Mayor Cornett holding Wancouver’s first white baby
during the Jubilee celebrations last month. The pioneer
stock from which she sprung voted a labor mayor to
guide the growth of the young city. For the last decade
or more Vancouver has been afflicted with “big business’
domination of civic affairs, Masquerading under the
guise of ‘non-partisan’. In order that Wancouver may
meet the post-war problems of reconstruction with its
eld-time pioneer virility, it is time for the citizens to
clean the City Hall of the ‘non-partisan’ party politicians.

en TTT HTT

Gold-plated bridge?

Vancouver citizens awoke one morning, and there, lo and
behold, resplendent in a shining coat of pure gold, command-
ing the entrance to Vancouver’s harbor and stretching its
impressive arch across Halse Creek was Burrard Bridge. The
eight-lane surface of the bridge gleamed with a king’s ran-
som in gold, the proud portals of the entranceway ‘were
proud in a radiant coating of gilded splendor, the girded
Span of its great canti-levered arch reflected the sun’s morn-
ing rays in a million dollar brilliance. Solid, twenty-four carat
gold. Citizen's called it a miracle, churchmen marvelled, but
people in the know credited it as another “neat trick,” pulled
off by the manipulators at the City Hall:

Actually nothing so wonderful as the gold-plated bridge
has ever happened and it is doubted that it ever will. But
the startling fact is that it could have happened, with enough
still left over to buy Mayor Cornett a box of perfectos.

The interest and Carrying charges on the eyebrow rais-
ing initial cost of $2,250,759.82 have boosted the reat cost or
the bridge to taxpayers to the sum of six million, five hun-
dred and eighteen thousand, two hundred dollars and sixty-

©r in other words the City Council reversed bar-
gain basement procedure and gave Vancouverites ONE bridge
for the price of THREE.

two cents.

Six million and a half dollars and a few odd cents is a
lot of. money, a lot of your money. And that is what the
city fathers did to erect a bridge, worth something under
two and a quarter million. And we'll be paying for this
“neat trick” until the year of our Lord 1970, which is long
after the men who pulled the “neat trick” will have passed
into oblivion.

The pity of it all is that the bridge could have been
build and paid for outright by the Non-Partisan financial
Houdinis, by floating a 10-year, three percent serial instal-
ment bond issue, which would have cost less than four hun-
dred thousand dollars in interest, a pittance compared to the
four and a quarter million dollar gift presented to the bond
holders by the Non-Partisans.

] i Z bridge, a very

It all adds up this way. Vancouver has a ge,
wonderful bridge. For the bridge the people of Vancouver
will pay not once, but three times. In other words, when-
ever a Vancouverite looks at Burrard Bridge very carefully,
he will see the ghostly outlines of the two bridges which he
will pay for but which were never built.

Or if he zoes down to the entrance to False Creek very
early some sunny morning he will see, lo and behold, re-
Splendent in a shining coat of pure gold, gleaming with a
king’s ransom, and stretching its impressive arch across False
Greek, the Gold-Plated Bridge. ;
SAMMI

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE it

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How to save a million dollars

Out of every dollar bill spent annually by the City Council, more than twenty-seven

' cents goes toward fixed charges on the city’s staggering burden of debt.

This startling

fact stands as a monument to ten years of mismanagement of civic finances by the Non=-

Partisans.

The Council, by continuing to
pay interest charges on bond is-
sues at the fixed rate of 4%, 5,
and 51% percent has piled up a
tremendous fixed expenditure of
public money, and in 1944 the
per capita debt was outranked
cnly by that of Montreal, which
is notorious for poor manage-
ment. a

Compare the debt position of
Vancouver with that of other
cities. While the City of Toronto
owes fifty-one dollars for each
citizen, Winnipeg thirty-nine dol-
lars, the City of Vancouver owes
the’ hair-raising sum of one
hundred and nineteen dollars for
each and every citizen in the city.
This means that Non-Partisan
“good government,” pledged) to

five the city wise and business-
like management, has plunged
the city into a morass of debt
which is almost incomparable in
Canada. 2 2

This situation is not inevitable,
nor is it unalterable. It is possible
for the Vancouver city: council to
save up to one million dollars
annually by refunding its bonded
debt and cutting the amount of
interest payable by one third.

Other cities in Canada have al-
ready shown the way, and have
refinanced outstanding issues at
lewer interest rates. The natural
means that Vancouver’s council
can adopt to ease the tremendous
debt burden borne by this city
is to follow this lead and recall
present high-interest bonds, re-

financing them at the lower rate
and effecting great savings.
This is not a smart legal or
financial trick. It falls into the
category of “good business,” the
type of thing the Non-Partisans

“Supposedly stand for. The record

proves, however, that “good. gov-
ernment” and “ good business”
are terms completely foreign to
the Non-Partisan bunglers.

Re-negotiate the present city
debt, and place a three percent
limit upon interest rates paid out
by the city in future. This is the
only means by which the present
Chaotic state of civie finances
can be remedied, but the Non-
Partisans have proven to Van-
couver’s people that they are
completely incapable of institut-
ing, sound financial practice.

Assessment chaos hides handouts

While assessments are
usually thought. of as a
sound and accurate reflec-
tion of actual real values,
Vancouver's assessments are
far from this condition. This
fact emerged from aé recently
conducted survey of Wancouver
property assessments.

The provincial government has
contended in the past that Van-
couver’s assessments are out of
line with real values and that
the remedy for this condition
is in the Council’s hands. This
contention is strongly borne out
by the facts.

The city council’s policy of
high assessment of private
homes and under-assessment of
business and commercial prop-
erties has placed a heavy bur-
den of taxation. upon small
home owners.

Taking an average home in
Vancouver, it is found that land

assessment is five hundred dol-
lars, while assessment of im-
provements is two thousand

dollars. The small home owner is

provided with an exemption of
one thousand dollars.

The situation with large of-
fice buildings, such as the Ma-
rine Building, however, with
land assessment standing at
$102,600 and improvements at
$1,285,000, provides an exemp-
tion of $642,500.

It is not difficult to see that
small home owners are discrim-
inated against in the form of
relatively higher taxes than the
owners of commercial property.

The total effect of Vancouver's
property tax policies has been
that while the average home
owner pays taxes on 60 percent
of assessments, owners of busi-
mess properties pay taxes on as
little as 53 percent of assess-
ment. In other words, tax polHcy
hands large property holders in
many cases with a gift of over
Six percent exemption.

Small home owners have pro-
tested the proportionately high-
€r assessments on residential
properties, but the City Council
has invariably fallen back on
the excuse that the Council can

do nothing about. raising or
lowering assessments, The coun-
cil maintains that assessments
are in the hands of an assessor
and therefore the matter ends
there. =)

The Council handily overlooks
the fact that the Council it-
self sits as a board of assess-
ment appeals with the power to
revise and re-assess value set
upon property by the official
assessor. And quite apart from
assessments, the City Council
sets the rate of exemption on
properties which provides high
exemptions to large holders and

small exemptions to the home
owners.
Small home owners are de-

manding that Vancouver’s civic
administration perform an about-
face in assessment policy and
restore a method of assessment
by which big properties will be
assessed at their true values,
and the giving of gifts to large
property owners through high
exemptions cease. This is one
partial cure for “what ails Van-
couver.” :

ees
ERIDAY, AUGUST 16, 1946