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<\/a>According to BC Transit, for the 2019-20 fiscal year, total U-Pass revenue from Royal Roads, Camosun College, and UVic was approximately $5.9 million and accounted for 14 percent of total passenger revenue for the VRTC. Of the $5.9 million, VRTC revenue from Camosun College students for 2019-20 was approximately $1.9 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving a say in what benefits our ridership, especially when our ridership is the largest stakeholder that uses transit, it would only make sense for students to have that sort of representation,\u201d says Cunningham,<\/p>\n
VRTC chair Susan Brice says the commission members \u201cunderstand, respect, and really rely on student input,\u201d but the decision to not give students a voting seat came down to the fact that the public can’t vote students on or off the board.<\/p>\n
\u201cDecisions that we make at that commission, in terms of dollars, go straight to the tax bill that the public gets; we\u2019re not an advisory committee that adjudicates and then recommends,\u201d she says. \u201cWe make the decision about taxation.\u201d<\/p>\n
That decision, says Brice, is vested in the public voting someone into office that they can then vote out if they don\u2019t agree with, she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t because of any lack of ability for the students to contribute wholesomely to the discussions around the table,\u201d says Brice.<\/p>\n
Cunningham says that he felt that the general sentiment at the February 23 meeting was that students were not \u201cin the same level\u201d as a municipal representative, and that in politics in general, students are sometimes \u201cspoken to as if we\u2019re not equal.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re increasing property taxes,\u201d says Cunningham, as an example, \u201cthere\u2019s a higher probability of them not being elected if their constituency\u2019s upset with that choice, and that\u2019s the kind of accountability mechanism there is, whereas, I guess they felt that students don\u2019t have that same accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brice says that Cunningham\u2019s opinion of students not being held equal at the meeting is \u201cnot one that I would agree to\u201d and says that she feels the commission has given input from student representatives equal weight.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople feel how they feel,\u201d says Brice. \u201cYou can\u2019t account for that. I can tell you that he is a thoughtful and contributing member around that commission table.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brice says all of the members on the committee value and rely on student input.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have always had… lots of good ideas from students, but this one issue\u2014wanting a vote\u2014unfortunately, was something that we just didn\u2019t feel we could recommend to the province,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
If it had been recommended to the province, that would mean a letter would have been sent to the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, and minister of transportation and infrastructure Rob Fleming would then decide if the province should approve the voting seat. If that happened, changes to the BC Transit Act would have been required.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a pretty significant piece of governance that we just didn\u2019t feel was one that would be appropriate to divest ourselves of that full responsibly as elected people,\u201d says Brice.<\/p>\n
Cunningham says that there was talk after the motion didn\u2019t pass of creating a student advisory committee for the VRTC. He is waiting to hear back on further details on that (Brice confirms that a motion was passed directing staff to bring options around what that committee might look like to the next meeting).<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m yet to decide how I feel on that,\u201d says Cunningham. \u201cIt was more of… them asking staff to look into it, and kind of explore options. I think the commission heard me out and felt that that would be a way to maybe appease the desire for student representation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Tuesday, February 23, the Victoria Regional Transit Commission (VRTC) voted 5-3 against giving students a voting seat on the commission. The Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) currently shares a non-voting seat on the VRTC with the University of Victoria Students\u2019 Society. CCSS external executive Quinn Cunningham calls the decision disappointing and says it\u2019s really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3868,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20721"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20722,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20721\/revisions\/20722"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}