BRITISH COLUMBIA

Vote outcome assures
no-layoff city budget

Vancouver’s voters will be getting what
they wanted — a balanced city budget
with no layoffs or service cuts.

-That’s the word from Ald. Bruce
Yorke, who with his colleagues of the
Committee of Progressive Electors, coun-
cil allies and a right-wing alderman passed
a preliminary budget Feb. 12.

The budget, which involves transfers
from reserve funds and a small property
tax increase to cover revenue shortfalls,
was a key issue in the Feb. 2 byelection in
which Yorke defeated by a handy margin
right-winger Philip Owen of the Non-
Partisan Association.

“That budget is the result of the byelec-
tion. In effect, the citizens have already
spoken their mind on this issue,” Yorke
told the Tribune.

The preliminary figures will go back to
various city department heads for adjust-
ment, then to council’s finance comittee
and back to council for the vote in mid-
April.

Once adopted — and its passage seems
assured — it will mark the third time the
city has held the line on layoffs at a time
when the public sector has been decimated
by Socred cutbacks.

The council vote followed the presenta-
tion of city official’s estimates thatthe city
will spend $292.9 million during the next
fiscal year, with expected revenues of
$285.2 million. That leaves a $7.7 million
shortfall.

That figure, which could be reduced
when department heads again’ go over
their estimates, will be made up largely by
a tax increase, said Yorke.

The reserve fund transfers, are already
included in finance director Peter Leckie’s
revenue estimates. These include a $7-
million transfer from the property endow-
ment fund, $3.5 million from a sinking
fund reserve, and $3 million from
exchange on U.S. funds.

The property endowment fund transfer
raised the ire of opposition aldermen, with
George Puil of the NPA and May Brown
of The Electors Action Movement attack-
ing the move.

Puil accused the council majority of
“painting a completely false picture of
what the actual financial situation is,”
while Brown argued against the transfer
and tax hikes. “Our businesses, if they
weren’t paying a tax increase, could
employ more people,” she claimed.

“As a matter of fact, transferring money
from the property endowment fund is
what has kept taxes down,” Yorke coun-
tered, while COPE’s Libby Davies noted,
“This policy is successful and has been
approved by Vancouver citizens.”

“The fact is that there are no other ways
to balance the budget and retain services,
and they know it,” Yorke said later.

“The only other way is layoffs and cut-
backs. That’s the politics of the thing, but
they haven’t got the guts to say it,” he
charged. The right wing on council “‘is
ideologically committed to the notion of
restraint and cutbacks.” :

For three years running council has
taken monies from the interest accrued by
the $450-million property endowment
fund. Created in 1975, the fund consists of
rents, taxes and revenues from the sale of
city-held properties.

Part of the city’s revenue shortfall is
caused by the provincial government,
which this year has axed $1.4 million it
used to pay in hospital taxes. There has
also been a continuing decline in revenue
sharing grants since 1980.

The interest from the property endow-
ment fund has been the safety net for Van-
couver’s citizens and workers, said Yorke,
noting Leckie’s projections earlier this
year that each $1 million cut in the budget
represents between 30 and 50 civic jobs.

“Any attempt to get the city off the path
that it has taken has been defeated,” said
Yorke, “And support for our position
hasn’t diminished, it’s grown.”

Approving the preliminary budget were
Yorke, Davies, COPE aldermen Bruce
Eriksen and Harry Rankin, Mayor Mike
Harcourt and ald. Bill Yee, along with the
NPA’s Don Bellamy.

Message and leaflets taped to the office window of Socred MLAs Pat
McGeer and Garde Gardom sums up sentiment of Point Grey parents and
students who placed them there following a protest march Feb. 17. Parents,
whose children attend Queen Mary school which faces a 50-per cent cut to
its special needs programs next year unanimously backed the Vancouver
school board's decision to submit a ‘“maintenance”’ budget of no cutbacks
for January-June 1985.

- Surrey council backs IWA jobless

Surrey municipal council decided Feb.
11 to back some 200 woodworkers faced
with layoffs from the imminent closure of
Weldwood’s Timberland sawmill.

~ Aldermen and the mayor agreed unani-
mously to seek a meeting with Weldwood
management to discuss ways to avoid the
closure of the plant, slated to shut down
June 1.

They also voted for a second motion
calling for a ban on the export of raw logs
from B.C., after hearing from Interna-
tional Woodworkers Local 1-357 presi-
dent Terry Smith.

Smith hit the increasing “yearly log
exports, calling “insane” a process that
sees jobs in wood processing leave the
country along with the exported resource.

“There is no doubt you have heard of

the economic downturn in terms of .

lumber exports to Japan,” Smith told
council.

“The interesting statistic not often men-
tioned is that the volume of lumber is

down by an amount equivalent to the logs
exported to that country.”

The IWA local president urged council
to press local Social Credit MLAs on the
issue, while hitting the provincial and fed-
eral governments for “‘shortsightedness”
in failing to ensure proper reforestation.

The result is that forest companies are
now cutting smaller trees, and the Timber-
land mill has been subsequently losing
business to Weldwood’s Squamish plant,
which can handle smaller logs, Smith
explained.

He said it would cost only a minimal _
amount to moderize the Timberland mill, |

which he called “probably the most effi-
cient in North America.”

The Surrey council vote isn’t the first
time the IWA,has had civic backing in
fighting plant closures. One year ago Van-
couver city council opposed the closure of
MacMillan Blodel’s White Pine mill at the
request of the IWA Vancouver local.

Upgrading possible with senior gov't cash |

Most Canadian cities have a real and
growing problem with their infrastructure.
(Municipal infrastructure includes such
public works as roads, sidewalks, bridges,
sewers, water supply and distribution net-
works, garbage collection and disposal
facilities, libraries, parks, schools and
transit systems.) Many of these facilities
are badly in need of repair or replacement.
They are nearing the end of their lifespan.

This is one of the main conclusions of a
survey of the Municipal Infrastructure in -
Canada made by the Federation of Cana-
dian Municipalities (FCM) in January this
year. The task force on the subject was
chaired by Vancouver Mayor Michael
Harcourt, its technical committee was
chaired by Vancouver city engineer Wil-
liam Curtis, and other members of Van-
couver’s engineering department contri-
~ buted considerably to the study.

The survey singled out several factors
for this decline in the infrastructure.
Among them were:

@ “Many of the post-war facilities
began to reach the end of their lifespan at
the same time; oie,

@ “The rapid inflation of the 70s was
not matched by a concomitant rise in the
rate of taxation. Municipalities were
beginning to find themselves with less
money at precisely the same time that
more facilities required repair or replace-
ment;

@ “(There was a) reluctance to borrow
at the high interest rates of the late 70’s and

: early 80’s;

© “Over the past 15 years, federal fund-
ing programs have been cut markedly, and
now provincial programs are being subject
to severe restraint as well;

@ “Increased public involvement -in
decision-making also’made reconstruction
more difficult, time-consuming and expen-
sive.” And it adds that “in larger munici-

Harry

Rankin

palities, prolonged public involvement in
the decision-making process is considered
by senior administrators to be the second
biggest impediment.”

(I want to say right here and now that I
don’t agree at all that we have too much
“public involvement in decision-making.”
If anything, we haven’t enough!)

When you look at the whole picture, it
is very clear that the main problem is, was,
and will continue to be, lack of money by
municipal councils. Our councils have

heavy responsibilities, yet all the most luc-
rative sources of revenue have been snared
by the provincial and federal government.
We have to rely almost entirely on taxes on
homes.

This is wrong. in principle, because
homes should not be taxed to raise general
revenue; they should be taxed only for
those services provided directly to them
such as water, sewers, streets, garbage col-
lection, police and fire protection.

The survey is right on when it says that
“inadequate funding is the primary cause
of infrastructure decline,” and that “the
funding required is beyond the ability of
many local governments.” It notes that
“the cost of bringing the most seriously
deteriorated facilities (sewers, water, roads
and bridges) up to acceptable levels is
high — $680 per capita in cities of 100,000
and more, possibly even more for smaller ~
centres.”

What about solutions?

Here the survey presents a mixed bag,
good and bad.

It suggests that user fees (tolls for roads
and bridges or park entrance fees) are an
alternative to increases in general taxes. It
suggests further than consideration be
given to such things as having private
investors provide capital facilities and leas-
ing them to municipalities, contracting out
of public services.

In my view these are all unacceptable;

they’re just another way of increasing
costs to working people.

On the other hand the survey also
makes some suggestions that could be
considered. s

The revenues derived by senior govern-
ments from gasoline taxes and motor veh-
icle licence fees should be shared with
municipalities to help pay for the road
system on which the service and revenue
depend.

It notes that a source of revenue would
be “muncipally-owned profit-making cor-
porations from which profits are used to
offset infrastructure costs.” (Edmonton,
for example, has its own municipally-
owned telephone system which contri-
butes millions to the city treasury each
year.)

However, it all boils down to this. Mun- ~
cipal councils today haven’t the sources of
revenue required to meet the obligations
imposed on them by provincial govern-
ments. The solution is to have provincial
governments share its revenue with the
municipalities, and for the federal govern-
ment to resume the grants it stopped as of
July 1 last year.

The survey is quite right when it says
that,“‘Canada’s long term economic well-
being is dependent on municipal infra-
structure” and that upgrading this
infrastructure would be a good job crea-
tion program

2 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 20, 1985