North Shore News
District of North Vancouver Mayor Mike Little has asked that taxpayers from around the Metro Vancouver region share in paying for skyrocketing costs for the new North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant, saying the $2.8 billion increase is too much for North Shore taxpayers to bear by themselves.
Little made the appeal to his Metro colleagues at a special budget workshop Wednesday, arguing that the North Shore was not responsible for the dramatic cost increases for the project and had no control over those. The problem-plagued project now comes with a projected cost of $3.86 billion, a huge increase over the last budget projection of $1.058 billion in 2021. …
Both Coquitlam Mayor Richard Stewart and Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie said their communities have had to shoulder large infrastructure bills in the past, in part because North Shore municipalities and the City of Vancouver voted against regional cost sharing 30 years ago.
“This issue hasn’t been fairly addressed historically,” said Stewart.
“If it’s not fair now it wasn’t fair then, and accommodation has to be made as far as I’m concerned,” added Brodie. …