The Burnaby Green Party wants to end all taxpayer-funded trips by Burnaby councillors and staff outside Canada if they are elected in October.
The party says local politicians and civic employees don’t need to leave the country to learn from other municipal governments, and going abroad on political junkets is an unnecessary bill Burnaby taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot.
Green mayoral candidate Joe Keithley says it makes sense for the premier and prime minister to go abroad to encourage trade, but at the municipal level, it doesn’t.
“My contention with the council and mayor going, is perhaps they haven’t heard of Skype yet,” he told the NOW. “I don’t think it’s worth the money … I don’t see the value in it for one town to go and find out about another town. The knowledge is there online and can be passed electronically.”
Keithley says trips overseas to sister – such as the trip Mayor Derek Corrigan, Coun. Dan Johnston and other staff members took to South Korea in Feburary – are an “unnecessary perk.”
“Going on junkets is a sense of entitlement. Politicians should not be acting like elites; that’s what our local politicians in Burnaby are acting like.”
While there is some value in visiting and having partnerships with other cities – Burnaby has four sister cities and friendship agreements with several others – Keithley says the benefits don’t outweigh the costs.
“Having a sister city, in a sense, is a nice kind of gesture, but I don’t think it’s of that kind of relevance,” he said. “I also question how you pick out the sister city.”
But Coun. Paul McDonell, who has been on trips to Burnaby’s sister city in Mesa, Arizona, says the arrangements with sister cities is important for sharing cultural ideas.
“Part of the problem is when people look at this and think it’s just a vacation, but it’s not. It’s a working group that goes over,” he told the NOW. “It’s to build relationships between cities and exchange, and it gives an opportunity for business people here to focus on some cities in China (for example) they never had contact with, and visa versa.”
McDonell said sister cities – which include Kushiro (Japan), Mesa (Arizona), Hwaseong (Korea), Zhongshan City (China) – are chosen because they have similar industries and programs as Burnaby, such as those with strong technology and tourism economies.
The Greens are also proposing to freeze property taxes at 2017 levels, and to put a moratorium on demolitions in Metrotown.
“The big issue we are fighting here is affordability,” Keithley said.
McDonell says a promise to free tax rates is easy to make, but doesn’t make sense in office.
“That’s fine to say, but the only way they can do that is if they start spending the reserves, and reserves are set up to pay for things as they come due. If you freeze our taxes, that’s over half a billion dollars you’d have to find someplace else,” he said. “It’s a favourite topic of people who haven’t been in office …Our reserves are there for a reason … we put away money for (firetrucks and police vehicles etc.) because we know it’s coming up.”
The Burnaby Greens are having a town hall tomorrow (Wed. April 18) at 7 p.m. at the Burnaby Neighbourhood House (4460 Beresford St.) in Metrotown to discuss these issues.
