 | Friday, January 28, 2022
Reading this online? Sign up to get this delivered to your inbox every Friday. | | B.C.’s decision to review how local governments are financed is worth watching | | |  | | | News releases announcing a memorandum of understanding between different levels of government to establish a working group to consider recommendations generally make people’s eyes glaze over.
However!
The provincial government’s commitment this week to review the local government finance system in B.C. is the kind of first step that could lead to big, worthy-of-your-attention changes down the road.
The review was sparked by a paper from the Union of B.C. Municipalities published last year (which you can read here). The paper’s focus is pretty simple to anyone who has spent any time studying local government: cities are being asked to do more than ever, but are generally stuck with the same taxation tools they were given decades ago.
Specifically, the paper cited three areas where municipalities big and small are increasingly hamstrung when it comes to making progress: community safety, climate change and attainable housing.
In all three areas, citizens often demand investments to make improvements happen. But over the decades, higher levels of government have cut cities’ funding, or explicitly downloaded responsibility that were traditionally the province’s.
Municipalities can’t run deficits and the ways they can raise money are limited and inflexible, so the idea of doing more with less leaves them in a bind. At the same time, smaller cities often lack the staff required to run the gauntlet of grant applications set up by higher levels of government in lieu of providing continual and predictable funding.
The end result is often frustration by local officials over not being able to react quicker to local concerns, and frustration by local residents over two levels of government pointing fingers at one another.
“These laments come up all the time,” said Municipal Affairs Minister Josie Osborne, who before 2020 was Mayor of Tofino, facing the same challenges when it came to affordable housing and climate change mitigation.
“These are issues that I've always known — or I did know, as a mayor — we needed to be able to speak to the province about constructively.”
Osborne cautioned that the review will take time. But these structural issues were not something this government really concerned itself with before this week’s announcement, so the sole fact the committee is doing the work means it’s worth watching.
“I think things have really changed,” said Osborne.
“There are issues we have to tackle together. And having a solid understanding of each other's needs and challenges is really important to being able to find different schools or new ways to tackle them.” | | |  | | | | | "This plan is a big deal."
So said TransLink Mayors' Council chair Jonathan Coté at their council meeting on Thursday, applauding the passing of Transport 2050.
The new long-term strategy for Metro Vancouver's transportation system outlines hopes for the future, including 300 kilometres of new rapid transit projects, illustrated by the blue lines in the photo above.
But there's no budget for the plan yet, and local mayors still need to determine which projects will go to the top of the priority list.
"I'm not going to sugarcoat it in any way: the implementation of this bold plan is not going to be easy, it's going to be a lot of work, it's going to require a lot of partners to be at the table, and it is going to require investments and priorities to align," admitted Coté.
In addition, TransLink is asking for another round of emergency funding to make up for lower traffic expected because of the pandemic — a $200 million shortfall next fiscal year, to be precise.
In short, don’t expect big changes anytime soon. | | |  | | | 1. Vancouver | | | The first full council agenda in more than a month in B.C.’s largest city brought with it plenty of news, including a decision to review the new fees on single-use cups and a move to potentially ban gas-powered leaf blowers by 2024. But the biggest could be approving Kennedy Stewart’s motion to allow six units of housing on land currently zoned for detached homes — although Wednesday’s vote was very preliminary.
Watch more | | |  | | | 2. Surrey | Mayor Doug McCallum was scheduled to be in court for his mischief charge — but like a lot of court cases, the first appearance was anticlimactic, with proceedings put off for another month. The city has had nothing to say about the case, and if you want to file a Freedom of Information request about that — or any other matter — it will soon cost you.
Read more | | | |  | | | 3. Parental leave | There’s nothing in the B.C. Community Charter that allows a councillor to take an extended period of time off for maternity or parental leave without risking disqualification. Saanich already has a policy to circumvent this (up to 78 weeks allowed), and Kitimat’s lone female councillor is now asking her council to consider something similar. Read more | | | | | |  | | | 4. Policing costs | Speaking of costs municipalities take on without a lot of flexibility: the new collective agreement for RCMP officers means many cities have seen the bulk of their 2022/2023 budget increases go to maintaining current police services. In the midst of that, one Prince George councillor is wondering why their police budget is higher than other municipalities with similar populations.
Read more | | | |  | | | 5. Staff spending | Remember last year’s controversy over a bureaucrat who expensed more than $500,000 on everything from lunches at fancy golf courses to wineries? After an audit and RCMP investigation, it’s been decided that no criminal charges will be recommended against former TNRD chief administrative officer Sukh Gill. A lack of regulations on expenses can be fun that way. Read more | | | | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
forwarded to you. | | | | That's it for this week! In the meantime, check out the latest headlines at cbc.ca/bc and follow our municipal affairs reporter Justin McElroy on Twitter. And if you have any questions you might want answered in a future mailbag, drop Justin a line at metromatters@cbc.ca. | | | |
