No document more clearly states an organization’s political intentions than its budget. That is certainly the case with the “2014 Budget outlook” presented to Vancouver city council this week. We will get the final version with more detailed numbers in December.
But what we have in this 30-odd page document is a statement of the ruling party’s strategic goals, its underlying values and the politically motivated behaviour that all that supports. It’s all expressed in numbers and wrapped in commentary.
This is where the ruling party puts its money where its mouth is, which the document states this way: “The purpose of the city’s budget is to allocate resources to enable achievement of Council’s goals.”
In it we can find what Mayor Gregor Robertson and Vision see as risks they face and what they see as opportunities to aggressively exploit.
We see the direction they hope to go in and what they want to remind you are their accomplishments.
We can understand better who or what they will favour and have favoured — cyclists, things green and housing the homeless — and, at least by implication, what they have chosen to ignore—cars and drivers.
And this budget, as it becomes more detailed over the next few months, is of most importance because, while the election is more than a year away, this is the last budget before we head to the polls. Consider it notes for the campaign trail.
(It is a peculiarity of the B.C. political calendar that determines municipalities have November elections and December year–ends and, because one council cannot bind another, in election years a new budget does not get fully formed until after the new council is sworn in.)
So what you see is what you get. And what you see, not coincidentally, is a document that is remarkably accessible. Dare I say, even “engaging?”
While that is not new, it exceeds past documents for its simplicity, its clarity of text and user-friendly graphics.
Give it a read. You will find none of the thickets of jargon or cesspools of acronyms that plague more conventional financial reports.
But let’s start out with the subject that is most often cited in news reports: increased property taxes. This is clearly an area of political risk, particularly when the commentary points out that household income in Vancouver has not kept pace with inflation.
That is why staff is decidedly vague, saying the increase in property tax will be “aligned” with the rate of inflation, giving their political masters room to decide how much risk they want to take.
And just in case Vision’s business buddies get fidgety, the document reminds them of a past favour. The property tax shift from commercial to residential that carried on partly during their watch and ended in 2012; now business picked up 46 per cent of the tab compared with the 1980s when they paid 60 per cent.
No actions caused the city’s civil service a case of the jitters or captured the public’s attention in the early days of this administration more than Vision’s aggressive centralization of power all in the name of increased productivity while shedding jobs along the way. In an organization where 55 per cent of revenues go to wages and benefits they want you to know that this exercise — still in progress — has proven to be a success. It has reduced the number of “active regular full-time staff back below the 2008 year-end level.”
And a kick at the previous Sam Sullivan/NPA administration with the observation that wage settlements under Vision have been much lower than “they have been in the past.”
But life, it appears, frequently begins with Robertson’s ascendency. There are a number of references to the last four years and the strides made as a result of the Greenest City Action Plan among other initiatives. Although there is some notice of trends that cover the past decade most of the commentary focuses on Vision’s time at the helm from cultural investments to social enterprise successes.
You could say these details are not strictly speaking budget stuff, but then budgets are political documents designed to put those they serve in the best light. And this certainly does that.
