John Jensen

In today's Globe and Mail I read an interesting article about how the Toronto school board is discussing a proposal to create some boys only schools in an effort to reduce the achievement gap between boys and girls.  Here in BC, the Vancouver Sun's Janet Steffenhagen blogged today about how districts in BC are ignoring at this issue, citing North Vancouver as an example. This would appear to me to be a perfect example of putting the data from the Foundation School Assessment tests to work.  The data from these is easily obtainable, and luckily by using the pdftotext utility it's easy to quickly parse it.  It only took me a few minutes to download all the reports and to put together a quick script that produces an overall index of the gender gap between boys and girls, using the six measures (reading, writing, numeracy for both grade 4s and 7s).  The higher the score, the bigger the gap. The results are below, and are fairly surprising to me.  While on the face of it there does appear to be some relationship between the socioeconomic situation of different districts, that's not always the case.  The best districts in the province (the ones with the lowest boy-girl gap) are Delta, Haida Gwaii, and Nisga'a.  I wonder what they are doing there as compared to Qualicum, Fort Nelson, or even North Vancouver?

Score	District Num	District Name
244	049	Central Coast
193	084	Vancouver Island West
175	074	Gold Trail
129	027	Chilcotin
126	081	Fort Nelson
121	059	Peace River South
117	069	Qualicum
111	010	Arrow Lakes
108	054	Bulkley Valley
107	005	Southeast Kootenay
104	072	Campbell River
102	091	Nechako Lakes
99	046	Sunshine Coast
98	085	Vancouver Island North
98	073	Kamloops/Thompson
95	064	Gulf Islands
94	070	Alberni
94	057	Prince George
92	047	Powell River
90	028	Quesnel
84	008	Kootenay Lake
78	093	Conseil scolaire francophone
77	051	Boundary
70	036	Surrey
69	068	Ladysmith
68	082	Coast Mountains
66	083	Shuswap
65	063	Saanich
65	042	Pitt Meadows
64	053	Okanagan Similkameen
63	040	New Westminster
61	043	Coquitlam
61	035	Langley
60	061	Greater Victoria
58	034	Abbotsford
58	022	Vernon
52	052	Prince Rupert
52	041	Burnaby
51	058	Similkameen
51	038	Richmond
50	039	Vancouver
49	067	Okanagan Skaha
48	044	North Vancouver
47	020	Columbia
45	079	Cowichan Valley
44	060	Peace River North
42	006	Rocky Mountain
40	071	Comox Valley
40	033	Chilliwack
39	087	Stikine
39	045	West Vancouver
38	075	Mission
38	048	Howe Sound
36	023	Central Okanagan
34	062	Sooke
34	019	Revelstoke
33	078	Cascade
14	037	Delta
9	092	Nisga'a
5	050	Haida Gwaii/Queen Charlotte

The age-old discussion on the North Shore about amalgamating the City and District of North Vancouver has, I am told, risen again. It is not a good idea. Here's why:

• The two municipalities already share costs in two of the biggest expenditure items -- policing and recreation. Costs for water and sewer treatment are already shared among the other municipalities in the Lower Mainland. There are or minimal savings to be achieved by combining the rest.
• There is considerable evidence that amalgamation of municipalities does not bring more responsive or lower-cost service. Robert Bish, Professor Emeritus of Public Administration and Economics at the University of Victoria, has written extensively about this. As he explains, "Activities that are labour intensive, difficult to measure, and performed frequently and regularly are likely to possess diseconomies of scale-that is, the average costs actually increase with the size of the organization producing the service." In Ontario, for example, some municipalities are actively working to de-amalgamate.
• The two municipalities are very different. The City is more urban, dense, and has a higher population of single people and renters; the District is sprawling, with more wealthier, long-term residents. The City has 84 people per hectare of taxable land, the District has 6. The City's median household income is $49,486 and the District's is $77,032. 53% of City residents live in privately-owned homes; in the District 81% do. Twenty percent of City residents have lived there less than a year; in the District the figure is 12%. These are significant differences that require different types and levels of services that in turn require more local representation.
• The City and District's financial situations are very different. The City has no debt and cash reserves per capita of about $3500, among the highest in the province. The District has debt per capita of about $370 and cash reserves per capita of about $1400. Negotiating an equitable arrangement for this would be difficult.

If municipalities were in the business of shipping coal or producing widgets, then the economies of scale would be so obvious that amalgamations would be the right thing to do. But municipalities don't ship coal or produce widgets -- they deliver highly-localized services -- 70% of their budgets go to salaries. As such it's difficult to squeeze more efficiencies by simple mergers. And even if they are merged, salaries nearly always go up to those of the highest level amongst the combined municipalities, eating away at any of the savings. When you combine that with the loss of localized representation, it's clear that wholesale amalgamations for their own sake are not worth the effort. That said, there is no reason why municipalities can't cooperate on sharing costs. They already do, as I noted above, for water and sewer services, policing, and recreation. It may be time to consider pooling resources for certain capital-intensive needs -- there is no need, for example, for the three North Shore municipalities and two school districts to each have their own works yard, something that Councillor Heywood in the City has said.  There may be a possibility to share investments and operations costs for fire protection services, as well. Acting on opportunities like these on an individual basis is the best way forward.

Bill Bell's column in the weekend's North Shore News betrays some frustration with recent North Vancouver City council activities.  I was asked to post this on northvancouverpolitics.com for discussion but due to rules about posts I'll place it here.

[R]ight in our own back yard -- City of North Vancouver Mayor Darrell Mussatto and council members Bob Fearnley, Craig Keating and Mary Trentadue will be jetting to Chiba, North Vancouver's sister city in Japan, as well as a new port of call: Huizhou, China. I have my doubts about the benefits of sending four members of council along with city manager Ken Tollstam to celebrate 40 years of city sisterhood, particularly when the projected city budget for next year is short by more than one million dollars. Bad timing. Bad optics. But what really gets me going is that the city is spending $50,000 of provincial funds to go to Huizhou as part of a provincial initiative for new twinning. Ouch! When the province found out that it was going into a massive deficit (in April, May or June -- take your pick), it should have demanded that money back. And surely, when these so-called progressive members of council saw that it was now blood money that could be used in our hospitals, drug rehabilitation programs and schools, they should have sent back that $50,000 and postponed the new twinning as a matter of principle. But they didn't. Shame on them.

For my own part I don't have a problem with city twinning / foreign visits per se.  I would just want to see value for them.  Since the relationship with Chiba seems to have been driven primarily by inertia (from review council minutes from 1969 it is clear that Chiba reached out to us, not vice versa), I am not sure I see the value there.  As for China, it's a little different.  There is much less separation between the political and economic realms there and it is quite possible that we could learn a lot and obtain more tangible benefits for the community by entering into a sister relationship.

Last week the City of North Vancouver indicated that there would be a $2.4m gap in next year's budget, about about $48 for every resident, which would be a 6.9% tax increase if no changes were made.  As I described earlier, staff asked council to give some guidance as to how big a tax rate increase would be palatable.  With the exception of Rod Clark, no council member offered up any direct answer, although Councillor Keating indicated that the increase should be as large as is necessary to support the current level of services. Across the water, the City of Vancouver announced that they too were facing a shortfall of approximately $60m for next year, or about $102 per resident.  However the Mayor and Council there boldly announced that their target was a zero percent increase.

“To cover a $60-million shortfall would require a massive tax hike — and we are simply not going there,” said Mayor Gregor Robertson.

Interesting.

I'll make sure to keep this in mind: http://rivervices.blogspot.com/2009/09/mayor-kalb-burning-midnight-oil.html

It's good to see that the Union of British Columbia Municipalities is considering campaign finance reform, and doubly so that some political watchers like Kennedy Stewart and the media are paying attention and lobbying for change. In my own little way I too did my bit, appearing before the City of North Vancouver council to ask that they vote in favour of the resolution. It should come up either tomorrow or Friday. Let's hope it passes.