City's subsidized meals for poor being diverted to staff making five and six figure salaries

Today on CKNW, Mayor Gregor Robertson said that the City could not possibly find further places to make cuts in the budget as the City was already "goin' bare bones".

Bare bones?  City staff and management continue to fatten up on the heavily subsidized meals the City provides for them daily, even though they make five and six figure salaries.  These meals, meant for the poor, are a cut above a regular cafeteria food; they have a health food orientation.

Carnegie Centre provides these quality subsidized meals daily not only to it's own staff but to staff and managers from the surrounding poverty industry organizations on the Downtown Eastside.  And they provide similar, reportedly even higher quality, subsidized meals to staff and management at the Gathering Place, which is an organization downtown just off Granville St.  This City meal subsidy program provided as a staff and management perk has been going full tilt for decades.  Yet it was never been part of negotiated contracts.

Dan Tetrault, Carnegie's Assistant Director, is estimated to have received a minimum of $20,000 in meal subsidies over the two decades that he's worked at Carnegie -- that's a conservative estimate, based on him eating one subsidized lunch each work day.  Actually, people have seen him ordering up breakfasts, lunches, and dinners on a regular basis for years.  Tetrault is a CUPE member; we know that because he stood on the picket line during the last strike demanding more money and benefits.

These big earners pay no tax when they purchase these meals from Carnegie.  No HST.

For years Carnegie served a full dinner, your choice of meat or vegetarian, for $3.00 every evening at 5 o'clock, except for Saturdays when the meal was $2.00.  They also served a hearty lunch: an entre and a salad for $1.75.  Their salads are good, they have lots of greens in them; sometimes they have potato or beet salad as well.  And they served a daily breakfast for $1.75.  And for years you could get a healthy low-sugar snack for under a dollar: big date squares for eighty cents, muffins for 50 cents, fruit, yogurt, granola made in-house, etc.  They don't serve junk food, except for Blue Sky cola which is a little lower in sugar than regular colas.

Last year they raised the price of all meals by 25 cents at Carnegie.  The meals at the Gathering Place have always been a little more expensive than Carnegie; an evening meal there is $3.75.  They offer a similar range of healthy food as Carnegie.

A few years ago, a worker in the Carnegie cafeteria told me that they prepare 60 meals an evening and when they're gone, they're gone.  Last year, even more of those 60 meals went to yuppies.  The rock bottom prices at Carnegie were advertised in a two page spread about the Carnegie cafeteria in the Province newspaper.  It was like an infomercial, emphasizing the great service this cafeteria was performing by feeding the poor. According to one regular at Carnegie, the kitchen co-ordinator, Catriona Moore, didn’t want the prices published in the Province.  She was ignored.  The regular noticed a rush on “yuppies” after that.  “There are whole tables of them.”  

Whitty avoided mentioning that she helps herself to the meals on top of her over $100,000 salary -- she used to regularly show up for the Tuesday veggie burger with a choice of green or potato salad for $1.75 -- talked to the Province reporter about the helping hand the cafeteria gives to the poor, “They come, we accept them, we feed them.”  Too often she does not feed them.  The poor and homeless are routinely turned away at both Carnegie and the Gathering Place.  The working poor too -- people who get welfare but are allowed to earn a top up by doing odd jobs such as unloading trucks in Strathcona -- are often told the food is gone when they rush down to Carnegie after work.

A homeless guy was telling me the Sunday before last that he had arrived after 5 o’clock and the dinner at the Gathering Place was sold out.  He had been looking forward to the pork dinner “with those little potatoes”.  I asked him if the staff got their plates, and he said they had.

It's time for a two-tiered payment system at Carnegie and the Gathering Place.  People who aren't poor can pay double for a meal.  They will still be getting a bargain.  Try getting the hearty Carnegie lunch at a restaurant downtown for less than $10.  If unionized workers and management in the poverty industry paid more, they could help finance that cafeteria.

A two-tiered payment system would also ensure that the City is not draining customers from private sector  restaurants in the City.  Waves coffee shop next door to Carnegie looks like it's going bankrupt.  It's close to empty much of the time.  They've shrunk their hours.  At Waves, they charge $7 for a burrito or wrap, before tax.  And you don’t get a salad with it.  Waves also competes with the Carnegie coffee shop which sells fresh ground coffee for 60 cents per take-out cup.

Carnegie could model on Quest Food store for the poor just up the street on Hastings, which  requires proof that you are poor.  They make that proof easy to get.  They accept a form letter signed by any staffer at a Welfare office confirming that you qualify for food assistance -- these forms are apparently available from any  front desk receptionist.  Quest will also accept a letter from other organizations that cater to poor people.  They will even take a letter from a Minister.  When you give them your letter, they give you a card that you are expected to show each time you shop.  That system hasn’t stopped a couple of Carnegie workers, a security guard and a former teacher, from relentlessly sneaking in there for the rock bottom prices.  But overall the system seems to work; everybody I know who shops there is dirt poor.

Carnegie wouldn’t have to hire extra staff to issue these cards.  They already have front desk staff who give out membership cards as part of their job description.  They indicate on your membership card whether you are a Senior qualifying for extra services -- I think they put a stamp on the cards of Seniors -- so they could put a stamp on the cards of people who qualify for subsidized meals.  Or give them a card in a different colour.  On the "bare bones" City budget, incidentally, these front desk workers were built a brand new desk with a tall back, like a throne, after we referred on this blog to the “surfer boy” who sits at the front desk looking at the web.  It was built at a time when the City claimed to be looking for efficiencies to save money.

When Mayor Robertson commented today about the City of Vancouver operating on a "bare bones” budget, he was responding to BC Conservative leader John Cummins’ statement that the new gas tax could be avoided if municipalities cut 5% off their budgets and allocated that money to the Evergreen Line.  Robertson called Cummins “ignorant”.  But what Cummins said is not far removed from what the homeless man who missed out on the pork said: the City throws money at Carnegie Centre and the Gathering Place and they don’t seem interested in the fact that staff inside are helping themselves.

Don't Cut Cops on Street, Cut VPD Mega Media Relations Department, says Eby

The Vancouver Police have announced they will avoid filling 35 positions due to the City's budget shortfall. That will mean 35 fewer constables on the street and longer response times.

David Eby of the BC Civil Liberties Association says there is no need for cuts to result in fewer constables on the street. Eby told CBC Radio last week that the Vancouver Police Department could first look at cutting their Media Relations department which is bigger than that of the City of Vancouver. The VPD media relations department, Eby said, is twice the size of the public relations departments in other organizations their size. Eby also pointed out that the VPD has an executive with an average salary of $182,000, another place that could withstand cuts.

I would add one thing: the reason the VPD needs such a monstrous media relations department is that they promote officers to six figure executive positions despite records of unprofessional and/or criminal conduct, officers who are at risk of re-offending. Take Warren Lemcke. There is documented evidence linking Lemcke to a political psychiatry scam, involving fraud and later destruction of evidence. After the evidence surfaced, Lemcke was allowed to personally decide whether the investigation into himself would proceed. He decided to cancel it. He was then promoted twice, first to Inspector and then to Superintendent. He's now well ensconced in the VPD Six Figure Club. He's even paraded in front of media cameras as head of "Con Air".

It's this constant covering for cops with questionable records by the VPD that requires a mega 'spin' department.

CUPE Wants Your Last Cappuccino

For years, CUPE and Vancouver City managers at Carnegie Centre have functioned in synch, like one giant Leona Helmsley inflicting cruelty on "the little people". Now it looks as though Leona's got an auto-immune disorder.

Paul Faoro, head of CUPE Local 15 which represents inside City workers, was on CKNW radio yesterday accusing the City of being "over-managed". He wants to see the City cut the jobs of managers, not just unionized workers. Faoro was responding to what he called, "the $60 million question": Who will lose their jobs as the City faces a $60 million budget shortfall and Council is determined to avoid serious residential tax hikes. So far, all of the jobs Faoro has seen slated to be cut are those of unionized workers. Yet there is one manager for every nine unionized workers, he says. Faoro believes that the City intentionally hires excess managers, so that they can do the work when CUPE strikes.

I agree with Faoro. I've repeatedly stated on this blog that Carnegie Centre is grossly over-managed. When managers have time to roll back the right of a homeless man to sit as an elected official, or the right of a woman to ask a male supervisor his name when he has made a decision to ban her from the building for raising the issue of sexism, their ample idle time has become the devil's playground. Either Ethel Whitty or Dan Tetrault should go.

Behead Leona.

That's Faoro's second choice though. First, he is eying the little people who pay taxes. He wants them to swallow a residential tax hike of 5%. He argues that a study has shown that Vancouver residents want to keep services such as libraries and community centres, and are willing to pay for them. Unlike Faoro, I don't see it as either/or. Tax hikes aren't necessary to maintain City services at current levels, if the fat, the morbid obesity, is trimmed. Either Whitty or Tetrault, for starters.

Faoro argued that a 5% property tax hike would be $50 a year. He said it merely amounts to "a few less cappuccinos". That's one way of describing it. I've heard it described other ways. Death by a thousand cuts. Incrimentalism.

Attempting to create common ground with the radio audience, Faoro noted that he too is a homeowner, that if there were a 5% residential tax hike, he too would feel it. He doesn't mention that it would feel good at his house: with the union dues flowing, he would get his usual raise, his usual hike in take-home pay. He could buy a round of cappuccinos at Waves coffee shop on Pender St., where CUPE members from Carnegie grab them between human rights abuses.

I almost got taken in during Faoro's bonding moment, but I know too much. I covered the story of the non-union secretaries hired by CUPE Local 116 to staff their executive offices. I learned how those secretaries had been fired, one after the other for daring to speak up about the fact that they were being run into the ground with overwork. One took CUPE to court when they allegedly reneged on promise to give her a pension. When the only one who hadn't been fired spoke up in support of the others, CUPE arranged for police officers who didn't even have jurisdiction at Local 116 to do them a favour. That favour was to visit the secretary at her home and warn her that CUPE wanted her to just shut up.

Faoro knows about those brass knuckles tactics but he's never taken a stand, even though he has the ear of CUPE boss Barry O'Neill. Faoro attends CUPE conventions and when O'Neill --- who he is reportedly angling to replace -- and the other union brass set the agenda, the secretaries are never on it.

One of those secretaries owns a house in Vancouver. Imagine that, paying a mortgage on a non-union wage while being run into the ground with overwork. When Faoro asks her to turn over her last cappuccino, I can just hear her:

"From my cold, dead, hands."

Residential Tax Increase of 11% Predicted by City Manager: Is Penny Wise or Pound Foolish?

Penny Ballem, Vancouver City manager, sent an email to all staff late Friday afternoon announcing that there was now a freeze on hiring for all staff positions.

Ballem explained that City revenues over the past several months have been far lower than predicted due to a decline in development.  If this situation continues, according to Ballem, taxpayers will be hit with at least an 11 % property tax increase.  At least.  

Ballem was instructed by Council a couple of weeks ago -- when residential taxpayers were bracing for a mere 6-8% increase -- to look closely at all City departments and agencies and cut the fat. 

Vision Councilor Raymond Louie expressed concern last week, according to 24 Hr. newspaper, that the residential tax increase could result in less support amongst taxpayers for services. 

Services?  

Too much of what the tax payer is funding are 'disservices', projects that disempower people:  like CUPE members writing security reports about non-violent people at Carnegie, then passing them on to clerical staff paid twenty-something dollars an hour to type them in to the City's "Security" database, and then arranging follow-up meetings between Security boss Skip Everall, Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty and Assistant Director Dan Tetrault -- meetings which sometimes include the targeted individual, sometimes not -- and those meetings breed further follow up meetings.  Multiply this by hundreds of people a year. And then add on the hours staff spend discussing who is suspected of blogging about these security abuses, and then add on the hours it takes to constantly brief staff -- even the librarian in the VPL "reading room" that doesn't need a librarian -- about who is suspected of squealing to Joe taxpayer via blogs.  And factor in that much of this "security" work is overseen by Skip Everall, a man who shows up to work wearing Bermuda shorts through cold snaps and snow falls.  Do you feel secure?

These and other make-work projects for CUPE members at Carnegie continue while the soup bowls in the cafeteria are no longer filled to anywhere near the brim.  And people buying dinners keep asking, "Who shrunk the portions?" 

  

None of this is likely to change. CUPE brought Vision to power and Vision brought Penny Bellam to power, and they, like Mulroney, know that, 'You dance with the lady what brung ya'.  

So the tax increase will be 11%.  At least.