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The provincial government’s
Move to abolish municipal control
Over public transit brings with it the
threat of higher property taxes,
Teduced bus routes and the layoffs
of transit employees.

__ it also constitutes another brick
In the wall the Socreds are erecting
to shut out locally elected officials

Tom any power of decision over
local services, centralizing these
Services under the provincial
ministry or, in the case of transit, a
Crown corporation.

As such it mirrors actions of the
Past year to remove taxing powers
from local school boards, which
made the education ministry’s the
sole hand on the purse strings. The
Tesult was the decimnation of the
School system under government-
imposed restraint, and like the
transit grab was spearheaded by the
Mmunister who has arguably become
the most hated in the Social Credit
cabinet — Bill Vander Zalm.

Unlike the school cutbacks,
Which drew and continue to draw
the outraged protest of parents,
teachers and school trustees, the
transit move passed with barely a
Whimper from most local officials
when Vander Zalm announced his
decision in a letter to GVRD direc-
tors Dec. 29.

The most they managed was a
Weak note of protest in an ineffec-

ual motion passed at their regular
Meeting Jan. 26 in which the direc-
tors sought + unsuccessfully — to
Wring a commitment from Vander
im (who attended) that the
Tegion be relieved of any financial
Tesponsibility in the wake of a tran-
Sit takeover.

The directors’ roll-over-and-
Play-dead attitude earned them a
Stinging rebuke from the Van-
Couver Sun, which in an editorial

%

Ae
BOB BOSE...

. . urges legislative
&Ction.

— the transit system should now
De dubbed, “the chicken express.””
at Was an apt term, in the col-

_ lective opinion of a group of

aldermen and GVRD members
Who have banded together to rally
a opinion against the transit

The five officials from four
Municipalities — alderman Bob
se (Surrey), Bruce Yorke and
arry Rankin (Vancouver),
Harold Weinberg (loco) and direc-
tor George Helenius (Bowen

‘Island) — want the GVRD to take

legal action. ;

And to get things rolling, they’ve
Called a public conference on the
Issue for Saturday, Feb. 19 at the
Indian Centre on Hastings St. at 1
P.m., the aldermen announced at a
Press conference in Vancouver city
hall Tuesday.

The aldermen, backed by

Organizations such as the Public In-.

terest Research Group, will urge

Aldermen pre
| against transit takeover

adoption of a plan calling for a
one-year moratorium on the transit
plan, said Yorke.

“We're asking the regional
district to take legal action. And
we’ve got to take action ourselves.
Three issues are at stake: local con-
trol over transit, the leadership that
should be taken by the GVRD, and
a decent transit system,’’ Rankin
told reporters.

If the government succeeds in
abolishing the region’s control —
replacing the transit committee
with a hand-picked ‘‘transit com-
mission’? — one of the first indica-
tions lower mainland bus riders will

have that things have changed is a

cut of 1,100 hours to bus routes.
According to Yorke, these are due
to be phased in when the crown
corporation, B.C. Transit, takes
over the region’s role of setting
fares and planning routes on Apr.
A

The impact of the change will hit
the residential property Owner
when tax time rolls around. Reduc-
tions in assessed values by the B.C.
Assessment Authority this year
meant homeowners could expect a
break from the usual spiralling tax
hikes. ;

But under the new arrangement
B.C. Transit will be allowed to tax
property — a first for a crown cor-
poration — to raise the region’s
share of transit costs. Yorke
estimated that to meet budgetary

“requirements for 1983, -residences
: would behit by a boost of five to six

mills.

That tax bill could triple when it
comes time to pay for the costly
Advanced Light Rapid Transit
system forced on the regional
district by the provincial govern-
ment. The project has already used
up the $60 million federal govern-
ment grant, and the final bill is
estimated at just short of $1 billion
when the system is completed in
1986.

Also potentially in the works is a
massive cut to the current transit
budget — already “‘bare bones,”
said Yorke, at $143 million — in-
vovling route cancellations and the
layoffs of hundreds of transit
employees. While details have not
been spelled out in relation to the
transit takeover, cuts of $24 million
to the budget of the Metro Transit
Operating Company (which runs
transit in Greater Vancouver) and
layoffs of 600 employees were an-
nounced by MTOC general
manager Bill Allan and chairman
Bill Reid last November.

The MTOC heads were forced
to withdraw the statements after

B.C. Transit chairman Larry.

Miller denied the budget cut was
impending. But B.C. Transit chair-
man Fred Macklin was also forced
to withdraw his announcement in
mid-December that the regional
transit committees were to be strip-
ped of power. That announcement

GREATER VANCOUVER

ss for fight

turned out to be premature, not un-
true.

With all financing directly under
B.C. Transit’s wing — direct taxa-
tion coupled with provincial fun-
ding — service cuts will be easier
because citizens will have ‘‘no abili-
ty to monitor where the money
goes,”’ said Yorke.

Bose, the outspoken Surrey
alderman who as head of the
GVRD transit committee last year
opposed the costly ALRT project,
said the transit grab violates the
legislation enshrining the agree-
ment hammered out among the
Capital and Greater Vancouver
Regional Districts and Victoria
when B.C. Hydro relinquished
control of transit in 1978.

That agreement still has two
years to run ‘‘and we(GVRD) have
a moral and legal obligation to
uphold that agreement and protect
our staff (18 people work for the
transit committee),’’ said Bose.
Vander Zalm can not simply

8

BRUCE YORKE ...
public conference.

announces

abolish the region’s transit role
with one letter. ‘“This must be done
through legislative amendment,
and it is on the floor of the
legislature that this battle must be
fought,”’ he said.

Bose’ point raises the question of
Opposition support for the region.

So far the provincial NDP has not °

voiced any objections to the Socred
move against local autonomy.

Vander Zalm’s rationale for
abolishing the regional transit com-
mittee was based on the argument
presented ina GVRD brief to B.C.
Transit’s organization review com-
mittee last June. The region urged
abolition of the ‘‘three-headed
monster’’ consisting of the transit
committee, MTOC and B.C. Tran-
sit in favor of a single body com-
prising equal representation bet-
ween provincial and municipal
politicians, similar to the Toronto
Transit Commission.

They received no response until
Vander Zalm sent his letter in
December, announcing a decision
that ‘‘callously and grossly
misrepresentéd the region’s sub-
mission,’’ said Weinberg in a state-
ment read by Bose.

Harry

Rankin

Residents to pay
for transit grab

An open letter to the Van-

- couver Sun:

Your editorial of Jan. 28 en-
titled, ‘“The Chicken Express”’,
is right on when it criticizes the
Greater Vancouver Regional
District (GVRD) for ‘‘knuckl-
ing under’’ and ‘‘waving a white
flag’? when Bill Vander Zalm,
the cabinet minister in charge of
transit, told the GVRD he was
taking over sole control of tran-
sit.

You are also right when you
state that Vander Zalm wants to
impose a tax on property
owners to pay for public transit

and to eliminate bus routes to —

reduce costs. You could also
have added that he intends to
drastically boost fares.

But you are dead wrong when
you state that alderman Bob
Bose of Surrey and mayor Mike
Harcourt of Vancouver were
the only people to speak up
strongly against the action taken
by Vander Zalm.

The two COPE aldermen in
the GVRD, Bruce Yorke and I,
opposed it as strongly as we
could. So did the directors from
Bowen Island and Ioco. COPE
has always taken the position
that public transit should be
under regional control. As early
as 1971 in my pamphlet, ‘‘Beat

The Traffic Rush’’, I said:

“The GVRD should set up a
transit authority for the whole
region with the responsibility
and authority, under the direc-
tion of the GVRD, to establish a
transit system for the region’’.

Had the GVRD done that we

would now be running our own
transit system. That’s what
Toronto did and it is working
out very well there. But as mat-
ters stand now, the people who
are most affected by public tran-
sit will have no say at all — the
whole thing will be controlled by
the cabinet in Victoria and its
main concern will be to shift the
financial burden from the pro-
vincial government to the
residents of the region. We’ll be
no better off now than when
B.C. Hydro was in charge of
transit.

Your editorial was quite right
when it stated mayor Jim
Tonn of Coquitlam, the chair-
man of the GVRD, and mayor
Emie Burnett of Delta, chair-
man of the GVRD transit com-
mittee, ‘‘chickened out’’. But
the term is too mild. They sold
out, like the good Social Credit
pussy cats that they are. Vander
Zalm has them in his pocket.

When he pulls the strings they ,

jump.

The way for this sell-out was
paved by alderman Warnett
Kennedy (when he was a
member of the GVRD board of
directors) and mayor Hum-
phreys of West Vancouver, two
more Social Credit pussy cats.

As for the selling out taking
place in an ‘‘in camera’’
meeting, that came about
because Vander Zalm said he
would only meet with the
GVRD if the meeting were held
“fn camera’’. That suited the
majority of GVRD directors too
— then their sell-out wouldn’t
be publicly exposed.

“wt

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‘PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY. '11;.1983—Page 3