Vancouver

COPE, GVRD plans reflect citizens’ anger over school tax hikes

The Committee of Progressive Electors has a plan to avoid the skyrocketing school taxes that could hit Vancouver homeowners with 22-per-cent increase this year.

Standing outside the Pacific Press build- ing on Granville Street to underscore their point, Chris Allnutt and school trustee Pau- line Weinstein called for the return of indus- trial and commercial property taxes to local school districts and a $50 hike in the homeowner grant.

The politically hot issue has local governments worried. The Greater Van- couver Regional District and the metropoli- tan area school trustees have struck a joint task force to find an alternative formula to the way public education is funded.

At issue is a formula that gets the provin- cial government off the hook while making local officials liable for increased school budgets resulting from the desperate need for additional programs such as English as a Second Language, and catch-up wage hikes for teachers suffering under seven years of Social Credit restraint.

Since the changes to the funding formula that followed the 1982 restraint program, big business” share of the school tax burden has plummeted while homeowners have shouldered an annually increasing tax load.

COPE, which pointed this out at a dem- onstration outside Molson Breweries dur-

ing the civic election last fall, repeated the action March 2 outside Pacific Press, pub- lisher of The Vancouver Sun and The Pro- vince.

Allnutt, a former COPE trustee and former chair of the Vancouver school board’s finance committee, pointed out that Pacific Press has paid 52 per cent less in property tax for school purposes since 1984.

In 1984, Pacific Press, owned by Sou- tham Press, paid $572,000 in school tax. Last year it paid only $271,000, Allnutt’s figures — based on the B.C. Assessment Authority’s rolls — showed.

By contrast, Vancouver homeowners were charged about $100 on the average in 1984, compared to $285 in 1988. In 1989, they can expect to pay more than $340, for an average 22-per-cent increase, the COPE analysis found.

This is due in part to the astronomical increases in assessed land values because of the current real estate boom, but also because Victoria’s share of school financing is continually dropping, Weinstein said.

The Socreds seized all property taxing powers from school districts shortly after the introduction of the restraint program. It returned residential property taxing author- ity to boards a few years back, but has retained the lucrative commerical and industrial tax base.

Chris Allnutt and Pauline Weinstein display graphs showing how business pays less

for schools outside Pacific Press building.

The province forwards the revenues gathered from that source to local districts, but it has steadily decreased the rate charged big business. Additionally, the Socreds abolished the tax on industrial machinery that used to provide a steady financial base for many school districts.

The return of those taxing powers would allow districts to increase the share large commercial enterprises pay while reducing the burden on homeowners, COPE argues.

“It is obviously unfair that the Van- couver school board has no power to tax the over $8.3 billion in commercial and indus- trial property in this city,” Allnutt says.

Despite the obvious benefits of renewed taxing authority on business and commer-

What to do with our mountains of gar- bage was the main issue at Vancouver city council’s marathon meeting on Feb. 21. It lasted from 2 p.m. till 2:30.a.m. By the time it was over two things became evident.

The first was that the citizens of Van- couver are quite clear on what they want done with our garbage. They are far ahead of the Non-Partisan Association in their thinking on recycling and reusing our resources. What they demanded and what the three Committee of Progressive Elec- tors aldermen supported were the princi- ples that:

®@ As much of our garbage as possible should be separated before it is picked up so that it can be recycled and used again.

® The financial benefits from the sale of recycled garbage should accrue to the city and not to private firms.

@ City employees should handle all garbage collection and disposal. It shouldn’t be turned over to any private firms.

At that council meeting NPA aldermen agreed, after great pressure from citizen groups, to institute a system of curbside collection of separated garbage from resi- dential areas. Citizens will be asked to separate their garbage before they put it out so that the collecting crews can put different types such as bottles, papers, metal, and plastic into separate bins.

This program will cost $1.9 million to start up and $1 million a year to operate. At the beginning it will be applied only to single family homes; later to apartments. This was a victory for citizens. The NPA has no enthusiasm for this: and has blocked it for years.

The second thing that became clear at this council meeting was the determina- tion of the NPA to contract out the most profitable sections of garbage collection.

This was demonstrated when the NPA

majority pushed through a motion to go ahead with the building of a recycling plant on a city-owned lot worth $2 million at 1660 Station Street, near Main and Terminal streets. After the recycling some of the garbage is to be sold; the rest will go into Burns bog. The garbage for this plant will come from the downtown area which provides the most profitable garbage from the standpoint of recycling.

The estimated cost of construction was $6 million. The NPA majority decided that the city should immediately call for tenders to build and operate the plant.

This means it would be privately operated.

This action was opposed by the three COPE aldermen and most of the citizen groups that appeared before council. We felt this facility should remain in the hands of the city and be run by the city.

Since private contractors want this facil- ity so badly, obviously there’s money to be made from it. But why should someone else make money from our garbage?’ Why shouldn’t the city get the benefits and use the profits to lower taxes or fund much

.needed programs? :

I think there should be only one pickup, separation and recycling program for the whole city and it should be under the

Recycling: citizens ahead of NPA

ownership and direction of city council. The way things are going now, the private sector will get the most profitable part and taxpayers will be left.to cover the cost of what’s left. Much remains to be done before we get a good pickup and recycling program in place.

For example, glass bottles that are col- lected should not be smashed and then sold to some glass manufacturing opera- tion. Why shouldn’t all glass containers be used over and over again? All glass con- tainers should be returnable. Firms that sell goods in glass containers should be required to buy back these containers from the public, the way pop and beer bottles are today. We have no moral right to waste our resources.

As for the tin and metals, why should they be sold to some middleman? Why can’t the city find a market for them? This applies to paper and cardboard too. We can sell this direct to paper manufacturers.

As for compost, I think homeowners should be urged to save this themselves and re-use it. Where that’s not possible, a special dump should be secured by the city where Compost can be stored to rot and used later as fertilizer. This is another resource that shouldn’t be wasted.

Some see incinerators as a solution to our garbage. But incinerators also waste resources, Furthermore the fumes they generate may be harmful. With incinera- tion, we may just be switching from one kind of pollution to another. This is another field that needs to be thoroughly researched,

We really need more research into this whole field of garbage disposal, or recy- cling and reusing. Very little of our gar- bage should be wasted in a world that is rapidly running out of resources. The pro- vince should be putting some money into this research.

2 e Pacific Tribune, March 6, 1989

cial properties, Vancouver trustees, most of whom are members of the business- supported Non-Partisan Association, rejec- ted Weinstein’s motion calling on the province to return that authority, at a recent finance committee meeting.

The labour-backed civic alliance also calls on the province to increase the homeowner grant, frozen since 1979 at $380. A $50 hike would allow the Van- couver board to keep residential tax hikes within six per cent, and pump an extra $5 million into the district for the 1989-90 fiscal] year, Allnutt and Weinstein said.

The proposed Vancouver school board budget, which goes to a vote at the March 13 trustees’ meeting, plans a $3.2 million increase with the 22-per-cent average resj- dential tax hike.

(A big part of the increase will pay for a ;

$258,000 school lunch program, along with a $380,000 infusion into six “inner city” schools where students are primarily from low-income backgrounds.)

The increased burden on local taxpayers has even conservative local politicians wor- ried, as can be seen from the joint effort of the Greater Vancouver Regional District board and the metropolitan area trustees to find a more equitable funding formula for public schools.

The regional district cites a updated study

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that found Greater Vancouver residents _

pay 40 per cent of school requirements, while other B.C. district residents pay 24 per cent. The district says this is based on the flawed assumption that GVRD taxpayers have more income. In fact, they earn about the same as residents in places like Kam- loops or Port Alberni, and less than homeowners in Prince George, the district States.

Greater Vancouver homeowners paid $130 million for schools in 1988, and are

expected to pay $150 million this year,

according to the GVRD.

A joint task force of regional directors and trustees states that it will seek short- and long-term solutions to the inequitable fund- ing formula, trying for a system “that does not solely involve residential real property assessments.”

However, the GVRD does not say if the task force will look at options such as seek- ing the return of the industrial and commer- cial property tax base.

CORRECTION

In the Feb. 20 issue, stories on page 2 (‘False Creek ‘decontamination’ slammed” and “Expo deal under cloud of secrecy”) stated, due to an editing error, that the city of Vancouver cancelled a rezoning hearing for Concord Pacific because negotiations over soil contamination clean-up between the developer and the provincial govern- ment had fallen through.

In fact, the negotiations were between the city of Vancouver and the province.