Budget 2024 – Utilities

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

This is the second in a series of posts about the 2024 Budget. I wrote recently about the general operating fund, and now am diving in to the utility funds.

The City of New Westminster has four utility funds. The financing of utilities are regulated by the Province and Public Service Accounting Board standards. As such, the money you pay in utility fees for your water, sewer, trash, and electricity are not “taxes” that feed general revenues, but can only be used to finance and run the utility. They must be accounted separately than general operational funds of the City and general taxation.

The Electrical Utility makes us different than other municipalities in the Lower Mainland (though there are municipal electrical utilities in Nelson, Kelowna, and a few other small communities in BC). That utility also has the unique feature that it pays a dividend to the City (it makes a profit), and because it is generally counted along with other utilities in comparisons between New West and other cities, it is also the source of some tired misinformation about our comparative taxes. But I’m tired of beating that drum.

All of our utilities have one thing in common – much of their budget is a result of costs passed down to us by larger entities. Water, sewer, and solid waste utilities pay Metro Vancouver to supply us clean water, treat our dirty water, and manage disposal of our wastes. The balance of the costs are operations of the utility (we need people to run and maintain the systems, test water, process payments, etc.) and capital costs (we need to build and replace pipes and pumps and vehicles). As such, the budgets are easiest to understand through a Lawrence Livermore style flow chart. So I’ll draw some of those, and talk about them.

The way these work is the vertical bars are (approximately) to scale, on the left are our sources of income and on the right are where that money ends up getting spent. Green are revenue sources, blue are operational expenses, pink are transfers internal to the city, and orange is interactions with our Reserves and the things we build through our Capital Budget. Each utility has a reserve, we put “surplus” every year into the reserve, and take money out of reserves to pay for and build things like pipes and pumps and trucks to keep the place running. Note all numbers here are rounded, and in the 000’s, and please recognize this is a bit of a simplification done to try to make the big systems more understandable. (I’d love to hear feedback about how this presentation works for you!)

Sewer Utility

Our main source of revenue is utility rates, though we also take in DCCs and other contributions to support our capital plan. Of the ~$31 million we take in, about 45% goes directly to Metro Vancouver to pay for the treatment of wastewater. This cost has gone up 14% in the last year, and is the primary driver behind our utility rates going up 8% this year. As you can see, the operational cost for us to run the utility (salaries, contractors, supplies) only equal about 10% of our revenues, so there is not a lot of cost savings to be found there.

We are planning for a $12.5 million surplus in 2024, which will all go into our Sewer Reserve, as will the $5.2 million we got from developers and senior government grants to support our capital program, which adds $17.7 million to the reserve. However, we are planning to spend $19.6 million on new infrastructure (pipes and pumps) and vehicles, which means we are planning to draw our reserves down by $1.8m, or about 5%.

Water UtilityAgain, our main source of revenue is utility rates, and the DCC/contribution part is much smaller in water this year. That has mostly to do with the timing of capital projects and our success at getting senior government grants for sewer work more than water work. Of the $18.5 million we take in, about 44% goes directly to Metro Vancouver to pay for the water. We spend less than 10% of our budget on operations, though with internal charges (the money other city departments charge the water utility for services), this cost is a bit higher than in sewers.

Our surplus in 2024 will be about $7.2 million, but we are planning to spend just over $12 million in new infrastructure and capital equipment in the utility in 2024. This means we will be drawing down the reserve by about $4.5 million, which represents about 20% of the reserve value. This is more than ideal, but with major sewer work being advanced by Metro Vancouver in Sapperton and West End, it is a good idea for us to do water upgrades at the same time, so you only have to tear the roads up once. Having a healthy reserve permits us to advance this work without borrowing money. I am asked often what the City is doing to find efficiencies and save money, this is a good example of one thing we are doing in the water utility – spending a bit now to save more money later. Our 5-year plan sees us getting back to 2023 reserve levels in the water utility by 2026 or 2027, so eroding reserves in the short term isn’t a structural budget issue, but a strategy.

Solid Waste Garbage and recycling are bit different than the other utilities, as the level of service provided to different parts of the community (house vs. strata, home vs. business, etc.) varies quite a bit, and although disposal charges handed down (mostly from Metro Vancouver) for taking in our waste still eat up almost 40% of all of our revenues, there is a much larger operational cost to solid waste. We need staff to drive those trucks and fuel for the trucks, because you can’t put your trash in a pipeline.

We have been running low reserves in the Solid Waste utility for quite some time, and are looking to build them up through this 5-year financial plan. As the “capital” is mostly trucks and bins, there is a shorter lifecycle than the pipes Water and Sewer put in the ground, so our annual Capital spend is perhaps proportionally higher than in the other utilities. However, over all the budget for Solid Waste is much smaller than the other utilities.

ElectricalOur Electrical Utility has a few unique aspects, but it functions like the other utilities we have. The electricity we purchase at wholesale from BC Hydro costs us just over half of our overall revenues, and the cost of day-to-day running of the utility costs about another 17% (or a little over $11 million). This leaves us with about a third of income that goes into our Capital Reserves or directly to the City as transfers. The transfer number here is large because it includes the dividend the City takes every year from electrical utility operational surplus and puts it in the general operational fund. This amounts to about $6 million that the City uses to offset property taxes in providing services that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to deliver.

The utility is spending a *lot* right now on a major capital upgrades. We just built a $30 Million substation in Queensborough, and are now rolling out Advanced Metering Infrastructure, which means 60,000+ new digital electrical meters and the hardware and software to integrate them into our IT network. This is a big, generational investment, and as a result we are drawing down reserves that were intentionally built up a bit to help support this work. Our 5-year Capital Plan has us building these reserves back up to the ~$37 million level by 2028, but at the same time, we are budgeting for a cumulative spend of more than $150 million in upgrading our critical electrical grid over the next 5 years. It’s a good time to be selling electricity, but it is also a challenging time to keep up with the demand for more service.

Summary
There is not a lot of change in these budgets compared to recent years, except maybe some increased capital expenditure. The annual increases are essentially the same as the last 5 or so years (sewer increase a bit higher this year, solid waste and water increases a bit smaller, both way lower than Port Coquitlam’s increases this year, but its not a competition!), and the budget drivers really don’t change – Metro Rates are going up to support their aggressive capital investments, and we pass that on. Compared to the region, our water and solid waste rates are about average (though it is hard to do apples-to-apples comparisons because all cities provide different services and rate schedules). Our sewer rates are still at the higher end regionally, because we still have a lot of older combined flow sewers. This has the double whammy of us sending more water to the plant than we should, and requiring higher capital investment to replace and upgrade those systems. Fortunately, we have been pretty successful at getting senior government grants to help offset some of those costs.

Which brings us into the discussion about the Capital Budget, which I will dive into next post.

Brand-o-lini

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

There is a principle known as Brandolini’s Law. I’m trying to run a family program here, so look it up to understand how it applies to what I am about to write about. I was pointed to some media reports and a Facebook thread about the City’s work on updating its logo, and the conversation is spiraling with misinformation. But in a vacuum of better information, this is inevitable, so I’ll take a bit of time to address the denominator of the Brandolini equation.

“The City is spending Half a Million on Rebranding to get rid of the Royal City”  is not an accurate description of the report that came to Council on Monday, so let me unpack a bit.

Here is the City Logo:

This logo was approved in 2008, during Mayor Wayne Wright’s second term. The old logo (a crest featuring the City’s Coat of Arms – you can still see it on some older City vehicles and equipment, which actually becomes important later in this story) was replaced by what we mostly use now, a St. Edwards Crown pictogram and a serif typeface. It looks a bit dated now, but was probably informed by the 150th anniversary of the City being imminent. It is a product of its time.

The City has been talking about a new logo for most of a year now. It was a topic of discussion through the last municipal election (perhaps an over-played hand), and in the 2023 budget discussions. Council actually approved this path forward back in June of 2023, but the roll-out has been slow due to staff priorities being elsewhere. Staff are now ready to move forward and wanted to inform Council before they went to the public.

By “move forward”, they mean hire a design consultant, and start a public consultation. This is envisioned as a two-phase consultation, where a committee of community members will be assembled to guide the consultation, and they will bring the larger public in through a full public engagement process. Council would need to approve any final design, and staff will need to guide the consultation, but the goal here is to have the public lead with the ideas, setting a vision, and working with a graphic designer to develop those into a refreshed logo. We have $40,000 in the budget to fund this work. Public consultation takes time if you want to do it right, and it takes a bit of an investment in this time.

There has been a $450,000 number thrown around about the cost of the rebranding, which needs to be clarified. Staff were asked last June what the “total cost to replace all letter head, decals, signs, etc.” and provided this response to Council in a public report:

“In response to Council’s questions regarding costs to rebrand City assets – i.e. re-decal vehicles and signage, and replace uniforms, stationary, and other branded materials – staff estimate a total cost across City departments to be approximately $450,000. It should be noted that these costs could be accommodated over time and within existing departmental budgets, with new products only ordered as existing stocks are depleted and/or replacements are required. This was the approach followed when the existing logo was introduced in 2008. For example, some City fleet vehicles continued to feature one of the previous logos until the vehicles reached the end of their service life and were replaced”

So the $450,000 number isn’t a real cost, it is the estimated value of current branded materials. This is not a new spend unless Council for some reason decided to throw away all materials featuring the current brand and replace them immediately with the new logo. That would not be a responsible way to manage public assets. We will instead continue to use the current materials until they are exhausted and/or meet end of life, then will replace with new branded material instead of old branded material, like we did last time. This is why you can still see the old coat-of-arms crest on some older equipment and vehicles.

Still, $40,000 is a real cost, and some will argue it is not worth it. I disagree, as I think re-looking at our branding is aligned with the Community Connections and Belonging pillar in our Council Strategic Priority Plan. A logo is art, and it is art about us. It is healthy and vital for a community to have a conversation about what kind of art we would like to see represent us. Even having the Public Consultation will bring people together to talk about what they value in this community. This has a potential to be an interesting community building exercise. I’m sure Mayor Wayne Wright and his Council felt the same way in 2008.

I can perhaps also respond to a few of the points raised on Facebook, though I do not want to link directly, because that feels a little weirdly like “punching down” on innocent people who are just sharing their community concerns. So here is a bit of a retort to general themes, not specific people:

“Why not fix the roads instead?”
$40,000 doesn’t fix many roads. In our recently-approved capital plan we are investing more than $20 million on pavement management, road repair and upgrades. No money is coming from those investments to pay for this. We have Engineering staff dealing with roads, EcDev staff dealing with logos and the City’s brand.

“Why not invest in helping homelessness instead?”
I agree that homelessness in a rich country like Canada is an embarrassment. This is why we have never stopped advocating to the Provincial and Federal Governments to re-invest in affordable and supportive housing in the City and across BC. In my time on Council, we have approved every affordable housing project put before. 96 units of affordable housing are about to open on 6th Street by the high School, we just broke ground on 356 units of student housing adjacent to Douglas College, and have more than 100 units of deeply subsidized affordable housing approved by the City right now waiting for the Province to come forward with the promised funds to break ground. Meanwhile New Westminster continues to support the Homelessness Coalition, the Rent Bank, and the most aggressive anti-demoviction and anti-renoviction policies in the province, in order to keep people facing housing insecurity in their homes. We also announced this spring a $2 Million commitment to a Three Crises Response Pilot to directly support people suffering homelessness in our community. We can do all these things and have a community conversation about our logo, they are not mutually exclusive.

“Why are you erasing history?”
I don’t agree that updating a 16-year-old logo is erasing history, but it could be a great opportunity for us to talk about and call attention to our City’s history. I hope that people born here and people who chose to move here and make New Westminster their home are both engaged in a consultation about what a logo means. This is where the community building can come from, if we are open enough to hear other voices.

Anyhow, I hope this clarifies where we are going, and I hope everyone so passionate about the City’s logo on Facebook show up for some of the public engagement to come, because comments on Facebook are not recorded for posterity!

Budget 2024 – General Operations

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

It’s Budget time. The City is currently approving its annual budget, which is more accurately and bureaucratically called the 2024-2028 Five Year Financial Plan Bylaw. There is a lot that goes into a budget like this, and a lot to look at, so I’m going to spend a bit of time writing about it, and hopefully opening up the details so you can understand what you are buying when you write those Property Tax and utilities cheques. I’m going to start with breaking down the various part of the budget.

To understand how we budget, you need to understand the difference between the Operational part of the budget, and the Capital part. You also need to understand the difference between General funds and Utility funds.

The Operational part is the day-to-day running of the city and the programs we offer. On the expense side this is mostly paying staff to do the work, but also includes the cost of consumables we go through as part of operations, like gas we buy to run the police cars, paper we buy to feed the photocopy machines, and things like insurance and bank charges. The money going into this part of the budget mostly comes from property taxes, but also includes grants from senior government, sales of services, and other revenue sources. This is the part of the budget people most people pay most attention to, because this is the one that results in that all-encompassing narrative around the “annual percentage tax increase”.

The Capital part is the money we are investing in the things we need to run a city: buildings, roads, sewers and pipes, a vehicle fleet and computers. We have a five-year capital plan that we periodically adjust so staff can plan out purchases and schedule construction. Every year, we take surplus money out of our operational funds and transfer it to reserves that are then, in turn, applied to pay for the things in our Capital Plan. We can also (within some regulated limits), borrow money to pay for these capital investments.

The General fund is how we budget for the general operation of City services that are funded mostly through property taxes. This is how we pay for parks and recreation services, Police and Fire services, running City Hall and the Library, bylaws operations, planning and much of our engineering services.

Separate from this are Utility funds. In New Westminster we have four separate Utilities: water, sewers and drainage, solid waste, and electrical. All of these rely on utility charges for their revenue, and are completely separate from property taxes. We spend utility money on the utility, and it isn’t mixed with “general revenue”, with two exceptions. First, there are transfers from the Utility funds to the General fund related to staff working on utility files (“internal recoveries”), and transfers the other way, because the City has to pay for its own use of utilities (“internal charges”) out of the general fund. The second exception is the annual dividend paid to the general fund from the Electrical Utility.

Here is how the General Operating fund breaks down for 2024:

On the left is “money in”, on the right is “money out”. The things “below the line” like Amortization or our Tangible Capital Assets and Internal Charges (the money our utilities charge to our General Fund account for utility services the city receives) are separated out because they aren’t really money in-out of the City, but money moving between accounts or accounting categories in the City. The biggest of these is the $23.5 million surplus which is transferred to reserves so it can pay for the Capital part of the budget, which I’ll write about later.

Some people like pie, so here are two pie diagrams: where our revenue comes from, where our expenses are allocated:

This diagram shows how some of the narratives we would like to use around our budget are not exactly accurate. Ideas like “15% of your tax dollars go to Parks” belie the idea that your residential property taxes are only 40% of our revenue. And as all of these expense items are total spending of a department, they ignore that many of these departments recover a lot of revenue through their operations through fees or other sources. The Police category is a specifically difficult item, because the NWPD pay for a lot of things (IT support, Finance staff, fleet operations) out of their budget that other departments like Planning don’t – those are captured under Corporate Services for every department that is “in City Hall”. Still , if you want to know how money in the City is spent, the pies are a start, as long as you are comfortable with all of the caveats.

Next post, I’ll write about the Utilities budgets.

Council – Feb 23, 2024

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 4 Comments.

We got a lot of work done at Council on Monday night, with a fairly long agenda, starting with an increasingly unusual Public Hearing:

Heritage Revitalization Agreement Bylaw No. 8425, 2024 and Heritage Designation Bylaw No. 8435, 2024 for 203 Pembina Street
It’s been a while since we have had Public Hearing, as we have adopted the now-mandated practice that rezoning applications that fully comply with the Official Community Plan don’t require public hearings. Heritage Revitalization Agreements, however, still require them, so here we are.

HRAs are functionally very similar to rezoning, except in rezoning the City gives a landowner some “value” by allowing them to build more or differently on a lot that the zoning bylaw allows, and in exchange, they provide some “value” to the city, in contributing to amenities or making a contribution to our amenity reserve funds. In an HRA, at least part of the “value” given to the city is the preservation of a heritage asset through permanent Heritage Designation. Usually, that is a heritage building, though it can be a landscape, a fence, or in this case, a Heritage Tree. This is a first for New West.

The project is a small 6-unit townhouse development that fits in the neighbourhood in Queensborough. The challenge with the specimen Red Oak tree is that it is located within the “building envelope” already permitted on the site, so the Tree Protection Bylaw would permit its removal. SO the proponent and staff worked on the HRA pathway to allow development of the land in a way that protects the tree, as it is felt to have acquired cultural importance in the community as a landmark and gathering space. The requirements to care for the tree will be baked into a Heritage Designation Bylaw tied to the property.

The Community Heritage Commission did not support using an HRA in this case, but did hope the City could apply a different tool to protect the tree, but the Land Use Planning Committee chose the HRA route. Other than the tree, the proposal aligns with the RT-3 zoning used for townhouse developments of this type in Queensborough, except for a couple of setbacks adjusted to give the tree more room. Public consultation we generally positive.

We had two written submissions to the Public Hearing and the proponent delegated in favour of the project. We also had 5 delegates speak (multiple times each) against the application. I would characterize their feedback as not opposing the development (none lived near the project) or the tree preservation (they all favoured it), but not liking the tool of the HRA being used this way, for non-specific reasons.

In the end, the majority of Council voted to support the application and designation.

The regular meeting Agenda began with the following items Moved on Consent:

Development Cost Charge Bylaw – Inflationary Amendment
We collect Development Cost Charges from new developments to pay for infrastructure costs related to growth. The amounts are based on a budgeted cost to build the specific infrastructure. Since the cost to build that infrastructure goes up every year, we can do inflationary changes to the DCC rates to help pay for part of this inflationary increase, but need to do so through Bylaw to keep things transparent.

Unfortunately, the provincial DCC regulation requires that we use CPI to calculate this inflation increase, and the CPI “basket of goods” does not reflect the massive inflation in concrete, steel, wood, and construction services which are the things the City buys with DCC money. This is one of the unwieldy aspects of the DCC process that comes along with the transparency and predictability benefits the DCC process provides. Everything in government is a compromise.

Then the rest of the items were Removed from Consent for discussion:

12 K de K Court Esplanade Boulevard Trees
Trees are interesting things. They add to the value of property, the quality of life, climate resilience, air quality, and social cohesion. To some they are the view, to others they block a view. A set of trees planted in City lands along the Quayside 15 years ago are reaching maturity, and some adjacent property owners feel they are too large, block their views of the river and light penetration to their homes. The City has been doing extra maintenance to reduce negative impacts, but some residents want them removed. The city is not in the practice of removing City trees, as it does not align with our Urban Forest Management Strategy, or our climate and livability goals. Staff have been working with the owners to address ongoing concerns, and are drafting a Letter or Understanding letter that outlines the city’s commitment to tree maintenance of the three trees of concern.

Budget 2024: 2024 – 2028 Five-Year Financial Plan Bylaw
These are the Bylaws representing the 5-Year Financial Plan worked out through numerous Council workshops and meetings. If you have been following along, there is not a lot of news here, but I will write a follow-up post or two with some of the details of the annual budget. This also includes some public feedback received on the budget, including a request for us to spend more on Bus Priority Measures (we boosted this in 2024, but the writer would like to see MOAR!), some concern that the 7.7% increase was high relative to inflation and Port Coquitlam, and some surprisingly details questions about how we account for the delay of hiring new staff. Once again, the Budget was approved for Three Readings.

Grant Program Refinements
New Westminster has one of the most generous Community Grant programs of any City in the Lower Mainland, with almost $1 million in grants awarded every year to community social development, arts, sports, economic development, environmental and cultural programs. This aligns with Council priorities, so staff are doing a review of the process to make it work more efficiently and serve the community better.

Since I have been on Council, there have already been significant changes to the program. The value handed out has gone up a lot (form $700k in 2015 to $1m now) and we have worked to remove Council from review and approval process to make it more community-centered and improve transparency, while giving more power to the Grant Committee model that includes volunteers from the community. We shifted from 8 streams to 3 portfolios in 2019 to make it easier to manage, but it still takes a considerable amount of staff time to manage.

There is a plan to do a comprehensive review of how this process works, aligned with Council’s Strategic Priority of “Community Belonging and Connecting”, but in the short term, there are some smaller changes being made to address staffing challenges and clunkiness in the existing system. The One-Time Small Grants process has not worked very well, and will need to be revised or rolled into the main grant program. For now, it fails the value-for-money test as it takes a lot of staff time for the small amount it gives out.

As the grant program has evolved over the decades, it’s ad-hoc accounting has become more of a challenge as the values get into the seven figures. More applications arrive every year than value in the budget, and not all of the grants are eventually handed out, as many applicants fail to deliver the idea they asked to grant. So we are undersubscribed, and also underspend, making for a complicated Operational budget impact. A more responsible easy to manage this is to set up a Reserve Fund, so non-allotted money in one year can extend over to the following year, and those carryover funds can help address more applications. There are some complications here, as some of the grant value is in-kind services, but staff are asking to set up a process that is accountable and transparent.

There is more to come here, and there will be some deeper conversation with the community about how to structure major changes if that is where Council goes.

Initiating process for updating the City’s corporate logo
The City replaced its corporate logo in 2008, replacing the Coat of Arms with a gold crown. It’s time for a refresh. The City will engage a professional Graphic Designer, who will lead a two-phase community engagement around this. Look for opportunities to engage soon!

Leave of Absence for Councillor McEvoy
If you follow the news, Councillor McEvoy had a heart attack a couple of weeks ago. He received incredible are at RCH, and is recovering from surgery at home. The best practice in local government is to grant medical leave and keep his seat warm for him until his return. He does have some committee roles that we need to fill in his absence, and we did so.

Rezoning and Housing Agreement: 145-209 East Columbia Street – Bylaws for First, Second and Third Readings
The owners of an empty lot in Sapperton what to build a six-story mixed-use building. It is aligned with the OCP, but requires a rezoning. This would have retail at grade, offices on the second floor, and 99 Purpose Built Rental homes, adding to the vibrancy of Lower Columbia. The 99 PBR homes meet the City’s Family Friendly Housing minimums and will provide active cooling to all units. As part of the “great dentist office debate of 2024”, the owners are concerned they will not be able to lease the ground floor unless some flexibility is offered to allow medial services in come of the units, and staff have hammered out a compromise.

Public consultation on this project was generally neutral to positive, with some concerns raised regarding parking (natch) and impact on traffic (double natch). There were some who felt it was too big for the location (though this being within 400m of a SkyTrain station, the new TOA provincial regulations would actually permit 8 stories). We also received a bit of “it is being built specifically for renters, meaning this project puts the safety and security of our quiet neighborhood in jeopardy” kind of feedback, which seems out of touch with the reality of our housing crisis, and is rather disrespectful to the 45% of the people in New Westminster who are renters. In the end, Council voted to approve three readings of this project.

We then read a bunch of Bylaws, including the following Bylaws for Adoption:

Development Cost Charge Reserve Funds Expenditure Bylaw No 8437, 2024
This Bylaw that allows us to spend ~$3 million from our DCC funds on the projects they were earmarked for was approved by Council.

Zoning Amendment Bylaw (810 Agnes Street) No. 8390, 2023 and Housing Agreement (810 Agnes Street) Bylaw No 8389, 2023
These Bylaws that facilitate development of a 33 storey high-rise tower with 352 Purpose Built Rental homes and a publicly accessible indoor community space and adjacent community park at 824 Agnes Street were approved by Council.

We then went through a raft of Motions from Council.

An information report on a Crime and Safety Townhall Forum hosted by the New West Progressives
Submitted by Councillor Fontaine and Councillor Minhas

Whereas the issue of crime and public safety is of concern to the citizens and business owners of New Westminster; and Whereas Councillors Daniel Fontaine and Paul Minhas hosted a community forum attended by over 120 individuals in November 2023; and
Whereas Councillors Fontaine and Minhas committed to drafting a summary report and submitting it to Council and the Police Board via the Chair;
BE IT RESOLVED THAT Council receive for information a summary report from Councillors Paul Minhas and Daniel Fontaine regarding a crime and safety forum they co-hosted in November 2023.

The motion here was to “receive the report”. There were no actions coming out of it, which made it a bit weird for a Notice of Motion process. But that aside, the report is a bit of a mess. It is perhaps a demonstration how public engagement without a clear direction or plan is useless at the reporting out stage. I have no doubt people at the event had valuable input and suggestions, but what is reported out here is a series of strangely unanswered questions, quotes pulled from a newspaper story, and unattributed statements that follow no real theme and draw no conclusions. As a result, no clear recommendations can come out of this, excepting the few things in the summary that read like suggestion to do the things we are already doing.

NOTE: the rest of these Motions below are resolutions intended to be considered at the Lower Mainland LGA conference in May, this being the formal process through which we collectively advocate to senior governments for changes in policy or funding

Allowing local governments to apply commercial rent controls
Submitted by Councillor Henderson

WHEREAS the Province of British Columbia regulates annual allowable residential rent increases through the Residential Tenancy Regulation, B.C. Reg. 477/2003, to protect lower income renters from housing insecurity; and
WHEREAS there is currently no similar Provincial policy to protect small businesses or community-serving commercial tenants from unsustainable, unpredictable, and increasingly significant rent increases;
BE IT RESOLVED that the Province of British Columbia 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.

There has been quite a bit of discussion in the community lately about ground-based retail and commercial, and what the City can do to protect local small businesses that make our neighbourhoods more lively. There have been a few stories recently of businesses facing 200% or 300% lease increases, and deciding it is just not viable to run a small business in the face of that. Though commercial leases are different that residential rent, the impact is the same – if a landlord was able to triple your rent overnight, there would be no such thing as secure affordable housing in our community. One important difference is that small businesses often invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in building improvements to make their business fit in a space, which makes it hard to walk away when the lease changes, and creates too much risk with onerous demolition clauses.

We can complain about 7.7% tax increases (which landlords directly download to leasing businesses), but that pales in comparison to 300% lease increases. The first is hundreds of dollars, the second is tens of thousands. We need to find a way to level the playing field between the people who own the commercial buildings and those who want to set up small community-serving businesses.

I’m not sure how the Lower Mainland LGA is going to respond to this, and there are certainly many details to work out on how rent protections would be applied in the commercial market, but we are asking the Province to consider giving Local Governments the authority to explore these ideas within identified areas of the City which has specific economic development goals.

Additional funding for overdose prevention sites across municipalities
Submitted by Councillor Henderson and Councillor Nakagawa

WHEREAS the Province of British Columbia declared a drug toxicity public emergency in 2016, acknowledging the rapid increase in overdose deaths and the need to deploy the necessary harm reduction strategies with urgency to prevent additional deaths; and
WHEREAS over 13,000 people have died of toxic drugs since 2016 in communities across British Columbia, including at least 2,500 people in 2023, about two-thirds of which were from inhalation, yet only about 40% of supervised consumption and overdose prevention sites in British Columbia offer inhalation services;
BE IT RESOLVED that the Province of British Columbia 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 municipalities which do not currently
offer this service to residents.

Health Outreach Centers with safe, supervised consumption save lives. People who deny this fact are denying the published research of health care professionals. Too many people in British Columbia are dying from the toxic drug supply for us to engage in that kind of denialism. They are not the complete solution, but they save lives and get people connected to other supports including recovery from their addiction. We need these in every community, because every community has people dying of toxic drugs. We also need to fund them adequately so they can provide health outreach and programs to move people beyond addiction. We also need to fund them so that inhalation is available, as this is largely replacing intravenous drug use in the overdose death statistics.

This resolution is asking the Province to increase funding for this important component of addressing the poisoned drug supply crisis.

Eliminating Barriers to Public Home Care Services and Social Supports for Aging in Place and Public Long-Term Care
Submitted by Councillor Campbell

Whereas seniors, families and seniors organizations have been advocating to improve access to public home care services and supports to assist seniors to live at home, in their communities, longer and to delay or prevent premature admissions to public long-term care facilities; and
Whereas finances can become an impediment to access the required home care services such as housekeeping, more frequent bathing and meal preparation necessary to age in place, and community programs that have been designed to try and meet seniors’ needs are unable to fulfil the increasing
demand;
Therefore be it resolved that the Province eliminate financial and accessibility barriers by investing in more public home care services and social supports required to age in place, and by further investing in public long-term care to ensure seniors are well supported in the continuum of care.

For those who read my Newsletter (link here to subscribe!), you know the outgoing BC Seniors Advocate was at Century House last month talking about senior services, and the places in our province where we need to bring more support to seniors. Not just because it is the right thing to do for seniors, but because investment in seniors home care save the health care system money, and investments in public residential care save seniors money while providing a higher level of care than for-profit homes do. This is advocacy the folks at Century House asked Council to do, and Council voted to support it.

Creating a Ministry of Hospitality
Submitted by Councillor Campbell

Whereas British Columbia is home to over 15,000 restaurants and foodservice vendors that employ over 185,000 workers across the province, generate $18 billion in annual sales and play a key role in supporting BC workers, families, and vital industries such as agriculture, transportation, and tourism and
are at the heart of every community in this province; and
Whereas the costs of food, supplies and transportation have substantially increased, commercial property owners are passing commercial property taxes on to restaurant and food service tenants, many of whom continue to experience longterm impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic;
Therefore be it resolved the Province create a Ministry of Hospitality to support and engage restaurants, food service vendors and the hospitality sector generally by acting as advocates within government for policy development and reform.

This idea is a bit out of left field, but comes directly from the same advocacy efforts that informed the approach to commercial lease rates control proposed above, the “Save BC Restaurants” campaign led by the BC Restaurant & Foodservices Association and Restaurants Canada. Our Local Chamber of Commerce also supported this. The combines voices of hundreds of New West businesses, thousands of BC restaurants, and tens of thousands of food service business across Canada. Let’s hope the Lower Mainland LGA also hears this call.

E-Comm Governance Review
Submitted by Mayor Johnstone

Whereas E-Comm has struggled to provide service levels that meet established standards or the expectations of the communities they serve, while the cost of E-Comm is increasing at an unsustainable rate, creating budget uncertainty for local Police and Fire services, and
Whereas the imminent introduction of next-Gen 911 will represent the single largest change in emergency communications delivery since the introduction of 911, with uncertain cost and operational impacts,
Therefore be it resolved the Provincial Government engage local governments in a comprehensive review of the governance structure and delivery model of 911 emergency call taking, related non-emergency call taking, and emergency dispatch services across BC with a goal to assure reliable, affordable, and sustainable services for all communities.

This resolution was developed in working with the New Westminster Police Board, who are increasingly frustrated with the lack of value for cost we are getting from EComm, the organization that provides 911 call taking, non-emergency call taking, and/or emergency dispatch services for various municipalities across BC.

I don’t think it is necessary for me to list the challenges with EComm that have been impacting our first responders for the last few years. Exacerbated with challenges in BC Ambulance, worsened during the COVID19 Pandemic, and highlighted during the tragic Heat Dome event of 2021, EComm has been challenged to meet not only the service standards set for their industry, but the service levels expected of the community, for years. New Westminster Police could no longer rely on EComm to provide non-emergency call taking because of the massive number of dropped calls and unacceptable wait times, and have taken the measure of bringing non-emerg calls in house at our own cost. Despite recent improvements, 911 service at the best of times can barely meet industry standards, and there is no evidence that resiliency exists in the system to assure it will operate when even a small a regional disaster strikes. At the same time, costs for our Fire Department and Police related to EComm call taking and dispatch are increasing at an unsustainable rate. Meanwhile, on the horizon is the integration of next-Gen 911 that is already looking technically challenging and massively expensive. Community confidence in EComm being able to address these overlapping challenges in a timely way low.

We am hoping the Lower Mainland LGA will support us in asking for the province to step in and lead a comprehensive review of how emergency communications are managed across the province.

And that was the end of a long meeting, with hundreds of rental housing units approved, a new budget bylaw approved, advocacy on major issues impacting our community, a pretty good Monday all around.

Council – Feb 5, 2024

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The Monday meeting was an eventful one, and I have already written some initial thoughts about that, and have more thinking and work to do. But before that all, we did get through our full Agenda, which started with us moving the following items on Consent:

Development Cost Charges Expenditure Bylaw No. 8437, 2024
We collect Development Cost Charges from developers to pay for infrastructure related to growth. To spend those DCC funds, we need authorization from Council. This Bylaw authorizes spending (numbers here approximate, itemized to the dollar in the report) $380,000 from our Drainage DCC and $1.2 million from our Sanitary Sewer DCC for sewer separation and modelling work, $145,000 from our Transportation DCC for pedestrian safety improvements, applying $450,000 from our Park Acquisition DCC towards the Pier Park loan, and $850,000 from the Water DCC for water main replacement.

Heritage Revitalization Agreement and Heritage Designation: 203 Pembina Street – Bylaws for First and Second Readings
There is a property in Queensborough where the owner wants to build townhouses consistent with the OCP, and they require a rezoning to do so. As the City and the community expressed concern about losing a prominent tree on the site, the owner agreed to a path where an HRA is offered instead of a typical rezoning. This provides permanent protection to the tree. This has not happened before in New West, but seems a creative way to balance development and tree preservation. The HRA will go to a Public Hearing, so I will hold my comments until then to respect the process.

Zoning Amendment Bylaw No. 8436 (Miscellaneous Zoning Bylaw Amendments) for Consideration
This is a bit of an omnibus bylaw to update our zoning bylaw in various small ways, correcting the inconsistencies, redundancies, language changes, and administrative errors that accumulate in such a complex Bylaw document. There are also a few minor changes to reflect best practice that are not properly codified in our existing Bylaw.

Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption Request: Metro Vancouver Valve Replacements (660 East Columbia Street)
A required valve replacement in the Sapperton Water Main that they are coinciding with some TransLink work for a bunch of good efficiency and operational reasons, and it is going to require some work outside of regular construction hours, which received Council approval.

The following items were Removed from consent for discussion:

Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption Request: 660 Quayside Drive)
The construction of the Bosa development on the waterfront is nearing completion, and they need to remove the crane, which requires Saturday work outside of regular construction hours. Council granted a Noise Bylaw exemption to permit this.

Budget 2024: Draft 2024 – 2028 Five Year Financial Plan
Our budget is approved by Council in the form of a Five Year Financial Plan, with a 5-year Capital Budget that sits alongside it. We have had a half dozen open workshops on this, over 9 hours of discussion and deliberation, including going back and forth with staff on the line items in the plan and the strategy for paying for all of the items in the plan. There were some significant changes made through the last couple of meetings, and asked staff to take all of that away and draft it into a Bylaw we can vote on (as per Section 165 of the Community Charter).

Our Utility rates are going up between 3.3% and 12.0%, driven primarily by the increased cost of service being passed down to us by Metro Vancouver (for water, sewer, and solid waste services), and our long-term asset management plan that is pushing capital investment to upgrade our utility networks and maintain sustainable reserve levels for the future of the utilizes.

Our five-year Capital Plan is pegged at $208.8 million for general City services (e.g. those funded by taxes) and another $272.9 Million in utility investments for a total of $481.7 million. As we are wrapping up a couple of large capital projects, a good portion of our 2024 capital budget will be funded by reserves set up for this purpose, meaning those reserves will be going down, from $256.8 million to $177.9 million. The 5-year plan sees these building back up to $238 million by 2028 as part of our long-term commitment to a sustainable reserves policy aligned with best practices.

Our “General Fund” operating budget has reached $189 million, which requires a 7.7% tax increase to support. More than half of this reflects inflationary increases and new labour contracts secured in 2023. And I wil write up a follow-up piece on the things that informed our budget decisions.

After reading a few Bylaws (none for Adoption at this time, we moved on to Motions from Council:

Establishing delegation to visit Port Coquitlam to review best practices for limiting tax increases while increasing services
Councillor Minhas

Whereas the City of Port Coquitlam with a population of approximately 60,000 people has consistently registered some of lowest year-over-year property tax increases in Metro Vancouver over the last decade and beyond; and
Whereas the City of Port Coquitlam has proudly continued to expand core services for their residents and businesses including the recent addition of 57 free parking spaces in their downtown core; and
Whereas the City of New Westminster experienced a record high level of property tax in 2023;
BE IT RESOLVED THAT the Mayor request a meeting with elected officials and senior city staff from Port Coquitlam to explore if any of their best practices could be implemented locally with a goal of limiting future property taxes while enhancing service standards

Any motion that starts with inaccurate statements in the preamble needs to be considered in that context. This is far from a “record high” property tax increase, as compelling a political speaking point as that may be. It also seems like I have already had this conversation…

On the subject of the motion, I already noted that we had 9 hours of open workshop this year discussing every aspect of the City’s Budget – and the budget was on the agenda today during the meeting – and the mover of this motion had ample opportunity to ask questions of our experienced and professional staff about comparators or different approaches, and those questions were not asked by the mover. Since I was challenged in Council on this point, I encourage folks to watch the 9 hours of publicly accessible video of those workshops and not take my word for it. (they are all available here, The workshop dates were Oct. 16, Nov 20, Nov. 27, Dec 11, Jan 8, and Jan 22). You can confirm for yourself how proactive the mover was in those discussions.

Further, every City’s budgets are open books – the Province even prepares spreadsheets and posts them comparing every City at the end of the year. Any member of Council or public can look at those spreadsheets and see where we are the same, or where we differ. You can not only compare us to PoCo, but to the other 21 municipalities in Metro Vancouver or the other 160 municipalities in BC. There is no “secret formula” or “tips and tricks” used by PoCo or any other City. Public Service accounting standards are used, and audits are publicly reported. The numbers below are not mine, they are directly from the BC Government site I link to above.

If a Councillor or member of the public does that bit of reading, they find PoCo’s increase of own-source taxation on a per capita basis has gone up 32% over the last decade (a timeline mentioned in the motion). New Westminster’s has gone up 35%, with both of us well below the metro Vancouver average of 41%:

At the same time, as there was significant speechmaking in the meeting about PoCo’s investments in infrastructure, PoCo’s 2024 Capital Plan is $33 Million. New Westminster’s is $152 Million. (the numbers I quoted in chambers were off the top of my head, and not accurate – these ones are).

On the topic of best practices, we have talked at length with our staff over the last year and a half about the best practice of asset management. This has informed our ongoing effort to take a sustainable approach to asset replacement and a responsible approach to asset reserves. Besides spending much more on capital projects, there is a significant difference in our reserves over the last 5 years – the timeline when New West began its serious efforts to address Asset Management. In New West they have more than doubled and are now approaching the 5% of asset value that represents best practice. Over the same decade, PoCo has chosen to not invest in their reserves, and they have not grown at all, to the point where PoCo has some of the lowest reserves in the region. This is not secret, this is not trick, this is a choice.

Now, to be fair, this is not a competition. PoCo opened a new recreation facility in 2021, that puts downward pressure on reserves; we are opening our this year, and that will put downward pressure on our reserves. But the choice to assure our 5-year plan offsets this downward pressure over the term of the plan was discussed several times around the Council Table in the last year, and Council has made a clear decision to follow this accounting best practice. Every City is different and has different pressures. We don’t need to go to PoCo to lecture them about this, nor do we need to bother their staff when we have experienced, knowledgeable and professional staff here ready to answer any question the Councillor is willing to ask whenever they arise. in a public meeting. So I could not support this motion, because it wastes the time of professional staff in two cities.

Increasing support in Budget 2024 to enhance the work done by our local resident associations
Councillor Fontaine

Whereas our resident associations have a long history of engaging with City Hall and actively encouraging community participation and engagement; and
Whereas resident associations only receive $200 each to support the funding of their operations; and
Whereas the grants provided to resident associations have not been adjusted in recent memory and they are not tied to the rate of inflation;
BE IT RESOLVED THAT staff be directed to increase the annual resident association budget by up to an additional $200 in the 2024 operational budget; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT this additional increase in base grant funding be available upon written request of the resident association; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT resident associations with a bona fide and active membership base over 150 individuals on December 31st of the previous calendar year are further eligible to request an additional $200 in funding to support their operations

I hate to once again be correcting the information inherent in the preamble to a resolution, but grants provided to RAs were adjusted in very recent memory – about two years ago to address on-line engagement costs related to COVID.

Although I support the spirit of this motion, I was not in support of the resolutions as written. This is because it is not aligned with the requests made by Residents Associations themselves during our most recent RA Forum. Though I recognize the author of this motion was not present at the Forum, and may have not read the follow-up communications I sent to RAs and members of Council.

There was some direction given to staff to help work out a new model that supports the digital engagement the RAs are requesting (and technical assistance may be more appropriate than funding) more fairly reflects the new world of digital engagement, but also recognizes the varied nature of the RAs. Some RAs are in very strong financial shape and have tech-savvy volunteers, some don’t even request the small subsidy the City provides. If there was a more common concern, it was access to meeting space due to insurance challenges, and we are also working on better supporting them in that area. Those discussions are ongoing, and I hope we have some clear direction to take back to the next RA forum with some proposed solutions. What is important here is that we include them in those discussions to put support where it is needed, not just throw money at a problem when that has not been a clear request from the RAs.

Council agreed to provide a bit more funding to the RAs that request it in the short term, but the “bonus” for having higher membership clause was not supported. None of this takes away from the ongoing work we need to do to support RAs.

And that was the end of the business part of the Agenda!

Humility and Power

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 4 Comments.

We had a challenging meeting on Monday. I am still a little unsettled by what occurred, and as the person required to chair meetings, I am still uncertain about how we could have managed the situation differently. To frame the challenges, I need to first talk about power. Power is an uncomfortable thing to talk about for people who hold it.

As a Mayor, I hold power. Some 6676 people in this community voted for me, giving me some power over how council meetings are run. There are limits on that power, in legislation and procedure bylaws written by people who similarly won some number of votes sufficient to give them power to make those decisions. The vast majority of people granted the power to make those decisions are people like me. People with privilege that comes predominantly with whiteness, maleness, access to education and wealth.

Through these systems created by people like me, we make decisions that impact our community, and impact people with much less power in our community. To do that justly, we in power need to bring humility into decision-making. The history of broken systems is not one of the most vulnerable being protected and supported, so even if we aspire to adapt those systems to make them more just, we must practically operate within the unjust systems to serve our community as best we can until they can be fixed.

And I am going way too deep into sociology for a geologist, so let me get away from the abstract here.

In a recent meeting of Council, a member of the community felt they were harmed by the comments of a member of Council. In a just system, this member of the community would be able to hold the member of Council accountable for those harms. Part of our system is the opportunity to delegate at a public meeting and bring to Council and the community’s attention the harm that was caused in the same forum in which those harms occurred. In some ways, this is a beautiful expression of democracy. Except we have not set up our system to support this.

We have a Procedures Bylaw and a slightly vague set of community standards around what can and cannot be said in that Delegation. We ask that delegates not speak about members of Council or other people. We ask that people speak about issues, not about people. But what if the issue is the words or actions of a person? What if that person is one of those holding power in that room?

In our meeting on Monday, we had a proclamation declaring a Day of Remembrance and Action on Islamophobia. This was not controversial, we have had similar declarations in previous years, and agreed unanimously as a Council in this very meeting that this was appropriate and something we support. What was different this year is that we had a delegate, a Muslim person, saying that they heard Islamophobia in our chamber in a recent meeting, and they wanted to speak out about that. Here is a person with personal and intimate experience with Islamophobia in our community who wishes to speak to personal experience in a system not well designed for them to speak their truth to power.

The question is whether that delegate did so in a way that was consistent with “rules of order” – those procedures and practices that people like me, people with power, have constructed.

When a member of Council calls “point of order”, I am required to pause any other speaker and hear that concern. When the point of order raised is “What that person said is inappropriate”, I have two options in front of me: exert the power given me, or show some humility to the power given me. To be honest, my reflex is to do the former and revert to the procedures and practice that put me in this place and shut the conversation down if there is any hint of impropriety. If you watch the meeting, you see me and other members of Council applying these systems by calling “Point of Order” when the comments seemed to be directed at a single member of Council. But in exercising humility we must consider: does this member of the community have a right to ask an elected official to be accountable for words they spoke in the Council chamber, that the member of the community believed to be Islamophobic? Can I, a non-Muslim person, judge or dismiss the impact these words have on a Muslim person speaking of that impact? Do our positions of power protect us from criticism in delegation? Is that what the system was designed to do?

I have been in many Council meetings where delegates and other members of Council quoted my words back at me in unflattering ways (indeed, it seems inevitable that some part of this post will be quoted back to me, stripped of context). I have also seen this happen to other members of Council. I do not recall ever having heard “point of order” used to repeatedly shut down delegates who unflatteringly quote members of Council and then speak to how those words impact them. What changed here?

My questions here are mostly rhetorical, and many of us will have different answers based on our experience and bias. Could I have managed my Chair role better? Possibly, but whether you think “managing it better” means I should have shut down the delegate sooner, or it means I should have let the delegate speak is likely informed by your relative position of power compared to the delegate. And as a person of privilege, I cannot dismiss that there may be an Islamophobic or other bias in how I view what is fair, what is just, in how I approach a conflict like this. This is why it still matters that a City like New Westminster proclaims that action on Islamophobia is important. If we are unwilling to even hear a Muslim person telling us that we expressed Islamophobia in our work in this chamber, what does that proclamation even mean?

I don’t support a person occupying space in our Council Chambers in a way that takes voice away from the 8 other people who wanted to delegate to Council on matters that are important to them on Monday. But more than this, I don’t like that our systems are so bad at addressing conflict and inherent bias that this occupation of the space was the only way a member of the community felt they could hold power accountable after that person in power would not let them speak.

Ultimately, this is a difficult space, at a difficult time, and as such I think leadership needs to lean more on humility than on power. We all have learning to do, and humility will be needed for that learning.

Council – Jan 22, 2024

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

We were back to a full agenda in our January 22nd meeting, so let’s get right into it with a few Information Reports that were pulled for discussion:

Member Selection for the Community Advisory Assembly
This is a report for information on the Community Advisory Assembly. We had more than 200 applicants, and staff used a member selection process to assure the Assembly as best as possible matched the demographics of the city. The statistics shown in this report demonstrate they did an incredible job.

One bit of update is that the assembly met for the first time two weeks ago, and informal get-together that was unfortunately a little choppy because of the snow event, but we had a great turnout nonetheless. The members were able to get together and meet one another for the first time. A couple of members of Council were there to meet the participants, answer questions, and thank them for their participation. It was a fun group of people from around the city, and it was a pleasure to meet a couple of dozen people I had never met before, but shared only an interest in making their community a better place. This is really exciting work.

Outcomes from Attending the United Nations Conference on Climate Change
This is a report out form Staff on their key take-aways of their participation at the Local Climate Action Summit and COP28. It was a unique opportunity for staff to learn from and share with their professional cohort around the world, and to connect with government and industry leaders in Climate Action on topics as far-ranging as updating the grid to youth engagement. I’m really happy the City was invited to take part, as it will make our City more prepared as we implement our aggressive climate plans.

Train Whistle Cessation – 2023 – Q4 Update
This is our regular quarterly update on Whistle cessation. This information is also available on the city’s website. There is a technical challenge on the Spruce Street crossing that we are taking to the CTA for a ruling, which is a hiccup, but a demonstration of how uncertain this work is.

We then moved the following items On Consent:

Child Care Facility Lease Agreement at 65 E. Sixth Ave
The new TACC includes a childcare facility – 12 infant/toddler and 25 pre-school child care spaces. This is thanks to a $3Million ChildCare BC grant, with the City contributing about $100,000 in construction and furniture and such, along with administering the lease agreement with a non-profit provider. The City went through an EOI then RFS process, and the YMCA of BC was the successful bidder. We charge a sustainable lease rate that is consistent with the non-profit childcare sector and allows us to recover operational costs for that portion of the building. This is the third City-owned and non-profit operate childcare in City buildings, along with the secured new childcare on Furness in Queensborough.

Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption: 651 Carnarvon Street
The Provincial Courthouse is doing some extensive envelope work. They are of the opinion that this work cannot occur while the Courthouse is in operation. We granted them a shorter-duration exemption to our noise bylaw to keep them accountable to the neighbourhood. We have not received a flood of complaints (in my recollection, Council has received a single complaint). It seems the construction company is demonstrating a level of concern about mitigating neighbourhood impacts. Council agreed to grant the extension.

Funding Submission to the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) Regional Community to Community Program 2023/2024
We are working through our Year of Truth and reconciliation actions. A large part of this is engaging in a more proactive way with Host Nations and others with a relationship with the City, and UBCM provides a fund to help cover some of these costs, so we are asking for some money from that grant fund.

The following items were Removed from Consent for discussion:

Addictions Treatment and Supportive Recovery Residences: Proposed Conditions Related to Rezonings and Temporary Use Permits
This is a report from staff on our efforts to support treatment and recovery in the City of New Westminster. We have been proactive in the City in all aspects of the ongoing poisoned drug supply crisis, and we need to frame this conversation by recognizing that this crisis of overdose deaths is multi-faceted. Not all people dying of opioid overdose are addicts, and not all people living with addiction are at risk of overdose, so there needs to be a spectrum of services and supports. Treatment and recovery are a part of that spectrum, and for many people access to treatment and recovery is the best pathway to not just surviving this crisis, but to improving the quality of their life. Currently, access is not sufficient to meet the need.

New Westminster has many treatment and recovery programs operating, and they have traditionally been integrated into community, because that is how they are most effective. These are rarely embraced by the community when proposed, as they represent uncertainty to many people, but once operating the city rarely has concerns raised about the programs. The City traditionally regulates this landuse using Temporary Use Permits or a Rezoning. This report outlines work staff have been doing to identify potential policy or guidelines to guide future TUP or RZ decisions regarding residential treatment and recovery facilities.

E-Bike Share Implementation Plan
Bike Share may finally be coming to New West. Staff have taken a cautious approach here, and I am confident we have done our due diligence. Shared mobility is a part of our Master Transportation Plan, our eMobility Strategy, and TransLink’s 2050 Regional Transportation Strategy, but we also need to take an approach that recognizes the complexity and potential externalities of new mobility. We don’t want to repeat the mistakes of some other jurisdictions, but we do want to learn from their example. There is a great report here folks who geek out on transportation should read.

There are several models of shared e-mobility. For simplicity (because there is more complexity in all three of these than can fit in one paragraph), we can think of three main models: the Vancouver/Montreal model where the City itself runs the bikeshare program. This provides a lot of control over how it operates, but in every example we see in North America this comes at a significant subsidy cost to the City. The San Diego model is more of a free-for-all; let the market see what works. This looks cheap and easy, but created such chaos in San Diego with multiple scooter share programs and questionable practices that San Diego had to bring in a bunch of regulations after the fact that ended up pushing all of the providers out of the market, paradoxically going from way too many to absolutely none in only a couple of years. The third model is a request-for-service like the North Shore, Richmond, and Coquitlam are doing (and like San Diego is migrating to), where the City doesn’t provide the service, but asks a service provider to bid on the opportunity to provide the service. This gives the city some authority through the contract to manage the externalities, while allowing the market to guide how the service is operated. We are going with #3 here.

Financial Statements Audit Planning Report for Fiscal Year ended December 31, 2023
Our financial statements are prepared to follow Provincial Law and the Public Service Accounting Board standards, and we have auditors who review them every year. This is always an interesting report because it outlines some of the new requirements under PSAB standards (there never seems to be a reduction in standards but only new standards applied). We need to appoint those auditors, this report does so. The cost of appointing auditors has gone up about 50%, but that appears to be consistent with the market. So much for 7% inflation!

Food Security Update and Funding Request
Since the GVFB announced they were ending distribution from their current location in the Brow of the Hill for logistical reasons, I have been working with staff to engage with food security providers in the City (GVFB, Don’t Go Hungry, St. Barnabas Shiloh Fifth Avenue, and Hope Omid) to determine what the GVFB move means to service in the community, and how the province can help to assure that people in need for food bank services can continue to get the help their families need.

We may have found a solution for GVFB in an underused City facility, but it is not clear that it will work for everyone, as the building is clearly end-of-life, slated for demolition for some time, and we need some clarity about the cost/benefit of re-investing in upgrades for building in this condition, especially as this may be a very short-term investment without a long-term value to the City. In the scope of out $200+ million capital budget, it is a small line item, but Council wants to be clear what the ask is before we make this investment.

The rest of this report (including one-time support to a couple of food hamper providers) speaks a bit our grant structure, the need for a reserve fund for grants to give us ability to react to this type of situation from a reliable and transparent funding source.

Report back to Council on September 11, 2023 motion regarding Samson V oil spill
This is a report back on the clean-up of the oil spill from the Samson V, and work done to prevent a re-occurrence. The good news is that the spill was remedied within a couple of days, and 100% of the spilled oil and impacted sediments were removed and properly disposed of to the satisfaction of the Regulatory Agency (the Coast Guard). The remediation cost for the spill in the river was about $35,000, and the required end-of-spill report was issued indicating that no detrimental impact on human health, aquatic ecosystems, flora or fauna was identified as resulting from the spill.

This also launched us to do some work that no-one in the city knew had to be done, because staff did not know there was oil in the Samson V. For whatever reason, the City assumed the fuel had been removed when it took possession of the boat from a local not-for-profit a couple of decades ago. So staff did now what staff should have done back then, and had the oil removed from the boat and installed a bilge hydrocarbon filter system, which all total cost us about $180,000.

We then closed with Motions from Council:

Request for a full accounting and report back to Council regarding trip to Dubai, United Arab Emirates by Mayor Johnstone
Submitted by Councillor Fontaine

BE IT RESOLVED THAT the Mayor provide a report to Council regarding the details pertaining to his recent business trip to Dubai, UAE; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT the report include the following information:
• Detailed breakdown of the financial costs pertaining to the trip including items such as meals, flights, hotel accommodation, ground transportation etc.
• Detailed summary of what the 3rd party funder offered the Mayor’s Office by way of free trips to Dubai for either himself, City staff or any members of his family
• A day-by-day itinerary of all meetings and events attended by the Mayor while in Dubai
• Estimated carbon footprint of attending the Dubai conference in-person rather than virtually
• Summary of the direct benefits to the City of New Westminster of the Mayor’s office delegation to Dubai
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT the City’s new Ethics Commissioner be requested to conduct a workshop with Council regarding the Community Charter Act with a particular emphasis on section 105 pertaining to the restrictions imposed on municipal officials by the Province of BC regarding the acceptance of gifts.

Section 100(2)b of the Community Charter requires that members of Council self-declare if they have a potential conflict of interest in a discussion at Council, and recuse themselves if it is so. I sought advice from the City’s legal staff and they advised me that there was no pecuniary conflict of interest, but the motion was worded in a way that challenged my actions, and as such, I could potentially be challenged with Conflict – how can I fairly moderate a debate on my own actions? So it was recommended to me that I recuse myself from the discussion in order to assure compliance with the Charter.

You are best to watch the video if you want to see how the discussion went down, but the short result is that Council did not support the first two clauses of this motion, but did support asking the new Ethics Commissioner to provide a workshop to Council on Conflict of Interest and Section 105.

And that was the end of the program. Once again, if you want a shorter news update with a different style of take, sign up for my newsletter here, coming out (almost) every Wednesday.

Council – Jan 8, 2024

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

For the first time I remember in my 9+ years on council, I was not present at a council meeting! Back in September, we planned a family vacation that I recognized may overlap with the first council meeting of the year, but also recognized that the agenda for that first meeting was likely to be very light coming off the Christmas Break, and indeed there were only two items on the Agenda.

Since I wasn’t there, and I still feel compelled to write a report about it as some sort of Completest thing, I am going to take a slightly different approach. I will talk a bit more about the process we see by watching from the video, I finally had time today to watch the video, so here goes.

Adopting the Agenda:
Council voted to adopt the agenda as usual, though there was a dissenting vote. One Councillor wanted to bring an information report forward this meeting for discussion. This is highly unusual and that takes us into our first process discussion.

We have adopted a practice this term of moving “Information Reports” to the end of the agenda. What makes these reports different is that they require no decision from council, no commitment of new resources of money, and no new direction or guidance. As the name implies, they are there simply to provide information to council. This speeds things up a bit as we don’t have to formally approve the report, but it also economizes a bit on staff resources. Having staff who are providing an Information Report hang around until 9 or 10 at night to see if there are questions or follow-up on what should be a straight forward report is not a good use of their valuable time (yes, staff are paid for the time they spend in Council Chambers, it is a job). If a member of council has a question or needs clarity on an item in the report, they can either ask the CAO to provide council a follow-up email with that info, or they can “pull the report” for the next council meeting, as Councillor Henderson did for the Whistle Cessation Report on the agenda (at the end of the meeting). Staff are then informed there are questions, and a week or two later, appropriate staff will attend council that night to address the questions. This meeting had four information reports (not an unusual number), and the Councillor wanted to “pull” one (again, not unusual).

What is unusual is that the Councillor wanted to pull it forward to be discussed at this meeting. That is not a typical practice, and has not in my recollection ever been suggested before. Staff who prepared the report were not present, so they would not be able to answer the questions. The Councillor continued to assert he wanted to “debate” the report, which is a strange thing to do for an Information Report, but safe to say there was some political showmanship going on here. Council wisely decided to follow standard established practice and pull the Information Report next meeting.

We then had a second request from the Councillor to amend the Agenda, adding a Notice of Motion that was not included in the Agenda because it was not submitted in time for inclusion according to the timeline provide to Council. There was some discussion about the date it was submitted and whether staff calculated the timeline correctly which I frankly had a hard time following. Council wisely decided to err on the side of good faith and allowed the Notice of Motion to be read so the Motion can be debated next meeting.

As a bit of a political aside, I do want to note that a similar motion last meeting to bring a Motion on Notice (the motion debated later this meeting, in fact) forward when we had a room full of audience members interested in hearing that debate was defeated by the same Councillor who made this motion to move his motion forward this meeting. Council could have saved hours of time at this meeting if that Councillor had voted for an accommodation that meeting that he requested and was granted this meeting. I have never seen it taking 20 minutes to adopt an agenda at Council before, and no criticism of the Chair here, I think Acting Mayor McEvoy did a great job wrangling the unusual procedures before him with a Councillor who showed no respect for the rules of order and intentionally misled the public on how the procedures of Council operate, but kudos to Councillor Fontaine for managing to say some variation of “the Mayor’s Trip to Dubai” eight times over a few minutes when it wasn’t even on the agenda.

The following item was Removed from Consent for discussion.

Construction Noise Bylaw Variance Request: Metro Vancouver Front Street Pressure Sewer – Manhole Abandonments
This is a request to do night work on Front Street to allow work on the sewer at a time when the sewer can be shut down (middle of the night when people do much less flushing, and on a day when it isn’t raining hard. It’s the reality of sewer work, folks. Council approved the request.

We then had Public Delegations which are not usually something I report on here, but I do want to speak a bit to process at delegations. We have a practice at New West where anyone can come to council to delegate for 5 minutes on pretty much any topic (except those not permitted under the Community Charter). There is a practical issue here, in that there needs to be some limit on how long we spend hearing delegations, and we therefore limit it to 10 people ,and have a process for people to sign up to delegate. Notably, this is more accommodating to Public Delegation than any other City in the Lower Mainland that I am aware of – some allow 2 or three minutes, some strictly limit delegations by topic, and some don’t permit delegation at all. 10 people at 5 minutes each, with time for discussion, usually takes one and half or two hours. That is a *lot* of council and staff time, but the principle of open local government is important in New West.

A problem with limiting it to 10 is that one relatively small group can sign up for all 10 spots on a single topic, and effectively crowd out others with contrary opinions, or people on other important topics. So staff have developed a procedure to prioritize delegates, a first-come-first served process, but also accommodating as wide as possible a range of topics. If 10 people sign up to talk about A and one signs up to talk about B, staff will allow only the first 9 speakers on A to accommodate the one speaker on B. It’s not perfect, but up to now it has worked pretty well on the few occasions when we have had more than 10 people sign up.

Alas, much like the rest of our processes, this is based on the principle of good faith – the assumption people will be respectful to the community and truthful to council. This meeting, some people chose to not be respectful or truthful, and mislead staff on the topics they wish to discuss with a clear intent to crowd other speakers out. I’m really disappointed this happened, and again commend Acting Mayor McEvoy for handling this with the grace and professionalism I am not sure I would have been able to show in the same situation.

Which brings us to the single Motion from Council:

Call for a Ceasefire in Gaza
Councillor Nakagawa

WHEREAS human rights groups such as Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders and the United Nations have cited growing atrocities in Israel and Gaza including the deaths of many civilians, including children; and
WHEREAS the City of New Westminster condemns the rising incidences of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in our communities; and
WHEREAS the City of New Westminster stands up strongly for human rights everywhere
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT the City of New Westminster write a letter to the Prime Minister urging the Canadian government to immediately:
• Call for a ceasefire
• Support unrestricted access to humanitarian aid
• Secure the release of all hostages.
• Call for an end to the siege of Gaza;
• Support unrestricted access to humanitarian aid;
• Support actions to secure the release of all hostages, including both Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, and
• Stop all arms shipments, sales, and trade to Israel in compliance with Canadian Law.

Respecting the process of us getting a motion in front of Council takes a couple of weeks, the Christmas Break added time to this schedule, events in Gaza and the actions of the Canadian Government (due to pressure at all levels, including motions like proposed in New Westminster passing in numerous Canadian cities) have changed since the original motion was presented, and an amendment (as seen above) was moved to the motion.

In yet another procedural challenge, two members of Council tried to abstain from a vote by walking out. They did this after first taking part in the debate. They provided speeches on the topic, then made like Brave Sir Robin. The problem being that the Community Charter does not permit abstention from votes unless there is a direct Conflict of Interest. Neither member indicated Conflict of Interest, so choosing not to vote is a violation of the Community Charter. The Clerk and Acting Mayor could have brought this to the members, but engaging in a debate then leaving the room before a retort is something I have not seen in my 9 years on Council. Amazing.

In the end, the Motion as amended was unanimously supported by Council, and if I had been present, I would have also supported it. I am not someone who typically brings these types of motions to Council, but I think Acting Mayor McEvoy eloquently made the case for why Local Governments will bring issues of conscience to the Chamber. When a motion like this is put in front of me as a member of council, I look at the material of the motion and how it aligns with the principles I hold and have represented to the public in my time as an elected official. In this case, I want humanitarianism to take hold in Gaza, and I want Canada to stand up and call for it. This includes the release of Israeli Palestinian prisoners, and unrestricted access to humanitarian aid in Gaza. I want Canada to more firmly stand against Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia here in Canada. The things this motion are asking for are things I support.

COP28 part 3

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I have written a couple of posts now on New Westminster’s presence at COP28, and the experience of the Local Climate Action Summit. I’m going to try to wrap up this series pulling highlights and major themes that came out of the event instead of daily run-down, because this blog series is already 5,000+ words and because there were a LOT of topics covered and incredible speakers:

Aside from the LCAS, every day had overlapping conference events at different locations; it was simply impossible to attend them all. I spent some time at Bloomberg Green Forum, at the Canada Pavilion, at the Urbanization Pavilion and EU Pavilion, and other event sites. My criteria for choosing what to attend was partly geographic (see my first post about the expansive site), but I tried to attend events that spoke to local climate action (inspiration!), financing the transition (where’s the money?), innovation in electrical grid upgrades (very relevant to New West), and “Just Transition” discussions that spoke to what that means in the “developed world” context (this is one area where, interesting enough, the US is way ahead of Canada in many ways).


The global challenge to get a new energy grid built was an interesting theme. A place where some technical challenges need to be solved (and a better place for our innovation investment than CCS in my opinion). The core of the issue is that the world needs increasing amounts of electricity, and the cheapest ways to generate electricity, by far, are solar and wind. However, these sources rely on an integrated grid and grid storage technology that has technical, logistical, and even jurisdictional barriers to implementation. Coal and gas are dirty, and increasingly expensive, but they are easy, so the Global South and most rapidly-growing economies are still seeing them as a viable way to achieve their development goals. The grid is the problem, and there are lots of people looking to fix it, but will it be a public grid? (more on that later)


The Canada Pavilion had some interesting sessions. Don Iveson (former Mayor of Edmonton) led a panel on Canada’s National Adaptation Strategy (where I first heard the term “mutli-solving the polycrisis” as a description of local government climate response, and I will be repeating it) that included the Federal and Provincial Environment Ministers, along with local government represented by FCM and the Mayor of Regina. One interesting framing presented was that Climate Mitigation is primarily an energy problem, where Climate Adaption is primarily a water problem: drought and flooding are the two horsemen of this new apocalypse for Canadian cities. Rest assured, the message to the feds out of this conversation was (am I getting repetitive?) local governments are on the frontlines, and can do this work, if given the resources.

Another excellent presentation at the Canadian Pavillion was on the integration of land use with climate action, addressing how local government land use decisions impact our climate goals. Here I met Serena Mendizabal from Six Nations in Ontario (alas, 2023 Mann Cup Champions) who is doing interesting work bringing First Nations into the energy transition space, and developed a Just Transition Guidebook to help guide governments toward more meaningful Indigenous involvement in local climate action.

As I mentioned earlier, there were some sessions I attended with City Staff, and some where we went our different ways to cover more ground. The more technical aspect of staff’s work here really benefited from their ability to network with their cohort across North America, and even Europe and South America. They also had a chance to get facetime with FCM staff who hold the strings to the Green Municipal Fund, and staff in both the Provincial and Federal Ministries. That relationship building, and the ability to share our successes and our challenges – and demonstrate to them that we are a City committed to doing the work – will pay back in a huge way as staff move forward in implementing the Seven Bold Steps in New Westminster.


On our final day, I attended the Ministerial Meeting on Urbanization & Climate Change. This is where we stood (well, sat) shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of the LMGA constituency to make our calls to the collected Ministers of Environment and negotiators from national governments around the world. In a weird coincidence, as I recently wrote about him in my Newsletter (subscribe here!), I sat next to Ravi Bhalla, the Mayor of Hoboken (the “New Westminster” of the New York Metro Region) during this session. I have already mentioned the Call to Action and Open Letter in the last post, so won’t repeat that here, but the dialogue with this group of Ministers was promising.
Also on our last day, we were able to attend the daily briefing of the Canadian negotiation team. This is where the representatives of the Canadian government (Minister Guilbeault and Canada’s Chief Negotiator Michael Bonser) update invited attendees on where the negotiations are, and then spend most of the hour taking questions from the audience. In the room were several stakeholder groups, including Elizabeth May (I didn’t notice any other federal party representatives, but I would be surprised if they were not there), representatives from Provincial Governments (again, I didn’t notice any BC Provincial elected types, though I assume staff from the Ministry of Climate Action and Environment were present), Labour groups, business constituencies, and activist groups. I’m not sure if it is a coincidence or a sign of something different happening in Quebec, but the activist questions to the Minister and negotiation teams were mostly delivered in French.
This was a really informative session for me, and gave insight into how the sausage of putting language to these international agreements is done. They spoke of early success (the Loss and Damage Fund secured on day 1), the failure to secure a food systems agreement, and the role the COP President had put on Canada to “find a landing zone” on Fossil Fuel phase-out (which even given hindsight, is not clearly a win given the weasel words included). Being Canadian, the most common answer to questions from the floor (which were almost all asking for more aggressive action and for Canada to lead in calling for it) was some form of “Yep, we hear you, that is consistent with our position, and we are working on it”.

The feelings brought home from 6 days at COP28 are complicated, but can be summed up in the Good, Bad, and Concerning.

Under “Good”, I am left with the positive feeling that local governments are On It. There were so many examples of local governments and inspiring local leaders doing to the work and building sustainable cities through a Just Transition lens. It was constantly repeated (and I’ll repeat here) that urban areas represent 80% of global GDP and 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and we are at the front line of climate action. At the same time there is pressure from the grassroots for local governments to meet and exceed Paris targets, because local governments from Langkawi to Bogota know that the actions needed to meet targets are the same actions that are going to make our cities cleaner, greener, more healthy, and more affordable to operate and protect.

On the “Bad” side, I don’t leave the conference convinced we were going to make it. I didn’t feel the national governments feel the same urgency that the scientific community is telling us we need. They all speak of concern, we heard many give addresses, from the Prime Minister of India to the President of Kenya and the King of Tonga, they all spoke of urgency, but then the language informing the negotiations gets much more nuanced. The timelines offered for fossil fuel phase-out (with even that bet hedged by talking “unabated emissions” and reliance on the CCS pipedream) or ending the construction of new coal power generation felt unambitious when the gavel fell on the 12th. The Global Stocktake told us clearly that the timeline for 1.5C is passing us by, and 1.77C might be the new ambitious target, and I’m not even convinced our collective national governments are there yet.

The “Concerning” part is a bit more about the nature of the conversations at so many of the panels and workshops, and this speaks a bit to the large presence of Global Capital in the room. There is a strong  neo-liberal drive to get private capital involved at every level in the transition, especially in the Global South, where transition plans seem to bypass any public ownership of life-sustaining assets. I’m not a global finance guy, and cannot pretend to be, but a new language of colonization is apparent when we hear the entire conversation about reliance on private capital from Europe and America in the desire to build a modern energy grid to serve Africa, where wind and solar resources are ample, but the lack of a grid is a real development bottleneck.

The media and pundits loved to criticize the Oil Industry lobbyists being at COP28, but we all know what their game is. Everyone knows there is no viable path to a sustained climate unless we end the unabated emissions of fossil fuels, so let the producers hear that and be part of that conversation. It is the ubiquity of private capital from the Global North that is seeing a profit opportunity in energy transition in the South that is more concerning to me – as the language sounds just as extractive as past colonial discussions of the Global South. Maybe I’m too cynical, but when talk of Africa arose at COP28, at times it sounded like a new Berlin Conference. And with so much of the LGMA conversation about Just Transition and the need for climate solutions to also solve deep inequity problems, I cannot help but wonder how we will solve inequity through the privatization of – or the keeping private of – the next generation of public goods.

This stood in contrast to the LGMA call for local and indigenous-informed action, and maybe that is where I will close this too-long reporting out, quoting Call to Action 10:

Pursuant to their budgets, legislative and executive actions, and leadership mechanisms, subnational governments are publicly accountable institutions. Through the acknowledgement of their role in the Paris Agreement and Glasgow Climate Pact, they also play a key role in driving and engaging their communities into global action. From business to parliamentarians, from civil society to academics, from trade unions and farmers to indigenous communities, from faith groups to generational and gender equality advocates, we invite all stakeholders to consider their subnational governments as their ally in responding to climate emergencies.

COP28 part 2

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

In my last post, I wrote about how New Westminster was invited to COP28, and what the landscape of COP28 looked like. In this post I am going to write about the role of Local Governments at the event, and detail the Local Climate Action Summit that opened the conference.

The invitation came from ICLEI, which was the key coordinator of the LGMA (“Local Governments and Municipal Authorities”) Constituency to the UNFCCC. They worked with two other organizations, C40 Cities (who managed the travel logistics of Mayors and senior staff from more than 100 cities around the globe) and the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy. This is already a long series of posts, so best to follow the links if you want to know who those organizations are and why they exist.

The goal of the LGMA is to influence the UNFCCC negotiations, empowered by the preamble of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which calls on all levels of government to work together, and the Multilevel Action Roadmap put together in 2019. As a Constituency, we put forward a COP28 Position Paper (link here) with a 10-point Call to Action that is delivered to the national level government negotiating teams. The hope is (as is spelled out in their mandate) that these Calls to Action will be integrated into the deal that is struck by the end of COP28. This Paper and an accompanying Open Letter (link here) is delivered through a Ministerial Meeting, but before that, we had a conference to attend.

For us Local Government types, the first part of the COP28 program was a two-day conference-within-a-conference called the Local Climate Action Summit (“LCAS”). This was held in several sites within the COP28 Blue zone, but focused on a pavilion called the LCAS Hub. The LCAS was hosted by the COP28 Presidency, as a part of the commitment the UNFCCC has made since the preamble to the 2015 Paris Agreement to include all levels of government in addressing climate change. COP28 represented the first ever LCAS, and it was opened by the COP28 President Dr. Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber, by the Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres, and the Chair of the Board of the C40 Cities (and former Mayor of New York) Michael Bloomberg.

The attendees of the LCAS were Mayors and senior Climate Action staff from several hundred cities around the world. There were local governments from every continent, ranging in size from megacities like Rio De Janerio to small cities like Yellowknife. There were perhaps a half dozen from Canada, with New Westminster being the only municipality in British Columbia represented. The program was intensive and pretty typically conference-like with panel talks, some interactive table-top learning sessions, and lots of opportunity to network and share with local leaders from across the globe. I can’t write everything here, but I will try to summarize a few key takeaways.

In his opening remarks, Secretary General Guterres talked about the importance of this COP in it presenting the first Global Stocktake, while making it clear that conferences aren’t the solution to the existential threat we face, only local action will get us there, and local governments are key to that. Urban areas are where 80% of global GDP is produced, and where 75% of global greenhouse gasses are produced – cities are where the environment and the economy overlap. At the same time, this is where the impacts of climate disruption are being felt the most – floods, droughts, heat waves, and climate-driven human displacement are all impacting urban areas. Cities are the front lines of this battle, and must be the front line of the transition. Most importantly, local governments are closest to the people governments serve and understand the context of change for their community in a way national governments cannot. So while national governments can make deals and drive policy changes, the only way they will achieve on their promises is if they support (and fund!) the local level governments in doing the work.

Panel discussions were as varied as the Cities represented. In Tokyo, the feeling was that solutions will be found in technology (“SUStainability + HIgh tech = SUSHI” was the Japanese tag line). The dynamic and brilliant Mayor of Bogota, Claudia Lopez, spoke of the need for Climate Justice to empower people in need through the transition. There are economic and empowerment benefits to be found in transitioning to low-carbon cities, especially in the developing world and global South. These opportunities need to flow to the many marginalized and under-supported people seeking opportunity in those cities if we hope for the transition, and the communities, to be sustainable. From Cordoba, Argentina, we heard about programs to empower and train youth to do the physical work of transition – from converting streetlights to LEDs to developing stronger local food systems within communities and keep money flowing within the local economy. Most agreed local governments were doing what national governments simply can’t, and were doing it faster than national governments can even imagine.

It was interesting to converse with the Mayor of Copenhagen, and hear their presentation as one of the “Coalition of High Ambition Actors”. On the face, the numbers for Copenhagen and Danish cities sound impressive – they are on target to reduce GHG emissions by 76% (from 1990 levels) before 2030, and 97 of the 99 largest municipalities are on the same track (compare that to the New West and CleanBC Goals of 30% – 50% by 2030 depending on the sector). However, this is driven mostly by the decarbonization of their electricity sector – they are closing coal plants and phasing out all other fossil fuel generation. Compare this to a jurisdiction like BC where 99% of electricity is already non-fossil-fuel, we are not ever going to match their “reduction” numbers. (for context, Danish net GHG emissions per capita are about 10T/yr, compared to about 12 for BC). At the same time, Mayor Haestorp-Andersen was a bit envious of BC’s LGCAP program, by New Westminster’s access to Low Carbon Fuel Credit funding and a climate levy to fund climate action, and even of BC and Canada’s (perhaps tepid, possibly tenuous?) Carbon Tax models. Senior government funding of local climate action is one place we in B.C. are leading over even progressive and high ambition jurisdictions like Denmark.

A theme across many cities was cars, and this is a place we are definitely NOT leading in BC. The transition to EVs is a distraction to the need to shift how and why we move across urban space. In Bogota (where car free days are not just a block party, but occur city-wide), they are serious about the redistribution of road space and are investing in all alternative modes. Mayor Hidalgo of Paris spoke of the “peaceful revolution” happening on the streets of her City as active transportation is taking the space away from congested traffic, with massive air quality, noise pollution, and safety benefits coming on top of GHG reductions. The Mayor of Tirana framed the automobile as anti-child when so much more is spent by his residents on cars than on children – many in his city were spending 30% of their income “raising a car”. He said when he was young, they threw out the Communist dictator, tearing down his statue from the centre of the City, and previously-unheard-of private ownership of automobiles became a symbol of their new freedom. Now, the car itself is the new dictator lording over the centre of the City, preventing them from having the freedoms and economic prosperity they seek. Erion Veliaj, welcome to the War on Cars.

There is another tell in here – “removing cars form the roads” is the almost universal metric in assessing climate action. City X talks about planting Y number of trees, and calls it “equivalent of removing 10,000 cars from the road”. City A builds a new waste resource recovery plant that captured biogas “equal to taking 50,000 cars off the road”. Once your ear is tuned to it, you hear this measure everywhere. This is perhaps unconscious jealousy of places like Bogota and Paris, where they skip the middle man.


The conversations were wide-reaching, but always seemed to come back to youth. One of the quotes stuck on my brain was “Youth don’t believe in action plans, they believe in action”. From Makati to Missoula, there were stories of youth driving climate action in local communities, calling for climate justice, and seeking support to get more work done. This is not an unfamiliar theme in New West, and I was able to share the stories of Babies for Climate Action and the Monkey Rebels, two local ad-hoc organizations centering youth and pushing us towards more aggressive climate goals, while also holding our feet to the fire to achieve them. As part of an Innovation Studio workshop for Mayors, we were given some tools to better understand a 3C “Codesign – Coproduce – Cogovern” model of engagement, effective at giving youth the opportunity to learn and be active in designing the city of their future. We also learned of a fund available to help finance this work (we’ll see if we can tap into that here in New West). In the meantime, I am going to think more deeply about my role as Mayor in empowering young leaders in our community to replace action plans with climate actions.

The LCAS was intense, and a conference worth the time to travel to on its own. In my next post, I’ll try to sum up as briefly as I can the rest of the COP28 program for local governments, and leave you with some thoughts about the good, the bad, and the ugly of COP28.