Marathon’s
waterfront
plan stalled

A TEAM backed plan to rezone
Vancouver’s waterfront allowing
for large scale residential and
commercial development between
the Bayshore Inn and the CN pier:
at the foot of Main Street was sent
back to the city’s planning and
development committee for more
work.

COPE alderman Harry Rankin
attempted to go ahead with the
rezoning, but with amendments to
the plan excluding residential,
institutional or commercial uses
such as hotels and offices which
would take land away from port
activities.

NPA alderman also favored the
elimination of residential uses
from the plan, but on the bidding of
Marathon Realty, the main lan-
dholder on the waterfront, refused
to let the rest of the plan proceed
because of the open space, parking
and height restrictions it would put
on Marathon’s developments.

Still to be resolved is the issue of
a value added tax for the increased
values a rezoning of Marathon’s
land would create. The rezoning
would make the waterfront area a
virtual extension of the downtown

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This strip of Vancouver's waterfront towards the Bayshore Inn

~~ Votes for COPE —

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‘would have had a potential population of 5,000 people in luxury
apartments and commerical towers, but the plan was turned back

by city council Tuesday.

Surrey boar

The Surrey School Board is
gearing up for a confrontation with
school board employees, Surrey
Alternate Movement (SAM)
candidate Vi Swann charged this
week.

“They’re cutting out every job’
they can, contracting out jobs that
belong to our school board em-
ployees, and at the same time
building up the bureaucracy and
administration,’ Swann told the
Tribune Wednesday.

The board has denied the
charges that it is reducing the work
force, but Swann said that. SAM
knows it is occurring because they

ow workers who are being laid
off. The board has begun to con-
tract out work such as window
glazing, plumbing and floor san-
ding, she said, and the construction
crew which renovated school
buildings for the past five years
has been phased out.

The cuts in jobs for school board
workers have been matched,
however, with an increasing
number of administrative
positions,
ministrative positions’, she said.
“It is almost as if the board wants
enough administrative workers to
take them through a strike.”’

The school board’s 1979 budget’
projects a 10 percent increase in
spending, but no increase in em-
ployee wages has been calculated
into it, Swann said, ‘“‘That’s ob-
viously unrealistic, workers must
get increases in pay to keep up with
inflation.”

Swann also wants the McMath
report on taxation implemented in
Surrey to relieve the burden of
school taxes from homes and
family farms. The so-called. tax
revolt hasn’t had as much impact
in Surrey as the media would
suggest, she commented, and most
people understand that the
provincial government and not the
local board bears the main
responsibility for high taxes. There
were only a handful of Surrey
residents who turned out to
meetings aimed at whipping up
hysteria against school spending,
and the organizers haven’t tried
again, she said.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—November 3, 1978—Page 2

d seeks confrontation
with workers says SAM candidate

A long time civic activist in
Surrey, Swann polled about 2,000
votes last year running for
alderman on the SAM slate. SAM
has three candidates this year, the
third time out for the organization.

Running for council seats’ are
CUPE executive member Bill
Mérrison and veteran civic
campaigner Wilf Lennox.
Morrison, Lennox and Swann have
all been endorsed by the New
Westminster and District Labor
Council.

SAM has formally adopted the 11
point municipal program of the
labor council and has applied it to
the specifics of Surrey, making
SAM the only policy organization

in the municipality. Neither the
ruling Surrey Voters’ Association,
SVA or the liberal Surrey
Municipal Electors SME require
any alligance to policy from
elected officials. SME, the-once
reform oriented organization from

which SAM split away from three_

years ago, has moved considerably
to the right and has endorsed right
winger Bonnie Schrenk in her bid
to get back on council.

Topping SAM’s council program
is a call for controls on develop-
ment, an increase in parkland,
particularly on the Fraser River, a
low cost housing program and
electoral reform to institute a ward
system.

will lower taxes -

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN.

I can’t remember a time when
education in this province was
under as much attack as it is today.
That attack is coming right from
the top, from education minister
Pat McGeer, and the provincial
cabinet.

The attack takes the main forms
—cutbacks in provincial grants to
education and cutbacks in the
quality of services provided by our
educational institutions. The
scapegoats are the teachers who do
not control either the costs of
education or the quality of the
educational programs provided.
The victims are the children
themselves.

Let me give you just a few facts
to illustrate these points.

Many people think that the mill
rate for education is set only by the
school board. Not true. The
basic mill rate is set by the
provincial government. If this mill
rate doesn’t raise enough money to

meet the needs of any school’

district, then the provincial
government provides a grant. And
if the mill rate plus the grant are
not sufficient to meet local school
board costs, only then does the
local school board levy an ad-
ditional mill rate.

The policy of the provincial
government has been to provide
less and less grants each year and
to make homeowners pay more
and more taxes each year. Its main
method of doing this has been to
raise the mill rate each year.

Since 1975 the provincial
government has raised the mill
rate for education from 26.5 mills
to 39.75 mills. That’s an increase of
50-percent. © ifeso deed ong as

This has worked out well for the
provincial government. In 1965 it
paid 60 percent of education costs
by grants. This year it is paying
only 39 percent.

In Vancouver where
operating budget of the school
board is $108, the taxpayers are
forced to pay $101 million and all
the. provincial government con-
tributes is $7 million. %

Another way the provincial
government has of forcing Van-
couver taxpayers to pay more of

the -

the costs of education is to close
down special provincial schools
such. as the Jericho Hill School.
Handicapped children from these
special schools, who come from all
over the province, must either be
absorbed by the Vancouver school
system or denied education. The
provincial government refuses to
provide grants to Vancouver to

cover these additional costs which ~

run into hundreds ot thousands of
dollars. The result — still another
increase in property taxes.

So what is the Vancouver school
board doing about this? Next to
nothing.

The NPA members of the board
think education minister McGeer’s
policies are just fine.

TEAM members of the board are
split between those who agree with
McGeer’s policies and those who
don’t like them but are unwilling or
unable to do anything about them.

Neither the NPA nor TEAM have
any solution for the crisis facin;
our school system. ;

The lesson for voters on
November 15 is clear.

If, you want school taxes
reduced; if you want the quality of
education maintained and im-
proved, you won’t get it by electing
either NPA or TEAM school
trustees. You’ll only get it if you
vote COPE.

COPE’s candidates are: Dr.
Pelly Weinstein, Wes Knapp, Irene
Foulks, Helen O’Shaugnessy,
Connie Fogal, Betty Greenwell,
Mike Chrunik, David Land and
Fred Lowther. :

Eriksen elected :

“More-than*200 people turned out
October:31for:the annual meeting
of the Downtown Eastside
Residents Association and re-
elected Bruce Eriksen to the post
of president and Libby Davies to
the post of vice-president. Jim
McQueen replaces Frances

Journet as treasurer and David
Lane was elected secretary after _
DERA’s Jean Swanson declined:

nomination to allow for new people
to share the leadership. Swanson
will continue to work for the
organization.

and ‘‘assistant ad- -

ust as the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute’s

study - ‘proving’ that unemployment in-
surance is a “disincentive” to work published
only weeks before the federal government cut
back on UIC under the guise of “curbing the
work disincentive affects of the program’’, we
can’t help hearing some ominous overtones to
the latest comments from the Institute’s
director, Michael Walker. For they come at a
time when unemployment insurance is again
under the gun because of alleged overpayments
and broad suggestions of claimant fraud.

Walker, for those who may have missed his
remarks splashed across last week’s news,
declared that “most recipients of unem-
ployment insurance are not in need’’ because,
if they were, ‘‘they’d show up on welfare when
their unemployment benefits run out.’”’ And
since unpublished government studies show
that only some 10 to 15 percent of disentitled
unemployment insurance recipients turn to
welfare, Walker concludes that most UIC
recipients “are not in need.” Therefore—
although Walker.is not so imprudent as to say
SO openly - unemployment insurance program
could be abolished without causing undue
levels, of starvation.

That, of course, is Walker’s point. The rest is
just economic pseudo argument designed to
Support the idea that unemployment insurance
is a “disincentive” to work and stands in the
way of employers getting cheap labor. And we
could even dismiss it as another voice from the
think tank were it not for the fact that Walker
and the Fraser Institute are clearly floating
ideas for big business — ideas which more than
once have found their way into government

PEOPLE AND ISSUES:

policy.

Just to what extent it does speak for big
business was revealed, interestingly enough, in
an article on the Fraser Institute by Vancouver
architect and lecturer Donald Gutstein in the
Toronto-based periodical City Magazine. As
Gutstein points out, the Institute’s board of
trustees — each of which represents a con-
tributing corporation — reads like a corporate
directory and includes such companies as
Imperial Oil, Canadian Pacific, IBM, Shell
Canada, the Toronto Dominion and Canadian
Imperial Banks, the Cadillac Fairview Cor-
poration and many, many more.

“Why, Gutstein asks, would corporations
spend sizeable sums to belong to the Fraser?
His comments suggest the answer: “In its
attempts to spread the right-wing position in
economics to the editorial pages of the
newspapers, the Fraser has done something
that no corporation could do on its own even
with the most highly-paid relations work
possible.”

> * * *

wo months ago we reported with regrets the

return to Greece of Elias Stavrides, a friend

of the Tribune who made quite a mark on the—

Communist and progressive movement during
his three years in Vancouver. But the loss was
balanced by the foundation which he left behind
for an organized communist presence in
Vancouver’s Greek community.

Sunday, a gathering similar to that which
met to say goodbye to Elias, said farewell to
another leader of the progressive Greek
community, Mario Tsoudis. The send off party,
for Mario, however, was also the first public

event of the Aris Velouhiotis club, the newest

club of the Communist Party of Canada, made

up of Greek Canadians.
Mario was the organizer of the Aris club, and

‘indeed its founder. Like Elias, he will be’

missed, but when he arrives at his home in the
suburbs of Athens, a permanent reflection of
his work will remain in Vancouver.

To remember Vancouver, Mario takes with
him a copy of Rankin’s Law, autobiography of
alderman Harry Rankin. It was a fitting gift for
Mario who had given considerable time and
energy to building support for COPE in the
city’s Greek community. Characteristic were
his parting words to his comrades and friends
Sunday evening: an appeal to work for a solid
Greek vote for COPE on November 15.

* * *

esee by the most recent report from the

director of the Vancouver Art Gallery that
some success has been marked in the Gallery’s
campaign to raise the $60,000 desperately.
needed to restore the paintings of renowned
British Columbia artist Emily Carr. But while
some $41,500 has been raised, from voluntary
donations, the Gallery’s Car(r) wash and -
corporate donations, the provincial govern-
ment has yet to respond.

A request for $25,000 to the B.C. Cultural ©
‘Fund has been submitted by the Gallery’s

director, howeyer—a modest request given the
precious heritage of Carr’s art. And considering
the fact that the Socred government spent well
over a million commemorating the Captain
Cook landing, an event of dubious significance
for British Columbians, $25,000 is the very least
it can do.