On the firing of TransLink’s CEO

Yesterday TransLink CEO Ian Jarvis was pushed aside. This was widely seen as a surprise move, one that is supposed to “restore confidence” in TransLink’s leadership.

The timing is a little suspicious as it comes smack in the middle of Metro Vancouver’s campaign surrounding a 0.5% increase to the PST to pay for a number of transit-related improvements. The ‘no’ side has been using TransLink’s governance and “waste” as a stick, even going so far as to label Jarvis as “the face of the waste”. The ‘yes’ side’s message has largely focused on the benefits of the plan, largely ignoring the TransLink governance issue.

And even though TransLink governance isn’t on the ballot, this move brings it back into the forefront. Politically, it’s kind of odd to do this, because it gives more ammunition to the ‘no’ side.

Here’s one reason they might have made the move now, rather than potentially waiting until after the plebescite is over:

In 2012 Jarvis received $438,700 in total compensation, and in 2013 he received $468,015. While his salary plus transportation allowance increased by less than a thousand dollars, he did receive bonuses based on long-term targets that increased his total compensation. This rankled with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, because, as TransLink themselves say, “the CEO’s base salary has been frozen since January 1, 2013.” While his salary was frozen, he still took home more money because he did a good job, and rewarding performance in this way is apparently wasteful.

The CEO’s bonus consists of two parts: a short-term incentive plan (STIP) and a long-term incentive plan (LTIP). The STIP is based on the previous year’s performance, and can be up to 30% of his base salary. The LTIP was eliminated on December 31, 2012, but was based on targets between 2010 and 2012. This bonus gets paid out over three years, and the first year was 2013 (he received $43,400). He received the same amount in 2014.

Now, here’s the thing: TransLink has to file all of this information for the 2014 fiscal year, and they need to make the information public. They’re looking at all of this information now, and if past years are any indication, the year-end financials get released at the beginning of April. This is smack in the middle of the plebescite mail-in period.

A bombshell in the form of a huge STIP bonus (remember, it could go up to 30% of his base salary, up to $95,773) coming right in the middle of the voting? It makes it a lot easier for the ‘yes’ side to say “yes, and he is no longer collecting that bonus, and the interim CEO is collecting no such bonus, and the interim CEO will be examining executive compensation a lot more closely” than to say “yes, he got it for meeting targets”. A large STIP bonus would also play into the “TransLink is wasteful” myth and offer a huge distraction for the CTF to wield.

Is this what happened? I don’t know. We won’t know until April. But remember that the TransLink Board has a lot more information to go on than we do, and financial information is something they’re privy to that we’re not at this point. We’ll just have to wait until April.

Yet another way the CTF is wrong

The Canadian Taxpayers Foundation continues to say that the proposed 0.5% Congestion Improvement Tax will result in an average household tax increase of $258.

This number is wrong. Plain and simple, it is wrong. I’ve shown this before [here] and here], but I just found a third way to show that they’re wrong.

Back in 2011 BC had a referendum on keeping the Harmonized Sales Tax. An independent panel came up with a report titled HST or PST/GST? It’s Your Decision. In it they presented different statistics and facts to give a neutral viewpoint on the pros and cons of either keeping the HST or switching back to the separate PST/GST.

Page 7 of that report presents these statistics on how British Columbians spend their money, and what percentages are taxed:

This is what is now happening at the cash register.

  • 17 per cent of your spending has an extra seven per cent sales tax.

  • 29 per cent of your spending is subject to the same total sales taxes as before. It has not gone up or down.

  • 54 per cent of your spending is not taxable under the HST or the PST/GST. Nothing has changed.

Let me clarify those three items. The first is goods and services that were not subject to the PST but were subject to the HST. The second is goods and services that were subject to either only the GST or were subject to both PST and GST. The third is goods and services that were non-taxable.

BC returned to the separate GST and PST. What this means is that the first group of goods and services are no longer taxed under the PST. The third group of goods and services were never subject to the PST and they aren’t now. That leaves the second group.

Some of the second group (29% of spending, remember) is subject to GST only, and some of it is subject to both GST and PST. Let’s assume for a minute that everything that you buy that falls in this group is subject to the PST. Let’s also assume that you’re an average household and that your take-home pay is about $55,000 per year (remember, I showed that in an earlier post). Let’s further assume that you spend every dollar that comes in.

That means of your $55,000 you’ve spent 29% of that on goods that are subject to the PST, or $15,950. If you multiply that by the 0.5% CIT, your yearly increase in taxes paid comes to $79.75.

That means for extra taxes of 22 cents a day you get a new, safer, wider Pattullo Bridge. You get a SkyTrain tunnel down Broadway in Vancouver. You get light rapid transit in Surrey and Langley. You get eleven new B-Line bus routes, you get more buses, you get more SkyTrains, you get more SeaBus service, you get more HandyDART service, you get more West Coast Express service, you get more NightBus service, you get more bikeways. You get an improved transportation system in Metro Vancouver.

But just remember, when the Canadian Taxpayers Federation says “the average household will face an annual tax increase of about $258” they’re completely wrong.

Frogman

I got a good day gig. I got a good day gig. Every day when I leave work I come here, or wherever town I might be in, and I join up with the boys.

My day gig is, well, it’s pretty gruesome actually. It’s pretty horrible.

I’m a frogman. I’m a skin diver. I’m an underwater dude for the cops. I investigate, I investigate. I go down and I find people who actually had the patience to let their cars fill with water to the roof before they decided to open the door for pressure reasons.

And I always see them blue and bloated with the window about halfway down, hand clenching the handle, wife riding shotgun, couple of kids in the back. And it just… I see this every day, and it weren’t no thing, it weren’t no thing, and then I come here, and I paddle the stage around for a while, in our little pond, and it weren’t no thing, you understand? I can see them floating in their cars.

“Honey, the ferry takes way too long. Let’s drive across the ice, it’ll be much faster.”

I’m telling her to wait, to be patient, there’s a little spot next to the roof where we can breathe. She’s screaming. The little kids in the back, well they got their carseats, they’re buckled in.

I took a couple of shots of Chivas Regal. I put on my mask. I put in my regulator, and I jumped off.

I see it, it’s a red Toyota.

I talk to the ship through a transmitter.

“I see it, it’s a red Toyota. It’s on the bottom, it seems to be covered with weeds and things, stones. I think it fell through the ice, yeah, it fell through the ice. Headlights are still on, headlights are still on. I can see some exhaust. They didn’t let the water fill up to the roof, they’ve actually got an airtight red Honda, they’re sitting in there with about an hour’s worth of air having a game of crib between man and wife and the kids.”

So I open the door and flood them out and they float to the top like pieces of popcorn. We get them on ship.

“We thought we nearly lost you Mr. Kennedy, we thought we nearly lost you, we were so concerened, we thought we nearly lost you sir!”

I took another shot of Chivas Regal. I took another shot of Chivas Regal.

I think I’m going to quit that job. I’m gonna quit that job. I’m gonna quit that job.

From New Orleans Is Sinking, Chicago 1991

Referendum Questions: What will it cost?

Update: I forgot a couple of bills that I paid in January. Please see my update below for new numbers!

One of the questions surrounding the Metro Vancouver Congestion Improvement Tax is how much it will cost the average household in Metro Vancouver. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation says $258 a year, and the Better Transit & Transportation Coalition says $125 a year. Keep in mind that those are for the average household, meaning roughly half will pay more and half will pay less.

So which is it? The actual answer is dependent on the household. Some households will buy a lot of taxable goods, some won’t buy many. I decided to take a stab at answering this specific question:

How much will I pay?

I kept all receipts for everything we purchased in January 2015. I added up the total amount we paid for taxable goods, and that came to $312.26. For those taxable goods, adding a 0.5% CIT would have cost us an extra $1.56 for the entire month.

That’s not all that we paid for that would be subject to the CIT. We are modo members, and car-sharing fees are subject to PST. In January 2015 we paid $26.10 in PST on our modo bills, which means we would have paid another $1.86 in CIT.

And we also bought a table. We bought this through a local company that makes tables, and it was a flat $1000, tax included. If you figure out what PST you’d pay to make the total tax-included amount $1000, it works out to $62.50 ($1000 / 1.12 = $892.86, 7% of that is $62.50), so we would have paid another $4.46 in CIT. This cost would probably have been eaten by the company, because they probably wouldn’t charge $1005 for a table. I only mention it because it’s an example of an expensive purchase that would normally be charged tax, but if you shop smart (and local!) you can find ways to reduce your tax burden.

So how much CIT would we have paid in January 2015?

$3.42

$3.42 for the whole month. 11 cents a day. And what would we get for that? A new bridge. A new SkyTrain line. New light rail lines. More buses. More walking and cycling routes. Less congestion.

All that for only 11 cents a day? Sign me up.

Update: I forgot my cell phone, internet, and TV bills that I paid in January. On these bills I paid a total of $18.27 in PST, which would have meant an extra $1.31 in PST. This means that in January, the CIT would have cost me an extra $4.73 in taxes, or 15 cents a day. My apologies for getting this wrong.

A Brewery District follow-up

I want to do a little bit of a follow-up to my previous post about building heights in the Brewery District. I posted that because I kept getting annoyed at Sapperton residents saying things like “Wesgroup mislead us” and “it was eight storeys all along.”

I did a little more digging, and found the McBride-Sapperton Residents Association minutes from January 22, 2014. In this meeting, two employees of Wesgroup presented an update on the Brewery District development site, which includes this:

There will be a total of 4 tall structures with a maximum of 30 storeys, minimum 12 storeys being built.

Read that again. “…minimum 12 storeys being built.”

So in January 2014 the MSRA knew full well that the first residential tower was to be at least 12 storeys high. This meshes with the photos and statements I highlighted in the previous post.

So what really pisses me off is when MSRA acting president Ross Eichendorf says this:

“I’m sure the residents in the area will be glad to see three [fewer] storeys, but it’s sure not the eight they had been representing up until recently.”

“Until recently”? If by five years ago you mean “recently” then yes, Wesgroup has been saying that the first building will be eight storeys “recently”.

But no, you can’t say that you didn’t know that the first building was going to be at least 12 storeys when the information sessions in February 2010 showed models of at least 12 storeys. Or when a story in the New West News Leader in September 2010 said that “the building is still in the design development stage, but said it will likely be over 12 storeys high.” Or when Wesgroup staff came to your meeting in January 2014 to tell you that the residential buildings will be at least 12 storeys high.

“Eight [storeys] they had been representing”? Bullshit.