TransLink meeting considers new transit tax

The board of the Greater Vancouver transit authority met behind closed doors Friday to decide how to divide $18 million in new taxes between businesses and homeowners.

The board was left with the a budget shortfall in November after the provincial government cancelled a two-year-old TransLink tax on the parking spots of business and shops in the Metro Vancouver area.

Now TransLink has to decide whether to offset the funding gap with a new tax on businesses, residences or both.

In the first regularly scheduled meeting of the newly appointed TransLink board on Friday, members had a number of other decisions to make, including whether or not to:

• Approve an undisclosed amount of funding for a major expansion of the transit fleet.
• Spend $27 million on a new bus maintenance and training centre in Maple Ridge.
• Set aside $6.8 million to replace 14 trolley buses with diesel electric hybrid buses.

The agenda for Friday's meeting says the funding assigned for the fleet expansion is needed to pay for 14 SkyTrain vehicles, 72 diesel-electric hybrid buses and 20 trolley buses.

As taxpayers will foot the bill, the transit authority has been criticized for holding its meetings behind closed doors.

On Friday, chairman Dale Parker had to defend the closed door policy yet again when a number of delegations showed up to complain that people who wanted to express their views were only given 24 hours notice.

A member of one delegation said he needed to file an access to information request just to obtain the agenda for the TransLink meeting.

When he finally received the agenda, James Steidle said, a substantial portion of it had been blacked out.

When asked to respond to these concerns, Parker told reporters that he thought Friday's meeting had been well publicized.

"We've certainly had discussion on it and if we haven't done it well enough, we'll correct that.''