We had a pretty light Council agenda on Monday, though we had pretty meaty daytime workshop talking Budget. The evening Agenda began with approval of the following items On Consent:
2025 Revenue Anticipation Borrowing Amendment Bylaw 8480, 2024
The City spends money every month, pretty much the same amount every month, because most of what we pay is salaries. However we get a big chunk of our income over a short period of time in the middle of the year – tax time. That means we need to operate a “float” to get us through, and there is a small, but not zero, chance that a major expense happens right before tax time or that something interrupts tax time. If we were a business, we would manage tis with a Line of Credit. As the City is not permitted to borrow money without Council approval by Bylaw, we need to pass a bylaw every year that allows staff to borrow up to $3 Million for a very short period (<1 year) in an emergency if current cash-in-hand cannot cover an emergent expense. This is that bylaw.
Official Community Plan Amendment, Rezoning, and Development Variance Permit: 1135 Salter Street – Bylaws for First and Second Readings
The owner of 1035 Salter Street in the middle of Queensborough wants to build 45 townhouse units. This requires an OCP amendment, rezoning, and a DVP for tandem parking, which has been a pretty standard practice for townhouse developments in Queensborough. As an OCP amendment, this has gone through public consultation and consultation with external stakeholders and rights holders. Design Panel and ACP have recommended approval. This will go to a Public Hearing, and so I will hold my comments until then.
Response to Council Motion Re: Improving the public’s access to trees during the City’s bi-annual tree sale
Staff have looked at our annual tree sale program based on a council request from a few months ago to expand it. Staff reviewed the program and report that the current scope meets the goals of the program and the level of community interest (the current subscription rate is around 95%), so there is no compelling reason to expand the program, especially considering the taxpayer subsidy that would require.
The following items were Removed from Consent for discussion:
Age-Friendly Community Strategy Update Work Plan
The City adopted an Age-Friendly Community Strategy in 2017, and were well into implementation of the plan when COVID forced staff to pivot to emergency-response then recovery work. Then came the Heat Dome, Wildfire impacts, food inflation, and ongoing housing instability among the factors that disproportionally impacted seniors in our community, and through our reactions to these crises as they emerged, it was recognized that our 2017 Strategy needs an update to meet the shifted needs of the seniors demographic. We received a grant from the Province to lead this work, and will be doing the background work over the winter that will lead to a fulsome consultation with the community next spring and summer, with a revised strategy prepared for the fall of 2025.
Budget 2025: Engineering and Electrical Utility Amendment Bylaws Report
We had an extended workshop discussion of the utility budgets last week, these are the bylaws that result. The reality is that the cost of providing utility services is going up, largely because the cost of building infrastructure that supports the delivery of water, sewer, electrical, and solid waste services is increasing at a rate much higher than CPI “inflation”.
I will follow up with a separate post that goes through these (if you just can’t wait, look at the flow diagrams I created previously, and see where the money actually goes), but here is the short info now.
Electrical rates will be going up by 3.5%, which is the same as predicted last year, and what the Electrical Utility Commission recommended. This represents a much smaller increase than BC Hydro is proposing this year (closer to 6.5%), and continues the practice of us trying to create consistency and predictability in our costs.
Solid waste and water increases are 12% and 6%, as we expected going into this year. The main driver in water is the increase in rates from Metro Vancouver for water (going up more than 10% this year), and the main driver in Solid Waste being our need to solidify our reserves as our vehicle fleet is coming up for renewal.
The sewer rates are going up more than anticipated (10%), as Council had a conversation about how to manage one-time costs related to major infrastructure costs from Metro Vancouver (mostly the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant). Again, smoothing it out so the impact is spread over several years was decided to be preferable than taking a big hit this year and lesser hits in the next couple of years.
These core services of the City, clean water, responsibly managed wastes, and reliable electricity to heat and warm our homes, are highly valued by our residents according to the recent ISPSO survey of the community. They are not inexpensive to deliver, but overall 87% of New Westminster residents think they get good value for their dollar for utility services.
We had a single Bylaw for Adoption:
Council Procedure Bylaw No. 6910, 2004, Amendment Bylaw No.8493, 2024
This Bylaw that shifts around the order of how thing happen in our Evening Council meetings was adopted, so next meeting it will be a bit different, but more of the same, just hopefully a bit more efficient.
We closed our meeting with two Motions from Council:
Vape Shops
Submitted by Councillor Fontaine
Whereas there has been a significant increase in the number of vape shops that have been opening in the City of New Westminster; and
Whereas a proliferation of vape shops throughout our city does not support the City’s efforts at creating a balanced and community-based retail market; and
Whereas dramatically increasing easier access to vape shops could result in more youth regularly consuming a product that has known and serious health risks
BE IT RESOLVED THAT staff report back regarding what options are within Council’s jurisdiction to limit the overall number and locations of business licenses issued for new vape shops
This motion was adopted by Council with Councillor Henderson adding an amendment asking that we take a resolution to the Lower Mainland LGA asking the Province to step up regulation of Vape shops to be more akin to the regulation of liquor and cannabis, which would give the City better tools and create a province-wide approach instead of city-by-city whack-a-mole approach.
Vision Zero
Submitted by Mayor Johnstone
Whereas many jurisdictions have adopted a Vision Zero strategy to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries, while increasing safe, healthy, and equitable mobility for all; and
Whereas a true Vision Zero strategy requires cooperation and coordination between agencies of the municipal and provincial governments, of the likes not yet achieved in British Columbia; and
Whereas Council’s 2023-2026 Strategic Priorities Plan includes a focus on “Safe Movement of People” which identified the need for collaborative relationships across agencies to advance a Vision Zero mindset; and
Whereas traffic calming and management was identified in a recent survey of New Westminster residents as one area the City needs to demonstrate more progress;
Therefore be it resolved that Council strike a Vision Zero Task Force including but not limited to representatives from engineering staff, NWFR, NWPD, ICBC, Fraser Health, TransLink, the Walkers Caucus and the disability community to make recommendations to Council to achieve Vision Zero.
This motion was also(!) amended by Councillor Henderson to include further potential representatives form community organizations, then queerly amended by Councillor Minhas to add his BFF Councillor Fontaine to the task force, which was strangely premature considering we haven’t even developed a Terms of Reference yet, but I am glad to see this work beginning and appreciate the community groups who came to speak to the need for a new approach on road safety. I will write more on this in a subsequent post.
And that was the end of the agenda. We have daytime workshops next Monday and the week after to discuss budget work. And though I don’t report on those here explicitly, they results will come to council and I’ll report on them then, or you can always go here and watch them in live action internet colour TV action!