Panorama

My name is Steve Wansleeben and I am starting my campaign for election towards being chosen as your Vancouver city councillor on November 15 2008.

During the last 23 years I have been working in the field of credit and collections as a third party collection agent and credit and collection management in both the retail and commercial sectors. I negotiate and mediate daily to try and resolve financial collection problems and disputes. If that fails I have to administer and manouevre through the legal system to obtain a positive resolution for my clients.

This experience, I believe, is partially why I am qualified to take on the challenges of helping to administer and develop this city we all love.

I ran for mayor in 1996 along with another 50 plus people. I received 14 votes.

I thought about running for Council in 2002. I decided against it but I did create a personal webpage to share my thoughts of the time which is still available at the following Shaw website page: Vancouver Votes 2002 Campaign Ideas

In 2005 I campaigned for a seat on Vancouver City Council. I received 2478 votes and wrote about my campaign here under the category link: Vancouver 2005 Election

Since our last election in 2005, plans for Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympics have developed almost to the point of completion, residential property owners have seen their property taxes go down, our police force has grown stronger, the Granville Entertainment District is becoming a bit more diversified and business is finally starting to invest in business again in the downtown peninsula.

Times have not been all rosy however. Despite some successes of the Vancouver Agreement of 2000 and attempts at social engineering from 2002 to 2005 and the introduction of a new social/business financing scheme introduced in 2005 called BOB, the problems of the Downtown Eastside haven’t changed much.

In addition small business property owners still pay more than their fair share in city property taxes, Vancouver’s liquor service by-laws are still cumbersome, unfair and confusing and there is still a huge divide and misunderstanding between residents and the city about what goes on and why at city hall and about the decisions that come from it.

Some members of Vancouver City Council have spent the last three years not trying to solve problems but rather simply yelling at other councillors that Vancouver’s problems are the other person’s fault and treating council meetings like Question Period. In fact, some councillors think that Vancouver has the same power and money as the provincial government and they neglect to think about local solutions to local problems.

So to start my campaign I’d like to propose a local solution to a local problem:

Residents who rent in our city have been facing major problems these last few years with being able to afford unprecedented rent increases and so called rental improvement evictions and increases. Some have been forced to leave the city to find affordable housing elsewhere.

Since 2002 the residential property tax rate has declined every year. Apartment owners paid less in property taxes this year than they did in 2007. Yet apartment owners were allowed to raise rents by up to 3.7 percent in 2008. For 2009 they will be allowed to raise rents again by up to 3.7 percent. In 2007 the allowable rent increase was up to 4 percent and so it has been since the province allowed apartment owners to raise rents uncontested a few years ago.

The province grants guaranteed rent increases to apartment owners even though the costs of being a landlord continue to decline.

Being a landlord should be a major responsibility and Vancouver has a duty to protect its renters and ensure that our city is affordable. In order to do that effectively I want to see the city’s annual business license fee that it charges for each apartment unit increase, and that increase then returned to renters at the end of each year to help compensate for the cost of making Vancouver home. Obviously the increase in the license fee would also have to be enough to cover the expense of mailing cheques to residents and be enough to ensure that the city is able to administer its tough rental housing by-laws on a regular basis throughout Vancouver.

Its a small step but atleast its a step that Vancouver can take.

More steps to come.