2020: What a Fucking Year

I haven’t written here in awhile. Like, a very long while. It’s not that I haven’t had much to say, it’s that I have often not known how to say it these days, or that I’ve said it on Twitter. This post was originally going to be a Twitter thread, but it got super long so here it is on a blog. I wanted to take some time at the end of this ridiculous year to reflect on the last twelve months. This is a ride through my personal life for the last year.

I started the year on a good note, with a fun but perhaps embarrassingly drunk New Year’s Eve. I lost my favourite toque on the Mobi ride there, something I had since completely forgotten about until I reflected back on the evening just now. I reconnected with someone I had previously gone out with and was hopeful that relationship could have a future.

I was still in the midst of addressing a long unaddressed battle with anxiety and switched medications the first week of the year, which combined with more of my endless business travel to fuck up my sleep patterns for weeks. I found comfort in a longtime friend who had been through similar things, and with whom I occasionally flirted. More hopefulness for romantic life improvements.

Things levelled off, I finally had a breakthrough with a different close friend with whom I had an informal but growing relationship. The next week I visited Whistler for the first time in a few years, and had bad sex there with a guy from Grindr. Days later I came down with the worst flu of my life, which in retrospect may very well have been a case of CoViD that I picked up on the flight home from Toronto. The lingering cough lasted two full months.

February flew by, and I don’t remember a thing of significance. A look at my calendar shows me I had one single day where I didn’t have appointments or meetings or social events or concert or film tickets or business travel. The relationships and friendships that showed potential in January continued forward hopefully, though slowed by all my time out of province. The second half of the month came and tax season came early and I was swamped by the time I left for what was to be my last visit to Ontario for the year. I neglected to see a dentist about a worsening problem on one of my back teeth, procrastinating it to later.

I fell further behind into the beginning of March, but got a good brief visit with family and friends in Southern Ontario before a work trip to Ottawa. I came home March 8th exhausted and drowning in weeks’ worth of work, about to head into the worst of tax season, but I still had a full social and volunteer calendar! That week I managed a get together with a friend from out of town, two board meetings, and a concert at the Biltmore. I had concert tickets that Friday which were hit with what became the first of many many cancellations of the year. The cough from the unidentified illness I had in January finally went away that week.

The world shut down around me but all I knew, all I really knew, was that I was drowning in work. Everyone around me was being furloughed or shut in or just otherwise lost for how to spend their time and my work volume just grew and grew. In normal times I would’ve been swamped already, but now I had to research on the fly a series of brand new government programs, revised deadlines, and endless speculation, let alone figure out the new protocols for simply going out of my home every so often. Each day the prime minister stood in front of his home and changed my entire work environment, in an endless slow drip of announcements and programs and changes to programs. American states changed their filing deadlines with absolutely no coordination or clear communication. I filled what little spare time I had with neighbourhood walks, weed, live streaming concerts, and Disney+.

March blurred into April. New York, the last holdout, eventually announced at the last minute, via tweet, its own revised deadline. April 15 and 30, usually important deadlines but also significant cliffs for my work volume, fizzled into nothingness as May, June, and July became the new April. I tried out a food box service, having grown frustrated with the new supermarket experience. I finally got my head above water, and came gasping for air into a completely new world. Nothing made sense anymore, everyone was impatient, everything was cancelled.

May rolled around and we started being allowed to do things again, and I did the things, but none of it was the same. I began to venture further from home, and get out to visit the suburbs again. I am thankful for my e-bike. Work life levelled off to normal, as did my volunteering. Now everyone wanted to meet, meet, meet, online of course, when we would have dealt with things by email before. Somehow the move from meatspace meetings to digital meetings had led people to love meetings so much they want to have them all the time. I finally get my potholed tooth fixed and my hair cut. At least my physical self began to get back to normal. I all but lost touch with most of the promising relationships from earlier in the year.

Then it’s June somehow and I’m slowly catching up on work and life and attempting to spend time with the friends I haven’t seen in months. I questioned whether I would have seen them any more frequently if CoViD hadn’t happened. I still don’t know the answer to that question. Feeling cooped up, I planned a road trip to Kamloops and Whistler for late June. Phase 3 was scheduled for “June” so I figured I’d be fine. In the end, I got home from that trip two days before Phase 3 actually started. This is the first time I’ve posted publicly about having taken this trip at all. I have no regrets. This is also around the time I started experiencing tinnitus, and it’s been non-stop ever since.

July arrived and departed quickly. Summer is never long enough in BC, and we somehow hit the point where time is both flying and dragging and the year was barely half over. I got to see more friends again, and long-postponed small gatherings were happening again. I took another road trip, this time to Kelowna and Revelstoke, just days after a major outbreak in the former. After months of living the new normal, it was odd to be in places so clearly disinterested in following any kind of CoViD guidelines, but it was also somewhat refreshing. I avoided the crowds regardless, and enjoyed some time in nature. My anxiety, well under the control of medication at this point, flared up again in the presence of FOMO. I never schedule enough days on any vacation I take, but at least I left Revelstoke happy to have seen what I could, and better aware of my triggers. I somehow finished off the neverending pile of books that had been on my side table for nearly a decade. I bought more books.

I was barely home three weeks, but I managed to take an amazing whale watching tour from Vancouver, and then it was August. I tried to use the time to both get ahead on work and force myself to relax, with mixed results. I finally sought treatment for my tinnitus, ending up at a for-profit audiology company that immediately launched into aggressive hearing aid sales mode, and I accepted a demo pair. I took a trip to Thetis Island, which was an adventure to get to by bike but a very chill destination where I intentionally planned to do absolutely nothing. I mostly succeeded at this, though I was stressed about the new hearing aids the entire time.

I got back home, and the usual stresses of post-vacation work life were layered onto “it’s September and everyone else is back to work so it’s busy” and various other non-pandemic-related stressors that were all made just so slightly worse by the pandemic. I gave up on the hearing aids which only minimally helped the tinnitus, and found a not-for-profit audiologist who still recommended hearing aids but was much kinder and more considerate about it. The hearing aids have helped, but it still distresses me that I will never be able to experience silence again.

The Fringe Festival was miraculously revived and I went to every one of the first round of shows. The forest fire smoke settled in over the city and breathing outdoors was incredibly difficult, and there was a dual outbreak of moths for some reason. Dystopia somehow feels perfectly normal now and I’ve forgotten what the Before Times were like. Were they even real? Some friends move away.

Somehow October flies by. Work grows and shrinks, and grows and shrinks. I finally retired from two of the four boards I sat on, a plan I’d been working on for over a year. I felt less stressed just knowing I have put a bow on things, even if it took some time to transition. I grew increasingly exhausted with city life and with paying a mortgage and with my social life evaporating, and seriously contemplate moving away. I planned a trip to Pender Island for December to see if it would be somewhere I could live. We had an election for some reason, with an acceptable result. America was still having the election it was having a year ago, and I couldn’t help but be terrified at what felt like a growing threat of civil war very close to our shared border. I spent an evening writing most of this post and made a mental note to post it at the end of the year. More friends leave town.

And all of a sudden it’s November. A rollercoaster ride of US election results ends about as well as it could have, though really anything was better than Trump. With the change in season I find my life increasingly threatened on our city streets by reckless drivers again. CoViD cases in the Lower Mainland spiked and we went back to a hybrid of fewer social contacts and maximum commercial contacts, which was a strange response to people breaking the existing rules. What few social contacts I had restored earlier in the year evaporated again, and this time (with a few exceptions) people even disappeared from online chat. The texts and Facebook messages and so on just kind of stopped, and I soon realised how often I am the first to start a conversation. Maybe I’m expected to take the lead, maybe I’ve been a nuisance all along, but the silence becomes deafening, and honestly a bit depressing. I know not to take it personally and know that everyone is not living in normal circumstances, but the frustration was real. The month steamed forward despite nothing in particular actually happening, and all my plans to use November to get caught up on everything and then take it easy somehow fall to pieces while the month stays busy anyway. Yet more friends move away.

December arrived unexpectedly quickly. With continued uncertainty around whether or not travel restrictions will be lifted, I cancelled my trip to Pender Island before I lost my entire booking cost. My VRBO hosts very graciously refunded the full amount instead of the 50% I was entitled to, thanking me kindly for following the PHO orders. I briefly reconnect by text with one of the dating interests from earlier in the year; with restrictions firmly in place, this goes nowhere. The restrictions are extended through January and I find myself not having made the cut for anyone’s core bubble, destined to spend six weeks with no social contacts whatsoever but with the freedom to spend as much time as I like at as many retail establishments as possible. This feels patently unfair, but I have little say in the matter.

I decide to use the time I would have spent on my cancelled trip painting my apartment instead, a project I had been delaying for the last two years. I expected this to be a small project to keep me occupied in between sleeping in and reading. It turned into a massive time suck and I had one of the least relaxing vacations of my life. Around this time I also finally cave under the pressure of solitude and really start hurting. I lose patience with the people in my life who mean well but have no idea how privileged they are to have people in their lives. I feel alone and deeply, deeply, lonely. I become more aware of the people around me, neglecting their endlessly barking dog, smoking outside my window, throwing parties despite the endless rules forbidding this. My desire to flee has never been higher, and simultaneously has never been less possible to fulfill. I feel trapped in a home I have little control over, in a City that holds nothing for me, in a province with priorities that make little sense to me. Vaccines begin to arrive, but there is the very real possibility this will continue another six months. I honestly don’t know if I can take it. I find myself having difficulty sleeping, despite being very tired.

And now it’s Christmas. Thankfully, work and responsibilities and all the usual adulting tapers off, and I finally enjoy a couple days to do virtually nothing. I still feel compelled to find things to fill the time with, but I’ve mostly been succeeding at taking it easy. This has been, on balance, a shitty year and I am looking forward to 2021 changing course – even if it’ll take a while. I’m impatient, frustrated, and still a bit exhausted from this neverending year. I hope that the new year brings less of that, and more joy. I don’t know yet what 2021 has in store for me, what I will be doing, or even where I will be living. For once, I am making no plans, letting the ocean of life carry me where it may. I can only hope the tides are kind.

Message to Vancouver City Council on the 2021 budget

I wrote this correspondence to Vancouver City Council about the proposed budget today, and I’m sharing it here to encourage others to do the same. Council is considering a budget that grows property taxes a very small amount (over a base that is already tiny), while funding rather than defunding the police, and slashing almost every department’s funding. Details of the budget are available on the City’s website here.

Mayor and Council,

I am writing with respect to the proposed city budget for 2021. I have several concerns.

First, the proposed 5% residential property tax increase is too low. I have written council the last several years to advocate for significant increases to residential property taxes. We pay some of the lowest property taxes in the country – even after accounting for our inflated real estate market. Homeowners – myself included – can afford to pay significantly more in taxes to fund the desperately needed services in Vancouver.

The failure to increase taxes appropriately is leading to a cut in the City’s overall funding by 1.1%, compared to an already slashed budget for 2020. This appears to be coming mostly from Planning, Engineering, and Corporate Services. These departments are already badly underfunded and badly understaffed. Further cuts will be worse for the City as a whole, leading to worse outcomes for residents and businesses – processing times for anything that goes through the City are already unacceptably long, and staff are regularly forced to tell residents improvements of any kind can’t be made because they simply don’t have the funding. I strongly oppose cutting these budgets and encourage the City to tax us appropriately to fund them.

Next, the City proposes to increase the police budget by $2.5 million. This is amidst calls to defund police departments across the continent, and at a time when our police department continues to contribute to – rather than lessen – violence on our streets, while using our tax dollars to fund victim-blaming “safety” campaigns that fail to recognise vulnerable road users as such. I encourage council to rethink this additional spending, and indeed to slash the police budget significantly, regardless of whether or not the police force itself doesn’t wish for that. Council’s tacit acceptance of the department’s “no” when it was asked to cut 1% from its budget earlier this year is a shameful embarrassment for this City.

The proposed budget does not reflect the principles of building back better, or even of a just response to the climate emergency. Vancouver can and should do better – we should be investing in the public sector, in safer streets, in public housing, and more, rather than cutting staff and services in most of the City’s functional departments. I strong urge council to do better than this.

Thank you,

Neal Jennings

Open email to the NDP government on transit workers

Premier Horgan, Minister Robinson, and MLA Chandra Herbert,

I am writing today to express my disappointment in this government’s handling of TransLink and, in particular, its labour relations. We are currently facing potential strikes from bus and Seabus drivers and maintenance workers, as well as SkyTrain workers. I expected a New Democrat government to be worker-friendly, not to be the first government in two decades to lead to a series of strikes over what I believe are fundamental issues for workers in the Lower Mainland.

While I am well aware that TransLink maintains a form of artificial independence from the government of BC, it would not have any reason to fight workers on the fundamental issues of pay and working conditions if it were properly funded through provincial taxes. The responsibility for this problem lies directly on all of your shoulders, and you should all be ashamed of failing BC workers like this.

Our transit workers help millions of us get around every day, and perform vital functions in our society. These are green jobs. What kind of message is being sent to BC residents if our own government is unwilling to support these workers? The government should be leading by example by providing transit workers with good pay, good working conditions, and reasonable scheduling. I can only hope that other employers would follow.

These workers are making very reasonable demands and it is entirely your responsibility to ensure that their demands are met – you cannot get out of this mess by continuing to pretend that TransLink is independent of the provincial government. In particular, the demands regarding scheduling, if met, will help to provide more consistent and reliable public transportation throughout the Lower Mainland. This is an absolute necessity in the face of the climate crisis.

The NDP is supposed to be the party of workers. Your complete failure to properly fund essential public services in order for these services to pay their employees well and to provide fundamental workers’ rights is an embarrassment, and I’m ashamed to admit I voted for your party with an expectation that you would do better. It is time to properly fund TransLink and to insist that money spent by TransLink go towards providing its workers with fair pay and good working conditions.

Sincerely,
Neal Jennings

Thoughts on tonight’s election results.

I never think to post here anymore, and oddly I often end up posting lengthy posts on Facebook that should probably go here in the first place. This post is precisely one of those.

I tweeted a lot and randomly throughout the evening, so I’ll summarise thoughts here:

Overall this election went about as well as I could have realistically expected. Liberal, not Conservative, with a plurality but not a majority. Greens gained, albeit not by much. The NDP were not totally obliterated, and Singh seems to have the needed focus to force the Liberals into doing the right things. And the results were basically over before 10pm, but weren’t over before we finished voting.

As usual, the big loser of the evening is Canadians, as FPTP continues to fail us. The Liberals, Conservatives, and Bloc all benefited from it, and the Greens, New Democrats, and even the PPC lost out. CPC got more votes than LPC and significantly fewer seats. This is not right.

I’m also concerned about the continued urban-rural divide, which seems to worsen every election.

In my riding of Vancouver Centre, I take comfort that Fry’s share of the vote is likely down to around 42% from 56%, with the NDP up from 20% to 24% and the Greens doubling their vote to 12%.

The continued entitlement of Trudeau in pulling that gross power move of going on air with his speech while Scheer was just starting his just really gets under my skin. I like Trudeau significantly less today than I did even a couple months ago. Althia Raj commented that many Liberal candidates won this time not because of Trudeau (like last election) but in spite of him. I agree. There are many good people in his caucus and I hope he can learn to yield to them more often.

I’m sad for the losses of Brosseau, Goodale, Raitt, and Robinson, and for the retirement of David Christopherson in Hamilton. I’m happy for the win of Wilson-Raybould.

What’s remarkable to me is that despite the fact that almost all the parties had disappointing results this election, my social media feeds are full of people who are quite pleased with the results. Many of us are quite happy the big parties didn’t succeed. I know I am basing this on small social media bubble, but I think we need to better embrace political diversity in our parliament and this very colourful election map is to me a good start (if only we had electoral reform to make it match closer).

And finally, despite some hilariously bad graphic design choices, the CBC had reliable and excellent coverage tonight and the many many members of their team covering this election deserve so much credit. I hope Rosie Barton gets a much-deserved vacation soon.

On the anniversary of Stonewall

Today is the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. Today, I am thankful.

I am thankful for those who lived through the riots, and those who have come after to make this world better for me and people like me and people not-so-like me.

I am thankful that I grew up in a world where, even when I didn’t feel safe where I was, I knew I could find somewhere where I would feel safe. I am thankful that from the early yawns of the internet there were corners where I could be myself. I am thankful that today there are not just corners, but entire rooms and cities and countries and worlds – online and offline – where I can be who I am and feel safe.

I am thankful that I’ve been a witness to so many firsts in pop culture – the first out gay character on network television, the first same-sex kisses, the first teen characters coming out, the birth and growth of mainstream queer cinema, and an endless line of out and proud musicians. I spent this evening attending the Queer Songbook Orchestra, an event that could not have taken place without all those that came before us, fighting obscenity laws and fighting for our right to take up space in public.

I am thankful that here, in 2019, we have achieved acceptance in so many parts of society. That I’ve gotten to work in mainstream non-queer organisations that simply take for granted that queer people are part of our society and should be included – in health care, in technology, in housing, in business, and in history.

And I’m thankful for the immense amounts of privilege that I have access to, that those before me did not. That I could come out as a teenager and, uncomfortable home life and a few harsh words from peers notwithstanding, everything turned out okay. That I could thrive and grow as an individual while embracing my sexuality. That I had opportunities to participate in and be a leader of groups where sexuality and gender were a focus. That I could be an out and proud queer without ever worrying about losing my job, or my home.

I’m thankful that, when I went on my first date, I never worried that people were looking at us. That when we made out in the back seat of his car, I was more worried about getting hassled for trespassing than for homosexuality. That I’ve had many emotional and sexual relationships with other men, and never once feared being arrested for them. That I had access to the information I needed to make healthy choices in those relationships (whether they lasted a day or a year). That I could party all night long, rubbing shoulders with people of all genders wearing whatever they like, without fear of the party being shut down by the police. That I could hold hands with a lover or kiss in public and no one even noticed. That when one idiot with hate in their heart tries to be a problem, I know there are thousands of people willing to line up to defend me.

I’m also thankful for community. I’m thankful to be young enough to have lived in queer communities much of my adult life, whether they centred around bars or coffee shops or nightlife or community centres or activism (or, usually, all of the above). I’m thankful to have made so many wonderful, dear, friends from this community – brought together by little more than a shared otherness. And I’m thankful that, when our community has been threatened, we have worked together to fight back and win. I’m thankful to have been a part of demanding and achieving changes to marriage legislation, human rights codes, and more. I’m also so very, very, thankful for the privilege of attending pride events in 2019 and seeing large numbers of queer and trans youth marching proudly with strength and resilience – something my generation didn’t have when we were younger.

And while I’m thankful for all this privilege, I’m also mindful. I’m mindful that our trans siblings haven’t achieved all the successes that cisgendered queers have. I’m mindful that black, indigenous, and people of colour who are queer or trans don’t have the same level of privilege us white folk have. I’m mindful that all these things I’m thankful for are constantly under threat and/or are at risk of being lost. I’m mindful that even for cisgendered white queers, where you live can have a big impact on whether your experience reflects mine.

But this mindfulness does not change the fact that today I am thankful for all the work that has been done by those who came before me (and those who are still here). Stonewall was a moment – it wasn’t the first moment of our movement, though it was an important one – and we have had so many moments since. We must not stop having these moments – these battles, these wins, these life-changing instances. We must thank our predecessors, but never forget that we must keep fighting. Fifty years from now, I want someone to be thankful to our generation for the work that we did on their behalf. 

Climate action shouldn’t happen by accident

Over the last week or so, we’ve seen both major closures of petroleum-powered automobile manufacturing facilities (in part to facilitate a transition to electric cars) and major cutbacks in tarsands extraction.

Let’s be clear about a few things:

1. These didn’t occur due to government action; rather, the economic conditions are making it so that building gas-powered cars and exporting tarsands products to the US are no longer viable.
2. These are both wins for the environment, and are part of a process that environmentalists have been demanding for years.
3. This is not how any environmentalist wanted it to happen. These are coming with huge impacts on thousands of individual workers, which is a very negative result.

Climate action has to come one way or another. I, and many other environmentalists and progressives, would prefer it to be led by government, and not come as a side effect of economic circumstances. We’ve been calling for a just transition, not overnight collapses of industries.

If governments had listened to us and acted in a meaningful way, they would have been ready to go with job retraining programs to help auto and oil workers get back to work in a blossoming clean energy sector, or in building vehicles for public transportation, or some other set of green jobs that would have been there waiting for them if we’d acted soon enough.

Instead, we are at thousands of job losses and years behind on climate action, and our governments have wasted countless dollars backing up the fossil fuel and fossil fuel-dependant industries for the sake of these “jobs” that need to be phased out, not in.

When we demand climate action, it’s not just out of wanting to protect the environment, though certainly that’s a necessity. It’s about realising the very real human impact of inaction, at so many levels. We can invest in clean energy and green jobs, and build long-term infrastructure and industries that are doing good in the world. Public policy should never be about saving existing jobs for their own sake, but should be about ensuring people can afford to live in a world without unsustainable jobs.

 

Follow-up on the Vancity crisis

 

After I wrote this email to the Vancity board on Thursday, we endured two more days of a system outage. As a brief summary of what ensued:

Late in the afternoon on Friday (40 or so hours after the outage started), the CEO released a hastily-recorded video repeating the talking points that the social media team had been using, and still refusing to give any further information on what was going on. That video has since been deleted from their YouTube account.

Friday evening I got the following email in response to my earlier email, addressed to me from a staff member – still no word from the board itself at this point. Note the word “inconvenience,” which will continue to be used throughout this process. This appears to be the beginning of management and the board gaslighting us into believing that this is a mere triviality, rather than a failure of the entire banking system at our credit union.

Dear Neal,

On behalf of the Board of Directors, thank you for taking the time to write. We understand your frustration and apologize for the inconvenience and stress that our online banking system outage and its impacts are causing you. Please know that we are doing our utmost to resolve what has been a difficult few days for all Vancity members and employees.

Your points are well taken. As an organization, we want nothing more than to explain what has caused the technical problems we have experienced these past few days, to resolve those problems, and to communicate to our members precisely what steps we are taking to address their concerns.

Unfortunately, we just aren’t there yet.

You can be assured that all of us–everyone across the organization–are working on a solution. Our first priority is to have the system returned to its proper functioning capacity. As we do that, we are also working closely with our members to make sure their needs are being met.

Part of the effort means standing up and taking accountability. Our president and CEO, Tamara Vrooman, and the rest of our senior executive team have this top of mind. They have been working with our technical team and partners in an effort to repair the system and return it to its normal operating condition.

Tamara has also been responding to media inquiries, getting important messages and updates to the membership and the public at large. She wants everyone to know that we have ruled out a privacy or security breach and that we understand what this outage means for our members. She has also participated in a video message, which you can find here: https://www.vancity.com/AboutVancity/ServiceDisruption/

All of our branches will be open each day this weekend, including Thanksgiving Monday, from 9:30AM to 3:00PM. Our Member Services Centre will be open to serve you from 8:00AM to 8:00PM each day.

Again, we thank you for your letter, and we hope that we can continue this dialogue, and to serve you in the manner you deserve.

Regards,

Lara

Lara Hamburg
Board Liaison
Office of the CEO
183 Terminal Ave
Vancouver, BC V6A 4G2

I responded with the following:

Lara, and Board, with a copy now to the Financial Institutions Commission,

This communication (this email and the video from the CEO) all came too late – and is thoroughly incomplete. “We don’t know what’s going on” 40 hours into an outage is not a good enough answer. And suggesting that the fact that the CEO has been talking to media is evidence of proper communication ignores the fact that members trying to get information – from our website, from our social media platforms, and so on – have been told less than the media has. The public relations campaign thrown together in a rush this afternoon is not a substitute for effective communication with members.

I sincerely hope that, as the board liaison, you are not filtering messages to the board. Board members need to know that Vancity members are not happy with them or the management they are supervising, and they need to hear our specific concerns. The technical outage has so far been an unmitigated disaster, but the response from the board (which is nonexistent – I do not consider a form email from staff to be even close to a communication from the board) and from management is nothing less than offensive. I sincerely hope that there are severe repercussions for the staff and board members responsible for this fiasco.

I, personally, have gone from “I am upset at the outage and lack of communication” to “I have lost all trust in this institution and fear for whether I will ever be able to access my money again.” The fact that almost two full days later we have not been provided with even an estimate of when we will be able to access our funds again is shocking, and if we ever do get access again, I will be very quickly moving most of my own funds to a safer financial institution. I look forward to the next AGM where we can vote to replace the board of directors, too.

Members deserve better than this.

Sincerely,

Neal

I have yet to hear back on this email specifically.

Saturday morning I got frustrated and posed the following question to Vancity on the poorly-managed Facebook thread they had created:

The fact that they could not answer yes was, to say the least, terrifying. I posed a similar question on Twitter and was met with silence (though they did reply to other tweets). The eventual response (that’s cut off in the screen cap below) was notifying me that the system had been restored and came much later that day.

They also responded to this thread with more vague platitudes.

Around this time, I also followed up on my email back to Lara, but this time I copied the board chair directly – her email address is publicly listed on her website.

This follow-up is to the board, and the board only. We are now in day three, and staff are still not only unable to answer the question of when the system will be online, but they won’t even answer the question of IF the system will ever be back online (despite my repeated requests). This outage, and the uncertainty around it, puts our entire credit union at risk, and indeed the economy of our entire province if Vancity’s billions of dollars of assets have indeed vanished.

The board has remained completely silent on this matter for the last three days. It took until late yesterday for the CEO to say anything, and even then she said nothing of substance – this morning, it was more vague platitudes and we still do not know even what has gone wrong, let alone what is being done to fix it or whether it can be fixed at all. As a member, my only recourse is through the board, and I personally hold the board responsible. If the board is unwilling to at least communicate with members, let alone act, each member of the board should rethink their commitment to this credit union.

If there is not a satisfactory action from the board today, I will personally be petitioning my fellow members for a special general meeting to bring forward a motion to remove the board of directors and replace it with one that is actually willing to participate in the governance of this credit union. This goes well beyond the inconvenience of online banking – trust in the very foundation of our credit union has been eroded, and trust is the only thing that financial institutions truly deal in.

Sincerely,

Neal Jennings

So, long story short, we all spent three days wondering not just when, but if, we would ever be able to access our funds again, or whether this was simply the end of our credit union.

The CEO posted another message on Saturday which looked slightly more polished and was slightly more apologetic, but still provided absolutely no information about what was going on. By Saturday morning, the story was all over every single news outlet, which certainly doesn’t inspire confidence in me in the future of the credit union.

Around 4pm Saturday afternoon, the system was restored. With no warning, no “hey we found the problem and it’ll be back shortly,” just a new message:

This was soon followed by another video from the CEO, which is still available on Vancity’s channel:

Note the continuation of the “inconvenience” language.

Later that evening I got this bit of copypasta from the board chair:

The thing I found most remarkable about this email, besides the fact that it was clearly and poorly forwarded, was that there was neither an apology nor any acknowledgement of the complete failure of communications. Indeed, she commended the communications in this email, along with the CEO addressing media, which I find shocking. I have no disagreement that staff did an amazing job with the very few resources they were provided with – they did, and I’m certain that all the front-line staff have done heroic work to hold things together as much as possible despite complete lack of any support from management or the board.

I responded with an admittedly too off-the-cuff response:

I’m sorry, but apparently we experienced very different communications. In particular, your copypasta says: “In those updates, Tamara was candid, sharing what she and her team knew as the situation was unfolding.” That is not the case. The updates, which came at least a day too late, contained little of substance. Communications staff (who I do not blame for this problem) were unable to tell us what was wrong or even whether the system could ever be restored – I asked this question point blank several times and was met with meaningless jargon and/or silence. The statements from the CEO (who must share at least some of the blame for this problem) said little other than “we know this sucks but we don’t know what’s wrong and we’re working on it, don’t worry your information hasn’t been compromised.” These communications were insufficient at the very least.

The fact that you seem to think the communications were a-okay deeply offends me as a member. The fact that we still have not even been given a hint of why the system was offline for three days (even though you must know if you were able to fix it) is even more offensive. The board must be held responsible for this, and defending the actions of management and of the board rather than issuing a sincere apology says to me that you are not yet willing to accept responsibility. Let me be perfectly clear, this is not about the outage – this is about the lack of trust I and many other members now have that Vancity will be able to protect our money and make it available to us. The board has let us down.

Sunday mostly consisted of things settling down, and the poor social media team following up on every single comment and tweet to tell everyone that everything is working again and don’t worry our money is safe, and so on. I also got a call from my branch manager, who said “I was told you wanted to speak to a manager; I assume this is about the outage we’ve had”. I never made such a request, so I’m not sure who sent her to me or why, specifically. We had a good conversation, where I reiterated that this is not her fault and there’s nothing she can do about this, and where I once again made my points about this being a governance crisis and corporate head office problem, not a customer-service one. She repeated the same talking points I’ve seen in all the other communications, and asked if I incurred any specific costs (I hadn’t, thankfully, other than a few days of lost interest on deposits I couldn’t make, but I’m not petty enough to pursue that). I notified her that I’m still considering my options – I was, and still am, torn between trying to save Vancity by pushing for a complete replacement of the board (this can be done in accordance with provincial credit union laws) and simply leaving Vancity altogether.

And then, today, this:

The post is accompanied by a scripted YouTube video from the board chair:

My response was as follows (I reply-alled to my earlier off-the-cuff response from Saturday), and sums up my position at this stage:

Anita,

I want to follow up to this message. I received a phone call from my branch manager yesterday – I’m not sure if it was at your direction or someone else’s, but whoever sent her my way seems to have the misguided impression that this is a problem that can be handled through talking points and branch staff. I lay absolutely none of the blame at the hands of the staff or the branch managers – this problem goes all the way to the top. Forcing them to deal with the problem created by the corporate office is unfair to the staff that have already put in countless hours of overtime to clean up management’s mess.

I have read and watched the update you posted on our website tonight, and I think you’re failing to understand the seriousness of this problem. You, and all staff who are communicating with the public, continually refer to this outage as an “inconvenience.” This was not simply an inconvenience. There were three major things that happened here that completely undermine the trust I and many others have in the ability of Vancity to protect our assets:

• The system went down in the first place, as has happened many times over the last several years. This is an indication to me of major flaws in our IT systems development and planning, and I have yet to hear a clearly articulated plan from the board for how we plan to address this, despite the fact that it has been ongoing for years. This makes me believe that we are relying on a faulty system that may never work properly.
• There was no Plan B. Or, if there was a Plan B, it involved taking the entire system offline for three days with no warning. This is again a failure in planning at the corporate and board level – any organisation, but especially a financial institution, needs a disaster recovery plan to address problems like this. Failing to have one, again, makes me believe we are incapable of managing such a large amount of member money.
• Communications to members were of limited use. We were given vague platitudes for three days, and no one could tell us anything other than that there was no breach of data and that staff were working on fixing the problem, with no clear deadline for success. I asked on both Twitter and Facebook, point blank, whether we even knew for sure that the system would ever be back – that is, if it would be back, not when it would be back – and no one would give me an answer that wasn’t a repetition of the standard talking points. What this tells me, as a member, is that no one actually knew. I never want to be in a position where we simply don’t know whether or not our financial records and financial assets will ever be accessible again. Whether this was a failure in communications – you seem to think communications were fine – or such a significant failure in the system that truly no one knew whether or not the system would ever be revived, this completely undermines any trust I had in the organisation.

The entire banking system, and indeed the economy, relies on trust. Money is only good when we can trust that it has value. If it can be erased in the blink of an eye – as appears to have been the case this week – it is worthless. The fact that I, and many other members, cannot trust Vancity to protect our funds and make them accessible undermines the entire institution.

Finally, while I absolutely agree that members who were hit with any financial penalties as a result of this failure should be compensated, the use of the term “we” to mean the institution that is Vancity and the use of the term “you” to mean members (“we will make it right for you”) implies an us-and-them relationship, which is not how credit unions work. It’s not like all these costs will come out of the profits and dividends of third-party shareholders – we, the members of the credit union, will pay for these costs. They’ll be distributed in a fair an even way to ensure that those most negatively affected will be reimbursed and those who were not will share only our proportionate share of the costs, but ultimately it is the members who will pay for these things. The way the board and management are treating members as customers first and members second says a lot to me about the culture of this credit union.

I had initially resolved to petition to have the board removed, and replaced with one willing to accept the severity of the problem and take action to fix it, but frankly I don’t know if I have the energy for this. I may, ultimately, decide to withdraw as a member of Vancity altogether. Let me be very clear that this isn’t about incurring a late-payment penalty or not being able to bank at midnight on Friday. It’s about the fact that I cannot trust that this credit union is capable of maintaining basic financial services.

Sincerely,

Neal Jennings

Email to Vancity CU

I just wrote this to the board of the Vancity Credit Union and realised it might be appropriate to share. We deserve better from our credit union than the problems we’ve dealt with today.

Hello,

I’m writing to the board because I’m extremely concerned that the board and management have not, on behalf of the members, empowered staff to engage in appropriate communications when there are problems.

As I’m sure you are all aware, the online banking system went down sometime this morning and has still not returned to service. All day, the social media staff have been diligently updating members, but they have not been provided with any information whatsoever on a) what the problem is or b) an expected return to service time. In fact, they were forced to post half-hourly updates saying that they didn’t know when it would be back and would update us again half an hour later. I had the following exchange with them, myself:

There are many similar comments within the Facebook thread on this topic, all of which make it clear to me that the social media team is doing their best, but that they are not being provided with the necessary information and tools required to communicate effectively to us, the members, about a very severe and sudden system outage.

This is completely unacceptable. I don’t know enough about the internal structures of the Vancity organisation, but whether this is an IT team refusing to communicate with the external comms team, or a management decision that members should be left in the dark (and treated like airline passengers on a flight that will probably eventually be cancelled but where the airline doesn’t want to have to reticket them), this is not the Vancity I’ve come to know and love, nor is it in the spirit of transparency and customer service I’ve come to expect from Vancity and from the credit union movement in general.

System outages happen, I think we all get that. Though they seem to happen all too often with Vancity, most of us are willing to accept them if we have some sense as to what happened, how it’s being fixed, and most importantly when it will be fixed. Being unable to complete necessary online banking is anxiety-inducing enough as is, but having an intense amount of uncertainty (at this stage, for all anyone knows we may never see online banking again) can causes serious distress among members, especially members who are low-income or whose work schedules do not allow them to visit branches.

I’m fortunate enough that the only impact to me is a couple days (I hope no more) of lost interest on a large e-transfer deposit that I’ve been unable to make. There are, however, numerous stories on Vancity’s social media right now about people who are going to miss bill payments and who are unable to make electronic deposits in order to make necessary purchases. We’re supposed to be doing good with our credit union, not destroying people’s lives. If our staff were empowered to communicate appropriately (and if we had the proper IT systems in the first place), we would at least be able to ease a small portion of the concerns caused by this outage.

I’m calling on you, the board of directors, to thoroughly investigate not only the problem that caused the outage, but also the internal channels of communication that are actively preventing members from having access to critical information about our credit union. I sincerely hope that this system outage is solved by the morning, and that a well-crafted apology that thoroughly explains all of the communication problems and how they will be solved will be quickly forthcoming.

Sincerely,

Neal Jennings

The loss of Greyhound can be the province’s gain

With today’s news that Greyhound is basically pulling out of BC, I was inspired to write to the Minister of Transportation urging her to turn this into an opportunity for better public transportation. The following is the email I sent, and I hope that others will encourage her to make such a plan happen.

Minister Trevena,

With today’s news about Greyhound’s withdrawal from British Columbia, and with the past failure of other privatised systems like BC Rail, I believe it is now long past time for British Columbia to develop a strategy for a transportation network that is truly public, fully integrated, and locally-, regionally-, and provincially-focussed.

The loss of coach bus service amongst the communities in our province will have serious impacts to those who reside in these communities as well as to those who live in larger urban centres and spend time in communities currently served by Greyhound. This will mean that people will be forced to choose amongst driving or flying (incurring a larger impact on the environment), hitchhiking (dangerous, at best), and not travelling at all. This province should not have to function in this manner.

I see this failure of the private sector as an opportunity for the public sector to serve residents of and visitors to British Columbia in a much better way. Besides the fact that until now medium- and long-distance travellers have had to rely on unpredictable, poorly operated, and overpriced Greyhound services, regional transit in the Lower Mainland is virtually non-existent outside of the very-limited-service West Coast Express. The Fraser Valley, in particular, is very poorly served overall, and access to Vancouver is almost necessarily by private motor vehicle. It’s time for us to do better.

As a former resident of Ontario, I look to the model of GO Transit for a regional transit system that, for the most part, serves residents quite well. Here in BC, we already have an intraprovincial bus system in BC Bus North.

As a first step, I would like to see the province step in and acquire the equipment, and hire the staff, to operate the existing Greyhound coach routes within BC (along with the previous connections to Calgary, Edmonton, and Whitehorse) when Greyhound withdraws later this year.

But I believe this should merely be step one. Here in the Lower Mainland, I would like to see this service work with Via Rail to expand the facilities at Pacific Central station to become a hub for true regional transit, along with opening up this facility to the public (it is currently guarded for passengers only). This service would provide regular express coach service along the Squamish/Whistler/Pemberton, Surrey/Langley/Abbotsford/Chilliwack/Hope, and Coquitlam/Maple Ridge/Mission corridors, for starters, though express service from Vancouver to suburbs currently served by slower TransLink services (Delta and White Rock, for example) could also be included. Similar expansions could be done in other growing regions (for example, along the Vernon/Kelowna/Penticton corridor, or the Victoria/Duncan/Nanaimo corridor), and additional service should be provided to smaller communities throughout the province in order to improve mobility with the minimum of environmental impact.

In the longer run, more popular coach routes could be replaced by suburban, regional, and long-distance (high speed) train service. This service could also investigate a second Vancouver terminus at an expanded Waterfront station, making use of existing rail lines and/or a bus terminus built on a deck over those rails.

I believe that mass transportation is something that can only be accomplished well by the public sector, and the failure of the private sector in serving this role provides proof that we should move forward as a province to provide this service. It is also only under a public sector mandate that we can achieve the efficiencies required to make the service truly integrated and useful for the public. For example, planning could be integrated to ensure the regional and intraprovincial bus and train services connect properly with existing transportation services provided by TransLink, BC Transit, and BC Ferries. Fares could be integrated, too, on a province-wide version of a Compass card (or some similar equivalent) that could work for foot passengers on all of these services, as well as on bike shares and other local transit connections like the False Creek Ferries.

I sincerely hope these ideas are given serious consideration, and in any case I hope that the government finds a public solution to address the void in transportation services that will soon affect most of this province.

 

Time For A Change – A Fantasy Platform for Vancouver

As recent weeks have shown us what might be the dying breaths of Vision Vancouver, and with an election on the horizon where none of the major parties seem to have their leadership candidates sorted out, we are living in a temporary political vacuum. With no one putting forward their ideas for the future of Vancouver, I figure now is a good time for a blue sky view. I’m not running for office, but hope to contribute to furthering the debate in our city. Call this a fantasy platform, a manifesto, or maybe just lunacy, it’s my two cents.

In the six years or so that I’ve lived here, virtually all the local political debates have been not about how to ensure we can pay for all the things we need, but how to best make use of the limited funds we’ve allocated to ourselves. There is another way.

Raise Property Taxes

I’ve previously written that I think Vancouver is long past due for a significant property tax increase. I propose phased-in tripling of property taxes. I’ll explain below where I think the money should go, but even if we didn’t need it I think there’s value in increasing property taxes at this stage of Vancouver’s history.

We are in a time of record-high property values, and a time where most of the city’s wealth is tied up in its real estate. Anyone who owns their home in the city (myself included) has seen annual percentage increases in value in the double digits, but property taxes in 2017 were set at a mere 0.255489%, including the amounts that go to TransLink, the school boards, and Metro Van. This rate is likely to be lower in 2018 if the status quo is maintained, because the city sets the amount of property taxes it wants to raise and adjusts the rate to match it – when values go up as much as they have lately, this means the property tax rate goes down. Indeed, the 2017 rate is almost 0.1 percentage points lower than it was in 2015.

I made comparisons to other cities in a previous entry, but let’s look at it from the perspective of the property owner. Even if property values were to increase at a much more modest 5% (an unlikely low amount in this city), a property tax rate of 0.75% (likely lower, for the same reasons mentioned above) brings the return on investment down to 4.25% – this is still better than a lot of investments that are less likely to maintain value, but frankly still quite reasonable. Regardless, we could continue to increase property tax rates and owners would still be far, far, ahead of those who don’t have the capital to buy into our overheated market. To put it another way, on a million dollar home, the cost of holding it long enough to get a $50,000 increase in value (one year at 5%) is $7,500. That seems more than fair.

This could also have some added side benefits. If the return on investment is decreased (by virtue of having to pay more property taxes) this reduces the economic return on property. This is pretty meaningless to those of us who live in our homes, but for those who are investing, speculating, flipping, or otherwise dabbling in our housing market without living it, this is just one more reason either not to do these things or, at least, to be willing to put less money into them. It could have the effect of cooling the property market, which is badly needed.

Mostly, though, now is the time to capitalise on the property value growth in the city – we do indeed need this money, and we have lots of infrastructure development to catch up on. It’s also time to shift the city’s revenues away from developer contributions (13.1% of the city’s revenues in 2016), which will eventually dry up when the city is fully developed, and towards long-term sustainable taxes.

Last time I raised this, some people raised some valid concerns – the biggest being that there are some people who have owned their houses since they were affordable (or inherited them from decedents who bought them that long ago), but who have very little income to pay the taxes. For seniors, there is the ability to defer property taxes altogether until sale, so while I don’t think public policy should encourage empty nesters to sit on oversized homes while young families can only afford one bedroom apartments, I think this policy should remain and would prevent them from being affected. For others, there is always private debt – it is not difficult to borrow against the equity of a million dollar home. Even after paying the interest, the ongoing value increases in their home will more than make up for any economic loss in these situations. Finally, I would make the case that serving entrenched interests is not the goal of my proposal, because those of us fortunate enough to own homes in this city do not need the help – everyone else does.

Property tax revenues for the latest year with data available, 2016, came to just under $721 million. They were budgeted to increase to a little over $750 million for 2017 and around $785 million for 2018. As a phase-in, I would suggest increasing taxes by 50% of the 2018 amount in each of the next four years (2019-2022). This would bring property tax revenues to $1.2 billion in 2019, $1.6 billion in 2020, $2 billion in 2021, and $2.4 billion in 2022. That’s an extra $1.6 billion per year that could be invested back in the city’s infrastructure.

Reduce Reliance on Metered Street Parking

Increasing property taxes could also help reduce the city’s reliance on other kinds of revenues. For example, the city brings in $87 million a year from parking, which includes metered street parking. For a variety of reasons, street parking is a very inefficient use of the city’s limited real estate: it significantly impedes bus travel, causes delays for those driving in the second lane while people pull into and out of the parking lane, and create significant danger for cyclists. We could eliminate on-street parking on major routes and throughout downtown and shift the revenues into property taxes, and free up space on our roads at the same time. This may require EasyPark to build new parkades in select areas, which could also be financed through the extra capital available from tax revenues.

Maintain Other Taxes

The city recently got the ability to levy an “Empty Homes Tax” to discourage people from acquiring homes and leaving them empty – i.e., not renting them out or living in them themselves. I support this tax and suggest that it, too, could be increased over time – I would want some data before suggesting such a thing.

Previous governments have suggested they would like the ability to levy a luxury home tax on homes valued over a certain dollar amount. I also support this, though it is not a power the municipal government currently has. There are other ways to solve the luxury home problem, and I’ll mention some below.

Increase Utility Charges

The city loses a little over $20 million a year on utilities. The utilities it provides – water, local energy, and refuse removal – are all things that should be priced at a rate to discourage their use, not at a price below cost that incentives environmental damage related to water, energy, and solid waste. I believe that prices on these utilities should gradually be increased until these services break even – we should not be subsidising the use of these services.

That said, water in particular is an essential service and those with low income will not be able to handle significant increases in costs. I strongly believe that offsets and grants should be provided to people based on their income to prevent any serious negative consequences as a result of this policy.

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Now that I’ve created a massive surplus (the city already has an annual surplus, but an extra $1.6 billion a year by 2022 is a lot of money), what would I do with it? Well, I can think of a number of things that could use improving in this city, and it will take money. Not having access to any of the necessary data, I have of course not costed this except where noted. Some of these things would need to be phased in along with the tax increase.

Most of my suggestions are long-term, capital projects. The City of Vancouver has grown from a small town to a big city, and is starting to deal with big city problems without the big city infrastructure to back it up. We have some great examples of good planning and investment, but for every success story there are many shortcomings lurking in the wings. It’s time the city made some “once and for all” investments.

Increase Operating Funding to Existing Departments

By many accounts, pretty well every city department is underfunded. Permit processing is taking obscene amounts of time, delaying development projects and approvals for local businesses. Maintenance crews during last winter’s snowmaggedons were virtually nonexistent, and some of the worst unshovelled sidewalks were on city property. Emergency services are overwhelmed with issues relating to the opioid crisis, which does not seem to be diminishing. I would propose a one-time across-the-board increase to department budgets by 10% (total cost, based on 2016 actuals, approximately $150 million), with a review done going forward to ensure departmental needs are met. It is likely that departments responsible for approving permits would need to receive an even larger increase in budget to help them catch up on the existing backlog.

Build More Housing

The biggest issue facing the city right now is housing. We don’t have enough of it, what is here is too expensive, and for most renters all housing is unstable. I believe that we need to address both supply and demand, and stop pretending that the entire problem is too many ‘undesirables’ making up the demand for housing. I believe that a significant increase in property tax as well as the empty homes tax are about as much as the City of Vancouver can do within its power to address the problematic demand from people who purchase property without occupying it themselves or renting it out. I’m now going to focus on the supply.

While the goals of the current modular housing projects are admirable, they don’t really provide permanent solutions, only temporary and cheap ones. I don’t think we need to have glamorous or expensive public housing, but we do need long term public housing solutions to solve this long term problem.

I propose investing a significant portion of the extra tax revenues generated into building permanent public housing through the city – even in the rich neighbourhoods that oppose them at every step. This could be done by utilising undeveloped city-owned land (like the massive VPD surface parking lot East of the Cambie Bridge), and by acquiring property where possible. We should not stop building until there are no longer any homeless people in the city – and I go beyond simply street homelessness in this. This is a lofty goal, but previous governments have proposed ending homelessness without meaning it – an ambitious building project puts real action behind it.

The city is also currently in contracts with a number of social service agencies for a variety of social housing that is often leased from private property owners. The city should invest directly in these properties and make them permanent facilities. Efforts should be made to work with First Nations housing organisations in the city to ensure that culturally-appropriate housing is available for indigenous residents of Vancouver, which may in some cases involve returning property to local First Nations from whom the land was taken in the first place. The governance of public housing buildings should be, where possible, given to residents to allow tenants to “take ownership” over their rented homes in a meaningful way.

Providing housing to those who most need it for little or no cost will, in addition to helping those who receive it, also help those who are just barely getting by now but are not homeless. Taking pressure off the extremely competitive market for affordable rental homes at any end of the market (even the lower-cost end) can only improve on the existing situation in market rentals.

Make it Easier for Property Owners to Build More Housing

Other changes can be made at little to no cost. A proposal was made last year to rezone the West Side’s mansion district to allow for more subdivision of the massive properties. This would incentivise development and densification, providing more supply to the market, but would also lead to higher property value assessments and higher taxes on these luxury homes. Not a perfect solution to the inability to levy luxury homes taxes, but an improvement over the current situation.

Zoning across the city should be evaluated to ensure the best use is being made of the limited land space that Vancouver has – particularly around SkyTrain stations, where density is logical. This includes the areas around Nanaimo, Renfrew, 29^th Avenue, Rupert, and Joyce stations which have nowhere near the neighbourhood densities of their cousins East of Boundary Road.

Zoning, generally, should not be used to further entrench existing property owners, but to open the possibility of new property owners and to allow more people into housing that is accessible and affordable. This would take a variety of forms, from typical high-rise apartment buildings to more allowances for laneway housing, low-rise apartment buildings and townhouses. Those last two are often left out in our housing plans and should not be overlooked – it is possibly to build density that is somewhere between a single laneway house and a massive tower. Heritage preservation should, of course, be maintained, but should not be used as an excuse to prevent development on lands that are currently undeveloped or occupied by non-heritage buildings.

Encourage Better Buildings

Developments should still be required to fund or build affordable housing within their projects. The policy requiring family-sized units to be built in new development is also a good one, but more needs to be done to ensure this doesn’t just mean building more luxury apartments that no one can afford. Incentives for build-to-let buildings and co-ops should be continued and expanded, to ensure a steady supply of new rental buildings. And earthquake-proofing should be accelerated, with an aim for all buildings (not just housing) to be seismically upgraded by 2025, through a combination of building code changes and municipal grants to facilitate it.

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The city is mostly responsible for roads and active transportation, but does have some ability to get involved in public transit. There are a number of shortcomings in this city’s transportation network, which is especially disappointing in light of the Greenest City brand machine.

Usable Sidewalks on Every Block of the City

The city should budget the capital to build sidewalks on every block of every street in the City of Vancouver. It’s embarrassing that in Canada’s third largest city we have many streets with no sidewalks at all, or sidewalks on only one side of the street. This makes active transportation inconvenient, unpleasant, and often dangerous. The city should immediately commence construction on all the missing sidewalks throughout the city, particularly in East and South Vancouver which are oft-neglected in city spending. After this project is complete, another round of construction should repair or replace sidewalks that have degraded over time – last winter was particularly rough on our sidewalk infrastructure, and I’ve seen little to no work done since then to fix them.

Make it Safe and Pleasant to Cross Streets

The city should also move to make active transportation more efficient and accessible by ensuring that pedestrians can cross in all directions at every intersection – too many intersections currently have physical and/or signed prohibitions on crossing in certain directions, even in very urban parts of the city. This applies at signalised intersections where continuing in a straight line often requires crossing the intersection three times because of a crossing prohibition, which is unacceptable. But it also applies at unmarked crosswalks on major roads which, while legal crossings, are dangerous to cross at – lights, stop signs, or at least marked crosswalks should be deployed to improve this situation.

Build the Broadway Subway Extension Already

A large amount of the money raised from increased property taxes could go towards funding the Broadway subway extension, which is forecast to cost in the range of $2 billion. A large portion of this funding should come from the federal and/or provincial governments, but with a drastic increase in property taxes the city could easily afford to fund a substantial portion of the project, even if it has to borrow to pay for it over 5 or 10 years. Construction should beginning immediately.

Build the Rest of the Broadway Subway Extension, and Others

As soon as design work is complete on the Broadway Line extension, staff dedicated to that project should be retained to start design on further transit expansions. A long term plan for SkyTrain (or other rapid transit) expansion throughout the city should be developed, and should include completing the Broadway Line to UBC, which should be done immediately after completion of the initial extension to Arbutus. Plans should also be developed for a Hastings line to replace the 95 B-Line.

Bring Bike Share “In House”

The city should buy Mobi out of its contract, and bring bike sharing “in house” either at the City of Vancouver or, if the province agrees to it, at TransLink. TransLink recently granted a large amount of money to Mobi, which is a private company, so TransLink clearly has an interest in supporting bike sharing. If the system is to expand beyond the City of Vancouver’s borders, it is critical that TransLink be involved. Cities like Toronto, Montreal, and Portland all run their bike share systems out of one government entity or another, and it’s been disappointing to see a private company squander public money on a bike share system that consistently overpromises and underdelivers. Once it’s run publicly, I would suggest a complete refresh of the poorly-maintained equipment (or a replacement with a station-free system or half-stationed system like SoBi), and an expansion at least to all borders of the City of Vancouver.

Replace Pedestrian-Controlled Intersections with Real Traffic Lights

The city should generally replace some of the backwards street infrastructure that the city has implemented over the years. Pedestrian-controlled intersections seems to exist as a result of choosing cost savings over safety. Their use is ambiguous, completely foreign to non-BC drivers, and regularly leads to conflicts on the road. Pedestrian-controlled intersections should all be replaced with full traffic lights, to reflect how they are treated in practice anyway and increase safety of all road users. Money should also be invested to optimise traffic lights for improved traffic flow and to restore priority to pedestrians and cyclists where possible.

Replace Traffic Calming Circles with Real Roundabouts or Stop Signs

“Traffic calming circles,” which are like roundabouts but follow backwards rules to them, should be replaced with real roundabouts or stop signs. They confuse virtually everyone and legally function as “uncontrolled intersections” which are strange things to put in an urban centre.

Complete Ongoing and Proposed Transportation Projects

A significant amount of the remaining additional money raised should go towards finish ongoing projects. The viaduct removal should move forward already – we have been studying this for over a decade, and need to get on with it. The city should continue ongoing active transportation improvements, such as the Cambie Bridge, 10th Ave, Arbutus corridor, and the complete street on Commercial Drive. I would add Main and Kingsway to the list of street that should be converted into complete streets.

Other transit projects should include the first few phases of the proposed light rail projects, which have been ready to go for years now but given less priority. Given the significant growth in population around False Creek, and the Granville Island 2040 plans, there is now a much larger demand for this service.

Funds should also be dedicated towards permanently converting Granville Street downtown into a pedestrian mall, and connecting it to the new greenway to be built on the Granville Bridge. Buses could be moved permanently to Howe and Seymour, which would reduce confusion and improve bus reliability.

Invest in Long-Term Homes for Cultural Institutions

Our cultural institutions, ranging from the Vancouver Art Gallery to the Museum of Vancouver and even the City of Vancouver Archives are all outgrowing their current homes. Money should be dedicated to helping our cultural institutions find permanent homes that will last them for the foreseeable future.

Pay Off Debt

If these proposals doesn’t use up all of the surplus our new taxes have created, we could use the remainder to start to pay off the approximately $1 billion in debt the city owes, so that future generations are not straddled with the debt of the current and past ones. I strongly believe that passing government debt on from generation to generation only forces future government to engage in even worse austerity, and that is not the kind of society in which I want to live.

Engage with the Community to Develop Priorities

I’m leaving this rather open-ended, because while I have my own pet projects especially when it comes to transportation, I know that others will have theirs. I think the city can engage in more open forms of governance, and allow people to propose ways to use this surplus. What is important is that we stop dwelling on how to divide up the pittance of taxes that we currently collect among cash-strapped departments. The city could create formal engagement tools beyond just inviting people to show up at city hall – a Talk Vancouver for the future that allows citizens to propose their own suggestions for how to invest the city’s wealth.

Some ideas that come to mind could include improving 3-1-1 service to provide more city services, and to expand the use of VanConnect for all departments (including parking enforcement) to use it. We could build more parks, invest in green energy and energy efficiency, or simply improve existing municipal buildings. We could open more safe injection sites, fund community health centres, and work with local First Nations to better serve indigenous residents. The possibilities are endless when we stop thinking of property tax dollars as a finite resource. I invite readers to comment on what you would spend such a surplus on.

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Many will probably call these proposals radical, and to a degree they are – tripling taxes is unheard of in recent years. But I consider the status quo to be equally radical – a status quo in which homelessness abounds, the opioid crisis seems neverending, and our transportation networks are bursting at the seams. We can afford to make this shift towards a long-term sustainable public sector with well-funded and well-developed public infrastructure – now is the time to do it.