As Halloween approaches, the spectre of a looming post-election tax hike appears to be hanging over Vancouver's civic election campaign.

Mayoral candidate Gregor Robertson and his centre-left Vision Vancouver party released a platform Monday that was peppered with significant promises – ending homelessness by 2015, for example – but short of dollar signs.

“We don't have a specific dollar figure,” Robertson told reporters. “There's a lot of items in here that require partnerships with the provincial and federal government.”

That mirrors the platform put forward by the ruling Non-Partisan Association earlier this month, which effectively failed to offer up any significant dollars at all.

While civic parties have never had fistfuls of tax dollars to dish out at election time, the prospect of what some predict will be a double-digit property tax hike next year appears to be making the campaigns particularly cautious.

City finance staff have estimated that decisions made during budget season this year – more policing, for example – will impact next year's taxes by between 4.3 and 5.8 per cent. Add in inflation, any additional funding requests for the year leading up to the Olympics and the fact that 2008 taxes were kept artificially low due to strike savings, and 2009 is shaping up to be a very expensive year for Vancouver taxpayers.

“It may be as high as 10 per cent, based on numbers that are around today. We've got a plan here that will redirect funding from initiatives that aren't working,” Robertson said, referring to NPA-led initiatives like the Civil City program and using city dollars to help expand the privately run Downtown Ambassadors program. Vision would cut both.

Vision offers up thirteen “actions” under its homelessness and affordable housing agenda. But the first item – ending homelessness by 2015 – may be dependent on the last – advocating other levels of government to be partners in affordable housing.

It's unclear what the points between will cost. These include:

- Guaranteeing the city has enough shelter beds to temporarily house the street homeless (The city will “work with all levels of government” to accomplish this, Vision promises)

- Using city bylaws to keep affordable rental buildings open

- Establishing a mental health advocate

- Expanding local hiring and training programs (Jim Green's fifth pillar of jobs from the 2005 campaign requires partnerships and presumably, minimal city funding)

- Using inclusionary zoning (mandatory affordable housing in new developments) and density bonusing (incentives for affordable housing) to encourage affordable housing

- Promoting secondary suites and laneway housing

- Ensuring no reduction in total rental housing stock (the region lost 637 units last year, including to the CMHC)

- Encouraging property owners, strata councils to unlock “thousands” of vacant condos for rental properties (Notice the absence of any mention of a speculators tax)

- Using tax incentives to promote new affordable market housing

Dollar signs are also missing from Vision's promises on public safety, which include:

- Providing “adequate resources” to the Vancouver Police Department

- Expanding prevention education programs

- Targeting police resources towards gangs and organized crime

- Cutting response times for 911 calls (Vision promises to work with the VPD's Chief Constable on this one)

- Establishing a “roundtable on prostitution” to deal with sex trade issues

Robertson devotes a section of his platform to the environment and sustainability. Vision's ideas include:

- Fast-tracking developments that incorporate green technology and retrofits

- Prioritizing cycling and walking, including installing biking facilities like washrooms in key cycling areas and bringing back trial lane closures on the Burrard Bridge - just one lane this time, not two

- Developing a rental bike program in the city, modeled after the Paris Vélib program

- Looking into giving buses priority on city streets (incidentally, a city report recently found that bus-only lanes did little to improve actual trip times, mainly because they are impeded by right-turning vehicles waiting for pedestrians to cross the road)

- Increasing recycling rates in city apartments and condos.

- Developing a city-wide curbside composting program

Vision also devotes a section to “creative capital and a growing economy.” Ideas include:

- Cutting business taxes, keeping the current one-percent shift from business to residents (an idea that runs against Vision's policy of the last few years)

- Keeping taxes “under control” (Robertson told reporters his goal was to keep taxes at inflation)

- Rebuilding the small business economy in the Downtown Eastside

- Establishing a Vancouver arts council

- Finding studio space for artists

- Creating “live sites” beyond the two Downtown sites already approved for the 2010 Games

For its part, the NPA sought to attach price tags to Vision promises where Robertson would not.

“There are huge dollar signs on all this stuff,” NPA Coun. Suzanne Anton said. “To implement his platform he'll be putting taxes way up.”

Anton questioned how the city could afford to target a five per cent increase in child care spots, offer tax incentives to encourage affordable housing or shelter all of the city's street homeless without significant city funding.

“The items they've got in there are big-ticket items,” Anton said. “It's accepting a lot more downloading form the province, which will be very costly to Vancouver taxpayers.”

Irwin Loy reports for Vancouver's 24 hours.