This whole rapid transit. GVRDofficialsdon’t even want
business isin one hellofamess. to talk about it.

It’s almost impossible to If the GVRD is right and the

Separate fact from political fic- cost does run over $800 million,

_ invited to a special meeting of

The GVRD should
tell Vander Zalm
to stick it on LRT.

tion, and believe me, there’s a
lot more politics than facts in-
volved here.

who will pay this overrun?
Vander Zalm won’t commit his
government on this point. And
yet it is a key issue. The govern-
ment’s track record on cost
estimates is anything but good.
Look at its Pier B.C. trade and
convention centre. in Van-
couver. In two years the cost of
this baby of Amazing Grace

Harry

Rankin.

McCarthy rose from $25 million

The minister of municipal af-* tg $105 million! The GVRD
fairs, Bill Vander Zalm has _ has every right to be suspicious |
decided, all on his own, that we of Vander Zalm’s figures. My
must have an automated light — own opinion is that the cost will |
rapid transit system whether we _ run well over $1 billion.
like it not. And if the Greater The GVRD has until now |
Vancouver Regional District supported a. conventional light
(GVRD) doesn’t accept his rapid transit system, rather than
ultimatum, Vander Zalm says the elevated automatic line that
he’ll appoint a new body that _ Vander Zalm now wants. It says’
will. that a conventional system will

Vander Zalm says that his cost $70 to $90 million less than
automated light rapid transit the automated system.

(ALRT) line running from Van-
couver to Surrey will cost $650 °
million. The GVRD says it will
cost over $800 million by the
time it is completed in 1986.
Vander Zalm says his govern-
ment will pay two-thirds of the
$650 million — about $433
million. How will the GVRD
raise the balance? By more taxes
on gasoline? No one knows.

Special meet
on LRT called

Public delegations have been

Vander Zalm says the
automated system is preferable
because most of its components
would be built in Canada. There
is evidence now to dispute this
assertion. The main cost of the
system will be the work right
here of building the line.

Vander Zalm says that the
automated system will be
driverless. It is becoming evi-
dent that this is also a myth.
There must be and there will be
drivers. The public will demand |
them for its own safety and |
quite rightly so.

Vander Zalm,has given the |
GVRD until Feb. 1 to accept his
decision or else. My own view is
that we should tell him to stick
it. There is no way the GVRD-

Vancouver City Council, 7:30
p.m., Jan. 20 to debate the pro-

vincial Proposals forrapidtran- can or should agree to start

sit and the position of Van- building until the costs have |
couver in the GVRD, been settled, until we know

_ Themeeting was called on the precisely who will pay and how.

Initiative of COPE alderman It’s time Vander Zalm put his

Bruce Yorke. money where his mouth is.

drops to 0.0

TRIBUNE PHOTO— SEAN GRIFFIN

Vancouver:
Vancouver
Burnaby
New West.
- North Van
* West Van
Delta
Richmond

The latest survey of apartment vacancies ‘
by the Canada Housing and Mortgage Cor-
poration has dropped the vacancy rate for
the city of Vancouver as low as it can go. In
October, 1980, there was an unmeasurable

‘less than one in 1,000 vacancies. In Greater
Vancouver the vacancy rate was 0.1%; the
same as Victoria. The Canadian average
was 2.2%, Here is a breakdown for Greater

0.0 Surrey . 0.0
0.1 White Rock 0.5
0.1 Coquitlam 0.8
0.0 Pt. Coquitlam 0.0
0.2 Pt. Moody 0.0
0.0 Langley 0.0
0.6 Maple Ridge 0.3

Continued from page 1
wiser to reduce the majority to 55
percent, so that it wouldn’t be seen
as merely a strategy to block any
change. :

The NPA then resurrected its
basic position, charging that the
1978 plebiscite victory and the 1980

. election of a pro-ward majority is
the result of a left wing conspiracy
which wants a ward system to take
over the city.

COPE aldermen Rankin and

Yorke countered the conspiracy
charges pointing out that thereis no
inherant qualities of the ward
system which will’ favor any:

political group. It will simply pro-

vide a more democratic and ac-
countable system, they argued.
The ward system will however

also end the built in advantage:

which the city’s establishment
_ forces have enjoyed for over thirty
years in the at-large system. And

the appreciation of that fact ex-.
plained the very long faces which
hung on the NPA during the
debate. :

Rankin’s motion consisted of
two parts. The first called on the ci-
ty to ask the provincial government
to pass enabling legislation for the
city to implement a ward system,
and the second called for a special
committee of countil to hear public
representations and to work out the
details of ward boundaries and deal
with other associated questions
such as the inclusion of the parks
board and school board. _

To meet the concerns of TEAM
that the Socreds not be allowed to
write the ward boundaries, the
COPE aldermen agreed to reverse
the order of the sections so that the
city will first arrive at a specific pro-
posal and then make submissions
to Victoria to change the city
charter.

€ won’t get many votes from those in this office — since only
one staff member is an alumnus and therefore eligible to vote
— but B.C. author and college instructor Stan Persky may stir up con-
siderable support as he takes another crack at the chancellorship of the
University of British Columbia. As before, he’s running against in-
cumbent chancellor J. V. Clyne who, as former chairman of
MacMillan-Bloedel and an honorary member of the C. D. Howe In-
Stitute, epitomizes the corporate establishment.
Largely a titular position, although one with considerable prestige,
the chancellorship has not traditionally sparked a great electoral con-
test although student radical Randy Enimoto turned it into one in 1966

_ during the heyday of student activism. More recently, Persky has

, garnering public interest in the post — and a not insignifi-
cant number of votes.
In the last elections, in 1978, he got 4,275 votes to Clyne’s 10,359 but.
this time round, he’ll likely do much better.

With typically sardonic wit, he’s already scored a few points. Tradi- -

tionally, candidates for both chancellorship and the university list, in
minute detail, every one of the posts the’ve held or the works they’ve

published. Not to be one-upped, Persky filled up better than half a -

page of the candidates’ qualifications paper with what appears to bea
comprehensive list of all the articles and columns he published in the
Sun, the Province, the Columbian and Canadian Dimensions in 1980.
It probably drove the typesetter mad. :

A much shorter list, but typical of the kind of pretension that sur-
rounds UBC elections, was offered by Elaine McAndrew, one of the
senate candidates, She listed her publications as ‘“Canadian Govern-
ment specifications board standards . . . ‘Unit Pricing’ and ‘Lids for
Home Canning’ ”’. With scholarship like that, choosing a candidate
ought to be an easy thing. :

* * *
i tis probably the only store closure the Silbers have carried out
with our first holding one of their notorious closing-out sales,
but it has happened — Union Furniture, that utterly misnamed store

PEOPLE AND ISSUES
ACR eat. a eaIR URE gale encore

opened by Stacy’s Furniture scion Steven Silber is closed. It was opened
in October on the site of the former Stacy’s Furniture after the earlier

store, owned. by Steven’s father Arnold Silber, hdd held an eight-
month ‘close-out sale’? — a sale allowed by Surrey municipality
despite protest that it was phony from the Teamsters Union Local 31 é
on strike at Stacy’s warehouse in Richmond since May 7, 1980.

But when we drove by this week, the windows were boarded up, the
sale banners were off the building, and the sign — Union Furniture, in-
tended by the Silbers to mock the Teamsters bitter strike to organize
and win a collective agreement — wastorn down.,

We'll wait and see, however. If it’s anything like the usual Silber
business reincarnation, another store could appear with the name, the
ownership — and the anti-union policy — intact.

* * *

0 ur page three feature last week by Betty Griffin concerning the
coming crunch in school taxes prompted a number of ap-
preciative comments from readers both in the Lower Mainland and

from Vancouver Island and the interior.

However there was an error, not of Betty’s making, which should be
Put straight. In the concluding section of the article it was stated that
immediate action is needed to pressure the province to reduce the mill
rate for education purposes, increase the homeowner grant and in-
“crease the basic education program or the amount of money allocated
to each school district for education purposes.

As Betty points out, increasing the basic education program may be
needed, but it would not affect the division of school taxes between the
homeowner and the province. Moreover, the basic education program
is already set for 1981. What homeowners need now is a reduced mill
rate, and a bigger homeowner grant with the balance taken from pro-
vincial general revenue.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JAN. 16, 1981—Page 2

“Home rule’ for city urged

However COPE alderman
-Bruce Yorke stressed that the pro-

vince should have nothing to do —

with deciding the form of govern-
ment in Vancouver. ‘‘We are ask-

ing for the right to run our own af- _

fairs —homerule,”’ he said. Yorke
said that that the city should ask the
Socreds for general enabling
legislation only.

The passage of the motion was
the culmination of a 10 year cam-
paign by. COPE and other citizen
groups which forced plebiscites in

1973 and 1978 and which was a —
central issue in each election cam- '

paign. Council will begin hearing
briefs from the public in the near

future, and the shape of a ward ~

system for Vancouver could be
recognizable in three months.

In other business, a proposal
from mayor Harcourt to establish
a $30 million housing fund and a
target of 5,000 non-profit units in
the GVRD in 1981 were referred to
committee for study. Three mo-
tions from COPE Ald. Bruce
Eriksen on housing to use zoning
powers to force developers to pro-
vide non-profit housing and to’
crack down on slumlords were also
deferred. .

CP rally

Communist Party national
leader. William ‘Kashtan will ad-
dress a rally in Vancouver Febru-
ary 4 as the opening shot in a west-
ern tour aimed at advancing the
CP’s position on the constitutional

‘crisis and problems of western

regional development.

The tour will follow a special CP
conference in Calgary Feb. 1-2 of
the party’s central executive com-
mittee and delegations from each
of the four western provinces.

The CP conference will

deliberate on questions of in-

dustrial development, energy
policy and oil pricing, discrimina-.

tion in tarrif- and freight rates, the
Crow rate and rail abandonment,

and it will analyze the so-called ©

western separatist movement.

_The Vancouver meeting is
scheduled for 8 p.m. at the Holiday
Inn, 711 West Broadway.

ei