Metro Vancouver Regional District to look for cost efficiencies | Daily Hive

Headquarters office of Metro Vancouver Regional District at Metropolis at Metrotown mall. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

With its finances now increasingly under public scrutiny, Metro Vancouver Regional District announced today it will undergo a review of its services to identify potential additional cost efficiencies and savings.

According to a release today, this work will be conducted in January 2025 as part of its budgeting and strategic planning process.

This follows the regional district’s board of directors’ approval of a member motion from board chair and Burnaby mayor Mike Hurley directing the regional district staff to report back in early 2025 on potential operational cost savings by department. This review will help make decisions for the 2026 budget and the next five-year financial plan.

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Also, a governance review of how Metro Vancouver’s regional government operates is underway, including how the board — comprised of the region’s municipally-elected mayors and city councillors — makes decisions and receives and shares information, and the possibility of recommending provincial legislation changes to improve efficiencies.

“We know that affordability is the top concern of residents in this region, and cost efficiency is my most important priority as Chair,” said Hurley in a statement today.

“While we must ensure Metro Vancouver infrastructure and services are meeting the needs of our rapidly growing population, we also want to take the time to evaluate the work and ensure that we’re meeting our mandate while respecting the interests of our ratepayers.”

This closer examination of the regional government stems from the controversy over the ballooning costs and extensive delays in completing the partly built new North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant. The estimated cost has risen from $700 million before the pandemic under the original contractor to $3.86 billion under a new team of contractors. These extra costs are reflected in the steep increases to the annual sewage connection fees paid by the region’s residents and businesses.

An independent review of this sewage treatment plant project is underway.

There is also some concern about the $9.9 billion cost of the new Iona Wastewater Treatment Plant near Vancouver International Airport, which serves the Vancouver and Richmond sewerage catchment areas. This includes a multi-billion dollar contingency fund.

In October 2023, the regional district came under fire for creating new development cost charges on new residential and non-residential buildings to raise much-needed revenue to help cover the growing costs of its sewerage treatment plant and water supply infrastructure projects. These new fees add up to tens of thousands of dollars in costs to build each new home.

The regional district has $30 billion worth of capital projects over the coming decades.

And more recently, there has been some criticism with regards to the travel expenses of the regional district’s board directors and staff.

“Metro Vancouver’s services are foundational to quality of life in this region,” continued Hurley. “We will continue to meet our responsibility to protect human and environmental health through our various roles — as a regional district, as a water, sewerage, and solid waste utility, and as one of the largest providers of non-market rental housing in BC — and we’ll meet it with careful consideration of how we budget and spend.”

For 2025, the regional district will have a combined budget of $3.2 billion, including $1.464 billion for operating costs and $1.768 billion for capital project costs. The 2025 operating budget is more than double the 2015 operating budget of $657 million. In 2020, the operating budget was $1.02 billion.

According to the regional district, in 2025, residents will pay an average of $875 annually per household for the services provided by the regional government, including average annual costs of $510 for sewerage/liquid waste, $200 for drinking water supply connections, $71 for solid waste/landfill, $63 for regional parks, $7 million for air quality initiatives, $4 for regional planning, and $20 for various other regional district services.

In November 2024, the regional district also began construction on a $495 million new replacement and seismic-safe water supply tunnel beneath Stanley Park, which critically feeds drinking water from the North Shore reservoirs to the Vancouver and Richmond catchment areas.

In comparison, in 2025, Metro Vancouver public transit authority TransLink will have an annual operating budget of $2.5 billion, while the City of Vancouver will have an annual operating budget of nearly $2.4 billion. The operating budgets of both the public transit authority and Vancouver’s municipal government has also increased considerably in recent years.

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