Author: Patrick Johnstone

Council – Sept 23, 2024

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

September 23rd is one of the most important days in the calendar (Happy Birthday Mom!), but for New Westminster Council it was another day at the office. Not just another day, but a relatively low-key return to Council of Jaimie McEvoy, which is a great thing for us as an organization, and for the community. The Agenda was fairly short, and started with us moving the following item On Consent:

Budget 2025: Fees and Rates Review, Amendment Bylaws
We received memos last meeting on the annual fee adjustments, and discussed them then. Staff has now taken that work and drafted bylaws to implement the changes. These are those 7 Bylaws. Council gave them all three readings today.

The following items were Removed from Consent for discussion:

2024 Capital and Operating Quarterly Performance Report
This is our regular quarterly update on the capital and operational budgets. We are making a relatively small ($0.7M) adjustment to our annual Capital budget to $199.8M, but are not changing the multi-year budget (are just moving anticipated expenditures across years). There are lots of details in these reports about everything from the last phase of work (street front improvements on East 6th Ave) for təməsew̓txʷ starting this fall to where we are in our $4.5Million pavement management plan for the year. Our annual operating budget is trending a bit high in both revenue and expenses, but well within 1% of budget.

Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption Request: New Westminster Interceptor – Columbia Street Sewer Maintenance Project
Camera inspection of sewers generally has to happen at night when sewer levels are low, and we are granting a construction noise Bylaw exemption so this work can happen at night.

Council Strategic Priorities Plan Quarterly Status Update
This is the first term where Council is actively tracking progress on our Strategic Plan on an annual basis. The red-yellow-green stoplight model is a good visual of where progress is being made, and where we are falling short. The overall result is demonstrably that we are getting the work done, though have much more to do. Our major challenges are staffing and workload (which we knew was going to be a challenge from day 1, and managing the work load surprise of the Provincial Housing regulations.
We had a short debate at Council about whether these reports should be annual or semiannual, and council decided the more frequent option was useful.

Interim Density Bonus Policy and Revised Interim Development Review Framework
The introduction of Bill 46 (along with Bills 44 and 47) has thrown a bit of a curveball into how we finance infrastructure related to growth in every municipality in BC. Though the bills are now enacted, the Province has provided cities the ability to use an “interim approach” for pending applications while we get all of our updates done – they don’t want all housing approvals to stop while cities figure out how to make the new regime work. This report provides a proposed “interim approach” for the City to use until last 2025 when a more permanent regime aligned with Bill 46 will be brought in.

Quick recap: Cities used to collect Development Cost Charges and Voluntary Amenity Contributions from development to pay for infrastructure needs required to support population growth, under the philosophy that “growth pays for growth”. The VACs are no longer permitted in the new regulations, though we will still be able to apply Density Bonusing (DB), and have a new tool called Amenity Cost Contributions (ACCs). There is planning, engineering, costing and finance work to do to inform these approaches, so this interim approach will give staff the time they need to get there.

In short, we are going to apply a Density Bonus charge of $50.sq.ft for most development above existing entitlements. For this short period of time until the more permanent financing model is completed, all funds collected by DB will go into a reserve fund earmarked for land acquisition for future City projects (Parks, community amenities, etc.). Developers could also have this charge waived if they provide non-market (“affordable”) housing that meets the standards of our existing Inclusionary Zoning policy.

The debate that arose at Council was whether the City should continue to provide DB waivers to Secured Market Rental (or “PBR -Purpose Built Rental”) development. This is a significant part of how the City has managed to encourage Secured Market Rental to get built in the City, as it fundamentally shifts the economics of Secured Market Rental to make it viable even where strata condos may not be. In a split vote, Council decided to change this policy, which will have some repercussions for how the City develops that I simply cannot predict now. More to come.

Metro 2050 Type 3 Amendment Application: City of Surrey (7880 128 Street)
Cities hoping to amend the Regional Growth Strategy can apply to Metro Vancouver to do so, and some of those applications (“Type 3”) amendment. Asking all 20 municipalities in Metro to comment is part of this process. Staff recommended against this application for a variety of reasons, mostly around erosion of viable industrial lands and potential transportation and GHG impacts.

Honestly, I could go either way on this application. Though it meets many Metro needs around integrating commercial space with other uses, and meets several Metro2025 goals, the uses are as in demand as the industrial use it is displacing, and there will be a significant increase in trees and green space, and there is little anticipated impact on the regional water and sewer networks. In general, I am reluctant to oppose local zoning requests unless there is a clear and notable regional impact (like an earlier Surrey Proposal to expand heavy industrial land into greenspace outside the Urban Containment Boundary), and this doesn’t meet that threshold for me.

In the end, Council decided to defer the decision and ask Surrey if they want to provide us a presentation or more detail than exists in the reports received by Council. We will see this again next meeting, presumably.

Report Back on Council Resolution to Develop a City-Wide Public Toilet Strategy
The topic of Public Toilets is never boring. I’ll extract straight from the report here, because I can’t say it any better:

“Access to public toilets is a human rights, dignity and public health issue, and is essential to facilitating independence for seniors and people living with disabilities and underlying health conditions. It is also often the only option for people who are unhoused, who otherwise must use public and private spaces, which negatively impacts overall community health and wellbeing.”

The community needs better access to public toilets, including the ones we already operate and very likely some new ones we need to invest in building. They are not cheap to build or operate (and as we recently learned) are not without community concern. So we are taking a holistic view to how we enhance the service we have, and will ask the community and subject matter experts in gerontology and disabilities, and come back with some recommendations for us to do better in meeting this vital need.

That all said, Public Toilets are a challenge in most of North America, and I have (believe it or not) read a couple of books that delve into why this is. It’s a long complex history rooted in ableism, patriarchy and austerity, and if you are interested, here’s a really great summary with lots of links for a little bathroom reading

We then had a single Bylaw for Adoption:

2025 Permissive Property Tax Exemption Bylaw No. 8474, 2024
There are some properties in New Westminster whose exemption from property taxes is permissive (not statutory), and this bylaw lists the properties proposed to be exempted in 2025. This bylaw was adopted by Council.

UBCM 2024 (part1)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The annual Union of BC Municipalities meeting was held last week in Vancouver. If I was slow to reply to an email or message, it’s because the UBCM is a chaotic time that challenges my calendar the most. Now that we are wrapped, I have a bit of time to report out on what we saw and did at UBCM, as I have in previous years. This is probably going to take more than one post, so instead of doing it in the order things happen in the calendar, I’ll cover it by themes.

I’m going to start with the fun (for policy nerds) part: the resolutions sessions. Every year, municipalities put forward resolutions and ask the membership to support these resolutions. They are generally motions calling for changes in policy, regulation, or funding from senior governments, predominantly the provincial government. The resolution session this year included more than 250 Resolutions, and through a slightly complicated process, some are moved in “blocks”, some are defeated in a “block”, and a large number are debated in order, one at a time. Overall, the membership decided on about 200 resolutions, more endorsed than defeated.

I obviously can’t discuss all 200+ here, but I can cover the 5 resolutions brought to UBCM by New Westminster, and one other I sponsored through my role on the Metro Vancouver Climate Action Committee.

EB4 Additional Funding for Overdose Prevention Sites across Local Governments

…be it resolved that UBCM ask the Province of British Columbia to increase funding for Health Authorities to augment existing, and to open new, supervised consumption and overdose prevention sites, including related inhalation services, across British Columbia and including local governments which do not currently offer this service to residents.

This resolution was endorsed by the Lower Mainland LGA when we met in the spring, and was endorsed as part of the “Endorsed Block” at UBCM. This block works like a Consent Agenda, where members can “pull” items, but otherwise they are approved en masse without debate.

EDIT: since I first hit publish on this post, looks like at least one Provincial leader has decided to do the opposite of what the Cities of BC are collectively asking for and what the entirety of the public health community and the overwhelming body of evidence suggests we should do, and has announced he would close all of the existing sites if elected. Make no mistake, this ghoulish move would kill people and cut off one of the primary pathways to treatment services.

EB13 Eliminating Barriers to Publicly Owned and Operated Home Care Services and Long-Term Care

…be it resolved that UBCM ask the Province to eliminate financial and accessibility barriers by investing in more publicly owned and operated and not-for-profit home care services and social supports required to age in place, and by further investing in publicly owned and operated and not-for-profit long-term care to ensure seniors are well supported in the continuum of care.

This resolution was also endorsed as part of the Endorsed Block, and there were similar resolutions from the North Coast Local Government Association (with a bit of a “rural flair” put on it) and by the City of Burnaby which spoke more to the need for a standard funding formula for these services, and those were also endorsed.

EB40 E-Comm Governance Review

…be it resolved that UBCM ask the provincial government to engage local governments in a comprehensive review of the governance structure and delivery model of 911 emergency call taking, related nonemergency call taking, and emergency dispatch services across BC with a goal to assure reliable, affordable, and sustainable services for all communities.

This resolution was not only endorsed by the membership through the Endorsed Block section (after receiving endorsement from the Lower Mainland LGA and the UBCM Resolutions Committee), but came back to the members as a commitment from the Premier during his speech at UBCM:

I have to take a moment to pull that out: both the City of New Westminster (through Council and with support from our Fire and Rescue Services) and the New Westminster Police Department (through the Police Board) have been banging this drum for some times now. The reliability of 911 services was a critical issue during the Heat Dome of 2021, and the cost of 911 call taking and dispatch has been rising significantly over the last couple of years. At the same time, our non-emergency call service was so unreliable we had to pull it from E-Comm and take that in house at our Police Department, again adding to our costs. With the pending introduction of “Next Gen 911”, which brings 911 into the modern communications era with text messages, video calls, and fewer people having phones plugged into walls, the ongoing cost and reliability concerns could be exacerbated. We need a comprehensive review of the governance of Emergency Communications services to determine if E-Comm is still a viable model.

I’m glad the Minister of Public Safety and the Premier heard our calls.

NR78 Allowing Local Governments to Apply Commercial Rent Controls

…be it resolved that UBCM ask the Province of British Columbia to provide local governments with the legislative authority to enable special economic zones where commercial rent control and demo/renoviction policies could be applied to ensure predictability in commercial lease costs, so local small businesses and community-serving commercial tenants can continue to serve their communities.

After a firey debate and close vote to endorse at the Lower Mainland LGA, this resolution didn’t disappoint at UBCM. It was one of the better debates on the Friday resolutions sessions, with some concerns raised, and folks from the Island, from the Interior and Fraser Valley all arguing how this tool might help their community, if cities choose to apply it. It was also interesting to see this was not a clear “left vs right” debate, but people across the spectrum wanting to support small community-serving businesses in their community. The quality of the debate was helped by Councillor Henderson’s leadership in framing the issue with facts and passion. In the end, I don’t even think the vote was that close, it was clearly endorsed by a large majority of the members.

RR17 Creating Safer Streets for Everyone with Intersection Safety Cameras

…be it resolved that LMLGA and UBCM call on the provincial government to expand the implementation of speed and red light intersection safety cameras in local governments across BC, prioritizing intersections near schools and those with a high rate of crashes that result in injuries or fatalities as identified by ICBC, and that the provincial government provide all revenue from additional speed and red light cameras to local governments as grants to be invested in implementing local and safety improvements; And be it further resolved that the UBCM request that the provincial government allow BC local governments to install speed and red light cameras at their own cost and set and collect fees directly to be earmarked for road safety improvements.

This motion was endorsed by the Lower Mainland LGA, but was not even debated at the UBCM because it was considered redundant. This is because there were no less than five other resolutions (EB41 Dawson Creek, RR14 Delta, RR15 Lake Country, RR16 North Vancouver City, RR18: Saanich) that asked for some version of the same thing. Only the Dawson Creek one was endorsed through the Endorsed Block, while the rest were considered redundant.

If nothing else, this reflects that the support for increased automatic road safety enforcement is broad across the province, and reflects the increased public sentiment around this. I would be surprised if the new government after the upcoming election does not look at this program for massive expansion, if not a re-write to bring more local control as most communities (like New West) are asking for. Watch this space!

NR81 Provincial Funding for Active Transportation Infrastructure

…Therefore be it resolved that UBCM urge the Government of BC to expand funding for active transportation infrastructure to at least $300 million annually over the next ten years to support the development of protected, connected, and accessible local cycling and walking infrastructure networks across BC, that are integrated into larger regional active transportation and public transit networks.

This resolution was put forward by Metro Vancouver, and as vice-Chair of the Climate Action Committee, I was asked to speak as sponsor toward it. If you are a frequent reader (Hi Mom!) you have heard my spiel on this before, you can read more of it here. This was endorsed by the members of the UBCM.

So overall, a successful resolution session for New West. All of our resolutions were supported (directly or by proxy) and one was responded to with concrete action. Of course, we won and lost other debates regarding the other resolutions put forward by our colleagues across the province, and quite a few important resolutions never made it to debate due to the resolutions session running out of time on the Friday, but it was a good year overall.

I’ll follow up this post with one about the other parts of the convention, the workshops and other learnings I attended, and the political part. I will also likely circle back to some more of the politics at my Newsletter, for those that subscribe (its free!)

Council – Sept 9, 2024

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

September’s first meeting continued our tradition of holding one fall meeting in Queensborough every year. It is a bit of a logistical challenge, and if you watch the video you see us managing as best we can with unfamiliar tech and layout, but I think staff did a great job in supporting us and it was good to see a full Queensborough audience at the event.

There is also something nice about holding a Council meeting in a room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a green park with young families and seniors walking by and kids playing on the playground equipment. It reminds you of the work we do, and how it impacts people’s daily lives, even if they don’t realize we are doing it right now on the other side of that window.

Our agenda started with the following items Moved on Consent:

Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption Request: 220 Salter Street (Metro Vancouver Sewer Inspection – Fraser River Crossing Project)
There are major regional sewer lines under Salter Street, and they need nighttime (when the water is low) inspection, which requires a construction noise exemption for two weeknights, which Council is granting.

2024-2034 UBCM Canada Community Works Fund Agreement
The City will be getting a grant of about $160K to support infrastructure investment in the City, but need to sign this agreement to get the cash, and agree to spend it on qualifying projects as per the agreement. Easiest grant ever.

We then had these following items that were Removed from Consent for Discussion:

2025 Permissive Property Tax: Exempt Properties – Review of Application Result
There are two types of properties that are exempt from Property Taxes – Statutory and Permissive. The first are by Provincial Law, and are why most churches and private schools are exempt. The second are at the pleasure of the Local Government, land use we can choose as a City to exempt from property taxes. These could include social housing, sports clubs, social service not-for profits, and the such. They must apply every year, and in my time on Council, we have not added many to the list of permissive exemptions, though we often get new applications. As a policy, the City directs not-for-profits to the City’s generous grant program if they need financial support, as that is a more accountable process.

The current list of permissive exemptions equals about $1 Million (this is reported every year as part of our annual report), and this year we got applications for 6 more, totaling $244,000 more. Two new applications (both established church properties with new congregations) totaling about $30,000 were added to the list of exemptions as per the established policy.

Budget 2025: Fees and Rates Review
As a normal part of our annual Budget process, we need to set fee bylaws fort next year. This has to happen early, because financial modelling of cost recovery is part of what informs the rest of the budget, and cost recovery is obviously impacted by fees. If we reduce business license fees, for example, that’s not “free”, it impacts the tax rates we need to charge next year. Most rates are adjusted annually to meet CPI, as a proxy for what I costs us to deliver the service, and to avoid larger and more intermittent price spikes. CPI estimate this year is 3.0%.

There are others that need bigger adjustments, like the cost of providing brass plaques for the cemetery have gone up quite a bit, requiring a 24% increase to recover those costs. Others have external controls, such as our towing charges being set by ICBC. Yet other fees are adjusted to align to market conditions (on street parking not going up this year, short-term parkade parking rates going up a bit due to demand increases), and yet other being shifted to better align with regional municipal comparators (e.g. Fire Safety Plan Review fees).

All told, these changes average aout to about a 3% increase, driving an extra $450k in revenue. For context, $450K is about as much revenue as we would draw from a 0.4% property tax increase.

Business License Bylaw Modernization Update
Staff have been working on a Business License Bylaw update for some time now. Not just looking at fees, but making sure our approach to issuing licenses reflects the modern reality of the local business community. Business license counts are way up, we issue almost 4,000 a year, which is about 20% more than Pre-COVID 2019. Still, staff want to streamline the license process, remove outdated requirements, and provide more flexibility for start-up businesses so it is easier to start a business in New West. Regular readers will also remember that a comparison with surrounding municipalities was conducted and changes to the fee schedule are proposed to align better with regional trends.

There has already been several stages of engagement with the business community here, but there will be another check-in now that proposed changes have been developed. This report simply to update Council before it went out to consultation, and to check in for any red flags.

Response to Council Motion Regarding “Tenant Protections”
As per a motion put forward in a previous meeting, staff are going to update our tenant protection measures. There is an ongoing rental affordability crisis, and recent changes to provincial housing regulations may result in increased pressure to demolish and re-develop our most affordable rentals, which puts a lot people in a very precarious situation. Alongside this the Province has brought in new tenant protection powers through Bill 16. It’s time to update our progressive-in-2015 Tenant Relocation Policy to assure we don’t exacerbate the homelessness crisis.

We then had several Motions from Council (not necessarily in this order, as we delayed a couple until after Public Delegations because we had people come to speak to Council in favour of a few motions).

Regulate the Unsolicited Distribution of Graphic Images Depicting a Fetus
Submitted by Councillor Campbell and Councillor Henderson

WHEREAS New Westminster residents have expressed concerns that unsolicited flyers showing graphic images of aborted fetuses are being delivered to homes and causing harm; and
WHEREAS a number of Canadian municipalities in Alberta and Ontario have established bylaws that; and
WHEREAS in accordance with British Columbia’s Community Charter, Section 8 (3) (i) A council may, by bylaw, regulate, prohibit and impose requirements in relation to public health; and
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT that staff provide council with proposed bylaw amendments to require all print collateral delivered to any premises or distributed to the public that shows, or appear to show, a graphic image of a fetus be delivered in a sealed opaque envelope with a graphic content warning, identify the name and address of the sender, and include measures to ensure individuals are not inadvertently exposed to graphic content on a leaflet, pamphlet, paper, booklet, postcard, or any other printed collateral.

This motion was driven by calls form the community we have received a few times over the last few years. I don’t have much to add to the wording above, except that this is just the beginning of a bit of a process Staff will have to go through to determine what our legal abilities are here, and how best to structure a bylaw so it is effective. I don’t know if anyone in BC has done this before, though local governments have been successful in Ontario and Alberta, so we will need to find a local context that fits with our Community Charter and Local Government Act. This was supported by all of Council, so more to come!

Lower Mainland Local Government Association Tracking and Reporting of Votes on Motions and Resolutions
Submitted by Councillor Nakagawa

WHEREAS Local Government Associations, the Union of BC Municipalities, and the Federation of Canadian
Municipalities advocate for issues that impact their member municipalities; and
WHEREAS municipal Mayors and Councillors are financially supported to attend these conferences in order
to advocate on behalf of their local constituents, yet there is no way for constituents to know how their elected representatives vote on motions and resolutions,
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT the City of New Westminster submit the following resolution to the Lower Mainland Local Government Association:
“THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT the Lower Mainland Local Government Association begins tracking and reporting how attendees vote on motions and resolutions and that they submit a motion to UBCM and FCM advocating for those organizations to do the same.”

Your local government is represented at these regional meetings by elected members of Council, and advocate to senior government for policy changes. It is probably a good idea for you to know what your local elected officials are advocating for – or against. It seems like a good step towards improving transparency and accountability. There are some technical challenges that might be easiert to solve at the relatively small Lower Mainland LGA than the much larger UBCM and FCM, and it will involve some investment of resources by those parties, so it is appropriate to structure this as a request for those organizations to evaluate if that is something they want to do. Council moved to approve this.

Selecting an Inclusive and Accessible Site for the 2025 Canada Day Celebration and Festivities
Submitted by Councillor Minhas

WHEREAS Canada Day offers the City of New Westminster an opportunity to celebrate and bring residents together in celebration and reflection; and
WHEREAS the Pier Park location for Canada Day festivities currently offers little opportunity for shade on hot days which often occur in early July; and
WHEREAS Queen’s Park has played host to previous Canada Day celebrations and offers more opportunities to keep participants cool on hot summer days;
BE IT RESOLVED THAT staff seek feedback from the public through our Be Heard system regarding their preference for the 2025 Canada Day festivities and celebrations; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT several locations across the City be offered to the public as a potential site for the 2025 Canada Day festivities including at least one site in Queensborough.

This was a bit of a complicated conversation as Council got a bit into the weeds, but it was nonetheless a good discussion that will hopefully lead to a good community discussions, and I think the direction is clearer with some amendments.

Be Heard New West is part of a community engagement toolbox, not a public survey tool. As Councillor Nakagawa said, “Public Engagement isn’t just asking if a hotdog is a sandwich”, it is a process of sharing information and asking for feedback in ways that have meaningful input into decision making. The decision by Council was to have staff report back with resource needs to do a proper engagement on this.

There was a bit of preemptive discussion about locations as well. There is a complex history why the “main”
Canada Day program moved from Queens Park to Pier Park, and those decisions were made in consultation with the many partners that are required to make the event happen. In the pre-COVID times we got to a point where there were two locations, with some overlap. Post-COVID the Pier Park location became the primary location, and the numbers reflected a much higher interest in people being there than Pier Park (thousands instead of hundreds in attendance). However, it is important to note that Pier Park festivities were not the only events coordinated by the City at Canada Day in 2024. There were activations all long weekend in Queensborough, at Queens Park, at the Anvil, and other locations.

Finally, The City’s festivals budget is fairly limited, and massive expansions of the event would require budget decisions, and increased staff resources. Many events in the City are primarily run by partners (Uptown Live, Pride, Hyack Parade and Festival, Fridays on Front, etc.) with some significant City support, but City-run events have been pretty limited to “civic” dates, like Remembrance Day (our largest City-run event), Canada Day and Truth and Reconciliation day, where partners support the City more than vice-versa. But it is clearly a spectrum between the two end members here.

Anyway, this will be an ongoing discussion. Let us know what you think!

Increasing Openness and Transparency at City Hall by Registering Lobbyist Activities
Submitted by Councillor Fontaine

WHEREAS lobbyist registries are intended to provide a public record that is accessible to residents of interactions between public servants, elected officials and lobbyists and to allow for rules regarding lobbyists to be enforced; and
WHEREAS British Columbia does not currently allow municipalities to use the provincial lobbyist registry nor does it extend the legal authorities municipalities would need to enforce lobbyist rules with a local registry; and
WHEREAS it is important for a functional local democracy that any lobbying efforts by entities such as corporations, labour unions, foreign governments or other similar foreign-based organizations be recorded and publicly reported in a timely manner
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT the City request the Province immediately take one of the following two actions:
The Province amend the Lobbyist Registration Act to cover the City of New Westminster and other similar mid-to-large-sized cities and administer the regulation of lobbying in the city; OR,
The Province amend the Community Charter to allow the City to establish a lobbyist registry and give the City the legal authority to register lobbyists, create rules for lobbyists’ conduct in their interactions with elected officials and public servants, as well as the power to enforce those rules. In addition, the Province further empower the Provincial Registrar of Lobbyists to work with the City to share information so as to reduce duplication and costs for both orders of government.

This was also a good discussion, and it was clear that everyone saw transparency and accountability as ideas worth supporting. There was a bit of procedural adjustment (to add this as an advocacy issue to the Lower Mainland LGA along with a letter to the province), but all in the interest in making our call for this louder.

I raised some concern about the difference between local politics and provincial/federal politics, and the need for us to clearly define what Lobbying is. I have dozens of conversations every week with people nt he community, residents, business operators, non-profits, and most some include discussions of City Bylaws or policies or practices. I would hate to think that every time I set up the Ask Pat booth at the Farmers Market that I would need everyone who asks me a question to register as a lobbyist. That said, there are clearly a few meetings I do have with people or organizations who are paid to advocate to me and fit the strict definition of Lobbyist. I just wonder if we can clearly draw a line between those two without finding exampled that straddle that line. So we have work to do there.

Finally, I added an amendment that asked that we engage the City’s new Ethics Commissioner, and ask them to report back on potential procedures or practices we could adopt as a form of practice disclosure for when we are being lobbied. I think the public is less interested in reading the names of lobbyists, and are more interested in what meetings we are taking and the purpose of those meetings.

So, more to come on that!

And with that we wrapped our Queensborough excursion, and considering the list of things above that ended with “more work to do”, I feel confident in saying we are back into the thick of it.

Labour Day ’24

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The days are getting shorter, the evenings are starting to cool off, the PNE rains have come and gone. Though the Equinox is three weeks away yet, most of us are looking back at the summer that was, while everything we put off until “after the break” is starting to loom large in our calendars for September. Labour Day always arrives with a mix of feelings: summer’s last hurrah, excitement of a new school year and a new recreation schedule, imminent pumpkin spice.

Labour Day is not just another day off, it is a day off won by working people organizing and asserting their rights. It is a celebration of battles won, a reminder of the quality of life granted to all working people because of 100+ years of work and sacrifice and solidarity though organized labour. It is also a call to assure that the rights won and economic prosperity driven by fair wages are not lost to the imaginary economies of neoliberal austerity.

Workers continue to build this City, this Province, and this Country. At the same time, right-wing politicians at every level are working to protect the record profits of multinationals at the expense of working people. They may talk a long yarn about “affordability”, but they are conspicuously silent when we discuss the erosion of real wages, or how austerity hurts the very social fabric that makes a society livable. They speak about supporting workers, but their votes tell a different story.

In New Westminster, our community is served every day by the professionalism and dedication of members of CUPE, the IBEW, the NWPOA and the IAFF. In the broader sense, our community is also served every day by the Teamsters who are right now fighting the rail multinationals to protect their hard-earned workplace rights and the safety of not only their workers, but all in their community. Our community is also served every day by the ATU members fighting right now to assure reliable and publicly-operated para-transit service remains available to the most vulnerable people in our community.

I was proud to spend some time up at Edmonds Park today showing solidarity with my friends in the Labour Movement: the leaders at every level, and the folks who show up every day and quietly build community while they provide for their family. The fight goes on. Not just on Labour Day, but every day.

Council – Aug 26, 2024

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Our summer break slightly shortened, and the weather decidedly not summer-like outside , Council had its first meeting in 6 weeks, with a fairly short agenda.

We started with a number of items moved On Consent:

Application for Extension of Liquor Service Hours: #200-55 Eighth Street, Hyack Sushi
The owner of this restaurant downtown wants to extend their liquor service hours. There have been no issues with their current license, so the City is letting the Province know we are OK with this extension though a resolution that is required under provincial regulations.

Application for Grant Funding to the 2024 UBCM Asset Management Planning Program
The City often applies for grants from senior governments and those administered through UBCM or FCM. Some require a Council resolution to make the application complete. As we continue on our Asset Management journey as a City, there is some financial support available to do this work, for which we are applying. Cross your fingers!

Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption Request: 32 Eighth Street (New Westminster SkyTrain Station)
Some work at the New West Skytrain Station needs to occur at night when trains are not running and the platform isn’t full of people. We previously gave a permit for this off-hours noise exemption, but the work is delayed, and they need an extension, which council granted them.

Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption Request: Metro Vancouver Queensborough Pump Station – 304 Wood Street
Sewer upgrade work also needs to sometimes happen at night, because that is when sewer flows are lowest. This upgrade to vital pump station in Queensborough will happen over two days in September or October (when the weather is amenable, as that also impacts sewer flows), and requires a noise bylaw exemption, which Council is granting.

Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption Request: 330 East Columbia Street (Royal Columbian Hospital Redevelopment Project)
There is a unique electrical conduit installation happening at the Hospital upgrade that takes about 24 hours to perform, and cannot be stopped once it is started, meaning they have to work through the night. This means noise bylaw exemption, which Council is granting.

Official Community Plan Amendment and Rezoning Application for 1084 Tanaka Court: Preliminary Report
This is a bit of an unusual one. There is a vacant property in Queensborough near the casino that was originally zoned for Industrial use until 2018, when Council granted them a rezoning to permit the building of a 3 story commercial building including a banquet hall, offices, and retail spaces. The owner has now decided that project is not financially viable, and wishes to sell the property. They wish to rezone again back into industrial, probably reflecting the change in industrial land values over the last few years due to a regional shortage. So we are looking at an OCP Amendment and rezoning. This is a preliminary application report, and will see consultation and a Public Hearing (as required by OCP Amendments), so I’ll hold my comments on the merits of the application until then. If you have opinions, let us know!

Provincial Housing Target Order for New Westminster
As was widely reported, the City is subject to a Housing Target Order from the province. We received the order officially on July 30, and this is an information report updating Council and the Public on the details of that order and what comes next.

Unfortunately, the order increases, not reduces, the confusion related to the provincial intent here. The number (4,432 new housing units by 2029) reflects 75% of the total estimated housing need determined from some slightly opaque provincial methodology. Notably, this is a different Housing Need number than the City has calculated using the methodology the province requires us to use for our own Housing Needs Assessment Report. So we have two sets of estimates driven by different methodologies coming out of the same Ministry in Victoria. Though the province “encourages” us to meet 100% of their new assessed need, we are only “ordered” to meet the 4,432 number, which should have everyone scratching their head about why we are striving to meet 75% of need, and how the last 25% of housing need will be met.

For the even stranger part, these “orders” are for occupancy, the day people are able to move into a newly built housing unit, where previous metrics have been for approvals. This is a problem because Cities may approve housing, but we don’t build it. We have no tools to force landowners to build what is approved on their lot. Look at the Tanaka Court application above: the City approved the banquet hall project, but we cannot force the owner to now build it, we simply don’t have the legal ability to do that. If you come into City Hall to apply for a permit to build a laneway house, we can grant you that permission, can approve it, but we can’t force you to build it on our timeline just because you applied and were approved. It would be a very different market if municipalities held this power, and it is unclear how the Minister thinks we are going to force building to happen.

Further, large development projects at the scale that will be required to hit 5,000 housing units in 5 years take years to plan, design, finance, and build. The two large towers being completed on the riverfront right now are going to receive occupancy permits this year meaning those ~700 units will be all we need to hit our occupancy target in year one of the Provincial Order, but that project was approved in 2017 – more than seven years ago! It is safe to say that our meeting this “target” in years 2, 3 and 4 will rely on rapid completion of projects that are already either approved or so far down the approval road that these new targets are meaningless to their success. So what’s the point?

But that all seems Inside Baseball.

Looking at the report, it’s clear that aside from tracking numbers and reporting out, there is no fundamental change the City needs to make, or can make, to meet this housing order. We have enough “zoned capacity” in the City to accommodate this number of units, and are working on our OCP updates to comply with the provincial Transit Oriented Area and SSMUH regulations. We currently have about 6,000 units in process (under construction, approved, or under planning review), however, we simply cannot predict, nor have any legislative or coercive control over, which of these are completed an occupied in the next 5 years. So we are complying with provincial regulation, doing our job as ordered, then getting back to work on the important stuff like planning for the infrastructure needs of the City.

We then had a raft of Bylaws for Adoption:

Council Procedure Bylaw No. 6910, 2004, Amendment Bylaw No.8467, 2024
This Bylaw that brings out Council Procedure Bylaw in compliance with new provincial regulations on Public Hearings was adopted by Council.

Heritage Revitalization Agreement (203 Pembina Street) Bylaw No. 8425, 2024 and
Heritage Designation Bylaw (203 Pembina Street) No. 8435, 2024
These Bylaws that enable construction of six townhouse units at 203 Pembina Street and designate an Oak Tree as a heritage trees was adopted by Council.

Parks and Recreation Fees Amendment Bylaw No. 8465, 2024
This Bylaw that amends our Parks and Recreation fees (after comparison to other Lower Mainland communities – which is relevant to a later motion) was adopted unanimously by Council.

Riparian Areas Protection Bylaw Miscellaneous Amendment Bylaw No. 8468, 2024
These Bylaws that update the language of our RAP Bylaw to comply with Provincial language was adopted by Council.

Bylaw Notice Enforcement Bylaw Amendment Bylaw No. 8469, 2024
Municipal Ticket Information Bylaw Amendment Bylaw No. 8470, 2024
These bylaws that simplify our ticketing an fining bylaw were adopted by Council.

Zoning Amendment Bylaw (1005 Ewen Avenue) No. 8452, 2024
This Bylaw that permits the development of 23 townhouse and duplex units and a commercial building in Queensborough was adopted by Council.

Zoning amendment Bylaw (1923 and 1927 Marine Way) No.8466, 2024
This Bylaw that permits the construction of a 90-unit affordable housing building near 22nd Street Station was adopted by Council.

Then we had three Motions from Council:

Enhancing Commercial Areas and Corridors in New Westminster
Submitted by Councillor Campbell and Councillor Nakagawa

WHEREAS The City’s Retail Strategy identifies current and emerging trends in the retail ecosystem, namely Micro Retailing and Combination Stores, and the Retail Strategy further underscores that both retail concepts have direct positive implications on the evolution of commercial areas and corridors in New Westminster; and
WHEREAS Micro-Retailing includes multiple vendors ‘co-locating’ in a shared space, utilizing shared resources or may encompass individual retail units that are much smaller than the average, with the intention to provide entry-level ‘gateway’ for small businesses to establish a bricks-and mortar location, without the financial requirements and risks typically expected in a standard retail lease; and
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED The City of New Westminster identify potential location(s), operating considerations, necessary resources and local partners to activate Combination Stores and Micro-Retailing commercial areas using shipping containers or similar concept to create a retail ecosystem that provides small businesses, artists, artisans, crafters and other vendors with affordable storefront locations and, at the same time, enhances commercial areas and corridors in New Westminster, with a report back to council on implementation feasibility.

This is an idea supported by our Retail Strategy, and discussed at and supported by the Arts Culture and Economic Development Committee. It also supports the nurturing of small local entrepreneurs by reducing risk and cost for set up, especially at a time where commercial lease rates are making it more difficult to find a place to start a brick and mortar operation in the City. The part I’m not sure about is what the role of the City is other than making sure we have a supportive permitting process, so I look forward to the reporting back form staff now that this was approved by Council.

Determine fee structure of New West business licenses and park and recreation programs compared to other Metro Vancouver cities
Submitted by Councillor Minhas

WHEREAS it is important for New West families and businesses to be charged fees for licenses, programs and services that are in line with other Metro Vancouver cities; and
WHEREAS there is no readily available and up-to-data analysis regarding how much our fees compare to other neighbouring municipalities; and
WHEREAS we strive to make New Westminster as affordable and competitive as possible;
BE IT RESOLVED THAT staff be directed to conduct a review of business license fees to determine how we compare to other Metro Vancouver cities; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT staff be directed to conduct a review of the charges and fees imposed by the Parks and Recreation Department for similar programs and services that are also delivered in other Metro Vancouver cities. The review should encompass core services such as: a. Annual gym pass; b. Swimming passes; c. Exercise classes; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT this information be incorporated and provided to the public as part of the 2025/26 budgeting process.

This motion completely baffles me. I don’t know how to square it with paying attention in Council meetings over the last two years. Because this motion asks for us to do things we already do every year, including in the most recent Council meeting in July. This seems like something I can unpack a but more in my next Newsletter, but here’s a quick timeline with links to the relevant public reports:

June 12, 2023 we received a report on the process to adjust Parks and Recreation fees, including this quote: “This will align the resulting proposed fees with the City’s comparative neighbours and keep costs relatively similar for residents who may have utilized services in those communities”. That report was approved unanimously by this Council.

July 10, 2023 Council reviewed and voted to update fees based on the process approved above, with the report including a spreadsheet comparing our fees to comparative municipalities, prior to 2024 Budget adoption.

July 8, 2024 Council received a report on the 2024 fee schedule, including this quote: “The annual staff review of existing fees and comparative data from neighbouring municipalities suggests relatively few modifications are required to the existing Parks and Recreation bylaw.” an attachment entitled “Comparative Municipal Analysis of Admission and Pass Fees” was included in that report.

Aug 26, 2024 (this very meeting!) Council unanimously adopted the new fee schedule informed by the above report.

On the business licence side, this is a work item identified as part of the 2024 work plan for our Economic Development department and was included in the resource ask for 2024 budget enhancements in the December 11th and January 22nd workshop reports. Progress on the work was reported back in April to the Arts, Culture and Economic Development Advisory Committee, of which the mover of this motion is a member. The Agenda and the minutes of the meeting where this was discussed are online with a spreadsheet comparing our Biz License fees to cohort municipalities.

So this motion asks staff to do again what it just did, or are already doing. I simply don’t understand how someone present at Council meetings could be unaware of this, and just what they thought they were voting for when they raised their hand to support those several reports previously received. Its baffling, and perhaps a bit concerning. Council did not support the motion, it being redundant.

Provide long-term funding to support the Walking School Bus Program to support the City’s stated goal of tackling climate change
Submitted by Councillor Fontaine

WHEREAS the Walking School Bus program reduces vehicle congestion around schools, greenhouse gas emissions as well as improves air quality in communities; and
WHEREAS the Walking School Bus program improves a student’s physical and mental health; creates an opportunity to make new friends through shared experiences; provides an inherent sense of belonging in being a part of a group; and
WHEREAS the City of New Westminster has a longstanding commitment to tackle climate change; and
WHEREAS the City’s Climate Action Reserve Fund has approximately $42 million as of Dec. 31, 2023;
BE IT RESOLVED THAT staff continue to work with the New Westminster District Parent Advisory Council, Society of Children and Youth, TransLink and SD 40 to seek out opportunities to expand the Walking School Bus program to other neighourhoods throughout New Westminster; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT to reduce the impact to residential taxpayers regarding the expansion of this program, that the City’s Climate Action Reserve Fund decision-making framework be applied, and that potential partnership funds be sought from the School District, Translink, and/or senior government(s) before the City commit to long-term funding, and that the Society of Children and Youth be directed towards the City Grant application process.

I wrote the motion here as it was amended through a lengthy discussion at the Council meeting. The Walking School Bus is a good program run as a pilot at a half dozen schools in the Lower Mainland (two in New West) by the Society for Children and Youth of BC, with support from the City, the School District and TransLink. There is some uncertainty about its longer-term funding, never mind how we might fund an expansion of the program. It is important that we connect with the people whose program it is before we start barging in with changes, which is the nature of the amendments brought forward.

Council voted unanimously to support this, and will reach out to the partners operating the program and find potential funding sources.

And that was the end of business for a shortish agenda. Hopefully you get to go out and grab one more sunny long weekend of summer before we are back in the whirlwind of September.

Paving Sixth Ave

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Paving a stretch of road in the City shouldn’t be news-worthy, the City spends something like $4 million a year on pavement management, and there are lots of roads that have seen recent paving, but the stretch of Sixth Ave in the West End has been such a bouncy boulevard of broken seams for a while now that people have been asking me why this key road in the City is so bad.

Now that we have timeline for re-paving, it’s a good time to talk about why it took so long, and why bumpy roads are sometimes running on top of a good news story. The West End has been the location of a lot of infrastructure upgrades over the last couple of years, and some of it is coming to an end.

The big project is the West End Sewer Separation and Watermain Replacement project. The main drive behind this project is replacement of the City’s old combined-flow sewer systems in the area with separate sanitary sewers (wastewater from homes that goes to the sewer treatment plant) and storm sewers (rain run-off from roads that goes to the river). This includes 8.4 km of new sewers, along with 24 rain gardens designed to decrease peak flow runoff. This will result in less storm water going unnecessarily to the water treatment plant for expensive treatment, and less chance of combined sewer overflows in to the Fraser River during storm events. There are also some older water mains in the area that need to be replaced and upgraded, , and it only makes sense to coordinate that work at the same time if you are tearing up the road anyway.

The timing of this project was also influenced by the significant support we received from senior governments to make it happen. The total project cost is $14.3 Million, of which $3.8 Million will be paid off over time by water and sewer utility users. The rest was paid by infrastructure grants from senior government: $5.7 Million from the Federal Government and $4.8 Million from the provincial government.

At the same time, this project overlapped with two major Metro Vancouver projects – the Annacis Island Water Main and the Central Park Water Main, and although only one of these crosses Sixth Ave specifically, the overlap with the bigger West End project was such that timing needed to be coordinated to manage traffic flows, cross-cutting infrastructure, and some excavation works.

Finally, because of new federal requirements, these projects required archaeological assessment work and the development of new chance find protocols for the City. This is a new area of work for the City, but an important step in reconciliation and meeting our UNDRIP commitments. This requires (you guessed it) digging of various test holes to identify where the native soils and underlying non-organic sediments interface, and identification of potential hot spots for archaeologic findings.

Overall, this was about a year and a half of work, and there were many occasions to break pavement during these works: various trenches for sewer or water lines or relocation some existing infrastructure, along with installing access chambers, valves, flow monitors, and tie-ins and the occasional archeological test pit. At some spots poor quality soils needed to be removed and replaced with competent backfill to support the sewer works or roadway above. Over that year and a half, there is really little point in spending a lot of money re-grading the road base and repaving when there are so many more excavations coming. Those temporary backfills begin to pile up, and the road becomes the bumpy patchwork quilt that is Sixth Ave. With the bulk of digging work now completed, the pave is about to begin.

There are a couple of spots that will still need one more excavation, likely in the spring, for good technical reasons. So that means a couple of the intersections are not going to be re-paved this time around, but will see their permanent paving next year. But for most of Sixth Ave from 12th to 20th, a smoother ride is coming soon. Sorry it took so long.

This Happened

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I might have mentioned that I have a Newsletter. Over there, I talk a bit more about day-to-day events in the City, a bit of politics, a bit of opinion. You need to sign up to get it, which you can do by hitting this link. They come out (almost) every Wednesday night. Here is a preview of a few things that I wrote about this week, sign up if you want to know more!

It’s Pride Week, so we raised a few flags, including this one at Douglas College.
New Westminster has a vibrant Recovery community, and their family event in Tipperary Park last week is a manifestation of that community focus.
What is Brewhalla? A lot of sun, a bit of beer, a bit of music, a lot of fun.
The ‘Bellies are still in it, against all odds!
Sometimes that exotic looking thing is just a Lancia past its prime. Peripherally related, I wrote a bit about the history of the Show & Shine, and where it went.

Pride 2024

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

It’s Pride week in New West.

For the 15h year, New West is marking its own Pride Week with a series of events, you can check out the entire calendar here, because it isn’t just about the Street Festival on the 17th.

As the week kicked off with the Flag Raising at Douglas College (the DSU and the College itself have been incredible supporters of New West Pride, and were there to help it grow from a small, one-day walk to a week-long-plus event!), and a flag Raising at Friendship gardens at City Hall, and a flag raising at the NWPD department on Columbia Street. These events have had be thinking a bit more recently about the evolution of the Pride movement (represented in part by the evolution of the Pride Flag), and how recent events, locally and globally, have changed the context of Pride.

I think some of us (yes, there is a cis-normative and euro-colonial bias here) have felt that the “fight” has been won, and Pride is more of a celebration of that than a protest against continued injustice. Right to have your marriage recognized, protection from state discrimination or persecution, the end of sodomy laws, these were big fights worth celebrating. But there are active movements right now here in North America to move backwards on these rights, and to prevent basic human rights and appropriate informed medical care to people who are not cis-conforming, with Trans and Intersex people facing the brunt of the intolerance and hate. The inclusive pride flag reminds us that until we all have rights, none of our rights are safe.

It shouldn’t take the persecution of a cis-gendered woman on an international stage, simply because she didn’t conform to a Eurocentric standard of beauty or sense of gender stereotypes for people to speak out about the harms faced every day by Trans and Intersex people, but here we are.

I am not trans, I am not intersex, but I try to be an ally, and often don’t know what allyship looks like, especially when I have this bully pulpit (that term being used in the strictly Rooseveltian sense). It is one thing to say we will not tolerate offensive of discriminatory speech in Council Chambers, and to take action to limit that even with public delegates, but what about the broader discourse in the City? There are a few vocal anti-Trans activists in New Westminster, and a small number of familiar local Social Media denizens who post discriminatory and often hateful rhetoric about members of the Trans and Intersex community. What is my duty as a leader in the community to call this out? To call these people out?

Should I stay out of it or be more vocal? Would I only be calling attention, adding to their audience or even legitimizing their “alternate view” by daylighting it, considering they are operating in a small bubble? Do I run the risk of being a “bully” (in the literal sense) by punching down at people who are, in turn punching down? Or am I being complicit in my silence when I see it and don’t denounce it every chance I get? What’s the balance?

I have taken to opening this conversation with folks I am chatting with at Pride events, especially to people I recognize from social media. Because I think I need to take some guidance from the community on this, and from the community impacted. What’s my role? Learning, listening and thinking about this is my work this year to exercise my allyship. I’m sure it won’t be a consensus on what my role is in combatting local on-line hate, but I’d love to hear from you if you have an opinion.

TransLink Funding

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I don’t spend a lot of time doing on-the-nose politics on this page. You need to subscribe to the newsletter for that, or drop by the booth, or stop me on the street, etc. However, Thursday was a big politics day on the topic of Public Transit, a topic that means a lot to me personally and professionally, so I’ll wade in on polite company here.

The Mayors Council put out yet another media release imploring senior governments (Federal and Provincial) to make some commitments about longer-term transit operational funding. There is nothing new in this ask, we have been at this since the day I first joined the Mayor Council almost two years ago. The new news here is that the Mayor’s Council received a report from staff that begins the work to plan for what happens if that funding commitment doesn’t happen. And it’s dire.

If we cannot find a new operational funding model, we will need to react to the operational deficit by cutting services drastically. The recent efficiency report identified some savings we can undertake (and are undertaking) that will not impact service to customers, but after than $90 Million, the next $510 Million will need to come from service. That means less funding for roads and active transportation, but it also means reduced transit routes and reliability. This is a bit difficult to model (and I encourage those interested to look at the report) because as we reduce service, there will be a reduction in ridership which reduced fare revenue, which drives further service reductions. This is the Transit Service Death Spiral we avoided during COVID.

To know how we got here, you need to understand how TransLink pays for its service. It is a unique body with many revenue sources, but most of them are going down, or not increasing to keep up with inflation and regional growth. TransLink’s revenue looks like this:

The level of Fuel Tax drivers pay at the pump is fixed by Provincial Legislation, but the amount of revenue it returns continues to go down as overall gasoline consumption drops. The Mayors recently agreed to a short-term increase in regional Property Tax to match a recent Provincial government contribution to address overcrowded bus lines, but Property Tax is being asked to fund an increasing number of services, and the Mayors recognize there are limits to how much we can push that. In New West, about 7% of your property tax bill goes directly to TransLink. The regional parking tax (which has gone down with work-from-home) and the levy on your electricity bill (not changing much as efficiency measures like Heat Pumps and LEDs offset increases from electrification) are both fixed by Provincial legislation, and combined only make up about 5% of our revenue.

On the Transit Revenue side, fare increases are limited by provincial legislation, and have been going up tied to inflation, however our fare system is shifting as we go through COVID recovery. With flexible workspaces, people are buying fewer monthly passes and are travelling less in traditional peak times, so overall fare recoveries are not rebounding as fast as ridership. “Other” revenues from transit includes things like advertising on Buses and fee-for-service, and are not going up. Direct senior government support varies quite a bit as it mostly reflects transfers to pay for capital projects or one-time funding, which makes it hard to plan around. TransLink also gets a bit of money to offset the revenue lost when tolls were taken off of the Golden Ears Bridge – but that pays for the financing, operating, and maintenance of that bridge. Finally, investment income is up a bit related to interest rates, but as we spend our reserves to keep the wheels rolling, this will go away.

The diversity of revenues is a good thing from and eggs-in-basket perspective. The challenge is that Property Tax is the only part that is 100% under the control of the Mayors Council, all of the other sources are limited by Provincial legislation – meaning we need permission from the province to raise them. Any new source of revenue would also require provincial legislation. It is this legislation that the Mayors Council has been asking the Province to change, a new “Funding Model”, because we are projecting ahead to 2026 when this revenue model will fall $600 Million short of projected operating costs.

So with that background and the new operational impacts report in hand, the Mayors Council is using the opportunity to call public attention (again) to the operation budget issue as we enter into the whirlpool of a provincial election – without doubt a political move. The Mayors expected, even hoped for, responses from Provincial leaders. And we got them, so let me review, in the order they hit my radar.

BC Cons: To be fair, the 900,000 people (like me) who rely on TransLink transit services to get around the region are not John Rustad’s base, but his response looked like he missed the memo and needs to do a bit of reading and listening before he starts throwing accusations in place of solutions. On almost every point he makes, he is either misinformed or misinforming.

The financial support that the BC government provided (or to use Rustad’s words “funneled to”) TransLink through COVID was a brave and defining commitment to public transit. The funding was needed because TransLink (by legislation) is not permitted to run a deficit, and because of how those revenue sources listed above all went down dramatically due to pandemic response measures. Unlike transit regions across North America, TransLink didn’t have to slash routes and reliability, because the Provincial Government recognized that hundreds of thousands of people still had to go to work through the pandemic – health care workers, first responders, people who maintain critical services like utilities that keep our communities operating. They were able to get to work, and as COVID restrictions waned, we had the fastest rider recovery of any public transit system in North America. While the other revenue sources have not yet recovered (and likely never will), we are limited (by legislation) how much we can raise fares, while our costs have gone up with inflation and we now have more ridership than pre-COVID.

Despite the protestations of Mr. Rustad, the numbers do actually add up, have been audited, are publicly available for his review, and the TransLink Mayors Council have been very transparent over the last two years about those numbers

His solution is yet another audit (just completed, actually, with $90M in potential savings found, which still leaves us $510M short), address overcrowded routes (dude, the Access for Everyone plan is Right Here!), stop-gap funding (which has, frankly, been the NDP solution that he was just complaining about, and is a problem if you need to plan transit expansion years in advance, like we do), and “accelerate the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain project”, which is a weird thing to suggest when there is nothing to indicate it is not moving forward as fast as possible, and we will still have no operational funding for it until we get the new funding model the Mayors are asking for anyway.

It’s clear Rustad has not read the file, has no idea what the problem is, and has no useful solutions.

BC United. Kevin Falcon’s news release on the same day announced a new 10-lane bridge at Second Narrows and a SkyTrain to the North Shore. I can’t flatter this by calling it a “response” because it is so disconnected from everything happening in the regional transportation conversation that it must have been developed in an impermeable bubble located in a deep bunker under miles of concrete. It makes Rustad look like a strap-hanging Buzzer editor in comparison.

I’ll skip past the obvious joke in Kevin Falcon finding a “10 Lane Bridge” as the solution to everything, but the regional Mayors (all 21of them) agree on transportation priorities for the region, and wrapped them up with a nice little bow and call it the “Access for Everyone Plan”. This plan not only shapes the transportation future of the region, it does it in a way that that supports and is supported by the Regional Growth Strategy. Mr. Falcon has surely seen this plan, and surely knows it is not funded. It’s not helpful when the region’s Mayors (who agree on very little) are all on the same page on something as fundamental as this to have a provincial leader ignore that page and start drawing your own multi-billion-dollar lines on a map.

Finally, and I cannot emphasize enough, if Mr. Falcon commits TransLink to building a SkyTrain to North Vancouver without first dealing with the funding gap the Mayors are currently talking about, we will have no funding to operate the SkyTrain line he just built.

BC NDP: Short of any official statement, Premier Eby was quoted in some media saying the NDP election platform would be clear in supporting TransLink. I heard the (outgoing!) Minister of Transportation on the radio this morning saying that the “worst case scenario” presented in the Mayors Council report would only happen if the Conservatives are elected, and that it is “certainly not going to happen under our government”, which sounds like a commitment. He also emphasized their admittedly excellent record in funding transit expansion (SkyTrain lines) and support funding to address operational gaps during COVID. He also gave the Mayors Council credit for finding some room to raise property taxes to match the $300 Million offered by the Province earlier this year to support the expansion of bus services to address overcrowding on some routes. So the messaging is all onboard, but we are short of an actual commitment, and that makes it hard for us to plan.

In concentrating his messaging on how Rustad is bad, he tellingly failed to even mention Kevin Falcon, though he did mention a former Premier and her disastrous referendum that set us back for 5 years or more.

BC Greens: Sonia Furstenau put out a short statement indicating full support for Public Transit and finding a sustainable funding model.

So overall, the Greens and NDP seem to hear the message and are responding to it with expressions of support, if not specific deliverables. We will have to wait for the election platforms to be released to see what that support looks like. Neither the Cons or the United seem to have any idea what the problem actually is. And everyone is playing politics. Welcome to silly season.

If you area Transit user, or even if you are driver who wants TransLink to still spend money on road maintenance, and don’t want 900,000 regular transit users getting in your way in traffic, you might want to take this opportunity to tell your provincial representative that TransLink funding is important to you, and that you will be voting to keep public transit running.

Workshop – July 8, 2024

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Council has been holding more “workshop” style meetings, with the idea that these meetings are where staff and council can dig into more details about programs, strategies, or ideas, prior to them coming to Council. There are a few advantages to this. They reduce the number of staff who have to come to evening Council meetings, which can go quite late, leading to significant overtime costs. They also allow us to have a bit more informal presentations and toss around ideas, raise concerns prior to Bylaws or strategies being fully cooked for approval at Council.

I rarely report out on Workshops, as these are generally preliminary things that will be reported out in the evening meeting when ideas are more fully baked. However, our workshop last week had 6 items that I thought were interesting to write about, and fit a bit with the theme of the evening meeting that I reported out on here (and complained about in the newsletter, for you subscribers). Workshops are public meetings, so you can watch them here and read the agenda if you like.

Massey Theatre Capital Project Additional Scope Items
The City made a decision more than a decade ago to “Save the Massey Theatre”. At the time, the theatre belonged to the School District and the School Board of the time decided that they didn’t want the hassle of updating or maintaining an end-of-life theatre with 1,300 seats, and determined it would be demolished with the old NWSS. A community uprising ensued, and City Council decided to take on the theatre in a land swap with the School District.

Of course, the Council of the day had no idea what the financial impacts of that decision would be. The Massey is a 75 year old building, and the School District did not spend a lot on maintenance or upgrades for quite some time, expecting the building to be demolished. We have already committed $22 Million in what we consider important life safety, building envelope, and accessibility upgrades, including the demolition of the north gym, for which there is simply no business case for preserving. That work is ongoing. It was hoped that the gym removal and envelope work would allow us to get a few more years out of the end-of-like HVAC systems (as it would significantly reduce the load on those systems). But it looks like the AC is failing sooner than we hoped.

Staff are going to develop a project plan for HVAC repair, upgrade, or replacement. Very preliminary estimates of replacing the heating and AC systems is $8 Million, but again, this is the kind of thing where estimating costs is not easy until you start doing the planning work. There is hopefully opportunity for us to avail ourselves of Green Municipal Fund or other senior government grants. There will no doubt be energy saving and greenhouse gas reductions coming with these upgrades (the Massey is now the largest single source of GHG emissions in the city’s facility stock, another unanticipated cost Council might not have thought of 15 years ago), and that combined with the Heritage and Arts and Culture aspects, make it a pretty attractive project for senior government partnership.

Council Strategic Plan – First Annual Report
A compliment to the Annual Report that was presented in regular Council, this report is more of a status report on progress toward the Strategic Priorities Plan that was adopted by Council in early 2023. There is a bit of a “stoplight” report here, with green for things on track, yellow for things falling behind, and red for things not moving forward enough.

Clearly, the elephant in the room is the massive shift in housing regulations that we could not anticipate when developing our Strategic Plan, and the workload related to those changes in regulation. I think when it comes to the need to increase housing supply near transit, and diversity of infill housing, our approach to these provincial changes will support goals in the long-term, though the road may be a bit rockier than we anticipated. I am still disappointed in the lack of rapid funding for affordable and supportive housing, never mind our persistent lack of a 24/7 shelter, but we continue to advocate to the province for these.

One of our strategic Plan pillars was around making transportation safer, and though we are doing the engineering work, there are identified safety governance and culture challenge. I will be bringing a motion to Council by the fall that asks for support to commit New Westminster to become a Vision Zero community. Bringing a safe systems approach to road safety and that may be a test of our ability to coordinate between departments in the City and other government agencies. We have suggested this direction in our strategic plan, but I think we need clear direction from Council if staff are to make this a priority and commit the resources to make it happen.

I also note that the biggest risks identified to moving our priorities forward are staff and resource shortages. We have been hiring, and are filling positions as fast as possible in this hypercompetitive labour market, but we still have a lot of staff doing too much off the side of their desks, and are at the limit of what we can deliver as a City until we give staff some space to breathe. The other stress is increasing cost escalation for all engineering projects – construction cost inflation is much higher than CPI right now, and our capital plan will be strained to keep up.

It is worth while watching the presentation from staff here, as they did a great job framing not just the pillars of the strategic plan, but also talking about how staff are keeping us abreast of the “lenses and foundations” part of the plan – how we are assuring the things we are doing are being done in a way that aligns with the expressed values of the Council around reconciliation, DEIAR, and climate action (for example).

For reasons never made clear, because there were no question or comments offered by the members to explain why, two members of Council voted against receiving this report.

Comprehensive Public Toilet Strategy Council Motion: Confirming Direction
This was actually a short discussion, as the direction from last week’s meeting on the Public Toilet strategy was from Council directly, not from a staff report. So staff put a quick report together to reframe those instructions in a way that is clear for them and aligned with previous instructions, and gave it to us to approve. The majority of Council moved forward with, and get us to approve it, but two Councillors voted against moving forward with a public toilet strategy.

Budget 2025 Public Engagement Methodology
We are going to do a commissioned survey on budget priorities to help inform the next Budget discussion. This is external to the Public Engagement process we usually go through, as it isn’t really “public engagement” as it would be defined by IAP2. There is a good article talking about the challenges of surveys as engagement here. However, it has been a few years since we did a public opinion survey in the City (I seem to remember one in my first term of Council, 6 years ago?), and so I’m not opposed to going through this process. However, we do need to be sure we put it in the right context.

I also thought it was funny to see this exchange on BlueSky the week we approved this:

Not an opinion I necessarily endorse, just one that made me laugh.

Procurement Policy Update
This is very Inside Baseball, but our procurement strategy has not been updated since 2013, and there have been significant shifts in construction costs over that decade. One part of the change is to align our thresholds for public procurement with those in the New West Partnership Agreement, a public procurement agreement that covers all of Western Canada. The second part is to update the values at which an emergency sole source contract can be awarded by the Purchasing Manager or CAO to align better with practices in neighboring communities and keep up with practical needs. A couple of Councillors voted against the second part here, but the majority of Council supported the update.

Development Application Process Review
One of the common narratives in the current housing crisis is that municipalities are to blame because we are slow approving new homes. There is no doubt that the steps to approve a new high-density building are complex, and include a huge number of geotechnical, engineering, building code, and other approvals to assure the building is safe, but also reviews about how a new building connects to the sewer system, the electrical grid, the road network, etc. The City of New west has been, since 2023, going through a Development Application Process Review to find out if there are redundancies, pauses, issues that make the process slower than it needs to be. The initial report from the Consultant is clear in its conclusion: “the City’s current development review process does not include any fundamental steps or requirements that would unnecessarily lead to slower approval times”. This is good. But there are opportunities to make things work smoother and more predictably in our approvals process, including better recordkeeping and increased digitization of records. These processes will require people to do them, but we fortunately have access to grants to pay for those people while the processes are updated, and permit fees for development should pay for most of their work going forward.

The purpose of this report is twofold. First, to seek Council’s endorsement of the results of the City’s Development Application Process Review, and second to seek Council’s endorsement of bringing new staff positions to the 2025 Budget discussion, recognizing the positions would be initially be offset by the UBCM Local Government Approvals Grant.

Council voted in a slim majority to approve this work, with two members voted against both receiving the report and doing anything about it, raising concerns about possible future impact on taxpayers. But I need to put this particular “no” into context. It was a year ago (May 29, 2023, I wrote about it here) when a motion asking for this very thing was proffered by a City Councillor. Council at the time voted it down because these processes were already going on, and the motion looked to be doing nothing but adding layers of bureaucracy to it. But Council voted that motion down knowing the work would go on because it was already happening. Now that the DAPR process has returned results, that Councillor who was so interested in “reviewing the effectiveness of and efficiency of our planning processes and procedures” opposes both the receipt of a report that outlines this, and the allocation of resources to make those processes and procedures work better. It simply baffles the mind.

After all that, the summary is that we are getting the work done, from Massey to DAPR, the City has a lot going on, and are making progress on so many fronts. I’m really proud of this work, but we have a lot more to do.