“Vancouver city council has approved rate hikes for some essential services.
City residents will pay almost 10 per cent more for sewer and water services next year, and 5.7 per cent more for garbage disposal.
In total, the average taxpayer will pay between $80 and $85 more in 2012.
Mayor Gregor Robertson said the increases are at least partly due to decisions made years ago.
“Unfortunately, past councils did not make the investments in infrastructure in water or sewer or landfill, and that means we’re having to make up ground now,” Robertson said after Tuesday’s council meeting.”
- Vancouver Sun, 14 Dec 2011
Headline inflation: 2%
Wage inflation: pretty much flat.
- vreaa
Don’t be mad, they have to raise taxes somehow. It’s all they know.
we use it, we have to pay for it. no need to be mad.
this is the next step. revenues swelled during the boom, as did budgets. now, nobody will cut back until they’re forced to. the public sector doesn’t know how to. it’s too easy spending someone else’s cash. how about a little open competition for those water, sewer, garbage $s?
Maybe a usage based charge? I mean a house with 3 people uses less water and produces less sewage than say a SFH with basements, top floor, extra bedrooms and laneway house all rented out by the landlord living on the main floor?
Are the condos being charged proper rates??
Serious question: is there any way to implement actual metering for these things in a timely and affordable way?
I suppose you could also have differential charging based on how the property is used (e.g. presence/absence of rental units on lot), but given how many rental suites are undocumented and the apparent unwillingness to go out and identify these suites, I don’t see it happening.
Well garbage pickup I think is based on the size and number of garbage cans so that’s partial usage based and I’m onboard with that. For things like sewage, it’s definitely hard if not impossible. The best city can do is maybe based on the number of tax returns files from a lot?
The reason I mention condos is because if a condo tower uses up a lot of city resources but don’t pay proportionally as say TH or SFH then that can be big issue/imbalance.
Based on my advance tax notice, my taxes are set to rise by more than 20%. C’mon Gregor, don’t blame previous administrations, my taxes have gone up by nearly 50% since you took office and I expect it will have doubled by the time you are done putting in “trial” bike lanes, ripping out turning lanes, and subsidizing affordable housing on the most expensive land in the country. It would be best if you stuck to making juice.
If the taxes had been high enough to properly fund the services we actually need here, there never would have been a bubble-
There is no excuse for everything being run-down and seismically vulnerable, in a city filled with panhandlers, mental patients, drug addicts and homeless…this stuff has got to be fixed.
On a seperate note, a hilarious post on VCI mentioned one of the great things about Vancouver is we have a City Hall building that looks like something off a Batman cartoon…how great is that!
and after the earthquake, the streets will be lined with 10 foot high piles of broken window panes.