DEALS ON WHEELS
MORE METRO MADNESS: Municipal staff get half-price parking, managers get $972-a-month car allowance.
The cost of living in Metro Vancouver is an acute pain in the pocketbook, especially if you have to pay $150 a month just to park your car at work.
Imagine the frustration of knowing the guy parked in the next stall paid just half that price.
Garrick Jay is an Interfor sales manager who works at the Metrotown office complex in Burnaby.
Paying that $150 a month to park is painful enough. But the pain became agonizing when he heard municipal employees of Metro Vancouver pay just $75 a month to park in the same lot.
“I think the municipal government and their employees have lost touch with reality,” Jay told me. “And aren’t they supposed to be encouraging public transit and discouraging car use?”
Yes, indeed. In fact, Metro Vancouver is preparing to wallop Lower Mainland drivers with new “mobility pricing” tolls to pay for expanded transit service.
But even though the Metrotown SkyTrain station is right across the street from Metro’s municipal headquarters, their staff get halfprice parking!
Even worse: Metro Vancouver senior managers pocket $972 a month for an “automobile allowance.”
Talk about a prime case of, “Do as we say, not as we do.”
“Why should bureaucrats at Metro Vancouver get half-price parking when so many working people are paying full freight?” fumed Kris Sims of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
“Why do some of these people get nearly $1,000 per month for their vehicles, all while harping at the rest of us to ‘take transit’ all the time?
“This is perk parking.”
Metro Vancouver is the regional authority responsible for water, sewers, regional parks and housing. They are headquartered at Metrotower 3, a highrise building in the Metrotown Centre complex. Metro Vancouver bought the office tower three years ago for $205 million.
In an earlier column, I told you how the building is equipped with a new $1.5-million ocean-and-mountain-view cafeteria and a staff massage clinic.
The building comes with 784 parking stalls, 412 of which are for Metro Vancouver employees. The other 372 parking spaces are rented to outside tenants.
Metro Vancouver spokesperson Don Bradley confirmed Metro employees pay $75 a month to park, while Metro charges outside tenants between $100 and $150 a month to park.
Why do municipal employees pay less? “We inherited a lease when we bought the building and those were the parking rates already in place for tenants — they haven’t been changed,” he explained.
He said Metro Vancouver decided to charge their own employees just $75 to park because it was a “modest increase” over what employees were paying at their previous location.
As for that $972-a-month car allowance, Bradley said that is paid to 10 senior managers who put a lot of kilometres on the road.
“Their travel around the region is considerable,” he said.
The allowance is paid in a flat amount each month to the managers, who are not required to produce receipts for their actual automobile costs.
Sims said the lavish car allowance, and the half-price parking for employees, sends a bad message to the public.
“These are the same people trying to impose mobility pricing and congestion fees on people for daring to drive,” she said. “Shouldn’t they lead by example?”
Metro Vancouver’s non-union management staff, meanwhile, recently got a raise and benefit improvements.
The 501 “exempt employees” received annual raises of between 1.5 and two per cent and improvements to their extended-health and life-insurance plans, according to an internal memo.
New hires received an extra week of vacation time, the memo said.
“We need to remain competitive against other public-sector organizations in order to attract employees,” Bradley said.
But a public backlash against Metro Vancouver perks and benefits is forcing Metro politicians to do a re-think.
On April 27 — this Friday — Metro politicians will vote to “reconsider” a 15-per-cent pay raise and retroactive severance package they voted to give themselves just last month.
West Vancouver Mayor Michael Smith said he will be voting to scrap the entire package.
“I hope to reverse the ridiculous $500,000 retirement allowance scheme and the increased pay,” Smith said of the cash grab, which was approved by the Metro board while he was out of the country.
The Metro Vancouver board of directors is made up of mayors and councillors from around the region and Smith has emerged as the fiercest critic of its spending on perks and travel.
He said the half-price parking rates for Metro staff was not approved by the board, while the car allowance raises questions.
“The amount of the car allowance seems unnecessarily high considering the pay structure at Metro,” Smith said, adding he thinks the board’s spending habits need independent oversight.
“The board should do a serious examination of its policies — or lack thereof — on travel and suitable expenses and how they’re approved,” he said.
They could make a good start this Friday — by scrapping that outrageous pay-and-severance booty haul.