Cascadia Report

We have money -- but no good way to send it

Sending money between the U.S. and Canada ranks with border delays and underdeveloped transportation infrastructure as obstacles facing regionally minded Cascadia citizens.

Recently I tried to pay a bill in Canada by sending C$113 from Seattle to Victoria. Apparently I ran afoul of post-9/11 inconvenience, anti-money-laundering worries and maybe even technology. I can accept some confusion, but there's got to be a better way.

When I went to a Washington Mutual branch asking for a money order, payable in Canadian funds, the teller looked at me like I was crazy. Bank of America said they could order a money order in about a week. Western Union was willing to help me for a hefty fee, but only if I wired the cash to an individual, who then would have to pick up the cash at another Western Union outlet.

Desperately seeking a good money changer, I called the Canadian consulate in Seattle. The single main phone number leads to choices in the automated system that all lead to a dead ends. After nearly three minutes of messages in English and French, I picked tourism. Then the message said there is no longer a tourism office and suggested calling immigration. The immigration line said they no longer take telephone inquiries.

My solution was to find a friend who happens to have an account in a Canadian bank -- a move he took post-9/11 in order to handle details related to his Whistler rental. He says his bank puts a 45-business-day hold on USD checks (even if he writes it to himself) so he's resigned to simply planning way ahead. It's nearly enough to keep us on our respective sides of the border.

Report: Cascadia cities among the world's costliest

A new report says Cascadia's cities are among the world's least affordable, with Vancouver ranked 13th worst, Victoria 23rd, Seattle 36th and Portland 60th.

The report, by research firm Demographia, focuses on the ratio of home prices to income. It rightly notes the imbalance between supply and demand, but dismisses the role of interest rates and robust local economies.

Another oversight: It doesn't mention the cost of transportation, which makes big cities such as New York and Tokyo less prohibitive than the report suggests. If transit options in Cascadia enabled the average family of four to live with one car instead of two, saving at least $400 per month, even pricey housing would be more affordable.

The report says land-use rules are the biggest culprit:

Various planning strategies have driven up the price of housing, such as land rationing (urban growth boundaries and infill requirements), extravagant amenity requirements, excessively high infrastructure fees and approval processes that are unnecessarily lengthy and complicated.

Picks from Sunday's papers

1. It turns out Seattle's booming downtown real estate market isn't just about symphonies and fancy restaurants. The people in this story enjoy the change from their previous single-family homes but note that downtown needs more variety of restaurants, shops and people to be a real community. The way to get there, of course, is with even more units -- which will eventually help lower prices -- and attracting a broader range of residents with infrastructure such as parks and schools.

2. Victoria is considering options to redevelop much of its waterfront, which was transferred from national to local control a few years ago. Details of one of the first projects are due next month.

3. A veteran Portland city commissioner has to choose, the Oregonian says, "between being the heir to Tom McCall and Mark Hatfield or being there for his toddler son."

4. The growth in container traffic is slowing at the Port of Tacoma as shipping lines shift to Southern California. The hiccup shows that Puget Sound ports need to become more efficient in order to compete with ports that have larger local markets.

Now Victoria has to figure out HOW to treat its sewage

According to recent orders by the provincial government, Victoria has to start treating its sewage. But how?

The orders, reported here last month, require the British Columbia capital to have a plan for at least some treatment of its outflow by June 2007. But according to this concise report Monday in The Tyee, there is no agreement on what to do by that deadline:

The politicians are swimming hard to pop up on the right side of the tide now, but they are largely still coming to terms with having to move forward at all.

Local business and tourism groups want strict standards for secondary treatment, mimicing what's long been done a few miles south in Washington. Proposals range from simple processing plants to expensive measures that would reclaim usable water and generate power.

It will be fascinating to see if B.C. chooses the bare minimum or technology that sets a new standard.