Vancouver business chiefs launch attack on parking tax
A slickly organized protest against the tripling of the provincial sales tax on parking is hitting the streets this morning.
Signs. Brochures. Anti-tax advocates manning the entrance to pay parkades throughout Metro Vancouver. A sophisticated website and social media campaign. Pre-programmed cellphones for parkade customers to inundate politicians’ and bureaucrats’ inboxes with their personalized protests.
All of this is focused to showcase some hard-hitting facts and analysis that build the case that this tax is too narrowly focused and unfair. The coalition also trains a harsh spotlight on TransLink’s performance. One poster decries how TransLink’s administrative costs have risen 101 per cent since 2002, how its debt has tripled, and how its board members are paid $1,200 a day. A background paper shows how, despite TransLink’s best efforts to get people onto transit, the number of cars in the region has been growing twice as fast as the number of people for the past 15 years.
But this campaign is also aimed at the provincial government, which has given TransLink the authority to impose the tax. And it will be hard for Victoria to ignore for at least three reasons:
- The organizers represent Metro Vancouver’s business elite — usually a B.C. Liberalfriendly crowd.
The 30 groups who’ve formed the coalition — and membership is still growing — range from the Building Owners and Managers Association, which represents owners of most of the big downtown buildings that will be hardest hit, to the Board of Trade.
- There is mass appeal to what they’re saying. E-mail response to earlier Vancouver Sun reports and columns on this subject — not to mention what parking garage staff report they’re hearing — indicates this issue has the potential to fire up a lot of voters.
- The solid base of research on which the case against the tax is based. The coalition behind the protest has marshalled the data to support its contention that this tax is unfair.
Three years ago, public outrage shot TransLink down on a parking-related tax proposal — the other infamous parking tax that would have hit every flat space owned by any business in the region. At that time, the Greater Vancouver Transit Authority Act was amended to allow a gas tax increase that was to be “balanced fairly between road users, transit riders and property taxpayers.”
Which, a lot of coalition members thought at the time, sounded reasonable. But they are a lot less happy with how the idea of “balancing” the burden between the three groups is playing out.
First, when the initial parking tax proposal was withdrawn, $9 million of additional taxes was added to the tax bills for downtown commercial properties. It remains in place.
Then the tax load to cover the remaining shortfall was divided into thirds–even though these three groups are very unequal in size, which dramatically affects the impact on each group member.
The upshot is that all of the drivers in Metro Vancouver have to chip in to pay one-third of the money TransLink needs through a 25-per-cent, or three-cent-a-litre, gas tax increase.
All transit riders will pay another third through fare increases that will total seven per cent over three years.
A couple of hundred downtown business properties with parkades will bear the brunt of the remaining third.
Of course, as Mike Bishop, the president of BOMA BC and a leader of this protest, points out, it’s the customers who park in those businesses’ parkades that ultimately pay the tax.
Hence, the mass appeal for this Drive Out the Tax campaign. And hence the risk that the decision to impose this tax will backfire in two ways.
Charles Gauthier, executive director of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association and another coalition spokesman, notes that parking operators are already reporting that some long-term customers aren’t renewing their contracts. These operators expect their total losses from long-and short-term customers to hit 20 per cent if the tax stays in place. This would mean less tax than anticipated will be collected, which in turn will hit TransLink’s revenue where it hurts.
Gauthier also points out that piling so much of the tax burden onto the people who use so few facilities adds to the pressure for businesses to flee downtown for the suburbs. This is already happening and has led to a “pickup sticks” pattern of rush-hour traffic. This kind of traffic grid is almost impossible to serve with cost-effective, efficient transit.
This trend will frustrate TransLink’s attempts to get its costs under control, as well as the broader objective of encouraging more drivers to leave their cars at home.
Bishop said a coalition website ( www.driveoutthetax.com)was going public this morning. Also, there will be new protest signs and brochures at all pay parking facilities. In addition, workers with specially programmed cell-phones would be on duty, encouraging customers to message TransLink and their local mayors to register their objections to the tax.
dcayo@vancouversun.com
January 7, 2010. The Vancouver Sun