John Jensen

This week's Georgia Straight has a short piece about proposed resolution B104, to be voted on by representatives of all BC municipalities at this month's UBCM Convention.  SFU's Kennedy Stewart provides a quote:

When you have $6 million spent in the last civic election here in Vancouver for part-time council positions that pay $50,000 a year—that is, more money spent in the local election per person than federal- or provincial-level [elections]—there’s something wrong ... What it will mean is that politicians will have to go out and get smaller donations from a large number of people,” he said. “In the end, it leads to more engagement, and I think that’s really the key here.

I completely agree.   That's why I appeared at the September 21 North Vancouver Council meeting to urge Council members to vote in favour of this resolution at the UBCM. We'll see what happens.

Someone asked me the other day about some voting pattern posts I had made in October 2008 regarding Council voting patterns for the City and District of North Vancouver. I had posted them at northvancouverpolitics.com.  For reference's sake I'll put links to them here. City of North Vancouver voting patterns, 2006-2008 District of North Vancouver voting patters, 2006-2008 I'll likely produce updated ones in the future.

I attended last night's City of North Vancouver council meeting.  It was an interesting affair.  The City distributed its first-ever awards for public art to a dozen worthy recipients. There were a few I was not familiar with and I plan to check them out when I can. After a public hearing regarding the addition of an infill house to a lot near Ridgeway Elementary School the meeting recessed to the Finance Committee to discuss a report prepared by the Finance Director, Ms Gordon. Her presentation described how revenues from permits and licenses was crashing by 40% from 2008 levels and that thanks to current CUPE agreements and (perhaps) some provincial downloading, costs would be going up. It was at this point the Finance Committee solicited questions / comments from the public, which is when I presented my comparative review of the City's financial reserves.  It was something I put together in a few hours on the Saturday before, after reading the agenda for the meeting. They currently total about $157m, which is about 2.4x operating spending of about $65m. That ratio is higher than any other larger community in British Columbia. Given that size, the current economic pressures on the community, and my perception that the overall reserves strategy for the City is not something that has been systematically and publicly discussed in recent years, I suggested that it was perhaps warranted to start a high-level discussion about this. I only had 5 minutes to present my comments; in retrospect I should have concentrated more on my suggestion regarding public consultation rather than on these comparative measures. The ensuing discussion was interesting to say the least. The comments included (I am paraphrasing here):

• "These measures do not include the value of land assets; if we include them then we are much more in keeping with the average". Possibly, but recall that our ratio is higher than communities much older and fully developed than ours, with presumably similar levels of municipal land ownership, including for example New Westminster and Burnaby, two of the oldest communities in the province. Also, land is much less fungible than financial instruments -- that's why it's valued more highly. It's really an apples-to-oranges comparison. When we do an apples-to-apples comparison, we are among the highest in the province.
• "Standard and Poor's played a role in the financial crisis, so we should not pay much attention to their pronouncements in this area." This is at best an ad hominem argument. Was the councillor inferring that Standard and Poor's incorrectly summarized the public financial statements of a number of municipalities?
• "When I visit other municipalities, I see that their infrastructure is falling apart, with broken concrete and rusting rebar. We do a good job of maintaining our infrastructure in the City and I want to continue to do so." So does everyone, or at least I do; and no one is saying that we should not maintain our infrastructure. But how do we know how well we are maintaining our infrastructure and how do we know we are optimally allocating capital resources to them? Of the approximately 130km each of roads, water lines and sewer lines in the City, how many kilometres are in poor, fair, good, or excellent condition? How many kilometres will need replacement within the next 10, 20, 30 years and how much will be required to pay for it?  With this knowledge it should be relatively easy to prepare a detailed plan for the capital requirements for the City for the foreseeable future.  The ten-year plans mandated by the provincial government have something approaching this, but it is insufficient in my view.  I am sure something like this exists, but it is not publicly available or I have not been able to find it.  See for example what Langley recently produced regarding their roads.
• "If we don't find the money somewhere, that means salary cuts or position cuts, and I refuse to consider those." While everyone agrees that those sorts of decisions should be a last resort, I don't think it is appropriate to rule them out entirely. In my private sector life I have been in the unfortunate position of being forced by economic circumstance to lay off good, hard-working talented people, and assigning (and personally taking) salary cuts because to do otherwise would put the viability of the corporation at risk. I don't see how the City should act differently.

In retrospect I feel sorry for Ms. Gordon.  She and her team have presumably been doing their preparatory 2010 budget work, and found that a budget prepared using previous assumptions and techniques would require a staggering 6.9% tax increase.  Knowing that would be a difficult pill for Council to accept next spring, she probably thought that the best thing to do was to pre-warn them and get some preliminary direction on how big a tax increase they were willing to accept so that she and her colleagues could start to make budgetary plans.  Unfortunately all politicians are going to be unwilling to  decide on a tax increase target six months before they absolutely have to, and my presentation served to hijack the discussion to some degree, which was not my intent.  I hope she takes another stab at it, before the usual budget preparation time, so that the community can absorb the bad news that is probably coming.

Yesterday, I attended the Canadian government's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade's California BootCamp at SFU's Segal Centre in downtown Vancouver.  A few venture capitalists from California had been seduced into town to watch some of Vancouver's local startups pitch their business plans.  While the event's overall design could have been better communicated, overall I enjoyed it. At the following evening reception, Vancouver's new mayor Gregor Robertson made an appearance, and I actually had the opportunity to have a longish discussion with him that included some pet issues of mine, notably improved civic engagement, campaign finance reform, and performance-based public sector  management. While his political pedigree is, in B.C. terms, from the left side of the spectrum -- he was elected as an NDP member of the provincial legislature in 2005 -- from looking more closely at his record and the current platform of his Vision Vancouver party it is clear that he is not a traditional public sector union socialist.  It appears that his personal background and beliefs are focused around individualist, almost populist themes, with a technocratic, non-ideological belief in governance.  About the only thing he seems to be dogmatic about it is his

Yesterday I attended the Canadian government's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade's California Bootcamp.  This event, held in SFU's lovely Segal  Centre downtown, was part of DFAIT's program to identify startup companies for a California-based intensive kickstart program.  While the event itself had its ups and downs, I found the reception afterwards to be interesting because of the attendance of Vancouver's new mayor, Gregor Robertson. The new mayor's political pedigree is, in B.C. terms, from the left -- he was a former NDP member of the provincial legislature -- but based on my discussion with him, his record thus far, and the Vision Vancouver platform, he's not a traditional unionist member of the Kingsway Mafia. The approach he and his Vision Vancouver brethren are taking is one that eschews the tired big business-vs-big labour rhetoric and ideology to one that focuses, almost in a technocratic and populist way, on results. I have heard in some circles that people think that Mr. Robertson, if he is at all successful in the City -- and with his party almost holding a monopoly on council it will be difficult for opponents to paint it otherwise -- that he will either run for the leadership of the NDP or take the Vision Vancouver party to provincial status. Both of those are indeed possible but I am curious why I don't hear people talk about another option -- Mr. Robertson succeeding Gordon Campbell as leader of the B.C. Liberal party.  From where I sit I think that is just as likely to happen and more likely to end in a successful outcome for Mr. Robertson. Here's why:

• The NDP in Canada and British Columbia, unlike New Labour in Britain, has not gone through the cathartic change and turmoil necessary for it to shed its strong union ties.  The platform it sponsored was remarkably backward-looking, with little to indicate that it is progressing to look at today's issues through different lenses.  It's not just me saying that,  prominent NDP members are saying that too.  I was sensing that the party was going to have this debate, but then the Campbell government announced the HST, which forced this discussion underground in the party.  Because of this it doesn't appear that the party will have time to go through this painful process in time for the next election.  Thanks to an over-reliance on unions, the party, like nearly all parties in Canada, has lost its populist roots, and the alliance between Greens and the Left has been seriously weakened by recent Liberal government policies.
• Vision Vancouver, on the other hand, is and will be a peculiarly Vancouver-focused entity, as it should be.  Its core tenets regarding homelessness and the environment are not held in as much importance as in other parts of the province.  There would be a lot of organizational work to be done to create a new provincial party from scratch.
• The BC Liberals, however, are, like Robertson, a party that celebrates entrepreneurship.  Despite the vilification of the NDP, Campbell has run an essentially technocratic government, and has had the guts to move in directions that many in the party membership found troubling (the carbon tax) or that were economically sound but politically unpopular (the HST).  The right-of-centre movement has always been a coalition and has a longer and stronger history of handling debate and a breadth of opinion among its ranks.  Rightly or wrongly, however, the party has been seen as moving too far to the right and will need a centrist new leader and a new brand by 2013.

Assuming Mr. Robertson does not change his spots before then,  I think he would find a happier and more successful home amongst a rejuvenated BC Liberal party than either going with the NDP or a provincial Vision BC party.  We'll see.