Quote:
Originally Posted by Traum
I'm curious to know what you find Vancouver City Hall has done that is far more accomplished than Burnaby City Hall.
The few things I can think of are:
- a far more extensive hospital network
- significantly better lit streets
- bike lanes!
On the other hand, Burnaby is significantly better at:
- managing the municipal finances
- a signficantly better municipal recreations program -- this is *HUGE* for parents!
- more efficient (building) permit process
- an infinitely more competent snow removal program
I am not too familiar with how Burnaby runs its public schools, but I can tell you that VSB absolutely suck donkey ballz. For quite some time, I have also been extremely disgusted by the woke CoV City Council. (Hopefully, Sim and his ABC folks will bring a much needed change in that regard.)
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There's a dark joke in some quarters of Burnaby that the only time Burnaby builds a crosswalk is when someone dies from getting hit by a car (Background:
https://www.burnabynow.com/opinion/o...hanges-4273700 and
https://www.burnabynow.com/local-new...irotto-3128208)
That joke has some truth to it though as the city also didn't roll out strong renter protections till a large series of protests and sit-ins happened about demovictions around Metrotown. The Mayor (and council) basically told the renters to "Go F*** Yourselves" and then the mayor was voted out which led to renter protections. The snow removal program also didn't improve till the Mayor was voted out - I wasn't here for it but I heard it wasn't great before.
The same goes for their approach to housing - don't get distracted by all the towers that are going up b/c the city has otherwise done jack shit in terms of providing more housing whether that's more duplexes or townhouses or social housing. They still don't have laneways approved and their legal suite policy only allows them if they're below ground (condemning the "poors" to living like dwarves). Despite a population density that's 40% of Vancouver's they only grew their population by 28% since 2001 versus Vancouver's 21% (Canada grew 22%) - they have so much room but could hardly care less about the housing crisis despite two major transit lines that run through the city.
Streetlights are garbage as you've noted - the standard for how far apart lights are in Burnaby is Vancouver's minimum standard and it's not considered a public safety problem, it's the responsibility of residents to gather signatures in support of adding a streetlight on their block and the residents have to pay for the light themselves (I would gladly pay 10x the cost out of my sense of civic duty). As a result you'll drive down a street where the lights come and go in really weird ways (see Burke between Boundary/Willingdon).
Sidewalks and crosswalks are equally bad - sidewalks often randomly end, don't exist when they should, or lack ramps for accessibility (wheelchair and strollers). Crosswalks require someone to die before they get built. Pedestrians are an afterthought in Burnaby - Vancouver may have a lot of bleeding hearts in city hall but the bleeding hearts do mean that nearly everyone in the city can get around. In Burnaby it's thoughts and prayers if you're in a wheelchair, have a stroller or have a mobility issue even in many busy areas.
All of these are fixable problems because Burnaby has a $2 BILLION reserve fund which represents 3 years of their annual budget - they could stop collecting fees for 3 years and still be totally debt free. Burnaby is quite proud of this reserve fund but it's also an embarrassment because it's not like the city has done a good job providing services and infrastructure - there are plenty of street lights, crosswalks, sidewalks, social housing, transit improvements etc that could be built with that money but the city prefers to brag about its great finances. Burnaby spends about $200m/yr on infrastructure so they could double the spend for 10 years and and likely could collect another $2B in fees to build up the fund.
At the end of the day Burnaby is still a good city but it got there not because of great management, it got there with uninspired, competent management and great circumstances (next to Vancouver!). I'd rank it in the top 5 of GVRD cities (Vancouver, North Van, New West, Burnaby, Coquitlam) but it should be clear #2 to Vancouver.
It's wasted opportunity - it has a major university, a great college, two major transit lines, a big highway, two accessible lakes, access to water etc and this is the best they can do?!?! WTF?
I have a lot of empathy for Vancouver City Hall - their job is way harder than Burnaby's or any other GVRD city. It's the densest city in Canada (pop >5,000), is our financial heart, and has a super diverse community (ethnicity and politics) that's quite outspoken so balancing all those needs is really hard. Burnaby could have ridden Vancouver's coattails all these years and also become a great city.