TWO North Shore mayors hope a meeting with 86 of their counterparts from across the province this week will help their communities get a heftier share of Canada's tax revenue.
The first ever B.C. Mayor's Caucus, taking place in Penticton May 16 to 18, is expected to draw representatives from all corners of British Columbia to tackle issues facing the province's municipalities including both the city and district of North Vancouver.
The No. 1 topic of discussion will likely be funding, said city mayor Darrell Mussatto.
Municipalities are responsible for a long list of on-the-ground services, from police, firefighting, parks and zoning to sewage, water treatment and roads, said Mussatto. But, he said, municipalities receive just 8 percent of tax revenue, compared to the 42 per cent the province receives and the 50 per cent the federal government gets.
This modest share is far below the 30 to 40 per cent of tax revenue municipalities got in the 1960s and '70s, said District of North Vancouver mayor Richard Walton. This despite the fact that cities now provide more services to residents than ever before, as they are often filling the gaps left by other levels of government.
"As the federal and provincial governments have been wrestling with their debt and trying to control their spending, often the programs that they cut over the years have been shared programs with the municipal government," said Walton. "We've ended up being asked and expected by the public to do way more than we were doing a generation ago."
Walton said the province's decision to cut gaming grants for arts groups in 2009 - with only three months notice - is a good example of the phenomenon.
Presentation House Theatre, a major arts organization in North Vancouver, was "really kicked hard in the face by the sudden loss of that grant," said Walton. In 2010, the District and the City of North Vancouver gave Presentation House $50,000 in emergency funding to keep the theatre afloat.
The increased expense of building and maintaining infrastructure is another municipal responsibility that has been weighing on communities like North Vancouver, said Mussatto.
"The costs to build a road have gone up quite a bit since I was first elected 18 years ago," he said, citing rising oil prices as one factor. "It's probably 5 to 10 times more expensive."
Mussatto said the new sewage treatment plant Metro Vancouver plans to start building in 2014 illustrates the point. The massive project is expected to cost the three North Shore municipalities $400 million unless they can secure funding from he province or from Ottawa. So far they have been unsuccessful, however.
Mussatto hopes the mayors' caucus will be the start of a change in the relationship between the three levels of government.
"We could look at all the priorities together," suggested Mussatto. "Are military jets a priority? . . . Or is clean drinking water and management of our sewage more important? Maybe (we can) get (the provincial and federal governments) to think outside their realm, and we'll think outside our realm, and we'll see if we can't come up with something."
District of West Vancouver mayor Michael Smith will not be attending the meeting. A spokeswoman for the municipality said he will be out of town.
