This fee increase is pay our employees a living wage and increase our programming to provide better services to students and the UBC community.

Without the fee increase, we will be forced to raise our prices again. However, we do not want to increase our labour rates or charge higher amounts for our services such as DIY and mechanic workshops: our core values are to remain an accessible and affordable community bike shop. We want to remain a safe, accessible and affordable space for all students and the wider community to learn, repair, recycle and connect.

We also need to be able to retain skilled staff (mechanics) who can both generate revenue and provide instruction and guidance on DIY repairs and workshops. Even before the pandemic our wages were lagging far behind industry standards, & each time we lose a skilled mechanic this puts a further downward pressure on our operations. We’ve also seen an increase across the board in costs from bike parts & accessories to our Point of Sale system, our current fee portion is not keeping up with actual inflation.

Why exactly $3? We did a 5 year financial projection in which we calculated the move towards paying liveable wages, adding health and dental benefits for all permanent staff, and expand programming and on-campus engagement. The $3 is the rounded number we need that would allow us to do all these things and get out of debt after 2 fiscal years, with operations stabilizing over the remaining 3 years. The fee is pegged to the BC Consumer Price Index so the exact amount will change each year. This is also an opt-out fee: you can vote yes and still opt-out at the start of your academic year.

Since the last referendum in 2022 we’ve continued to operate on the bare minimum and it has been especially challenging. Even with campus re-opening and resulting in increased foot traffic and student engagement, we are not operating back at pre-2020 levels. We’ve continued to scale back our programming, and have not properly increased wages (shop staff saw one minimal wage increase in July 2022, and we are still losing skilled labour to other shops). The AMS has allowed us to carry our debt year to year and we have a very dedicated team of staff, board, and volunteers who are helping us stay open despite this negative financial spiral.

Since spring 2022 we have re-opened some of our programming including Access Nights, Volunteer Nights, Kids Bike Library and Do-It-Yourself shop time:

== served over 60 people through our Access Nights (Gender Liberation and Pride nights where DIY is free for folks in those demographics)

== provided 88 bikes to migrant workers through our Bici Libre program

== completed 96 free tune-ups at outreach clinics on campus during spring and summer

== over 200h of volunteers helping build and strip bicycles

== built 25 kids bikes for the Kids Bike Library

== supported over 470 people at the Do-It-Yourself stands during shop hours

== spoke to over 640 people to promote cycling and our services so far this fiscal year.

However all these programs and services cost money to run and are not a means to get us out of debt. Furthermore, in April 2022, we lost an additional revenue stream when the management of campus bike lockers and cages was transferred to UBC. This resulted in further cuts to our operating budget. There is so much more we could do if we can be financially stable for the years to come.

If the referendum does not pass, we will have to do a combination of things: we will have to continue offering basic programming, which means less offering for students, and we will have to increase prices across the board in order to recoup losses and retain our skilled employees:

Labour rate increased from $75/h to $80/h

Introducing a deposit for repair appointments (from $0 to $40)

Tool rental for Do-it-Yourself will drastically change from $12/h (with or without instruction) to $20/h with no instruction and $80/h with instruction

Used bikes: current we sell in the $250-$750 price range - this will increase to $500-$1500

Access Nights, which are currently free, will be charged $20/h for stand rental and instruction

Workshops pre-pandemic ran for $150 for the general public and $100 for students; these would now be closer to $600

Kids Bikes (part of the Kids Bike Library) are currently sliding scale/by donation (no one turned away for lack of funds), we would begin charging $50-$100

Outreach clinics not currently subsidized by Campus and Community Planning and any pop-up tune up stations on campus would go from being free to charging $100/h minimum.

This means instead of sharing the fee among the student body, the people who will be most impacted will be the students who rely on our services to be able to get to work or school. For example paying $80/h for DIY instruction will be unaffordable for most students. Without any kind of additional financial support, we will be pricing out our main purpose for providing these services: students.

Being part of the AMS limits the kinds of grants and subsidies we can apply for. Most COVID resiliency funding off campus requires the organization to be a registered charity, which we are not. We get a yearly grant from UBC Campus and Community Planning to offset the costs of running our programs and we have partnered with other community bike shops who have registered charity status to apply for local Vancouver grants when possible (ex. Greenest City Grants), but it is not feasible to rely on grants to get out of debt.

We currently hire people under wage subsidy schemes (like UBC WorkLearn and Canada Summer Jobs) to limit our personnel costs (which is currently our biggest expense) - we will continue to do so, but these wage subsidy programs place a lot of restrictions on who can be hired and for how long, which further creates issues in terms of turnover and skill-levels of mechanics.

We are dedicated to supporting the students commuting to and living on campus - we are not looking to create profit but to break even and expand our programming in a sustainable way. Any revenue generation once we are debt-free will be reinvested back into students through subsidized or free programming.

The Bike Kitchen exists to lower the barrier of entry to cycling; we want to support you by providing affordable bicycles and accessible repair. We are building a community around cycling that is inclusive for everyone. Beyond cycling, investing in sustainable mobility benefits everyone - one more bike means one less car, one more seat on the bus, etc. We also do so much more than promoting affordable transportation - we work in incorporating anti-oppression values on campus, supporting student groups and social justice causes (our long-running Bici Libre program provides bikes to temporary foreign migrant workers in the Fraser Valley, partnerships with other community bike shops have supported programs like Pedals for the People which provides bikes to those facing barriers to affordable transportation, and our fledgling project Bikes for BIPOC to provide bikes to BIPOC students, pushing for the right to repair in an effort to lower consumerism, increase sustainability and recycling/upcycling, and divert waste from our landfills. In reality, the bicycle is just the means of our work, but it’s not only about bicycles!

All that being said though: we are an opt-out fee. This means students can support sustainable and affordable transportation by voting yes to the fee increase and still opt-out (digitally!) at the start of their academic term if they choose to.