New Metro mayors must take on transit referendum quickly
Posted November 17, 2014 8:24 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
METRO VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Some familiar faces are now gone from TransLink’s mayors’ council, and a new-look group will have only days to agree and vote on the spring transit referendum on how to fund major transit expansion in Metro Vancouver.
Five Metro mayors who served on the council lost their seats in Saturday’s civic elections; Surrey’s Dianne Watts did not run; and Jack Adelaar, the Mayor of Bowen Island, passed away last month after battling cancer.
A new mix of mayors has a fast-dwindling amount of time to pass a critical vote to allow them to go to a referendum and provide the details and wording for a potential ballot for provincial Cabinet approval.
“We need to get that [approval] before Christmas if we are going to have any opportunity to mount a meaningful campaign and pass the referendum,” says Council Chair Richard Walton, mayor of the District of North Vancouver, who admits there is a time crunch.
Seven new mayors on the council will be sworn into office on December 1st, and then have to take part in a critical vote on the 5th.
“They’ll have to pick up a body of knowledge which goes back several years with votes and negotiations, commit to this transit referendum, and vote on it within four days. That’s a challenge, but the timing of the referendum and the timing of the elections has always been problem. We always knew that,” Walton tells News1130.
“It will be a very busy first two weeks of December, both within the mayors’ council at TransLink and within the provincial government. I’ve been speaking with Transportation Minister Todd Stone as recently as several days ago and I think there’s work that needs to be done at both ends in order to move forward.”
Walton says not moving forward to a referendum would mean there is “no hope on the horizon, given existing legislation and policy” to provide meaningful amounts of funding for transit in the region.
“The entire region would lose. So what happens after December — how that plays out with significant campaigns and public involvement between January and April of next year — is critical to the future health of this region.”
