The things we discussed in open workshop on February 25th will end up being more interesting than what we did in Council, but those will have to wait for subsequent posts. Partly because those things will come to regular council and I need to stick ti current business here, and we had a full agenda, starting with a Public Hearing:

Zoning Amendment Bylaw No. 8067, 2019 Phase One of Infill Housing Program
As part of the implementation of the Official Community Plan, we have created zoning language around design of infill housing – laneway houses and carriage houses. After review of several applications that have been coming in coming in since the program was started, staff are recommending a few changes of that language to allow more flexibility in design while still addressing the design, massing, and parking concerns that may be presented by these designs. We are also making a few housekeeping changes (i.e. making our access requirement consistent at 6.0m when it was made inconsistent by a rounding error). These changes require a change in the zoning bylaw, which we are required to test in a Public Hearing.

No-one wrote us to opine on the subject, and no-one showed up to speak to the Public Hearing, so Council moved to give the Bylaw third reading and adoption.

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We then went on to a couple of Opportunities to be Heard:

Development Variance Permit DVP00660 for 1050 Boyd Street
The new Toyota dealership located next to Boyd and Howes wants to put fascia signs on more than one face of their building, and have a taller freestanding sign than strictly meet the limits of our sign bylaw. The highway-offramp location is not typical of New West, and that is why their design really doesn’t fit neatly in our Sign Bylaw, and why they are looking for a variance. No-one wrote to council to opine on the variance, and no-one came to speak against it. Council voted to approve the variance.

Commercial Vehicle Amendment (Taxi) Bylaw No. 8091, 2019
This Bylaw increases the number of permitted taxi licenses in New West, consummate with the number permitted by the Passenger Transportation Board. Not enough, and not enough accessible taxis, in my opinion, but this will marginally improve service and reliability of taxi service in the City. No-one wrote to us or came to speak to the Bylaw, and Council moved to approve it.

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The following items were moved on consent:

New Revenue Sources
It’s budget time, and we are reviewing many aspects of how we collect and spend money. Part of that is reviewing our non-taxation revenue sources: fees we charge for every service from building inspections to swim passes. Many are adjusted annually to match CPI, while others are given a more detailed review that tries to balance the sometimes-conflicting goals of cost recovery and being a price that reflects the regional market for similar services.

This report covers a variety of engineering fees, including parking in the downtown parkades going up in price for the first time in several years. We are also doing a bit of a revamp of development fees as that department is seeing increased work load with more complexity in the types of applications they see, and there is a general feeling that more of the cost of that work should fall on the applicants in the development community than the general taxpayer.

Revised 2019 City Partnership Grant Recommendations
The City’s Partnership Grant process is getting more and more difficult to administer, as we are reaching towards a half million dollars in annual granting and the dozens of applications are all for things we want to see happen in the City. The battle to manage within our budget inevitably means saying no to many worthy organizations and potentially great programs. The good news? We are giving a combined $493,000 to 22 organizations supporting the arts and varied social services in our community. These are all true social profits for our community, and I hope you will support them with your time or money (whichever you have more of), and help them keep our community connected.

Recruitment 2019: Economic Development Advisory Committee (EDAC) Appointments
The EDAC needs community members, so we appointed them! Thanks to the volunteers who give their time and energy to help us help the local economy.

Recruitment 2019: Youth Advisory Committee (YAC) Appointments
The Youth Advisory Committee needs a few more appointees for the year – so here they are getting appointed!

Recruitment 2019: Community Heritage Commission Representative on the Heritage Grant Program Committee
We have a volunteer committee that evaluates heritage grant applications, and one spot is reserved for a representative from the Community Heritage Committee, and here they are, appointed by Council upon recommendation from that Commission.

Light Industrial Zoning Districts (M-1): Text Amendment to Permit Electrical Utilities – First and Second Reading
The City expropriated a piece of light industrial land in Queensborough upon which it intends to build an electrical substation. The zoning does not currently permit that use, so we need a zoning text amendment to fix that.

Housekeeping Amendments to Three City Bylaws (Controlled Substance Property Bylaw No. 6679, 2001; Noise Bylaw No. 6250, 1999; and Construction Noise Bylaw No. 6063, 1992): Bylaws For Three Readings
Here we go with some omnibus changes to Bylaws under the category of “housekeeping”. We are not changing how the Bylaws work, you won’t notice any changes, this just updates the language and makes sure the language is consistent with language found in more recent Bylaws and with shifts in other regulations.

Royal Columbia Hospital Project: Request for Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption
Work at Royal Columbian is going to require digging up East Columbia Street to install electrical conduits, water pipes, and the such. Staff figure the best way to avoid traffic chaos of closing the street during the day is to allow some night work noise exemptions so the work can happen outside of business hours. They are asking for a noise Bylaw exemption for a few days in March and a few days in April, which Council approved.

Hey Neighbour Collective
This is an interesting program that has some solid academic backing and has proven to work in Vancouver where it was piloted. The idea is to improve social connectedness and public engagement in multi-family buildings. Anyone who has read “The Happy City” knows that creating social connections and engaged neighbourhoods in multi-family buildings is sometimes challenging, but is very much doable with the right kind of intervention. Council voted to approve this program on the recommendation of the Community and Social Issues Committee.

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These items were Removed from Consent for discussion:

Sanctuary City Designation: Process and Proposed Next Steps
Back in January, Councillor Das put forward a motion requesting the City work towards Sanctuary City status. This report outlines the path the City will take to implement that recommendation including work with external agencies and the Multiculturalism Advisory committee. Council added that the NWPD be brought closer into the process, as their participation in this program will be vital to its success.

In short, a Sanctuary City is one where all residents are provided access to services regardless of their immigration status – or lack of immigration status. There are people in our community who may be reluctant to seek a variety of services, be it calling the police to report a crime, seeking health care, or even applying for a permit, because they may carry fear that exposing themselves to officialdom may impact their immigration status, or even cause them to be jailed or deported. This may seem absurd to many Canadians, but a portion of our immigrant community comes from places where governance and corruption exist in a very different space, and they may have good reason to mistrust people in positions of authority. We want to assure all residents have equitable access to municipal services, and that no-one should live with fear separating them from vital services.

Light Industrial Mixed Use Zoning Districts (M-5): Text Amendment to Permit Public Utilities – First and Second Reading
Metro Vancouver is boring a new water main under the Fraser River, and it will terminate and connect to a pumping station on a lot they expropriated on the Lower 12th Street area. The lot is zoned light industrial, but this specific type of utility operation is not named in the applicable use for M-5 zoning. So a text amendment or re-zoning is required, and staff figured the text amendment was minor enough that it was the easier way to go.

My only question was about the property tax implications. A lot like this pays taxes if it has an industrial or commercial operation on it, I want to know if Metro pays taxes to the city at that rate, or what the impact is if they get a different rate. Staff surprisingly did not have the answer on hand, so hopefully will clarify this before third reading.

660 Quayside Drive (Bosa Development): Request for Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption
The Bosa project on the waterfront is continuing to adjust how they manage the most challenging part of the project – driving a secant pile wall adjacent to fisheries habitat with uncertain ground conditions within a rapidly-closing fisheries protection window. I have a bit of experience in this type of work, and can attest it was much easier to manage (with better protection of habitat) before the federal government disassembled FREMP. Alas, there appears to be no interest in the new government for cleaning up that environmental review mess either… wait – I went off on a tangent there…

We continue to get complaints about impact driving, but not on the vibratory driving of the secant piles. This request to do non-impact-driving works outside of regulated construction hours in order to reduce the amount time spent impact driving is a reasonable request, and I think a net good for the community. I hasten to remind people – they could, under the existing bylaw, be doing 100% impact driving, 8 hours a day 6 days a week, but have spent a considerable amount of time and effort to reduce that impact in response to community concerns, and to reach out to the community to manage conflicts. To characterize this as “pushing us around” is, in the technical term, bullshit.

Proposed Speed Hump Policy
The use of speed humps to reduce speed in our residential neighbourhoods is something we receive occasional calls for. They are often seen as a bit of a panacea for other traffic-related concerns, when in reality, they are only one tool that needs to be fit into context of other interventions (traffic diversion, road narrowing, speed enforcement, education).

That said, the City receives almost constant requests for new speed humps where residents feel they have a spot speeding problem, so the Neighbourhood Traffic Advisory Committee and staff took on the task of developing a policy about when these requests would be reviewed, the process used when a request is received to determine if the intervention makes engineering sense, and then to prioritize installations of new humps within the available budget, based on that data.

Council bounced this back to staff, only because the public consultation part of it seems to emphasize homeowners, actually to the exclusion of renters. Almost half of residents of New West are renters, and we have been trying to better engage them – they care just as much about safe streets and traffic management as homeowners, so this need to be jigged a little to assure they are given a voice.

1968 New Westminster Salmonbellies Lacrosse – BC Sports Hall of Fame Induction Recognition
The 1968 Salmonbellies were one of the greatest lacrosse teams ever assembled, apparently. They are already in the Lacrosse Hall of Fame, but are about to be indicted into the BC Sport Hall of Fame, and the City is going to honour them at a reception at the Anvil Centre.

2019/2020 Electrical Utility Rates
The Electrical Commission is recommending a 2.8% increase in electrical rates. I do not support the recommendation, and would have preferred a 1.8% increase. This was discussed at some greater length in the afternoon workshop, where I went off on a pretty lengthy rant. I will write another blog post to follow up on this to explain my rationale, as it gets pretty philosophical, but short version is I was not supported by the majority of Council on opposing this.

Festival Grant Committee: Request for additional funding for Sapperton Day Street Festival
I recognize the value of Sapperton Day, and have enjoyed it for the many years it has been running. However, having just gone through the Festival and Partnership granting process where we gave out more than our ~$600,000 in budgeted grant money, Council was not in the mood to re-open the process and add another $25,000. To the best of my knowledge, Sapperton Days did not apply for this funding back in December when every other festival organization did, which led the Grant Committee (of which I was a member) to understand that they were satisfied with the $11,100 grant in cash and city services they were already granted for 2019 as part of the 3-year agreement with the City. I am hoping staff can connect with them around how to make things work within their existing budget, or they can work on alternative funding models, but to throw $25,000 more at them at this stage would be unfair to every granted festival in the City, not to mention the ones we found we just didn’t have the budget to grant in 2019.

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We then did our readings of bylaws, and many went through first, second, and third, but there are the Bylaws for Adoption:

Building Bylaw Amendment Bylaw No. 8084, 2019
This was the Bylaw we rescinded and fixed after second reading, and adjusts some of the fees and fines under the building bylaw. Council approved it, and it is now the Law of the Land.

Development Services Fees and Rates Amendment Bylaw No. 8094, 2019
This Bylaw adjusts some of the fees we charge for various development process, permit application and the such. Council approved it, and it is now the Law of the Land.

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We then addressed a bit of New Business, as is becoming the trend:

Motion: Neighbourhood Learning Centres
Councillor Das brought forward this motion to ask staff to work with the School District to provide an update on “Neighbourhoods of Learning Pilot Project”, and to update us on plans for an integration centre as part of the new high School neighbourhood learning space plans.

Motion: Creation of Office of the Renters Advocate
Councillor Puchmayr brought forward this motion after Councillor Nakagawa raised the need for an independent provincial Renters Advocate at a recent community forum. The idea is that the advocate could work on the same models as the Advocate for Youth or Seniors Advocate to hold the government accountable for how their various programs and initiatives are impacts in housing affordability and the availability of rental housing in the province. For increasing numbers of our working population, renting isn’t a wacky phase of life, but their only foreseeable access to housing. New West will bring this motion to the Lower Mainland LGA and the UBCM, hoping to get more communities to call upon the province to make this a reality.