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It's crazy, I would never have suspected that a city where 50% of its residents are perpetually $150 away from insolvency would be at risk of going into mass default.
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Apr 13, 2020 06:07
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I don’t even understand what he is saying here. Does he know that the city has recourse when property owners don’t pay property taxes? How does he think property taxes even work
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Apr 13, 2020 16:32
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Throatwarbler posted:I don’t even understand what he is saying here. Does he know that the city has recourse when property owners don’t pay property taxes? How does he think property taxes even work What recourse?
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Apr 13, 2020 17:09
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That is outstanding.
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Apr 13, 2020 17:15
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Throatwarbler posted:I don’t even understand what he is saying here. Does he know that the city has recourse when property owners don’t pay property taxes? How does he think property taxes even work From what I read there the city is risking insolvency because of cash flow, not assets. Basically bills are coming due and if people don’t pay their property taxes they can’t pay the bills. They can recover the money eventually through liens, but can’t pay their bills up front. Illiquid might be a better description.
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Apr 13, 2020 17:24
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qhat posted:What recourse? Place a tax lien on and then foreclose on the property? It’s in the name. Like did you think if you just decided to stop paying property taxes the municipal government will just go welp we tried our best the cops aren’t getting paid this month?
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Apr 13, 2020 17:25
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Mandibular Fiasco posted:That is outstanding. One of the replies is  quote:If the City of Vancouver can't afford to live here, maybe it should move.
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Apr 13, 2020 17:26
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Throatwarbler posted:Place a tax lien on and then foreclose on the property? It’s in the name. I think the point is that it's not just one or two owners who are going to default, it's potentially up to 50% of them. Foreclosing to that extent that quickly would require essentially a fire sale of property that will sell for extreme discounts. So not only have you kicked your voters onto the street, but you also now have a bunch of assets on your balance sheet that you can't get rid of (so your cash flow problem has not been solved anyway).
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Apr 13, 2020 17:34
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qhat posted:Foreclosing to that extent that quickly would require essentially a fire sale of property that will sell for extreme discounts. At least it would dispel the notion that all of the baby boomers can put their properties on the market at the same time and not take a penny less than they think their houses are worth.
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Apr 13, 2020 17:37
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That is true and nothing could make me happier than seeing such stupid assumptions being proved catastrophically wrong. That being said, you can see why the mayor maybe doesn't want to do that.
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Apr 13, 2020 17:39
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Why get rid of them? Vancouver could finally have an abundant supply of rental housing.
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Apr 13, 2020 17:40
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Properties which go to tax auction start the bidding at the owed tax value. I see absolutely nothing wrong with selling vast swathes of the city at this discount, gently caress the gentry. Should have made better financial decisions and pulled up their bootstraps!
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Apr 13, 2020 17:42
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Anyway you need 3 years of tax in lien before your property goes to auction. The problem is that Vancouver today has no cash to pay people.
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Apr 13, 2020 17:46
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https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/1249744854998867968 awwww fuckkkkkk
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Apr 13, 2020 18:04
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The province will bridge the funding, and the municipal "bonds" attached to property tax arrears will probably be paying a decent return.qhat posted:So not only have you kicked your voters onto the street Debatable.
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Apr 13, 2020 21:33
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Yeah I was going to say, just start selling bundles of securitized tax obligations. Voters, well the new owners of those houses vote too don't they?
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Apr 13, 2020 21:41
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Seriously though, what should CoV do? I have a few ideas: - Staff the fire department at a level appropriate for fire response, and not the 90% of the work done as medical first responders. It's totally voluntary to participate in the program, and participating stops the province from adequately funding paramedic services appropriately. While you're at it, slash their pay, too. It's insane to me that engineers with professional designations and multiple degrees make very little more than a fire fighter with a three-month fire academy course and a couple of weeks of first responder training. - Cut the communications department by a crazy amount. They have ~50 people in there if Twitter is any indication. That seems excessive for a city of Vancouver's size (maybe all of Metro Vancouver). - Ditch the property tax deferral system. I don't know if this actually affects revenue, but it's costing something and is another sop to old homeowners who should be able to afford to live in their houses. What do you say, thread? What thing should they do that they won't?
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Apr 13, 2020 22:02
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Mandibular Fiasco posted:Seriously though, what should CoV do? I have a few ideas: Yeah the deficit they're talking about is like 50% of the operating budget, depending on how things all play out. These things you're listing account for maybe 1% of the budget each. I've no idea about the fire department, although I would point out that the middle of a pandemic seems like a bad time to be restructuring first response mechanisms. For the communications department, aren't those are people who staff the 311 line? That's pretty essential during good times and critical to have during a pandemic. For the property tax deferral system, are you maybe getting mixed up with the provincial school tax? Running a city costs money, and just cutting 50% out of the budget does not seem likely to be feasible. Crow Buddy posted:The province will bridge the funding, and the municipal "bonds" attached to property tax arrears will probably be paying a decent return. Yeah this -- City of Vancouver accounts for a quarter of the province's population. If it were a BC Liberal government I might not trust them to help out, because their whole platform is gently caress the cities, but I'd expect bridge funding. And yeah on the "debatable". What's the proportion of households in Vancouver who own the property? 35%? And if half of them default and you kick them out, that's still a lot of people, but it's less than a quarter of the electorate.
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Apr 13, 2020 22:35
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Mandibular Fiasco posted:Seriously though, what should CoV do? I have a few ideas: I read elsewhere that the property tax deferral thing comes from the province anyway (ie. the province pays the deferred tax to the cities) so that doesn't help. Communications staff levels is a common complaint from NPA George Affleck and others and on the surface it seems like a fair criticism (ties into the criticism of Vision Vancouver politicizing the city bureaucracy) but these vaguely described 'communications staff' are the persons that are hosting rezoning open houses and other urban planning project consultations things. So if the city is to cut communications staff this means a weaker ability to do public consultation and/or development in general. Seems counter productive at a time where vacancy is very low and people are demanding more development of housing. I don't really have any good ideas myself. Considering that the health crisis means community centres and parks have been under used, the city could look at punting any and all forward looking spending on those areas.
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Apr 14, 2020 00:03
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Mandibular Fiasco posted:While you're at it, slash their pay, too. It's insane to me that engineers with professional designations and multiple degrees make very little more than a fire fighter with a three-month fire academy course and a couple of weeks of first responder training. They are literally putting their lives on the line to save said engineer from a loving fire. Come on. Ambulance isn't paid enough for what they do, either.
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Apr 14, 2020 00:14
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less than three posted:They are literally putting their lives on the line to save said engineer from a loving fire. Come on. Did some estimates once, figured the average urban firefighter spent one day a year fighting fires. Should be reproducible, haven't asked real firefighters to confirm because I don't want the "first responders!" speech.
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Apr 14, 2020 00:39
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The VPD budget has doubled in ten years with little to show for it, could probably trim some fat there.
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Apr 14, 2020 00:40
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Rime posted:The VPD budget has doubled in ten years with little to show for it, could probably trim some fat there. Could probably just roll them up into the RCMP and save a lot on management costs. (I don’t actually know much about it, I’m just trolling Surrey)
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Apr 14, 2020 00:57
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The last time governments tried austerity was in 2008 and can any of you really say that it worked? ACAB and all but I don't think laying off a bunch of unionized first responders who make 6 figure government salaries is really going to stimulate consumer demand. Also, why are you all so afraid of having the province and feds fund municipal governments?
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Apr 14, 2020 02:11
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Rime posted:The VPD budget has doubled in ten years with little to show for it, could probably trim some fat there. I mean, what's the correlation there to the reduction in the provincial mental health services budget over the period?
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Apr 14, 2020 03:05
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these fat cats in the fire hall have had it too good for too long
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Apr 14, 2020 04:20
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Sassafras posted:Did some estimates once, figured the average urban firefighter spent one day a year fighting fires. it 👏 doesn't 👏 matter 👏how 👏many 👏fires 👏they're 👏there 👏for 👏a 👏reason They're dealing with overdoses and other stuff in the meantime.
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Apr 14, 2020 05:55
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Lol are people really arguing for cutting the emergency services in an actual time of emergency? You could hardly make this up.
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Apr 14, 2020 06:01
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You know I figured if there are only really 12 fires a day in Vancouver, we should hire no more than three people for the whole of the city. They can work in shifts, one on one off, and then on average they will be putting out a fire every 2 hours. This makes sense in my weird computer brain.
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Apr 14, 2020 06:03
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Apr 14, 2020 06:11
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half cocaine posted:Also, why are you all so afraid of having the province and feds fund municipal governments? Not sure how it works in Canada, but state/fed funding like that always, always comes attached with the most vile, conservative strings imaginable.
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Apr 14, 2020 06:17
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Also I'm pretty sure it's the same in most places outside of Canada. Back home in the UK acquiring money from the government is such a PITA that local councils at the end of the year will deliberately spend all of the budget they have left on digging up roads that don't need digging up just so they can maintain, at a minimum, the same level of funding. If they come back at the end of the year with a surplus, the govt cuts their allocation.
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Apr 14, 2020 06:20
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Best way for CoV to save money is to finally adopt blanket rezoning along acceptable paramaters to reduce paperwork, especially in niche areas like liquor and weed licenses that take up an insane amount of resources. All of that comms staff overhead is only "necessary" if you are doing dumb public input sessions for every single loving thing. If we're really in lean times, that level of fussiness is not necessary.
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Apr 14, 2020 06:22
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Franks Happy Place posted:Best way for CoV to save money is to finally adopt blanket rezoning along acceptable paramaters to reduce paperwork, especially in niche areas like liquor and weed licenses that take up an insane amount of resources. Blanket zone everything touching a bus route or SkyTrain station for at least 6 storey apartments, counter the NIMBY crying by saying these are desperate times.
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Apr 14, 2020 06:42
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Franks Happy Place posted:Best way for CoV to save money is to finally adopt blanket rezoning along acceptable paramaters to reduce paperwork, especially in niche areas like liquor and weed licenses that take up an insane amount of resources. https://app.vancouver.ca/QFOrgChart_net/orgchart.cshtml there's 41 people in the Comms department, there's a lot of chaff to cut I'm sure. My feeling is there's bloat there in the bureaucracy of CoV, but that doesn't make it easy to identify how to tighten up processes.
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Apr 14, 2020 15:55
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less than three posted:Blanket zone everything touching a bus route or SkyTrain station for at least 6 storey apartments, counter the NIMBY crying by saying these are desperate times. Remarkably given their reputation as a bunch of do nothing nimbys, CoV council actually already did this in November. quote:Vancouver city council approves new zoning policies allowing up to 6-storey rentals Funniest thing about this was the cool reaction from developers on twitter. Richard Wittstock hand waving away the whole thing and saying that actually four floor apartments are fundamentally unviable. Wait a minute though, the entire branding of Abundant Housing Vancouver and its vaguely adjacent YES Vancouver political party was fighting for the reasonable compromise of "four floors and corner stores." I guess that was just a sham...?? Femtosecond fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Apr 14, 2020 |
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Apr 14, 2020 16:24
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Makeout Patrol posted:these fat cats in the fire hall have had it too good for too long I dunno man, nobody's wrote a 'gently caress the Fire Fighters' anthem yet.
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Apr 14, 2020 16:46
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Skizzzer posted:https://app.vancouver.ca/QFOrgChart_net/orgchart.cshtml Wow you must be every conservative voter ever. My feeling is government is not efficient but I don't know how.....
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Apr 14, 2020 19:22
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Sounds like more "questioning total headcount is tantamount to asking for a 99.9% reduction in staffing" talk to me!
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Apr 14, 2020 19:27
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apatheticman posted:Wow you must be every conservative voter ever. no dude, i have spent my career thus far in government and i consistently vote green/ndp. i am in favour of big government generally, but there's a lot about CoV that I question and i don't see how that makes me what you say i am. edit: like my org receives billions of funding and we are heavily involved with the COVID-19 response (healthcare) which obviously involves a ton of messaging right now and our Comms department is i don't even think a quarter of that size. their salaries are probably less too because unlike CoV our wages are frozen (that might've changed recently, not sure). Skizzzer fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Apr 14, 2020 |
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Apr 14, 2020 20:22
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