiet about stupid decisions because they were plain for all to see. I have never repeated gossip, and I kept no private records, so I do not need to behave like Deep Throat.

But I suspect that if this Board keeps going in this direction there will be people who will find it necessary to give unattributable information to people who can get it out. Or even publish it themselves. Many secretive organisations have found anonymous bloggers in their midst in recent years. I hope so anyway.

BC Local News

Basically I am doubtful about every story I see today. I will let you read this one and decide who the joke is on. This cannot be an accurate report of a responsible public body even in BC

Miro Cernetig goes into the context of the Les case, and reveals the secretive culture of municipal halls. Or rather reports on the attempts of an SFU professor to dig into it, usually unsuccessfully

Here’s what the report says happened when they asked Port Coquitlam for the election documents: “… one surprising discovery was that Port Coquitlam had ‘inadvertently’ destroyed’ all 1999 campaign finance disclosure statements before the scheduled time.”

Another eight municipalities — some of them the province’s biggest — didn’t respond in the required time under the law: “Belcarra, Coquitlam, Harrison Hot Springs, Lions Bay, Pitt Meadows, Richmond, Surrey and Hope, did not respond within the 30-day time limit and as a result their responses were ‘deemed refusals in law’ according to the B.C. Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.”

Perhaps the most shocking finding of all, though, was the secretive culture that the professor and his graduate students Denisa Gavan-Koop and Stephanie Vieille encountered. Most of the municipalities seemed to want to limit access to those campaign financing details, which would tell you such things as what developers financed which politicians.

Municipal officials should be like civil servants - professional not political. They should work in the interests of the community not elected individuals. But the relationships inside many municipal halls are much closer than they should be. Any not a few senior municipal officials have clearly a very hazy notion of where their responsibilities are supposed to lie.

The author of the article thinks that the Freedom of Information Act should help. And I know I have done this too often but I have worked under the old blanket “Official Secrets Act” in the UK - which made it an imprisonable offence if I told you the price of a cup of tea in the staff canteen, for both of us - and the BC Freedom of Information Act. And in my experience, the public got a lot more from people working under the former than the latter.

Because the OSA was treated as something that could be dealt with on a discretionary basis. It was terrible legislation - a very brief bill rushed through at the start of World War 1. But that meant it could be administered very flexibly. Although I was hauled on the carpet over the risk of exposure of parking meter rates in the City of Westminster - but at least the lady from the SIS had a smile on her face when she did it. But the very detailed FOI means that there are all sorts of rules and regulations, and a whole office of people just “severing” stuff using special felt tip pens that defeated Xerox machines. We never had those in Whitehall.

No it is not the legislation - or the lack of a commissioner to dig stuff out. It is people who think they report to the Mayor and Councillors and not to the tax payers and voters.

Vancouver Sun

There is going to be a public meeting tonight in Burnaby. Translink wants to consult - about less than 2% of its revenues. They would have got that from businesses, but they balked and want homeowners (and renters too but they do not see it directly) to help pick up the tab. Because the BC Liberals in Victoria like to give the odd sop to businesses - unless they are in the way of one of their favourite projects of course.

Property tax is one of the worst ways I can think of to pay for transportation. Note too that in the minds of the subs at the Sun, it’s a “transit levy” - no matter that increasingly it is going to pay for roads. In fact for as long as I have been around Metro Vancouver’s transport issues, the common theme has always been that transport users should pay for transport - and that if the price they paid to use their cars and trucks - or buses and trains - were closer to their true social costs we might see a more reasonable distribution of trips between modes, and fewer vehicle kilometres travelled.

The one thing that is not going to be on the table for discussion is how $18m could be absorbed by budget cuts. And of course, the only thing that gets mentioned are things people want. I simply would not expect Dale Parker to talk about how the credit collapse - which is by no means a problem limited to the US - is affecting some of the P3 projects we are now stuck with. The Canada Line and the Golden Ears Bridge are costing much more because of the fallout of the bundled mortgages crisis. And we have already seen the Canada Line trim its project scope to try and stay within budget. And I have seen it suggested that it has also had a knock on effect of reducing available funding for other major capital projects yet to start.

He does say “And these [operating] costs have gone up 93 per cent in the past seven years” but he does not say how much unit costs have changed, because a lot of that increase comes from at long last actually expanding transit service - not that it is anywhere near enough and is certainly not increasing transit mode share the way it was supposed to.

The very rapid rise of board meeting costs will not, of course, be mentioned. Not by the Board anyway. Though you can expect a lot of puffing blowing about maintaining competitiveness in the market place for skilled talent. Which may well also be called to defend rapidly rising staff costs too. Not to mention the shortage of bus drivers. Nor what happens to a gas tax that is based on a levy per litre not percentage of pump price when those prices rise.

How many people going to this meeting are going to say “Yes, I would like to pay more property tax” ? And what do you think the outcome will be if 100% of them say no?

So I won’t be going.