Tuesday - Jan. 2, 2024 - Corporate spending skyrockets at health authorities

🌧 High 8C

Good morning!

Happy New Year, everyone! 2024 is going to be a great year, I can just tell. I’ve never been very good at New Year’s resolutions. Or rather, I’ve made them, but I’ve never been much for sticking to them. You might remember that last year I resolved to read 50 whole books. That probably didn’t happen. (I stopped counting after March.) I think this year I’m going to set a lower literary bar for myself. I’m going to try to read more classics. Reply to this email with your favourites and I’ll add them to my list!

– Grace

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NEWS

Corporate spending at health authorities skyrocketed last year

BC’s largest health authorities presided over a half-billion surge in corporate spending last year. 

But despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars at a time when the hospitals they administer are struggling to care for patients in a timely fashion, the three organizations can’t say what that money has been spent on.

Corporate spending at BC’s three largest health authorities—Fraser Health, Vancouver Coastal Health, and the Provincial Health Services Authority—increased by nearly 30% in just 12 months, according to financial statements from the three massive organizations. And the increase in corporate spending goes well above system-side investments. An analysis of six years of financial records by The Current shows the three health authorities are now spending a significantly greater share of each dollar on corporate needs than in 2018.

When asked for comment, only Fraser Health attempted to provide an explanation. But its public relations staff claimed the increase in spending was linked to pandemic-related costs, even though the financial statements clearly showed that the corporate splurge only started in 2022, just as COVID-linked public health spending began to decline.

• Today, Tyler digs through documents to reveal massive, unexplained hikes in corporate spending at BC’s struggling health organizations.

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  A decade of failure: data shows Fraser Health ER troubles are uniquely bad

  Fraser Health's CEO says positive progress has been made. Her health authority's own data doesn't agree.

Need to Know

👉️ A Langley School District trustee has left Mayor Eric Woodward’s Contract with Langley slate [Langley Advance Times]

👶 The top baby names last year were Noah, Oliver, and Olivia [CBC] / You can track the popularity of hundreds of names over the last century here (Grace was most popular in 2003; Tyler was most popular in 1984 and 1993) [BC Government]

🚚 A Langley trucking company has been shut down after another of its drivers hit an overpass last week; it was the sixth overpass collision in two years [Langley Advance Times]

🐶 Six puppies were surrendered to the Abbotsford SPCA just before Christmas [Abbotsford News]

🚨 A semi-truck rollover closed Highway 1 in Chilliwack on Friday [Chilliwack Progress]

⛴️ A derelict ferry in Mission has been assessed as ‘lower-risk:’ Mission council still wants it gone [Mission Record] / Tyler reported on concerns about the abandoned hulk nearly a decade ago

🔥 Bystanders used hoses to fight a fire at a Chilliwack home on New Year’s Eve [Fraser Valley Today]

➡️ The BC Supreme Court has paused the province’s law banning all drug use in a variety of public spaces [CBC]

🚨 A 66-year-old man has been convicted for impaired driving for the 21st time in Abbotsford [CTV]

🚧 A Langley townhome construction project has hit a rocky financial patch, with builders owing nearly $40 million [Langley Advance Times]

🍴 Garrison Bistro in Chilliwack will close and re-open as District Bar Restaurant in the spring [Facebook]

The Agenda

Reconstruction planned for Langley’s Old Yale Road

A historic road in Murrayville doesn’t need to be commemorated or restored, residents said. Just fixed.

Langley Township council didn’t exactly agree. 

The responses from residents came from public feedback conducted by the Township on plans to renovate the Old Yale Road, a concrete road from the 1870s that runs between the Five Corners intersection in Murrayville towards Langley City.

Public engagement presented residents with options for commemoration and conservation (both of which would involve preserving at least a portion of the old, concrete road) and one for complete reconstruction that would bring the road up to current standards for cars, bikes, and pedestrians. 53% of respondents voted to reconstruct the road.

The Township has been planning the project since last January. While public feedback didn’t favour large conservation efforts, Mayor Eric Woodward suggested including the restoration of up to 150 metres of the old concrete roadway between the Five Corners intersection and 215 Street. (The “Commemoration” option would have kept 375 metres of concrete road).

Heritage interpretation and traffic calming measures around the nearby James Hill Elementary School would also be part of the project. 

Plans to handle the now-crumbling roadway, in one way or another, have been expected since a 2001 report to council said the road was deteriorating and needed to either be rebuilt or conserved. A previous attempt to fix the road stalled in 2016, where a project that intended to complete a commemoration-oriented rebuilding of the road that preserved more of the original concrete roadway ran out of funding. 

A complete reconstruction of the road was expected to cost $8.9 million in 2023 (about double what the estimated cost was in 2016). The originally-proposed commemoration approach would cost about $9.2 million. More detailed cost estimates and plans for the Old Yale Road’s future will return to council in the coming months.

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