Retiring Toronto City Councillor Kyle Rae is sick and tired of the hopeless fiscal situation of municipalities.

The political retirement of veteran Toronto City Councillor Kyle Rae is not particularly significant for us here on the west coast as a stand alone story. Rae was Toronto’s first openly gay politician, and spent 18 years as the representative for Toronto Centre-Rosedale.

What is significant from the perspective of Vancouver, and indeed all BC municipalities however, is his reasoning for doing so.

In fact, in light of Vancouver’s current budget crunch, local Councillors and critics alike would be wise to use his experience as an indicator of what could be our future.

The most glaring message that I take from Rae’s words (read ahead) is a warning that municipalities are financially handcuffed by their provincial masters, and that without fiscal responsibility and tough decision making at the civic level, all hope for effective local governance is lost.

Allow me to contextualize.

Most politicians leave office claiming success with their work and a legacy of positive change. The straight-shooting Rae does not fall into this group, as evidenced by this excerpt from an email to supporters:

“I wish I could say that I have left the City in a better state than I found it.”

In fact, Rae’s prognostications about Toronto are very bleak:

“This is my 19th year and I don’t see a very healthy future in the city’s fiscal situation and I’ve spent 18 years trying to improve it.”

Why does Rae feel this way? Well, it has to do with the unbearable costs that have been shifted to Ontario’s municipalities over the past 15 years:

“I arrived before the Harrisite amalgamation and download. Queen’s Park has hobbled the City’s ability to deliver municipal services. Downloading provincial programs and services onto the municipal taxpayer has wrecked havoc on our parks, recreation centres, libraries, community services and culture. The federal and provincial aversion for responsible tax policy and appropriate tax increases has resulted in more than 15 years of cowardly downloading onto the City.”

I am presenting these quotes in order to frame the current budget cutting process that Vancouver City Council is spending ridiculous working hours trying to complete in these final weeks of 2009.

According to a 2007 pre-budget submission made by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO):

“Canada is the world champion of reliance on property taxation as revenue. At the local level, on national average, property taxes accounted for 40.4% of total revenues in 2004/05. This share has remained stable during the last 15 years, peaking at 43.4% in 1997/98.”

As I have mentioned in many previous posts, municipalities do not exist except by the will of the provinces. They are not constitutionally recognized in this country, and as any civic politician will tell you, the quest for such recognition is solely motivated by the increasing demands upon municipal fiscal resources (or lack thereof).

The Constitution Act, 1867 established the parameters of current federal and provincial relationships with municipalities. Section 92 of the Act sets out the exclusive powers of provincial legislatures in 16 areas, with section 92(8) giving the legislature of each province exclusive responsibility for making laws relating to that province’s municipal institutions.

Unlike their provincial and federal counterparts, municipalities can’t run annual deficits. As mentioned above, property taxes tend to comprise the majority of their revenues, forcing options like using debt financing to fund major capital projects.

Now while the Mike Harris binge of municipal amalgamation and the associated downloading of responsibilities has hit Ontario the hardest out of all the Canadian provinces, British Columbia’s municipalities have not escaped the cowardice of their provincial government.

Resolution B-26 of the recent Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) convention stated the following:

“WHEREAS over the past few decades the provincial government has downloaded and offloaded provincially mandated services to local government without sufficiently, if at all, matching the services with funding (i.e., roads maintenance and replacement, homelessness, wildlife, policing, mental health and transit);
AND WHEREAS the provincial government may not be aware that their cost cutting measures over the years have resulted in pressures on communities to address the service gaps to the extent that limited local government funds are being used to fund provincially mandated services, negatively impacting a local government’s ability to adequately address core local government services:
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the UBCM strongly urge the provincial government to cease their downloading or offloading of services to local governments;
AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that any future services, if devolved in any manner, whether subtle or not, must be accompanied by sufficient, sustainable revenues which will be in the control of the local governments”

The results of this phenomenon have been predictable. According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, municipal spending in B.C. rose by almost 50 per cent between 2002 and 2008. Property tax revenue jumped by 26 per cent, compared to inflation which rose by about 12 percent and population figures which increased by about 8.5 per cent over the same time frame.

As an example, take a look at the Vancouver budget, which went up by 19.4 per cent, from $773 to $923 million, between 2005 and 2009.

Now, in Vancouver’s particular experience, the Olympics as well as horrible political leadership with little controls over an out of control city bureaucracy also played a part in such a huge budgetary increase.

Nonetheless, with increasing costs shoved off on municipalities (take for example Translink and the Province recently holding Metro Vancouver’s municipalities to ransom) and limitations on revenue generation, something’s got to give.

Property taxes are a losing proposition in the long term, as the regressive and restrictive nature of this form of revenue means that municipalities do not necessarily keep pace with economic growth or inflation, as do income taxes or even sales taxes.

Property taxes are also the final resting place for tax increases, as federal and provincial government have chosen to download in recent memory in lieu of actually raising taxes.

This is the reason that I look at organizations like ThinkCity, which just recently conducted its annual citizen budget survey, and shake my head with their support for the option of raising taxes instead of making cuts to spending.

Here’s a question…if our federal and provincial counterparts aren’t willing to do so to fund the projects and initiatives they deem as important, why should our cities?

Municipalities are no doubt in an impossible situation that is in no way sustainable. Limited revenues that have remained steady over the past decade meet with ever increasing costs handed down by gutless senior levels of government. It is a recipe for disaster.

But until this situation gets fixed, and as long as municipalities are prevented from running deficits, fiscal responsibility is the only option left.

So before we go and place an undue burden on civic taxpayers for the sins of others, isn’t looking internally for cost savings a reasonable course of action?

As a side note, Rae also has words of wisdom for those advocates in Vancouver who are so very enamoured with the idea of wards:

“I’m turning 56 next year and I didn’t want to be like some colleagues who have been there for 30 years and are only interested in their ward’s agenda and have no clue how the city has changed.”

This is exactly what I talked about in this post. Wards have the potential to entrench pedestrian politics and pit Councillors against each other for limited resources. They do not lend themselves well to the concept of a broad and sweeping municipal vision for the future.

Anyways, Rae’s words are prophetic for Vancouver, and should be considered very carefully for a perspective of where we could end up with the continuation of fiscal limitations at the civic level and the introduction of wards as a new electoral system.

So enjoy your retirement, Mr. Rae – civic politics is most definitely a thankless job.

Civic affairs were front and centre in an interesting and engaging forum hosted this past Saturday.

I really wasn’t sure what to expect when I walked into the “Year In Review” forum hosted by previous NPA candidate Michael Geller, largely because I suspected an overwhelmingly NPA supportive crowd would be the only ones to show up.

And, for the most part, I was correct – former and current NPA board members, elected officials and supporters roamed the room, with few Vision or COPE supporters in tow.  In fact, one of those former NPA elected officials tried to tell me that the morning remained civil and well-behaved because “the right-of-centre” had been behind the organizing, suggesting that had the “left” been at the helm, chaos and hostility would have ruled the day.

This is exactly the type of comment that I have come to expect from your typical NPA, Quadra-type of supporter.  When confronted with the question, I told the individual that having grown up in Marpole/Kerrisdale, I knew first hand that civility was by no means exclusive to her end of the political spectrum.

That bit of nonsense aside, I found the morning to be a fantastic endeavour that could prove to be a model for civic engagement for all parties – assuming, of course, that the pool of interest is widened with future sessions.

First and foremoest, let me say that Michael Geller is an absolute gentleman and a scholar.  His demeanour is completely disarming and welcoming, his intent seems to be without political motivation as its driving motivation, and his genuine interest in improving Vancouver is obvious.  He admitted that my post from last week was a welcome wake-up call for him, and I thanked him for the invite.

The first panel session involved former NPA Councillor Gordon Price, former Vision Vancouver mayoral candidate Jim Green, and Geller, and was moderated by architect Joost Bakker.  14 topics were brought forward for discussion, including the Burrard Bridge bike lane trial, the Woodsward’s development, the Olympic Village, the STIR program, laneway housing, the HEAT shelters, parking and the Green agenda.

The banter between the three participants was amusing, for the simple fact that positions held true in time of election didn’t necessarily fall in line within this particular debate.  Green was passionately advocating for increased density in the city, Geller was singing the praises of how Vision Vancouver had handled the Olympic Village, and Price was strongly backing the maintenance of the social housing compoent of the Olympic Village regardless of costs.

This is what I enjoyed most about this first panel – the urban experts that were willing to advance viewpoints that had little adherence to their former partisan posts or the current state of their former political homes.

Geller was angry with the province for their lack of interest in his modular housing proposals directed towards lower income families and the homeless.  Price was fascinating in his views on the concept of “motordom,” where from the 1950s onward, cities were built according to the facilitation of the the seamless use of automobiles.  And Jim Green beamed about the Woodward’s development, which he used as a model of mixed use and composition that the Olympic Village should be patterned after.

All in all, a fantastic session that only scratched the surface of some of the most pressing issues of the day.

The second panel was lacklustre for me, as what was to be a discussion on the budget and the merits of the Green Capital economic development plan turned into a generic discussion on the city’s economic prowess.  Moderated by former NPA mayoral candidate Peter Ladner, the panel included John Tylee from the Vancouver Economic Development Commission (VEDC), James Fletcher of ThinkCity, and once again Gordon Price.

Tylee was interesting in his emphatic endorsement of the way in which the current Mayor and Council have backed the VEDC like no other administration in recent memory.  He emphasized the forthcoming economic development strategy as the first in two decades, and stated that he was enabled by the political support and involvement from Gregor Robertson in particular.

Fletcher spoke about the surveys that ThinkCity had received back on the budget process, speaking about the short time frame and the lack of public involvement in the process as if the City and its methods were solely to blame for this problem.  Of course, a lack of interest from the general public plays huge into this lack of participation, and no matter what the city does to extend deadlines or engage the public, the same 100 individuals are going to show up.  Ladner asked a loaded question of what ThinkCity’s respondents thought of service fees (hidden, as Ladner described) in lieu of more substantial tax hikes, to which Fletcher was clearly unprepared to answer.

Price dismissed the Greenest City Action Team ten-year plan as litte more than policies that broke little new ground.  He spoke about how there has been a global urban paradigm shift that had achieved “consensus” on these kinds of measures, making the document more of a game of catch-up rather than an earth-shattering initiative.  I had never heard of the Clouds of Change report from the early 90s (found here and here), but Price called the GCAT report simply a “child” of it.

The final panel is the one that I took part in, where I joined Monte Paulsen from the Tyee, Miro Cernetig of the Vancouver Sun, and Mike Klassen, who prophesized about his style of editorialized news coverage.  The proceedings were moderated by freelance reporter and regular contributor to the Globe and Mail and Vancouver Magazine Frances Bula.

The topics surrounding Vision’s performance were interesting.  Cernetig admitted that he had previously underestimated Gregor Robertson, who he now thinks of as very politically sharp after seeing him in action after a year.  Whereas once Robertson was more “GQ than IQ,” Cernetig said that he though that the advisors he had assembled around him were a politically shrewd bunch that were guiding the Mayor into hallowed territory when it comes to political favour.  He was frustrated, however, by the lack of access to the Mayor, whom he said is much more elusive with the media than even Sam Sullivan.

Paulsen examined four broad campaign promises from the Vision Vancouver platform – tackling homelessness, building safe and inclusive communities, fostering creative capital, and building an sustainable and green agenda for the city – and reviewed them.  He determined that the homelessness file had been the most active for Vision, but that while there had been an immediate rush of activity with the HEAT shelters right after assuming office, there has been far less progress since that early spell.  He talked about how building safe and inclusive communities was one of those campaign promises that was hard to pin down, and he was unsure of how that had been achieved thus far.  With regards to fostering creative capital, he commended some of the work done by Heather Deal in opening up smaller venues for live music and entertainment, but acknowledged that the city did not have enough infrastructure and affordability to truly foster a cultural revolution.  And finally, he spoke about the GCAT 10-year plan and the Green Capital branding, which he stated was attractive for public consumption but suspect in terms of the kind of uptake it will garner amongst Vancouver residents.

Mike Klassen said that Gregor Robertson “didn’t have the intellectual capacity” to serve as Mayor, but did commend him for working with the province on issues such as finding shelter for the homeless.  I found that he was far less boisterous and aggressive in person than he is behind a keyboard, but to no one’s surprise, his reviews on Vision Vancouver and Gregor Robertson were less than favourable, to say the least.  As an example, the Burrard Bridge, which he had prepared for with his grossly imappropriately named “Gregor’s Gridlock” website, was now apparently “window dressing,” an opinion that I assume has been shaped by the trial’s overwhelming success.

I emphasized that Vision Vancouver had shifted the political landscape precisely because they do not have a natural constituency of voters to call their own.  I spoke of my early hesitations with the Vision Vancouver movement due to the NPD, closed-shop mentality that originally infiltrated the organization.  But I also stated that what I had seen through the nominations of both the Mayor and his group of candidates was a diversity of support that is unparalleled in Vancouver municipal history.

The most interesting discussion to arise out of the final panel was a debate about how blogs were changing the landscape when it comes to political coverage.

Frances spoke of a hesitation to use blogs as a driver of news, largely because of the political bias that drove the coverage being offered.  She really took Klassen to task with the kind of stories that he was able to drive “lazy” media into covering, likening CityCaucus’ big exclusives to the kinds of headlines that the Province newspaper runs.  In other words, a lowest common denominator approach that appeals to newsrooms without the staff and or resources to cover municipal affairs properly.

I took Klassen to task, speaking about how his website claims to offer civic coverage with respectful debate, but in my opinion, took personal attacks and fervent opposition to the current Vision Vancouver government.  I apparently misspoke about Klassen and Daniel Fontaine being non-partisan, because I was corrected in the audience by Michael Davis, the former NPA president (he just recently resigned), who stated that it was no mystery as to where the two authors and their loyalties lay.

Paulsen had an interesting point of view on the major changes going on in the mainstream media.  He stated that newspapers in this city – the major dailies – were on a downward slide, and the form in which they would take in a year is a huge unknown at this point.  He pointed to blogs and alternative media like the Tyee as a revolution, although he also stated that everyone wants a revolution until they immersed in one (or something to that effect).

At the end of the day, my take on blogs and the notion that authors like myself are pseudo-media is realistic and I think pretty reasonable.  I realize that the 600 or so visitors I get on a daily basis are a tiny fraction of the electorate.  I know that I am offering a mix of opinion (a healthy dose) and some breaking stories that largely have a political bent to them.  I understand that my political positioning, experience and involvement is what sells this website rather than “news coverage” par se.

One thing I do know, however, is that I will not hide behind the guise of being a presence in the world of commentating that is there for the public good.  I am a partisan that supports a political administration.  Now that does not preclude the fact that sometimes I might indeed offer criticism or words of advice for those in office.  It does, however, allow me to put aside any complaints about pandering or campaigning to get at what I am trying to accomplish – and that is, to simply offer another voice in this municipal political landscape.  Nothing more, nothing less.

Blogging, particularly when it comes to poliitcs and influencing public opinion, is a revolution in a sense.  But those who take themselves too seriously are bound to find themselves disappointed by the ineffectiveness of their efforts to change the course of the political landscape.  Frances Bula gets this, and understands that her blog is as much a tool of marketing and self-promotion as it is a way to disseminate hard news.  Others on the local scene, however, take a far more virulent view of their assumed position to serve as an opposition where a huge void within the Vancouver City Council chambers currently exists.

All in all, I was very pleased by the way the morning went, and I hope that Michael Geller and others keep such events up to enlighten the debate of our collective civic future.

Hey, you never know…maybe I’ll take a shot next time.