 | Saturday, July 09, 2022
Reading this online? Sign up to get this delivered to your inbox every Friday. | | Why claims that Kennedy Stewart will put in mobility pricing if re-elected aren’t entirely accurate | | |  | | | Have you heard about Kennedy Stewart’s so-called Road Tax?
A party hoping to take over city hall — Ken Sim’s “A Better City” team — certainly hopes you will. They’ve launched a campaign claiming that if re-elected, Stewart will put in a charge between $5 and $30 for every vehicle entering the core area of Vancouver, from Burrard to Knight Street.
“Kennedy’s Road Tax will apply to all vehicles on our roads — cars, buses, delivery vans, scooters, trucks, and even ambulances,” the party wrote in a fundraising email this week.
“If Kennedy Stewart is re-elected, it will absolutely be implemented,” said ABC councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung on CKNW.
It sounds scary. But it’s not exactly true.
What is true is that in 2020, council voted to move forward on a bunch of transportation and energy policies recommended by staff, stemming from their 2019 declaration of a climate emergency.
Staff was asked to study the concept of a charge for entering the core of the city — a concept used in London and Stockholm, among other cities — to reduce congestion and emissions, with a vote happening years from now.
But there are several impediments to the plan, the biggest being that taxation of moving vehicles is under provincial jurisdiction, and the NDP have been clear they wouldn’t allow a road tax.
In addition, Kennedy Stewart isn’t exactly keen on the idea himself.
“I know that Vancouver can't do mobility pricing on its own. That's been pretty clear,” he said in an October interview with Metro Matters
“What I want is to see what staff comes forward with their recommendations, and then listen to the public.”
One would call it a make-work project by city staff, except the city staffer who was working on the file has left the city, and nobody is currently working on it at all. It’s essentially in the same place as the mobility pricing floated by TransLink in 2017 and 2018 — a zombie document, a repetitive tale of planners suggesting an idea and politicians deciding not to move forward on it. Which isn’t to say a mobility tax couldn’t happen. It would just require a change in opinion by the provincial government, a change in opinion by the mayor, and a change in the composition of Vancouver council this election, and likely changes at several other city halls.
It’s easy to see why ABC Vancouver is using the issue, since it’s easy to understand and there’s some ambiguity around how possible it is.
But the hyperbole around the issue is another sign that we’re firmly into election season. | | | Better know a local election: Richmond | | | | | | | | | | |  | | | Richmond may be B.C.’s fourth-biggest city, but it’ll likely rank much lower when it comes to excitement this October.
Malcolm Brodie was first elected mayor in 2001, and since then has won six straight elections. That’s a big feat in any big city, but it’s even more impressive when you consider the size of Brodie’s victories — he’s never gotten less than 60 per cent of the vote, never really faced any significant competition for the job.
“When I first talked to him after being elected, he went up and told me how large his war chest was. Maybe that was his way of trying to intimidate me from running against him,” said councillor Alexa Loo.
Loo said Brodie’s recipe for success is similar to a lot of semi-suburban mayors': respect everyone around the council table, avoid controversy, keep the streets paved and the flowers growing.
“I think for the most part people aren’t looking for massive changes, I think people do like to stay the course,” she said, noting that the city’s political culture has tended to support those already in power across all three levels of government.
At this point Brodie has no challengers, and while last election saw a number of hot-button issues in Richmond — including mansions on farmland and English sign bylaws — there’s been minimal political controversy the last few years, despite an ideologically diverse council.
“You have to make sure that everybody has a say … there will be the odd 5 to 4 vote. But what I’m hoping to do is have most people supporting most items,” said Brodie.
When asked what new things he would do with a new term, he mentioned the development of a new Official Community Plan that would provide more housing options, and leading Richmond’s debate in what role to play in a possible 2030 Winter Olympics.
After it was suggested those may not be issues that excite voters, Brodie said: “Well, I don’t want excitement.”
He then clarified he was was joking. But as a political philosophy, it’s worked well for Brodie so far, and it could work well again in October. | | |  | | | 1. Vancouver | | | Plenty of smaller stories came out of council this week, from removing red tape around a pub expansion application to debating what type of street should be renamed for remembering the Komagata Maru. But the thing that could have the biggest long-term impact is the Vancouver Plan, which is slowly winding its way through council after three years of consultation — though it would be up to a council after the election to actually implement it.
Read more | | |  | | | 2. Surrey | It’s considered some of the finest agricultural land in B.C. — but it’s not actually part of the Agricultural Land Reserve. That’s at the heart of the tension over the future of land next to a growing industrial area of Surrey, and also part of the reason why some are skeptical that a Surrey council promise to prevent the land from being developed can be done unilaterally.
Read more in the Peach Arch News | | | |  | | | 3. Kimberley | When municipalities talk about creating a diversity of housing options in their community, one usually focuses on work being done in big cities. But B.C.'s Best Small Town has put forward a zoning bylaw that would allow up to six units of housing on a single plot of land in most residential areas — though as always, there was debate on whether the changes would create truly “affordable” housing. Read more in the Kimberley Bulletin | | | | | |  | | | 4. Gondola? | A new 10-year plan for transit investments across Metro Vancouver was approved by the TransLink Mayors’ Council, and while there were no real surprises in the list, the importance placed on building a long discussed gondola between SFU and the rest of Burnaby makes it more likely to happen in the medium term — unless the people who would live underneath it have their way.
Read more in the Burnaby Beacon | | | |  | | | 5. Nanaimo | Every so often, a municipality will sift through the dusty attic that is their historical bylaws that have long since been enforced, and find a few that they decide should be removed. It happened in Nanaimo this week, and residents can now breathe easy knowing drunken singing is now legal, and that the maximum speed for cyclists is no longer eight miles an hour. Read more in the Nanaimo Bulletin | | | | | | 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. | | | |
