There are many shades of green on display at Vancouver city hall with the municipal business being discussed in recent weeks.
Green has multiple connotations, of course. It can be construed as new or unfamiliar — as in a green elected official. Green can mean something natural, such as environmentally friendly or a verdant landscape.
Green can also be interpreted as cold hard cash — as in greenbacks, the nickname for U.S. currency. Green is also the hue of a Canadian $20 bill, the preferred banknote of money launderers.
Then there are the Vancouver Greens, the local elector organization that is strongly in sync with their provincial and federal Green Party counterparts.
There are only two members of council who have sat in the chamber before this year (councillors Adriane Carr and Melissa De Genova), so it is expected it will take the new councillors some time to get their footing.
Council’s rookies do not lack for ambitious ideas, though the practicalities of implementing them are a whole other matter.
The recent declaration of a climate emergency through a motion from Coun. Christine Boyle, for example, comes while the city struggles to fulfill its ambitious list of Greenest City targets for 2020. But why not shoot for the moon, right?
Coun. Jean Swanson’s #AllOnBoard motion calling for free transit for students was also a stretch goal for the city, given that no one has yet stepped forward with ideas on how to pay for it.
The city’s influential Department of Engineering has big plans to add plenty of green up the spine of the Granville Street Bridge. Its scheme to build a landscaped bike and pedestrian strip down the centre median of the bridge has resulted in the traditional divide between citizens who think there are better ways to spend tens of millions of tax dollars, and those who embrace bike lanes.
After approving a 4.5 per cent property tax increase in December, you would think the colour of money would be everywhere at city hall. However, this has not deterred Mayor Kennedy Stewart to ask council to triple the Empty Homes Tax.
Critics of this tax rightly ask whether we should first have some evidence that it is actually driving owners to put properties on the market, either for sale or as rentals.
Then there is the question of whether protections are needed to prevent money being laundered through tax payments at city hall — something flagged by Coun. De Genova in her recent council motion. According to De Genova, some ratepayers are showing up with bag loads of cash to pay their tax bills. How large those amounts have been is not public knowledge, but staff have confirmed that, yes, the city still accepts cash payments.
Other municipalities have apparently long since ended the practice of allowing cash payments. The fact that so many Vancouver real estate dealings are reported to have involved laundered money for so long, it is quite remarkable that anyone can still walk into city hall with a sack full of banknotes.
Concerns about cost of government were raised after Mayor Stewart announced a motion to give a five-fold increase in discretionary spending for city councillors from the current $60,000 to $300,000 per year.
Stewart said he had run his motion past council before announcing it in a media conference last week. Councillors Lisa Dominato and Sarah Kirby-Yung followed up that claim by stating it was the first time they had heard about the proposed council slush fund.
Dominato said the increase sent the wrong message to taxpayers just hit with a big bill, and that the appropriate time to discuss this was during the recent budget debate.
While Stewart claimed the quarter-million-dollar funding increase was his idea alone, there are strong indications that the Greens are the drivers behind having more to spend on their political operations. They have certainly been full-throated in their support since Stewart announced it.
Since their provincial counterparts in Victoria now receive ample taxpayer-supported funding for more staff and election campaigning, it is possible that the councillors are green with envy.
The backers of this increase would be wise to be careful about raising their own budgets, as it will not take much before the taxpaying public begins to see red.
