She got there first:
MEDIA ADVISORY – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – OCTOBER 4, 2016
Councillor Carr Moves to Oppose Use of Vancouver Development Levies for TransitVancouver – At today’s Vancouver City Council meeting, Councillor Adriane Carr submitted a notice of motion that welcomes more provincial funding for transit in the city but opposes tying it to density upzoning along proposed transit routes or using development fees to help pay for the transit. She raised these issues with Provincial Cabinet Ministers at the recent Union of BC Municipalities convention in Victoria. “Such contingencies undermine the City’s authority for zoning and planning, the integrity of the public planning and public hearing processes, and would make it impossible for the city to adequately fund desperately needed affordable housing and other essential public amenities,” said Councillor Carr. The text of Councillor Carr’s motion is as follows. — Ensuring Vancouver Development Levies are Not Used to Fund Transit WHEREAS: 1. The City of Vancouver depends on development fees, including Development Cost Levies (DCLs) and the Community Amenity Contributions (CACs) from higher density rezonings to fund important civic services and infrastructure including parks, childcare facilities, and affordable housing; 2. Over the past six years, Council has allocated approximately $671 million of CACs towards affordable housing, heritage protection and community facilities such as childcare, libraries, neighbourhood houses, and community and seniors centres in the neighbourhoods affected by development, yet even this spending falls short of meeting the growth in community needs given the number of new residents that the developments bring; 3. In 2015 the City collected $99.8 million in DCLs, with Council allocating $25.6 million for social and supportive housing, $23.6 million for engineering infrastructure, $9.2 million for parks and $6.6 million for childcare. 4. The City does not use development fees to fund transit, which has always been funded by the provincial and federal governments; 5. The City would not be able to deliver the essential public amenities currently funded by development fees if development fees were used to fund transit development; 6. There was indication at the recent Union of BC Municipalities conference in Victoria that the Province is considering tying provincial funding of transit projects to municipalities that upzone density along proposed transit routes and that use development fees to help pay for transit. THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT: Mayor and Council inform the Premier and Cabinet that: A. The City of Vancouver enthusiastically welcomes more provincial funding for public transit in our City and in Metro Vancouver; B. the City of Vancouver opposes making provincial transit funding contingent on density upzoning as that would undermine the City’s authority and responsibility regarding land use planning and zoning, including the public process of developing local area plans and the public hearing process; C. the City of Vancouver opposes making provincial transit funding contingent on the City’s use of CACs to fund transit as that would infringe on the City’s authority and responsibility to implement public amenity strategies as embedded in local area plans and would make it impossible for the City to adequately fund affordable housing and other essential public amenities. – |
Good on Clr Carr. The city is going to need every penny in the coming months!
LikeLike
The result of this motion is that we will end up with more areas like Nanaimo and 29th skytrain stations in YVR where a casual passerby or visitor to the neighbourhood wouldn’t even be aware that there is a high density transit station in the neighbourhood….tragic and sad waste of major public infrastructure dollars.
LikeLike
Why?
LikeLike
The failure to develop densely at Nanaimo and 29th Ave. Stations and Broadway Station were a direct result of planning policies imposed by the City of Vancouver in 1987. City Council caved to the NIMBYs.
The station area plans are available here:
Broadway Station Area Plan Summary 1987
http://former.vancouver.ca/commsvcs/guidelines/B020.pdf
Nanaimo/29th Avenue Station Areas Plan Summary 1987
http://former.vancouver.ca/commsvcs/guidelines/N003.pdf
LikeLike
Transit ought to be self-funding through more taxes collected in all forms: CACs, property taxes, land transfer taxes, PST, GST, employment taxes, corp taxes .. on all levels: federal, provincial, local.
LikeLike
You are exposing your ideology Thomas. Next you’ll be suggesting those that use the system help pay for it. The last TransLink fare increase was 2%. Ouch! That’s almost as horrifying as saying my soy latte is going to cost another nickel? Are you kidding me? No, no. Transit must be paid by the BC government, meaning all BCers and, other people that can’t or don’t need to use it, drivers of vehicles – via road pricing costs. That’s the way I’ve been indoctrinated.
LikeLike
Transit users do pay half the operating costs in the Metro in perpetuity. There are no operating costs recovery mechanisms for roads except for a highly generalized multiplicity of taxes, and increased debt.
LikeLike
Eric you do use transit whether you realize it or not. Otherwise the claim that those who never leave the city still require our highways for goods doesn’t hold water.
LikeLike
That beggar’s belief – that nimbies from 25 years ago blocked the logical build-out around one of the best most expensive transit systems in the world.
The juxtaposition between what’s happening at Joyce/Collingwood and 29th Station, Nanaimo, or Commercial/Broadway is stark. Joyce/Collingwod is being built out to Boundary to house tens of thousands – people who no longer need to infest our streets with cars.
The whole Skytrain corridor should be built out into a conurbation. How absurd that a group of vocal nimbies could put the kibosh on the needs of the many. This situation needs to be revisited. Most of those nimbies will be dead by now; those remaining will succumb to the siren call of cashing-out to to highest best use and move with crocodile tears and wads of cash to the interior, or Saltspring.
If zoning were changed to high-density within a 15 min walk to Skytrain the speed of development would be shocking. To push that a little further, I understand that in Toronto there is a system of building by precedent – that if a tower is built in one place, then the adjacent property will also qualify – providing more land base for high-density housing.
It’s peculiar how much quacking has gone on about the Arbutus Corridor and almost nothing about about 29th or Nanaimo stations. 29th sits beside a park and the largest ravine in Vancouver, yet many have not even heard of it. A few years ago a plan was made to replace the land crossing with a steel bridge (timber would be better) and to build boardwalks. To date, the only visible progress has been the cutting down of some shrubs. That’s it. Nothing. This could be such a cool place.
Nanaimo Station has Trout Lake (a pond really). It should have a resto in there. It wouldn’t be Seasons in the Park, but it would be popular; or a food truck venue. This park was a lot of fun during Illuminares. There were naysayers when Kits got a restaurant – are they broken-hearted now.
LikeLike
Typo: Beggars belief, not beggar’s.
LikeLike
Over the past six years, Council has allocated approximately $671 million of CACs towards affordable housing, heritage protection and community facilities such as childcare, libraries, neighbourhood houses, and community and seniors centres in the neighbourhoods affected by development, yet even this spending falls short of meeting the growth in community needs given the number of new residents that the developments bring; […] In 2015 the City collected $99.8 million in DCLs, with Council allocating $25.6 million for social and supportive housing, $23.6 million for engineering infrastructure, $9.2 million for parks and $6.6 million for childcare…
Kudos to Councillor Carr for bringing this information to the foreground. This data is an antidote to those who refer to CACs as “crack cocaine.” And to Fraser Institute alumni who feel it’s their solemn duty to publish op-ed pieces calling for the barriers to their developer brethren’s interests to be eradicated from city hall without one smidgen of analysis of the value of DCCs to society, or reference to the cost of providing public services to private development.
Having said that, in my view Carr is taking an overly rigid stance on transit, probably in reaction to the historical animosity of the BC Liberals toward the Metro as demonstrated time and time again by forcing TransLink to walk the plank on policy and funding. Carr may change her tune should John Horgan become the next premier and ups the provincial share of transit funding to 40% (as promised at the same UBCM conference), a level in keeping with the provincial share of tax revenue.
Until that happens (IF it happens), every funding source for public transit must remain in the table. Councillors like Carr should be encouraged to address this concern from a regional perspective. The city can still harness the bucking bronco of TOD to control its form while also obtaining per m2 transit levies, and this may be a way to also afford the ‘missing middle’ in housing and commercial retail to finally appear. Not every transit line needs to tower up.
LikeLike
Missing in this debate is immigration volumes and the cost to accommodate them. Every immigrant – or in-migrant to the Lower Mainland even form other provinces like AB or SK – takes up resources, be it transit, or roads, or schools or policing or healthcare. All that costs money and many do not pay any or very low income taxes. Cities receive far too little of the tax pie, for example none on income taxes.
We need to thoroughly review our tax mix, such as lowering income taxes but increasing SHARPLY consumption and property related taxes, or reducing federal income taxes and increasing cities share of taxes. Since property is a form of consumption it is utterly undertaxed, both its holding as well as its gain. If cities participated in that share of property taxes more, for example a share of any capital gains, they might be more inclined to co-fund transit and upzone. If income taxes were allocated to cities Vancouver would actually be more open to commercial development.
The whole healthcare debate now where the feds collect taxes and then re-distribute healthcare $s to a province is ridiculous. It shows me the feds collect far too much in taxes and the provinces too little since healthcare is provincial and not federal. Ditto with social housing, homelessness or mental illnesses, or transit.
LikeLike
Immigrants have kids. And their kids have kids. The antidote to your prescribed socially conservative view on immigration (and just how is that related to a transit levy on development?) is to tally up the economic activity of each generation. If immigration stopped based on your definition of “cost”, then Canada wouldn’t exist.
LikeLike
streets including bike lanes are paid on municipal budget, so why not transit?
It is also logical then that transit is subisidized from muncipal source revenue, and there is no reason to think that means less service elsewhere since transit reduce the need for street infrstructure
Furthermore, financing transit by municipal revenue sources is also of nature to encourage municipalities to adopt development pattern enabling efficient transit, to effectively maximize revenue sources room for other municipal services (i.e. a city could think twice before closing robson square, and we could probably see more bus lane…).
it is also the point done here:
https://voony.wordpress.com/2015/01/19/transit-funding-the-batemans-plan-and-charles-marohn/
In the form of minimal density, the province is asking for some guarantee, they will not finance a white elephant. In regard of the Vancouver history, it is very understandable.
…the Carr motion is a step in the wrong direction on all accounts.
LikeLike