Progress on establishing a regional fuel tax to support transit has stalled.
City of Powell River Mayor Stewart Alsgard and Chief Administrative Officer Stan Westby met with provincial officials in Victoria recently about the initiative. Alsgard had promoted the idea as a way to expand transit, both in the city and in rural areas outside the city’s boundaries.
The city receives about 47 per cent of the operating cost for the transit system from BC Transit.
Alsgard reported that other local governments had picked up on the concept and the provincial government had received requests from other areas of the province. “While we had high hopes for initially something coming through that would go well for us, and while yes, it’s possible to have it, it doesn’t quite work the way that I had hoped it would,” he said.
The province would reduce the funding from BC Transit if the city brought in a fuel tax, Alsgard said. He pointed to Victoria, which has a 3.5 cent tax to run its transit system, but it doesn’t receive 47 per cent funding from BC Transit. “What happened to them was that their grant was cut back to bring them up to the level that this fuel tax might yield,” he said. “My plan was to make sure that their 47 per cent would stay put and that the fuel tax would be on top of that.”
Alsgard and Westby also learned it would take a long time to go through the process to establish the tax.
