Homeowners are now paying city utilities bills due March 15. Renters are paying too, indirectly. We all pay city utilities and taxes, so let’s drop Mayor Derek Corrigan’s tacky tactic of stoking division between house owners and everyone else.
Burnaby First Coalition (BFC) is the municipal party uniting the growing, diverse opposition to one-party rule by the NDP-based Burnaby Citizens’ Association (BCA). BFC seeks fairness, but observes that once again, utility fees are up while related services are down.
First, many homeowners were angry when they received letters about the suite cash grab: the 50 per cent add-on in utility fees for homes assumed to with a “suite.” This means an increase of $304.30 to be paid, regardless of suite size and even if it is not rented. B.C. Assessment checks for suites in part by looking at rental ads and then passes the info on to Burnaby.
Under-occupied houses exacerbate urban sprawl and inflate housing costs. So why not encourage efficient use of existing housing by encouraging suites?
This would help address the problems of under-occupied houses and the shortage of affordable housing. The fact is that houses are bigger but families are smaller than in the past. Plus, we have “empty nesters.” This means there are thousands of under-occupied houses.
The city’s website says the cash grab is needed “to cover the costs associated with additional water and sewer services for suites.” But people do not produce “extra” garbage or use “extra” water because they are not members of the house owner’s family.
So why does council want to charge more for garbage and water in houses with suites? The mayor could well argue that sharing living space rather than building new buildings reduces the profits of the development, real estate and construction sectors. In short, it could reduce profits for BCA donors and buddies. But council ought to put the interest of residents first.
Moreover, we encourage seniors to stay in their own homes because folks are healthier and happier, and this lowers public costs of special housing. Suites for caregivers can make this possible. Punishing them financially is not fair.
And while fees are up, utility services are also down. Take yard waste. Recall that Burnaby is supposed to be “green.” Plants are green. Yard waste is produced by plants that absorb carbon, release oxygen,
provide homes for birds, beautify our neighbourhoods, clean the air, control rain water run-off and flooding, and – if edible – enhance local food security. These are all goals of council.
But for the past few years the yard waste pickup has been drastically cut. We used to have seasonal weekly pickup of all the yard waste that gardeners could bundle up and put out. Now we are restricting pickup to one official container per week, every week. And even that one container is often not picked up. Weekly pickup means we get yard waste removal in mid-winter when there’s no yard waste. But anyone who has trees and shrubs to prune, or grape vines and bean stalks to cut down will have far more than one container full seasonally, not every week. So gardeners spend a lot of unpaid time chopping branches into tiny pieces and stomping on the container to compress the load, while piles of uncollected yard waste remains for weeks and months.
Lastly, in April we will have garbage pick-up reduced to once every two weeks. This may be smart from an environmental and efficiency points of view, but shouldn’t reduced service result in lower fees? Oh, and there’s an annual surtax of up to $360 for the garbage container.
BFC would review utilities to ensure fees and services are necessary and fair.
J. Colin, David Field, Charter Lau, Heather Leung and Helen Ward represent Burnaby First Coalition and friends.