TransLink is going to dig deeper into Delta homeowners' pockets.
On a weighted vote, Metro Vancouver mayors voted in favour last Friday of the transportation authority's request for gas and property tax increases.
Sixteen of the 22 mayors, including those in Surrey, Vancouver and Coquitlam, supported the initiative to pay for transit improvements. Six, including Delta Mayor Lois Jackson, were opposed.
The mayors had initially rejected TransLink's request for supplemental funding, especially when it came to hiking property taxes, however since then many of the big city mayors have changed their tune.
The Evergreen Line, linking Burnaby, Port Moody and Coquitlam, has been much talked about but stalled because TransLink doesn't have its $400-million share of the funding required for the $1.4-billion project.
In addition to the Evergreen Line, the Metro mayors this summer supported TransLink's plan,
called Moving Forward, which includes other regional improvements. To pay for it all, the mayors this week voted in favour a two-cents-a-litre hike in the gas tax, which would go into effect next spring.
Unless other funding sources are found, a property tax increase will take effect by 2013, working out to an average of $23 per home in the region.
Jackson, who chairs the Metro Vancouver board of directors, told the Optimist afterward that TransLink wants to continue to spend on big ticket items but has no clear and sustainable plan to manage its budget or pay down its growing debt.
The interest on the debt alone will rise from $160 million to $235 million by 2021, she noted.
"This is just not acceptable. There's a lot of suggestions that were offered," she said.
"I've talked extensively about a container tax, having a basket of options with a little from every place where everyone pays a share of the load. I just don't see that on the table at all."
A Metro staff report last fall warned, "Continued increases in the property tax is neither sustainable in the long run, given the wide range of local and regional infrastructure and services that are beholden to the property tax, nor do they have a nexus with shaping and managing transportation demand."
Also at the time, Delta budgeting manager Vivian Koo told the Optimist that in two years, if the average value of a typical Delta home reaches the $500,000 mark, the TransLink tax hit would be around $50. She noted the increase would depend on the value of homes at the time the tax hike is introduced.
Earlier this year, Delta council talked about a scenario where communities south of the Fraser River could split from TransLink.
The Delta Chamber of Commerce, a member of the Lower Mainland Chambers Transportation Panel, supported TransLink's supplemental funding plan.
However, Delta Chamber of Commerce chair Ian Tait said, "While we join the panel of chambers in supporting this TransLink funding proposal, for the sake of economic development of the region, we also advocate for a much more effective long term solution for transit, especially south of the Fraser River, and further still, in Delta in particular."
