BC mayors can't agree on TransLink funding

BC mayors agree on one thing: TransLink’s two week period for input in July wasn't enough, and TransLink must give the public more of a chance to respond to a new funding plan that includes an extra two cents per litre in gas taxes.  However, mayors remain divided on TransLink's proposal for paying for new transit projects.

Vancouver mayor Gregor "Extreme Green" Robertson and Surrey's Diane Watts support the plan, while the mayors of Burnaby, Delta, and Richmond are among its strongest opponents.  If this proposal fails, The Globe and Mail notes, "it will be the latest in a long string of failed efforts over the past two years to find a solution to TransLink’s $400-million share for the long-awaited Evergreen line to serve the region’s northeast cities – and ultimately, to find a formula for paying for future transit projects."

Besides the new gas tax, which would see Lower Mainlanders paying 17 cents per litre in local taxes alone on gas, TransLink is also pushing for extra property taxes.  The plan would only cover new projects, and would require the provincial government to pony up additional funding as well, potentially leaving mayors on the hook if the government doesn't come through.

Burnaby mayor Derek Corrigan, who leads a group of mayors opposed to the plan, said he will never support the TransLink supplement: TransLink is continually forcing local taxpayers to pay extra taxes because its board and bureaucrats make all the decisions about what will be included in the base budget and then go to local politicians for extra money.  According to Corrigan, mayors have no say in the choices the TransLink board makes, and TransLink has many times spent money in its base budget on things the mayors would never agree to fund through taxes if they had a say.

TransLink is known for forcing stupid and widely hated policies on its users, for mismanaging money, and for then coming up with loony ideas for raising more of it, leading Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon to call it a "disaster circus."

Hate group is "alarmed"

Parents’ Voice member Homara Ahmad is "alarmed," according to the hate group's latest press release.  The group was created to oppose the Burnaby School Board's anti-homophobia policy.

According to the release, Parents' Voice members decided to file a freedom of information (FOI) request after reading a story in The Province about a student being bullied because he was skinny:

"Parents’ Voice members wanted to know the extent of the 'bullying' problem: who the perpetrators are--staff or students--and their targets."

It is unclear why Parents' Voice twice decided to use scare quotes around the word "bullying."

Allegedly, group member and spokesperson (they all seem to be spokespeople) Homara Ahmad made an FOI request for "copies of all reports, incidents recorded, and/or complaints made involving students, staff or any other person related to the operation of the Burnaby School District, that has been party to any form of bullying, assault, harassment, verbal abuse or any form of mean-spirited conduct, that has occurred on or near any property owned, managed or operated by School District 41," and demanded an exemption from fees, which was refused, leading the group to lose its collective mind.

Gordon World, another "spokesman," said:

"it seems highly unlikely that the incidents of reported bullying will justify the special attention directed to the political agenda of the sex activists involved in creating Policy 5.45. I believe this last point is the real issue. If the claims of sex activists were true, and a disproportionate number of children were being attacked based on sexual orientation, wouldn't the Burnaby School Board be more than willing to release this information to back up their claim?"

World is known for his outrageous homophobic lies, such as claiming that the murder of Aaron Webster was not an anti-gay hate crime and that gay men are responsible for most HIV infections and have a significantly shorter lifespan.

In another staggering display of homophobia, the press release goes on to add:

"Burnaby trustees, and others in positions of trust, should know better by now than to rely upon data and research generated by homosexual and other sex activists. Our children deserve better than to have policies developed by hyperbolic-spin propaganda, masquerading as research, generated by sex activists who want to promulgate their version of diversity politics and practices among our children, via the public education system. Parents’ Voice is against all forms of child abuse, including bullying, the political sexualization of children and the intellectual abuse of children by indoctrinating them with propaganda that falsely portrays sexual and emotional practices that can and do result in provable harm, as being 'acceptable.'"

Not coincidentally, this hate-filled press release coincides with the Outgames and Vancouver Pride.

An area of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside has an unusually high number of pedestrian fatalities. So, in it's latest stupid decision,Vancouver city council has voted to reduce the speed limit along six Downton Eastside blocks of East Hastings Street from 50km/h to 30 km/h.  The new slow zone (between the two red marks on the map, left) is a major artery into and out of the downtown core, heavily travelled by buses, cars, taxis and delivery vehicles.

The new slow zone's halfway point is Hastings and Main which, not coincidentally, is also the location of the city's largest open drug market, where narcotics are bought, sold, and consumed openly approximately one block from a large police station and a courthouse.  As anyone who has ever driven along Hastings Street between Cambie Street and Glen Drive will tell you, the issue along the stretch is not speeding drivers, and surveys have confirmed this.  Rather, the problem is the high proportion of junkies, alcoholics and mentally ill people who live and congregate in the area, and who regularly run out into the street without warning or--whether because they're too high or too sick to care about their own safety or anyone else's--simply wander into the road without looking.

Instead of doing something useful, sensible, and effective, such as installing barriers that prevent people from crossing the street except at controlled crosswalks like they do on dangerous streets in other major cities, in its latest idiotic decision, city councilors have decided to punish drivers who are already obeying the law.  Even worse, they have ignored studies going back as far as 1998 which show that changing speed limits on low and moderate speed roads has no significant effect on traffic speed or the number of crashes. 

Of course, new road rules require education and enforcement, and both cost money, but there has been no word on where the money will come from.