Editor:
Re: Burnaby mayor calls for 75% wage subsidy for local gov'ts, NOW News
Shame on Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley for asking the federal and B.C. governments to provide financial assistance to egregiously wealthy Burnaby.
Differing from most of Metro Vancouver's 20 other member cities, since 2010 Burnaby has accumulated a city reserve fund (of more than $1 billion).
This has occurred, mainly, as a result of the city being able to attract billions of dollars of commercial and residential investments to its four designated "town centres") that are connected by and adjacent to an extensive network of rapid-transit (SkyTrain) lines - the Expo Line, Millennium Line, Evergreen Line and Canada Line SkyTrain lines, and the West Coast Express heavy rail line:
With B.C. government permission, Burnaby's massive reserve fund could be used to pay (portions of) Burnaby's operating expenses.
Without B.C, government permission, the multi-million-dollar (monthly and annual) interest payments that are received by the city from financial institutions where this (more than $1 billion) is invested could be used to pay city operating expenses.
Instead of mindlessly providing handouts to rolling-in-dough Burnaby, the federal and B.C. governments should require the city to share its massive reserve fund with less-fortunate Metro Vancouver member cities, whose business owners and residents have (during the last two decades), indirectly through taxes, paid the vast majority of the multi-billion-dollar costs of building and operating the network of rail rapid-transit lines within and adjacent to Burnaby that has attracted billions of dollars of investments to the city, and consequently enabled Burnaby to accrue its gargantuan reserve fund.
As well, as a strategy to "force" efficient use of taxpayers' funds and end the "make-work-project" attitudes that are prevalent in many of Metro Vancouver’s smaller member cities, the B.C. and federal government should require all of MV's 21 member cities - including Burnaby - to merge into no more than six or seven "bigger" cities (such as):
1) Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster;
2) North Vancouver City, NV District and West Vancouver..
3) Port Moody, Port Coquitlam, Coquitlam and (microscopic-sized) Belcarra and Anmore...
4) (Comparatively huge) Surrey and (minuscule) White Rock;
5) Langley Township and (puny) Langley city;
6) Pitt Meadows merged and Maple Ridge;
7) Richmond and Delta;
Instead of attempting to fool upper levels of government into handing over unneeded financial assistance to Burnaby (and other cash-rich cities), Hurley should be advocating for Burnaby's tremendous wealth to be shared with legitimately needy cities.
Roderick Louis
