The website design might be new, but the feature is a classic: it’s time for another Monday Morning Quarterback – five things the B.C. office is pondering this week.

1. Jon Ferry makes the point in this morning’s Province that regional politicians have got to quit thinking about megaprojects – taxpayers just can’t afford them. From his column:

The bottom line now is we’re living in an age of austerity, and there’s only so much money to go around. And taxpayers don’t care whether it’s municipal, regional, provincial or federal bureaucracies trying to extract it from them. They just want them all to stop.

So, instead of hyping such unaffordable megaprojects as the $2.5-billion-and-counting Broadway SkyTrain Line, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and his ilk must ditch their caviar transit schemes and dreams ... and their juicy metro committee attendance fees.

Hear, hear, Jon! This piece builds on an op/ed I wrote late last year:

Regional politicians seem more concerned than ever with looking green – all while sucking more green out of taxpayers’ pockets.

Whether it is the $783 million sewage treatment plant in Greater Victoria, the $450 million waste incinerator in Metro Vancouver or the $3 billion subway line to Vancouver’s University of British Columbia campus, these projects are nowhere near as environmentally green as politicians claim them to be.

2. My op/ed touched on the Metro Vancouver waste-to-energy garbage incinerator, which the Fraser Valley Regional District has said could be worse for the airshed than the infamous Sumas Energy 2 proposal.

The FVRD is still fighting to be heard on this:

[Patricia] Ross feels the incinerator would be even more destructive to the air shed than the proposed Sumas Energy 2 (SE2), an American project that would have built a polluting power plant near the border. The plan was defeated after a large public outcry, which drew politicians and thousands of citizens into a six-year battle to stop the project.

"This is going to emit far worse toxins that SE2 ever would have."

Ross said Metro Vancouver has been dismissive of the uniqueness of the Fraser Valley's air shed since the WTE project was proposed, though they had previously backed its need for protection during the SE2 issue.

"It seems that ever since they decided to burn garbage they've done a bit of a one-eighty."

3. Vancouver City Hall continues to try and save its preposterous bike rental boondoggle, this time paying $50,000 for a helmet vending machine (Sun). Anything to push your plan to spend $1.9 million a year to put private bike rental companies out of business, right, Vision Vancouver? Of course, nothing any helmet-law jurisdiction has done, anywhere in the world, has saved a bike rental service from fiscal disaster, but Vancouver forges ahead, convinced it can buck the trend.

4. Paul Willcocks recently looked at whether MLAs receive too much in taxpayer-funded housing allowances, given the fact 18 of 85 have bought second homes in Victoria. From his piece:

And it provides generous housing allowances. MLAs can rent, and claim up to $19,000 a year in expenses with receipts. Or they can claim $12,000 a year and not have to provide any receipts.

And they can also claim taxpayers’ funds to support the purchase of a second home in the capital, based on the same approach. With receipts, they can get up to $19,000 a year for “property taxes, strata fees, if any, insurance, basic telephone and Internet service, parking and furniture rental.”

Or they can just claim $12,000 a year with no receipts. (It’s notable that MLAs believe they need up to $19,000 for a second home, but single parent with two children on disability assistances is allowed less than $8,000. Their children must not need housing up to MLA standards.)

Given the fact that the Legislature has sat so infrequently over the past few years, it’s hard to support such a generous allowance.

5. Don’t forget to check out my op/ed on the Danish fat tax experience – it’ll have you hiding your potato chips from the government.