Finance Committee starts up

Did you know that you can go to Council to ask questions about the budget?

Well, not really a budget but a financial plan that assists more spending.  Tonight, they determined the Rec Commission didn't spend all of their allocated funds so had to give back $97,000 but don't worry our Council will not let a penny of your taxes go unspent.  Horror! They could have left it unspent and lowered the spending the following year.

Here is what they will share with the public:

The Presentation:
http://www.cnv.org/attach/2013%2010%2007-FC-PP.pdf

An extremely macro view of the budget:
http://www.cnv.org/attach/2013%2010%2007%20item%2007.pdf

and;

http://www.cnv.org/attach/2013%2010%2007%20item%2007%20attach%2001.pdf

The October 21st Council meeting will continue a series of Finance Committee public hearings where you can have your say.  I was of two people, the past president of the Lower Lonsdale and past candidate for Council in 2008, complained about police response time and questioned on whether the Council had cut the number of officers.  He was assured that was not the case.

I asked whether the tax decrease in the last budget meeting of last year to rebalance the residential and business taxes had partially gone to apartment buildings who are actually hold city issued business licences.  I had called on Council to give more tax relief to actual businessess hoping that actual small businesses would get a higher level of tax relief.  The Council decided in the middle as usual but I was more concerned that the tax relief has partially gone to large corporations rather than struggling small businesses. The Finance Director informed me that apartment buildings although registered as a business are categorized by residential so rather than business so they were not only not getting a tax break but paying more.

Sometimes the question has to be asked even when you don't get the answer you expect.  

What the heck is a BIA?

A Business Improvement Area.  The City Council has given the Lower Lonsdale Business Association $120,000 to help start one after a required referendum failed to approve one.

A BIA is a group of businesses in a defined area who vote to be taxed by the central organization.  Of course, if 51% vote to be taxed the Council orders everyone to pay.  What did the LLBA do when denied to right to to tax the unwilling?  They changed the boundaries so that next time they could win.  At least those in the deleted areas can't be taxed there will be another vote where this can be stopped.

So they went to Council for funding to continue their crusade to tax the unwilling. Council, of course was right into the concept since they make their living overtaxing people, gave them $60,000 to fund a more professional campaign.  Tonight they came back for another $60,000.

Councillor Bookham asked about attendance at recent meetings.  I got the feeling an implication was there was not even a lot of support in their audience.  Someday Councillors will ask honest and blunt questions when they know want the answer is at the start or let the public know what is really going on.

The proper way performing their task is a form a voluntary organization which of course they did with the Lower Lonsdale Business Association.  They should not become unelected people taxing the unwilling.  Business owners that oppose this should join the LLBA to stop this stupidity, the voters should stop Councillors who want to hand out taxing authority to their proxies so they can deny the tax increase.

The day the Monorail salesman came to North Van

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEZjzsnPhnw

It felt like this last night as I sat through Rogers Brooks' presentation on branding with the new waterfront. It was reported on the Voices website that there was a strong feeling of "an Amway conference or some kind of cult event" taking place.

We never met Roger Brooks but an showman playing the role of Roger Brooks, a hippie who worked on the Bee Gees tour. He played the role of the anti-politican and anti-populist. It probably goes over well in the hinterland of the USA where he usually works. It felt like Roger was channeling the spirit of Stalin as he railed against public having a  real say. I had the "monorail" song going through my head during the long bits. Maybe Roger has forgotten we have this little thing called elections in his long time in the United States.   If the public doesn't like what is being done, they will toss out the Council and put people in place who will change the script that they're being told to clap for.

It seemed out of place as Roger spoke like there was a blank slate we would fill when we all know that staff has a plan almost done already.  Darryl and others have already decided on the script, they just need us to clap without questioning anything.

But at the core of it is good as it leans heavily on whatever is proposed going through a rigorous feasibility study.  The Council has already placed the new museum here, in a place where it will dominate the site and stated it will not be subsidized more than the current museum. So any businesses that can be convinced to locate here will have to provide a large input to the tax base that will cover the losses of the museum and what ever other money losing attractions Darryl has up his sleeve.

I bet that the old Site 8 and a 400 foot tower will raise back up at the end of this scheme with a lot of "amenity" money attached to at least move the Waterfront project forward. Millennium was forced to sell off their share of the land on Site 8 when their Olympic village scheme failed and they had to go out of business.   The City of Vancouver picked up the property and sold it to the City of North Vancouver who is free to re-sell it to a developer. I bet factions of the De Coitiis family will rear it's greedy head to lead this project whether it is Onni, Pinnacle or Amacon. 

Trouble follows this family who are locked in a Shakespearean tragedy of their own http://www2.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=fca1081a-8ba6-4568-a42c-e23962a6d3bc

The bottom line is that this must be a money producing enterprise for North Vancouver not just for developers as usual.  Not counting any temporary revenue from future huge towers that the usual suspects will try to build while we're humming "monorail" or a new version "aquarium."  Come on folks, sing it along with Darryl and Roger - aquarium ... AQUARIUM.  Sounds better than Casino, doesn't it?

Roger gave a different website address for the survey but I think it's the same one. It does seem rather shorter and unsubstantial than what Roger talked about in his sales pitch but that's probably just the free Kool Aid wearing off.

http://www.cnv.org/CentralWaterfrontSurvey

Will the bidding process be rigged?

No necessarily legally so since the Council is bound by NOT bound by any of the requirements set out by the requirements of what they posted  on www.cnv.org/BidNotices

Then click on the title and then the link "Supplier Attachments exist" to see two pdfs with the actual detailed info including the requirements.

Perhaps one just wanted to check if Council was awarding two contracts of over $5 million each to potentially unqualified groups that had helped the Onni Corporation receive permission to build an unsuitable project in the core of Central Lonsdale. Many citizens suspect that the assignment of $10 million of City property is being rigged.

The fact that the Vision North Van Councillors fought against this bidding process shows their intent of giving the affordable housing to a local advocacy group and the child care space to the NS Neighbourhood House.

Does the community receive community amenities?

Now that the provincial election is over and the socialists have been stopped at the gates, now we should worry about our home-grown socialists in the City.

It shouldn't be a mystery to anyone who is on the North Shore that the City is run by a NDPers. It's easy to see the unregistered slate of Mussatto and Keating joined by whoever they are running this time.  I like to call them Vision North Vancouver as there is not much difference between high-school buddies Mussatto and Robertson.  At least Robertson honestly declares his municipal party.

Provincial politics are the parents of municipal politics and its the best way of generally knowing what a candidate actually believes in as citizens get very little information on Council candidates.

In the City we have 4 councillors who support the NDP and 3 who support the BC Libs.  Of civic politics muddies it as development issues also split the axis of Council into a pro-development and anti-development.

In the District, there are 7 supporters of the BC Liberals.  With 86,000 residents in the District and 52,000 in the City, it is easy to understand why Mussatto and his party is so vehemently opposed to amalgamation of the City and District.

We live in a rich city but overtaxed city as the NDP councillors, frustrated by all the socialist initiatives the provincial government refuses to do, takes the opportunity to spend millions of dollars outside their jurisdiction.

They accept million of dollars from developers, call them a community amenities but rather than designate the money (over $10 million in the Onni/Safeway case) to actual community amenities that the whole populace can benefit from, it goes to the local service non-profit industry that thrives on City funds.

Had all the amenity funds been directed toward Harry Jerome, we would have it, we would have broken ground now and had most of it paid for.

We could have gone a little slower on Harry Jerome but sold the adaptive housing units to BC Housing for let's say 3 million and still ensured that the BC Housing did the job that they are supposed to do.  The same with the daycare units.  The concept of "value for money" is foreign to these NDP politicians, using our money buy votes and turnout at a public hearing is not.

A lot more on this matter to follow, including the Kimpton case study.