The transit plebiscite ballots are set to arrive in homes starting next week, which means the campaign over whether or not to hike the sales tax by a half point in Metro Vancouver is really just beginning.
Up until now, much of the "debate" between the Yes side and the No side (which largely takes place in media news stories) has been lost on most voters. I suspect few people have been paying close attention to the arguments for and against the tax hike, and won't really focus on the issue at hand until they have that ballot in their hands.
But what has become clear, judging from comments on social media and media web sites, is that the No side has uncovered a simmering anger directed at the organization that is most directly linked to the plebiscite issue: TransLink.
I pointed out several weeks ago that the Yes side had to get voters focused on potential transit improvements flowing from that tax increase, and away from thinking about TransLink when they ponder how to fill out that ballot.
But I see no evidence that the Yes side has been successful on that front, at least not yet.
Last week, the mayors' council announced that billionaire Jimmy Pattison, who oozes credibility, will chair a committee to oversee the money collected by the tax hike. All well and good, but I doubt Pattison's appointment will trump the ill will directed at TransLink over a number of issues.
For example, TransLink's decision to change its CEO, while a good one, became a public relations fiasco when its board admitted it was actually going to keep the outgoing CEO on full salary while paying the new CEO a full salary as well.
That was done to avoid a huge severance payment, but any rational explanation was lost in the furor over the bad optics of paying two huge salaries.
The new CEO, Doug Allen, is a highly regarded former senior civil servant in the provincial government. In his first few weeks on the job he has discovered TransLink has a deeply imbedded "bunker mentality" that will be hard to remove.
"TransLink has no friends," he told me. The mayors don't want ownership of the organization, and neither does the provincial government.
While most transit experts rank the TransLink system as one of the best in North America and other jurisdictions, it has earned a reputation (unfairly at times) as a bloated, wasteful and tone-deaf organization with many of the people who rely on its services.
Allen should be able to make some much-needed changes. TransLink is also getting a capable new communications director - Marc Riddell, with whom I worked at Global TV - which should also lead to some improvements.
But to turn TransLink's public image into a positive one will take a lot longer than the few weeks voters will have their hands on those plebiscite ballots.
The Yes side seems increasingly desperate, as it flings out big numbers when it comes to reduced travel times or costs if the tax hike is approved and suggests an apocalyptic outcome if it is not.
But all of that talk, I suspect, is nothing more than noise for most folks. What isn't noise, however, are those entrenched negative attitudes towards TransLink.
And that is reason enough to worry the Yes side.
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Sad to note the recent passing of former B.C. cabinet minister Peter Dueck. He was a cabinet minister during the tumultuous years of Bill Vander Zalm's government, and I remember him as a principled, gentle man who established his own personal honour in an administration composed of many people who were challenged on that front.
Dueck is also forever tied to a historical moment in B.C. politics. He resigned his Matsqui seat in 1993, paving the way for Mike de Jong of the upstart B.C. Liberals to win the byelection there a few months later.
In the byelection, de Jong narrowly defeated Social Credit icon Grace McCarthy. There are many who think that if McCarthy had won that fight, she may have been able to rebuild the Socreds and in doing so may have been able to push the B.C. Liberals back onto the political margins.
But she lost, the once-powerful Socreds faded out of existence and the B.C. Liberals emerged as the dynastic "free enterprise coalition" in this province.
Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global B.C.
