rc When the business people and residents of the Commer- cian Drive area asked the pro- vincial government to change the light rapid transit line down Commercial Drive from an elevated line to a tunnel, the answer was an emphatic ‘‘no!”’. But when a developer at Ter- minal and Main wanted the line changed so he could make a fast buck (or rather, several million | fast bucks) the provincial government complied im- mediately. Not only that, it went directly to city engineer and director of planning and enlisted their support to get city council’s agreement. Harry Rankin Originally the first section of the ALRT line was scheduled to go down the centre of Terminal Avenue. Now the Urban Tran- decided that it should go down the north side of Terminal Avenue. Why the sudden change? The reasons given include the claim that it would be less costly because less-utilities would have to be re-located, there would be ~ less traffic disruption, it would be more “‘aesthetic’’ and so on. » All of these reasons are what was involved when it decided that the ALRT line should go down the centre of Terminal Avenue. | What, then, has changed? Well, it just so happens that last May a certain used car dealer in Vancouver bought three acres of land at the corner of Terminal and Main for $3 Developers saw fast buck on LRT sit Authority UTA has suddenly , )~ because the UTA knew all along- 7 of this developer. And it just so happens that the UTA has now made a deal with this developer not only to build the terminal on his property, but also to accept a gift of $2 a square foot (for a total of $1.3 million once the property is rezoned by city council to enable this developer to build a huge high-density hotel commercial complex on his property. We are told that this was all done innocently and above board, that the used car dealer did not have advance informa- tion when he bought th - : : = : | ty and that the Snail el assessment. reductions were based . Sasgso=TScS ms <4 During the three-and-one- | advarice information when he: — key documents which are BRUCE YORKE . . . demands re. half hour hearing, Richmond} bought it from the used car dealer. How stupid do they think the citizens of Vancouver and city council are? Those stories are made up of the same stuff that you wipe off your shoes after you go through a horse stable! Some 36,700 homeowners — 46 percent of all those in Vancouver — had their assessments rolled back 25 percent Monday as the courts of revision began reassessing market values in various munici- palities. Blanket reductions from five to 25 percent were made in other municipalities including Langley, New Westminster, West Vancouver and Lions Bay. But in Vancouver, the court of revision has so far refused to release the information on which the necessary to determine whether the ” areas on the east side of the city should also have been included and to assist other homeownersr preceeding with appeals. COPE alderman Bruce Yorke called. on the court Monday to make the information available but was turned down. He said Wednes- day that if the information was not released, he would take court ac- tion to have it released. Despite the reductions, the Committee of Progressive Electors plans to proceed with its assessment workshop Feb. 6 to assist homeowners in proceeding with their appeals. The workshop is set The UTA had no damn busi- for 10 a.m. at the Robson Square ness making such a deal without. theatre and COPE has a number of consulting city council in the lawyers and accountants available first place. Zoning and rezoning is the right of council, not the UTA. Not only did the UTA The action by the court of revi- and the developer want council sion has also not changed the de- to make a decision in their | mand of the city for school tax re- favor, they wanted it made im- lief by the provincial government. mediately on presentation of City council voted Tuesday to call their demand. an additio _ Sharing formula for the future.’ ‘tions. uN Sian, andthe sand of | a2 adonal $20 on the heme, “Tse etdon was adopted in| Event at iafavorble Bruce Yorke and Bruce Eriksen school taxes, or to give all GVRD SS meetings of 800 taxpayers in J ing in the Woitas case, there wl | ils a pe dimers: kd 4. teskieht teat ceciagtion, at. Vit00a, 700 "in Sidney” and’ a ; | stillbesome20,000 applicalg be granted; furthermore that the provincial government expense. meeting of 50 in the Collingwood- | for such increases pending terminal should be built on city- In those areas where the courts ‘@ngford area last month. cording to assistant rentals owned land at that corner. If | of revision recommended blanket __ Activists from thenewly-formed ] Anthony Dibley. there’s any money to be made as well as current real estate market information. on Victoria to give residents either funding in assessments, it was a posed to reflect market value to the BRITISH COLUMBIA Appeals trigger assessment cuts lease of assessment informa. tien. «7: end of the year. Still awaiting a decision is an im- portant recommendation from the district of North Vancouver which appealed the entire assessment roll. The district called Monday for all residential assessments to be rolled back to the 1981 level, citing market figures to back that recom- mendation. If granted, the appeal would leave commercial and industrial assessments, which were not af- fected as much by the market sw- ings, at the current assessment le- vel. The court of revision has reserved decision, however. In Victoria, where some 15,700 appeals have been lodged, the Citizens Action League has been circulating a petition which also calls for the 1982 assessments to be rolled back to the 1981 level. The group has also demanded dn im-*>' mediate and total review of the tax. . system ‘‘to devise an equitable organization have gone door-to- door to get signatures on the peti- tion and have urged that the cam- paign for tax relief be continued even after the courts of revision. The formation of a province-wide organization has also been sug- million. A week later he sold it on such a deal, let it be made by result of sales figures for the period to a Surrey developer and. thecityso wecan useit to reduce from September, 1981 to the end of speculator for $4.9 million. And _ taxes, not to fill the pockets of | the year which showed that market!’ it just so happens that the UTA some developer who has the values had dropped substantially in then decided to build a terminal provincial government in his those few months. Assessments are = the newly acquired property pocket. drawn up in September but are sup- ee Rent hike decision nw | reserved North Vancouver tenant Irm- | gard Woitas, facing a 122 per- | cent rent increase on her 380} East 1st St. apartment, is still] waiting for a ruling on her case} following a hearing before the} Rentalsman Jan. 29. Rentalsman officer Eleanor] Ramsdale told Woitas and] North Shore Tenants Associ tion secretary Greg Richmon that she would render a decision | some time in early February. challenged landlord M.G. Har- vey’s claims that the increas were needed to meet the costs renewing the mortgage and car- | rying out repairs to the buildi _ The repairs were immediate questionable, he said, because] there were no plans presented t0| the hearing nor were any repairs} scheduled. | The tenants association secre} tary also took issue with) Harvey’s projected 18 percent) mortgage for 1982, noting that the current rate is 16.5 percent, under Harvey’s “‘floating rate | mortgage. if Richmond told the Tribune} in an interview later that landlords prefer the floati rate arrangement because yields higher profits. It is that potential for ab of Section 67(3), which allo -landlords to apply for extrao dinary: rent increases to ‘grarited’ at ‘the * Rentals discretion, that +has~bro protest from tenants’ orge Richmond, whose assoc tion is urging tenants’ groups unite in a province-wid® organization, to press fot tenants’ rights, charged that te} section ‘‘allows a built-in prolly for landlords,”’ e hadn’t thought of it at the time we were preparing the article on U.S. claims about alleged Soviet chemi- cal warfare (‘‘A horrible death in 15 minutes,”’ Jan. 29) but now that a long hidden U.S. Air Force report has been revealed, the U.S. ruse is transparently obvious. chemical weapons to justify re-Opéning its own program of chemical weapons ion and deployment. In- evitably, many scientists saw through the ploy; and the “evidence” didn’t stand up to critical examination. But what we didn’t know was that all the time the U.S. military was floating its stories about the Soviets through the media, it was itself in the midst of a freedom of infor- mation suit with the U.S. National Veterans Task Force on Agent Orange which sought the release of a secret U.S. report on defoliant spraying by U.S. troops in Southeast Asia. That report was finally wrested from the hands of the U.S. Air Force last month. Its contents are a damning in- dictment of U.S. duplicity; they reveal that the American military, by its own admission, was guilty of far worse crimes than those it had accused others of committing. The report, entitled Operation Ranch Hand: The U.S. Air Force and Herbicides in Southeast Asia 1961-71, of thouands of gallons of defoliants on South Vietnam, the U.S. carried out secret operations against Laos, spray- trails north of the 17th parallel. : Significantly, the report noted that American officials sought deliberately to “‘mislead the press about the covert We said in that article, as readers may recall, that the _ U.S. had contrived to produce evidence.of Soviet.ise‘of » showed that, in addition to the admitted dumping ing a total of 200,000 gallons of defoliants on roads and People and isswes spraying in Laos.’’ And a decade later they were continu- _-ing to mislead. . Spe oie ae = : so 4 =: ee fe are ae s C t will probably come as no surprisé to most le | that the ae tax revolt has attracted See wing politicians, Socreds Bill Vander Zalm and Hugh Cur- tis among them, who see in the recent appeals of assess- ments a popular cause that might bring a few votes. But it is just a trifle incredible to find those who have vigorously opposed tax equity for homeowners presenting themselves’ as the advocates of residential property owners seeking to appeal their assessments. In a recent notice from the Vancouver Peoples Law School we note that North Vancouver district alderman John Lakes will be leading a special free law class next week for homeowners on “Property assessments: What’s behind them and how to appeal.’”? And who is John Lakes? Why, he was legal counsel for Shell Canada in Bur- naby who successfully upheld that company’s low assess-. ment when a third party appeal urging an increase in Shell’s tax bill was launched by Vancouver labor economist Dave Fairey. Anditis partly because companies such as Shell pay a disproportionately smaller share of pro- perty taxes that homeowners in Burnaby and elsewhere 7 bear a heavier burden. tt we’re sure it is only for altruistic reasons that Lakes has decided to impart his wisdom to beleaguered homeowners. : _ _ dian Defence Commitee) and the Ku Klux Klan. ” Front’? members violently attacking rallies organized b if ever there was an example of groups purported] from opposite ends of the political spectrum coming together to achieve the same purpose, it must be the CPC- ML (in all its various incarnations including the Peoples Front Against Racist and Fascist Violence.and the East In- Many have already witnessed the spectacle of ‘ ‘Peoples the B.C. Organization to Fight Racism — a spectacle followed by farce when the KKK publicly ‘‘thanked”’ th attackers for their actions. That was in turn followed a couple of weeks ago by spokesmen for the Klan, claiming harassment by the RCMP, saying that they were going to carry out their ow?” harassment campaign — against the CPC-ML. q The farce became melodrama this week when the Klat” : mounted a picket line outside the Enver Hoxha bookstore - in Vancouver, a headquarters for the CPC-ML: Anyone would be justified in being suspicious of whole performance since both groups have shown there is little to distinguish them, Certainly both have long record of violence. Of course, many people going by and seeing the pi might wrongly assume that the CPC-ML is an organiza tion which fights racism and the Klan. Some who didn know the CPC-ML record might even give a lit legitimacy to the organization. Maybe that’s why the performance was staged in t first place.