Funding B.C.'s crumbling infrastructure was the hottest topic at this year's week-long Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) convention in Victoria, according to the convention's president.
While the mayors' vote to push for the decriminalization of marijuana has caught popular attention, UBCM president and Quesnel Mayor Mary Sjostromsaid the future of infrastructure funding was the top concern of mayors at the convention, which wrapped up in Victoria September 28. She noted that municipalities' top infrastructure funding source, the federal government's $8.8 billion Building Canada Fund, expires at the end of 2013. "Overall, [solving the infrastructure problem is] what is truly important to communities. They're finding less money to do [what they need to] and infrastructure's deteriorating."
Sjostrom said other key topics this year were:
•energy and energy savings;
•halting the expansion of tanker traffic off B.C.'s coastline; and
•transit. •
Four B.C. mayors raise four key B.C. business issues
Michael Smith: West Vancouver
We passed policy that we lobby senior governments for a consistent source of long-term funding for infrastructure projects based on each municipality's needs. Two-thirds of the infrastructure in the country is owned by municipalities and yet we only get 8% of the tax revenue. Senior governments dole it out, almost like a kid giving people their allowance – government decides what programs it wants to fund, and the municipalities have to either sign up for that program or get nothing.
Richard Stewart: Coquitlam
[I'm concerned about] the number of resolutions that UBCM deals with and the fact that they don't deal with the most important [municipal] issues – among them, business. One of the only resolutions that had anything to do with business was put forward by New Westminster, and it was in opposition to the province's initiative on business taxation - the expert panel review on business taxation. But [at UBCM] we don't look at those things. Instead, we look at shark fin soup and the war in Iraq or whatever.
Gregor Robertson: City of Vancouver
In Metro Vancouver, our business community is stepping up its calls for significant new transit investment, which will cut commute times to major employment centres, reduce congestion on key transportation routes, and support transit-oriented development. The Broadway corridor is home to over 100,000 jobs, B.C.'s second-largest job centre after downtown Vancouver, and a stark example of a vital economic engine that is severely under-served by transit with thousands of pass-ups every day.
Darrell Mussatto: City of North Vancouver
I didn't spend a lot of time on the resolution floor. I did have a very productive meeting with Port Metro Vancouver with respect to Lower Level Road – it's a $100 million project that's now beginning and the port is working hard on that one. Richardson's has just announced an expansion to their grain terminal here in North Van, which will have some impacts on local residents, and some of the local residents are a bit concerned about that. So we're going to have to work between the residents and the business.
