Campbell: He's on a boat

Campbell: I've got a nautical themed pashmina Afghan.
PHOTO: Carmine MarinelliMetro Vancouver mayors should forget about funding TransLink’s budget with revenue from the controversial provincial carbon tax, Premier Gordon Campbell suggested Wednesday morning.

“The carbon levy is not a revenue generator,” Campbell told reporters during a nautical themed campaign photo-op on Burrard Inlet, noticeably swapping the word ‘tax’ for the more neutral term ‘levy.’

“… Every single cent that is raised from the carbon levy is going in tax reductions.”

The 21 mayors who sit on the Mayors’ Council on Regional Transportation, set up by the province to ostensibly provide oversight to TransLink’s private board last year, flexed their muscles for the first time as a group Wednesday.

They said they would support in principle TransLink’s plan to take on $450 million in added yearly costs rather than cutting transit service – but the extra money on top of the current $1 billion budget must not come from cash-strapped municipalities in the form of increased property taxes.

Instead, the mayors want the province to redirect portions of the carbon tax paid in Metro Vancouver.

But Campbell is fighting back against the mayoral push, suggesting the region has benefited greatly from provincial transit funding.

“We recognize the difficult choices to make,” Campbell. “But if they decide they want to expand transit services, they’re going to have to be part of the partnership that funds that."

But the mayors say local taxpayer dollars already go towards funding two-thirds of TransLink’s budget, compared to one-third from the province.

The question over who bankrolls transit has become a highly-charged debate in the Lower Mainland, where TransLink is warning it will have to cut services if new revenue can’t be found.

Already, it’s plugging a yearly $150-million budget shortfall with money from its reserves, funds that will run out in 2011.

The $450-million price tag is what’s required to meet the transit plan laid out by the province last year.

For further reading:
Carbon tax should fund transit: Mayors
Can't touch this: TransLink board meetings closed to pubic
Still can't touch this: TransLink reports won't be public
Mayor Corrigan craps on Falcon (metaphorically speaking)
Light rail south o' the Fraser

When bullets and ballots collide

Find your riding! 2009 Lower Mainland shootings compared with B.C. electoral boundaries."If I were a gang member right now, I would keep real quiet until the election's over," a local political observer said to me recently.

It was a sort of throwaway comment, the point being that someone who works to circumvent the law would probably be best served by not giving those who make the law too much fodder around election time.

Yet it's worth noting that so far in April, Vancouver has been (mostly) spared the seemingly daily shootings that have plagued us this year, and indeed sporadically over the last several years as a gang war simmers its way through our streets.

Who would have thought names like Jarrod and Jamie would be bandied about as freely in the press as Gordon and Carole? Abbotsford's Bacon brothers have even made for fashion commentary, courtesy of a certain editor at The Province newspaper.

Here are a few words looking at the awkward intersection of gangs and politics this campaign, published today in 24 hours and on The Tyee:

Keith Roy is feeling nostalgic these days. The Vancouver realtor recalls the good old days in his city, when the only gun that went off was the nine o'clock cannon in Stanley Park.

These days, Roy feels like he reads about a new shooting almost every morning.

"That's not the city I grew up in," says Roy.

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Carbon tax should fund transit: Mayors

Metro Vancouver mayors look ready to give an early thumbs up to a plan that would increase TransLink¹s budget by nearly 50 per cent ­ so long as the money comes from the province¹s controversial carbon tax.

Members of TransLink's Mayor's Council on Regional Transportation have called a press conference for Wednesday at noon, where it's expected the mayors will wade into the highly-charged issue of who pays for the Lower Mainland's transit network.

The mayors are expected to tentatively endorse a plan for cash-strapped TransLink to boost its yearly revenues by $450 million over its current $1-billion budget. But the mayors want new ideas like the provincial carbon tax and a proposed port container tax to pay for a chunk of it, not a smorgasbord of raised property taxes, fare hikes and proposed vehicle levies.

Carbon tax revenue now goes towards tax reductions in B.C.'s effort to label the controversial fee as "revenue-neutral."

"This does nothing towards moving Metro Vancouver residents from their cars towards public transportation," a proposal to be discussed by the mayors before Wednesday¹s press conference states.

"... Applying the carbon tax revenue collected from the Metro region directly toward the broadening of transportation options will directly benefit the public.

Wednesday's announcement will come amidst a provincial election campaign that has seen the carbon tax issue already spark debate.

The timing isn¹t coincidental.

"There¹s a very strong feeling on the part of the mayors that the provincial and the federal government should be taking a hard look at what they're going to do to provide sustainable funding for the operations of transit."

But the main purpose of the mayors' closed-door meeting Wednesday is to present a unified lobby on how TransLink should be funded. The message is: Not with more local tax dollars.

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