Labour Day ’24

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

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

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

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

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

Pride 2024

It’s Pride week in New West.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TransLink Funding

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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


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


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

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

Workshop – July 8, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Housing and Growth

The discussion around provincial housing regulations hasn’t slowed down, as the first of several deadlines related to bills 44, 46, and 47 came and went. Some Cities have complied, some have chosen a different path. In New Westminster we adopted two Bylaws in June that make us complaint, and staff are busily working on the next steps- a renewed Housing Needs Assessment, OCP updates, and revising our DCC, ACC, and Density Bonus programs.

City staff are also working with provincial staff on their Housing Target Order methodology, so we can respond on the expected timeline, likely in August. I was on the radio last week alongside the Mayor of Langley Township talking to Belle Puri about this (you can listen here!), and we had slightly different takes on the core issue. I actually agree with the Minister that the introduction of Small-scale Multi-Unit Housing and Transit Oriented Area regulations will be a good thing. IT is clearly a massive hassle and staff time suck to implement, and will likely slow down development for a short period of time while everyone finds their path through the massive changes, in the end it will be a positive for the reshaping of the next era of regional growth.

My problem remains that we have had some significant tools taken away that we have used to fund infrastructure and amenities in our community. Equally troubling is that our ability to compel developers to build childcare, to provide spaces for new schools or parks, or to include affordable housing as part of their developments, has been eroded at the same time that the cost for development has gone up. It is unclear whether the Province is going to give us the money needed to make up for these shortfalls, or expect property tax to fill the void.

That said, I did appreciate the Minister’s thoughtful responses the next day (you can hear them here!). We are all trying to get the same thing done on housing, and I hope that the province brings the kind of aggressive, proactive change to our funding model that they did to our building approvals model. Dare to dream.


There was another related piece of news that snuck out last week, and it was related to a report we received at Metro Vancouver Regional Planning Committee. Metro staff working with academic demographers have created updated regional growth projections. These are not “targets” the region is aiming for, but instead projections of what is likely to happen given demographic changes, birth/death statistics, immigration, and inter-regional and inter-provincial migration patterns. The numbers are all here in this report.

The local angle on this might surprise some folks, especially my colleague on the radio last week from Langley Township who always refers to his community as the “high growth region”, that the City projected to grow fastest over the next 6, 16, and 26 years is New Westminster. Here’s the numbers:

These are numbers for the medium-growth scenario, but both the low-growth and high-growth scenarios have us in a similar spot: top of the charts for proportional growth.

There are a lot of factors that drive this, including our commitment to Transit Oriented Development and the large proportion of our City that is near that transit, but also the balance of housing types, the “sweet spot” between affordability and location on the north side of the River, and the attractiveness to both young families in the growing stage, and new arrivals to Canada and the Lower Mainland – for every reason you choose to live here.

This speaks to our Housing Needs Report, but it also speaks to our need to invest in infrastructure now to support that growth, and the community amenities that residents want in a thriving, growing community. Adding austerity to this trend will be a disaster for the livability of our community, we need to show leadership to shape a community that serves today/s residents, and the people arriving tomorrow.

FCM 2024

June’s been a very busy month with little time to get a bike ride in or write about the things going on. The long weekend couldn’t come fast enough, and I got a nice long bike ride in on Saturday, so here is another piece of catching up, sorry it took a month to get here!

Back in the beginning of June, Councillor Henderson and I attended the annual Federation of Canadian Municipalities meeting in Calgary. I gave a bit of a photo preview here, and people who subscribe to my Newsletter got my summary of the politics part of the program, so that leaves this post as a bit of a broad overview and my highlights from the meeting.

FCM is the annual meeting of local government leaders from across Canada. As Lower Mainland LGA is for the Lower Mainland, and UBCM is for the province of BC, FCM is a chance for us to get together, attend tours, workshops and panels to learn what’s happening in other jurisdictions, share our successes, challenges and opportunities, and do some networking. It is also an opportunity for us to meet with national agencies (the Federal Government, Railways, Ports, etc.) and talk though issues or opportunities.

FCM is not my favorite conference. The municipal-federal relationship is a bit less clear than the municipal-provincial one, and FCM tends to skew towards the rural, with many more representatives from small towns in the Prairies and Ontario than there are form the urban areas with who we share challenges and opportunities. This year provided a couple of unique opportunities to talk to folks about train whistle cessation, the Green Municipal Fund, and some other funding opportunities in the transportation and housing files that tipped the balance towards attending in Calgary. Those conversations, still being preliminary, I will be talking more about in the near future.

Solar Energy
As a member of the New West Electrical Commission and somebody generally interested in the energy transition, I leapt at the opportunity to take a tour of new solar generation projects in the Canadian city most closely aligned with fossil fuels. Like most events at FCM, this tour was also a chance to talk to other people around the nation to hear how their transition plan is going (Kirkland Quebec: 75% of their municipal fleet is electric, but two municipal buildings run on diesel generators because of an underdeveloped electrical grid; Summerland BC has invested not just in solar, but in battery storage for peak shaving), but the star of the show was three installations of new solar power by the City of Calgary.

We saw an example of small installations on the roof of neighbourhood community centres, where the queerness of the Alberta “Micro-Generation Regulation” makes it illegal for a project like this to produce more energy than consumed by the building that hosts it. We saw a medium-sized (1.2M kWh/year) solar-panel-as-parking-lot-shade project, and a larger (5.5M kWh/year) filed array at a landfill site on the edge of town. There were some great learnings here about snow (not much of a problem, except when the warm panels melt it and make the parking lot below a skating rink), hail (they manage golf-ball-sized hail without damage) and design angles (turns out pointing arrays optimally at the sun is less important than you think), and various technical and lifecycle costing details.

In the end, it always comes back to economics, and it is hard to translate the Calgary example to British Columbia. First, their consumer electrical rates are highly variable and typically twice BC Hydro rates, so their pay back times and value as a hedge against price uncertainty do not translate at all. Secondly, Alberta still has fossil fuels as the foundation of its electrical generation base, meaning the GHG reductions resulting from these installations are significant, where in BC this would simply not be the case except ins a few off-grid communities.

Sustaining Growth
A common theme across workshops was the challenge of growth and trying to keep up with infrastructure funding. It was a bit relieving to hear it wasn’t just me, as these pressures are being felt in many regions of the Country, from Saskatoon (14,000 people moved there last year, while only 2,500 new housing units were built, having predictable impacts on homelessness, rents and vacancies) to Toronto (much like BC, the Province is bringing in aggressive legislation to drive local development, but not providing tools to fund infrastructure investment).

Among stories of Exciting! New! Massive! Developments! like Quayside in Toronto, Zibi in Ottawa, and Brighton in Saskatoon, the stories are more about development paused due to interest rates, construction costs, and economic uncertainty, local challenges in funding important infrastructure to support the growth, and a general inability to find the financing room for significant affordable housing among new developments. At the same time, jurisdictions across the country are seeing increased downloading of provincial infrastructure costs (school, hospitals, etc.) to local governments while provincial governments in the same breath blame local governments for increased development costs – one of the few tools local governments have to pay for those downloads.

It’s almost like people are starting to recognize the Market is not going to fix the problem created by two decades of runaway market growth. This is hardly news in Greater Vancouver, but to hear the same lament across the country in cities of various sizes comes with both the comfort of not being alone, and the recognition that this is a national crisis that needs a national response. No amount of digitizing local building plans or using AI to speed up approvals is going to fix it. We need a new financial model.

Municipal Growth Framework
The FCM itself does common advocacy, and they are addressing the infrastructure funding gap by asking for a new Municipal Growth Framework. There were several discussions of this during the conference, and it was referenced by the Federal housing minister during his address to the delegates.

Fundamental to this is a review of the funding model for local governments, dominated as it is by the single tool of property tax. Even the way we tax property is such that it is not intrinsically linked to population and economic growth. The senior governments get most of their revenue from income, sales, and consumption taxes. When the economy grows, their tax revenues increase automatically track along with it, because a growing economy grows incomes, sales, and consumption. Though people have the impression property taxes are increasing at unprecedented rates, they are not increasing anywhere near the rate of the thing they tax – property values:

The MGF also asks for the Federal government to step up their contribution to municipalities by $2.6 billion per year (which is about 5% of annual GST revenues), and to index these contributions to GDP growth. There is also an ask for Provincial Governments to agree to match these federal investments through reform of municipal finance, or allocation of a portion of PST or Provincial income taxes.

Finally, the MGF asks for a comprehensive plan to address chronic homelessness through federal re-investment in non-market housing, and a more coordinated approach between federal and provincial governments.

Alas, at least one of the panels I attended around this need for public re-investment in our communities kept circling back to some apparent need for municipalities to “reduce transaction friction” and “build structures where business can invest [in infrastructure] with certainty”. The neoliberal imperative filtering back into the problem created by 30 years of neoliberal austerity.

Mental Health innovation
This was an excellent panel comparing three different municipal approaches to a nation-wide challenge – addressing the community impacts of the mental health crises. The PACT program in New Westminster was one of the models presented (by the Canadian Mental Health Association), along with EMMIS in Montreal and REACH in Edmonton. The targets and the approaches vary quite a bit. This is most obvious in the funding sources, EMMIA being a $50 Million project over 5 years, with the cost evenly split between the Province and the Municipality, where REACH is about $4.5M Million a year, 100% funded by the Municipality, and PACT is 100% funded by the Provincial government.

In Montreal, there is not just a diversion and crisis support function, but also a function to address “social cohabitation issues between people who share public space”, which more closely parallels the City of New Westminster’s Three Crises Response Pilot.

In Edmonton, there is a close tracking of activity and success, and through 33,000+ responses and 4,000+ emergency service referrals, they have tracked the social return on investment of at least $1,90 for every dollar invested. Montreal has seen similar levels of pay back, though the tracking of health care savings and other externals is surely an underestimate.

Finally, there was an excellent expert panel on protecting the health and safety of municipal workers (included elected officials) at the front line of the polycrisis. This spoke of the tools we need to give staff who are addressing a perceived or real loss of civility and standards of respectful behaviors, on the streets and inside City Halls. There was much discussion of the widespread introduction of Integrity Commissioners, and the challenge they have in addressing egregious behaviors, when so many of our policies and practices are based on an assumption of good faith. It was commonly recognized that good faith was not a universal political or social principle these days, presumably driven by social media and increased anxiety in the pandemic hangover.


As maybe a final take-away, one of the benefits of a meeting like this is the recognition that none of your challenges are unique. Municipalities across the country, in every province, are dealing with similar and overlapping challenges. Talking to our cohort, there are areas of work we need to be very proud of in New West – our aggressive Asset Management Plan, our leadership in PACT and with our Three Crises Response work, while there are areas we can benefit from the experience of others.

Council – June 10, 2024

Our Monday Council meeting was another long one with a fairly short agenda, but aside from a full list of public delegates, there were also quite a few speeches that needed to be made, so there we are. We started with a Development Variance Permit for consideration:

Development Variance Permit No. DVP00697 for 114-118 Sprice Street
The owner of these properties in Queensborough is rezoning to build 10 compact lot detached homes. Nothing unusual here, in fact when it came to Council for a comprehensive review almost a year ago, Council approved it on Consent without comment. The Bylaw also saw three readings by Council and adoption this year, all without comment. So I was a little surprised when this DVP (required only because the lot dimensions are such that that the frontage is less than 10% of the total lot circumference, which the Local Government Act says staff can’t approve without a Development Variance Permit) resulted in numerous questions from a single member of Council that were more related to the previous-approved rezoning than the DVP, but here we are. Nonetheless, Council approved the DVP.


We then had the following items Removed form Consent for discussion:

Building Safer Communities Fund Program Update February 2023 to March 2024
The City received BSCF funding (up to $1.7 million) from the federal government to implement a plan to address youth being at risk for gang involvement of violent crime. The working group established by the City to implement the plan, and incredible partnerships in our community – NWPD, the Lower Mainland Purpose Society, Dan’s Legacy, the School District and many others. Between the Situation Table model that is aligning agencies to address very specific and emergent needs to the Youth Hub at Purpose, we are building resiliency in our community here. This report is long, because there is a lot happening. I’m really proud of our community for doing this work, but it was effectively just an update for our consideration, not an action item for Council.

Development Variance Permit for Works & Services Security – 602 Agnes Street (68 Sixth Street) Affordable Housing Project – Notice of Consideration of Issuance
68 sixth street is moving forward, now addressed as 602 Agnes. This is a bit of government sausage-making, but the short version is we need a services agreement to connect any new building to City services (electrical, water, sewer) and usually collect a Letter of Credit to secure any unexpected costs the City may suffer from this connection. With a regular developer that is an important piece of security in case the development goes insolvent so the city (taxpayers) doesn’t get caught holding the bag. With BC Housing, we are pretty sure they are not going to go bankrupt, so we are asking for a letter of indemnity (a promise to pay, effectively) instead of freezing up their capital. This needs Council approval, which we are doing, because we want affordable housing built.


We then address several Motions from Council:

Tenant Protections
Submitted by Councillor Campbell and Councillor Nakagawa

WHEREAS new provincial legislation is creating a path for increased development density around transit areas which will impact many more affordable New Westminster neighbourhoods due to our abundant transit services; and
WHEREAS Bill 16 (Housing Statutes Amendment Act) allows municipalities to enact tenant protection bylaws related to redevelopment, including within transit-oriented areas; and
WHEREAS tenants—especially those in older and more affordable rental housing— may be disproportionately impacted due to this new development; and
WHEREAS New Westminster has previously shown leadership in protecting vulnerable renters with strong actions to curtail demoviction and renoviction; and
WHEREAS the regional housing market is reaching new levels of crisis, increasing the risk that existing tenants will lose access to adequate housing through displacement related to redevelopment;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT the City of New Westminster update our tenant protection and relocation policies, using Burnaby’s as a model to provide support for tenants who may be displaced from their homes, including by redevelopment.

We had several people, including folks from the New West Tenants union delegate to Council about this issue, all in support of the motion. There is significant concern that the unanticipated impacts of the new Transit Oriented Development regulations from the province may impact our ability to enforce demoviction protections in the same way we have previously at the same time as it puts increased pressure on redevelopment near transit centers. Time for a review. This was also timely as Tasha and I had returned from FCM, where we both saw protesters calling for basic rental protections for Alberta (where there is almost none) and met with Councillors from Ontario that were using New Westminster anti-rennoviction bylaws as a model for their own similar regulatory approach to protecting the most affordable homes in their community. The contrast was shocking and reminded me of what side of this fight I want New Westminster Council to be on. Council voted to support this motion.

Making the Annual State of the City Address More Inclusive to Our Youth
Submitted by Councillor Fontaine

Whereas a recent series of State of the City addresses by the current and past Mayor have taken place at a private venue that restricts entry only to those 19 years and older; and
Whereas the most recent State of the City address held on May 7th, 2024 was a ticketed event which also required people show government issued identification to enter the premises; and
Whereas the City of New Westminster is committed to supporting our youth and embracing inclusivity; and Whereas other Mayors within our region ensure their State of the City address is held in an open, no-cost, low-barrier venue such as at City Hall;
BE IT RESOLVED THAT Council prohibit the Mayor from hosting future State of the City events that are not fully accessible to all members of the public free of charge.

I cringe whenever we use possessives to describe a group of people, but we don’t debate the titles of these motions.

This motion seemed to be based on a strange idea about what the State of the City is, as an event. The word “official” kept getting applied to it by the mover for unknown reasons. There is nothing “official” about it. It isn’t in the Local Government Act or any other legislation in the City. This is not the Annual Report of the City (which is “official”, prepared by staff and delivered by the CAO of the City in Council Chambers).

Instead, the State of the City in New Westminster (like in almost every other City in BC where such a thing takes place, including Surrey, Vancouver, Delta, White Rock, Langley, North Vancouver, Burnaby, etc…) is a partnership with the Chamber of Commerce in the form of a ticketed business luncheon sponsored by valued local businesses. I think the participation by the Mayor in a Board of Trade or Chamber event of this nature is a win-win.

There are many events that I am asked to take part in where I talk to select groups of the community about the City. That’s one of the roles of Mayor. Last week I gave a (shortened and looser) version of the STOC to seniors at a registration-required event at təməsew̓txʷ, I have also met recently with several elementary and middle school classes to talk about local government and the City. Net month, I will be talking to the (Members only!) Rotary Club and next week providing a Keynote to the (registration required!) Active Transportation Summit. None of these were open and accessible to all for a variety of reasons, but are facilitated to address a specific group. I don’t think there is anything wrong with the Mayor taking part in these types of events, and I can only speculate why some members of Council want to limit my ability to talk to different groups of the public.

Anyway, Council defeated this motion. And for those curious, the State of the City is recorded and streamed on the City’s website, anyone can watch it any time they want, which I think is a nice benefit for every one of the Chamber providing their partnership for this event.

Undertaking a review of the City’s outdoor events policies, procedures and permit fees
Submitted by Councillor Minhas

Whereas the process, procedures and policies linked to the establishment of outdoor events in New Westminster has been described at complex, costly and a challenge to overcome; and
Whereas there is a desire on the part of the City to encourage more outdoor events on a regular basis throughout the year; and
Whereas it is good practice to regularly seek feedback from the community regarding whether there are opportunities to streamline our processes in order to reduce red tape;
BE IT RESOLVED THAT Council establish a citizen-based taskforce to review our policies, procedures and permit fees regarding how they may be impeding the development of new and/or putting into jeopardy existing outdoor events; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT the taskforce make recommendations to Council regarding how we can streamline our processes and reduce red tape to help facilitate more outdoor events on a regular basis.

This resolution seemed to be a solution looking for a problem. Rather like some recent discussions about businesses abandoning New Westminster while our business license count shows we are growing new businesses faster than ever, this motion seems to be about a nostalgia for events that no-one in the community was interested in running (Show and Shine) without recognizing that we have organizations running literally dozens of events in the City, from well-established events with long history like the Hyack Parade and Nagar Kirtan, to the new traditions of Uptown Live, Pride Week, and Recovery Day, to emergent new events like On Your Block, National Indigenous Peoples Day, and Blocktober Fest. The best part is to see the recovery after COVID and how people in the community show up for these events.

It seems the mover didn’t speak to the organizers of these events putting this together, or otherwise did not recall the work the City is doing in this space, endorsed by Council in February. The mover is a member of the Arts, Culture and Economic Development Advisory Committee, where much of this work is being coordinated (as Festivals are the perfect interaction od Arts, Culture, and Economic Development), and would have benefited from getting caught up on what’s happening at that committee.
Staff have created a FEST team to coordinate though a one-stop-shop the fire, police, engineering, traffic and Fraser Health requirements that are often the biggest logistical step for festivals. There are other concerns related to policing and safety costs, which is where the City’s current work on updating our Grants process has a role. We are also building back our volunteer coordination resources after COVID, as volunteer support is one of the areas where many festival organizers are feeling pinched. I don’t want us to take people off of those work areas to coordinate another task force. It seems that adds to instead of reducing complication and bureaucracy.

Council did not support this motion.

Requesting that Metro Vancouver conduct an independent review of the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plan cost overruns
Submitted by Councillor Fontaine

Whereas Metro Vancouver’s North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant project is now estimated to cost nearly $4 billion dollars, a massive cost overrun compared to the original $500 million dollar budget; and
Whereas the specific circumstances that led to one of the largest cost overruns of any public infrastructure project (on a percentage basis) are still mainly unknown; and
Whereby given Metro Vancouver is about to undertake several other mega projects that will cost Metro Vancouver taxpayers billions of dollars;
BE IT RESOLVED THAT Mayor Patrick Johnstone, as our representative on Metro Vancouver, be asked to submit a motion to that governing body calling for a full, independent public inquiry into the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant cost overruns.

This motion may have benefitted from the mover talking to their colleagues on Council or on the Metro Vancouver Board instead of spending all their time talking into various TV cameras. And the conversation about it in Council was equally frustrating, because it never seemed to get through that the motion (if approved) was not going to deliver what the mover seemed to insist would be the result. On that failure to understand the situation, I prefer to invoke Hanlon’s Razor.

Like the mover, I also have significant questions about how the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plan was approved at just over $700 million, and the conditions that led to the firing of the main contractor in 2021 – events that presaged the current budget on the order of $3.8 Billion – because I was not on the Board when those events occurred. But I do know (and it has been widely reported) that we are currently in the middle of a legal fight with that contractor – suit and countersuits that will no doubt preclude any full public disclosure of the conditions that led to those lawsuits until people get their day in court, because that is how legal processes work. One would expect Metro Vancouver, having several hundred million public dollars at stake in those legal proceedings, do not want to do anything that might jeopardize them. So, calls for a public inquiry at this time will not be heard by anyone in a position of responsible governance.

I know that isn’t a satisfying answer to anyone, it isn’t a satisfying answer to me. But that is where we are, and when I serve on the Board of Metro Vancouver, I have a legal duty of fidelity to that organization, and cannot ask for things that would threaten that.

What I can say is that this situation is not representative of how Metro Vancouver delivers large infrastructure projects. Metro is commonly delivering numerous large and complex infrastructure projects in the hundreds-of-millions scale, from water treatment to major region-spanning pipelines, and has a strong record of delivering on time and on budget. The Metro board has also committed to internal review and addressing concerns that led here so they don’t end up in the same boat on future major capital projects. There is no reason to believe that this is a new normal, or a situation that will be repeated in future capital investments.

In the end, Council did not support this motion, as it would not deliver what the mover wanted to insist it would deliver. However, this is not the last we will be talking about this project.

Supporting families, people with mobility challenges and/or a disability to access New Westminster’s waterfront
Submitted by Councillor Minhas

Whereas access to our City’s waterfront should be something accessible to all residents, regardless if they have mobility challenges or not; and
Whereas there are several City owned-operated elevators that connect our downtown to the waterfront which have been out of service for periods of several months at a time; and
Whereas a lack of elevator access can prove challenging for people with mobility difficulties to access our waterfront
BE IT RESOLVED THAT staff report back to Council regarding the status of our City owned-operated elevators (connecting our downtown to the waterfront) over the past year including how many days they have been out of service; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT staff report back with an action plan to ensure that at least one City owned elevator always remains operable to ensure a minimum level of access to our waterfront.

This is an email, not a resolution. In fact, this comes on the heels of an email provided to Council on the status of the McInnes elevator (repaired and still under warranty). We don’t need an “Action Plan” developed on elevator maintenance for two elevators, this is an operational item that is not something Council needs to meddle in. We are a policy body, not managers. Our goal as a City is to maintain assets in a way that best applies our limited resources, and our goal is to have all of the elevators operational at all times. Recognizing that, maintenance of elevators is complex and outdoor elevators do occasionally break down, and as anyone who lives in a high-rise knows, when things go wrong, there is sometimes a wait for parts and people who can fix them. I have confidence that staff take this work seriously, and are doing all they can to be responsive to maintenance challenges.

That saying, we also recognize that broken elevators are problematic for access, and this is why we made the decision to not rely on an elevator for the west Pier Park access built for the City by Bosa, but invested instead in the bigger, more expensive, and maximally accessible ramp. It is also why we put so much emphasis on assuring the new access across the tracks at Begbie will be fully accessible.

This resolution was amended to change from a report to an email (saving staff time and energy) and asked that other issues regarding accessibility to the waterfront be referred to the Accessibility Committee. The Amended motion was approved by Council.


And to wrap we had one piece of New Business:

EComm AGM representative
New Westminster is member of the EComm “syndicate” and we need to assign a member to attend the AGM and vote on our behalf. Council appointed Councillor Fontaine to be this representative.

This Happened (in Calgary)

Last week was mostly spent in Calgary, attending the annual Federation of Canadian Municipalities meeting. This is the annual get-together of local governments from all across Canada to network, share, learn, and advocate. It is not my favourite conference (I find UBCM more relevant) and I have not attended in a few years, but this year brought the opportunity to have some meetings about some specific issues important to New West (more on that later), so packed the bags and booked the flight.

As usual (see here and here for example), I will provide a more detailed report on my FCM take-aways in a follow-up post here. In my Wednesday newsletter (link here to sign up and get the juice into your mailbox), I’ll write a little more about my thought on the political part of the conference, where we had very different addresses from the Prime Minister, the shadow minister from the Conservatives, and the leader of the NDP. In the meantime, here are a few pictures of the Calgary FCM experience:

Tasha showed up with a specific message for any Federal Government types we met at the conference!
This emergency alert arrived in our inbox as 1000s of local government delegates arrived in Calgary. Infrastructure Funding Anyone?
The Mayor of Edmonton and I had a significant difference of opinion on the value of bandwagons, but all in good fun!
The challenging regulatory environment in Alberta has not prevented the City of Calgary form investing in solar infrastructure at various scales.
Wherever you go, there you are! With Councillor Dominique O’Rourke of Guelph, Ontario.
In Calgary, the ultimate virtue signal is a cowboy hat in a convention centre.
I had a lunch discussion with Sam Trosow, a Councillor from London Ontario who sought me out at the event, because his City has studied New Westminster’s anti-demoviction regulations, and wanted to chat about challenges and successes.
My view for most of FCM was some version of this. The weather was always fine inside the conference sessions.
Streetscapes in Calgary are a study in contrast. Some nice public spaces, some serious car sewers.
Being a geologist, I know a few people who work in Calgary. I had a chance to catch up with a couple of old University friends I had not seen in something like 25 years! Good times. And yes, Calgary has craft beer.

Council – May 27, 2024

As Mayvember moves in Juneuary, we spent Monday cozy and warm in Council Chambers with a regular agenda we moved through relatively quickly.

We started with moving the following items On Consent:

Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption Request: 330 East Columbia Street (Royal Columbian Hospital Redevelopment Project)
The RCH project has been operating at extended hours on Saturdays for some time, and it has only resulted in two noise complaints, both resolved. They are entering a phase where deliveries may need to occur as early as 7:00am on Saturdays to keep things moving, and council is granting them a construction noise exemption to permit this.

Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption Request: 612 Seventh Avenue – Marcon Construction
A large slab pour is required for the new mixed use tower being built Uptown. This work site had a few early noise complaints where the operator paid fines, but not complaints have been received in some time. Council is granting them a one-time expansion of work hours to facilitate a single large pour.

Development Cost Charge Bylaw – Inflationary Amendment Resubmission
DCCs are funds we collect from developers to help cover the cost of supplying infrastructure related to growth resulting from their developments. They are strictly regulated by the Province, and the money must pay for the specific infrastructure we identify as being needed to support that growth. As the cost of building that infrastructure goes up, we are able to do inflationary increases to our DCC rates. This Bylaw does that. We passed a similar one back in March, but the Provincial inspector of these things didn’t like the language we used around the date the change becomes effective, so staff have redrafted a version to the inspector’s liking, and we are moving it again.

Zoning Amendment Bylaw for 310 Blackley Street: Bylaw for First, Second, and Third Readings
The “Eastern Node” is a long-coming and slow –developing project in Queensborough. There is a master plan for townhouses, apartments, and commercial spaces in the area just west of Port Royal, and this single lot is part of “Phase 3”. The property is included n the land assembly, and is now coming to us for rezoning to match the masterplan.

Zoning Amendment Bylaw for 1005 Ewen Avenue: Bylaw for First, Second and Third Readings
This 23- unit townhouse project in Queensborough came to council for three readings back in 2019, but has been somewhat redesigned to better fit the site, so those three readings are being discarded, and a new bylaw to reflect the new alignment of the property is being brought to council for three readings.


The following items were Removed from Consent for discussion:

Queensborough Transportation Plan
Transportation staff have been engaging the Q’boro neighbourhood on the first transportation plan specific to that neighbourhood, recognizing it has unique transportation challenges. The first being that there are no plans to replace or expand the (provincial) Queensborough Bridge any time soon, and much like the adjacent Hamilton neighbourhood of Richmond (and downtown, for that matter), moving around within the community is challenged by twice-a-day through-commuters. The new Plan includes priorities to address some of those unique challenges of Q’Boro, and identifies some of the pains of growth in the community.

The depth of consultation here is something to behold: lots of info on the Be Heard New West project page, direct outreach to 25 identified interest groups, community pop-ups, social media, advertising in the record, on the digital billboards and at community bulletin boards, and 4,000 direct mailings. The resulting report is a really good read, and identifies strategies to address the walkability and transit access on Lulu Island.

One of the key issues in Queensborough is the intersection of Howes and Highway 91A, which is statistically one of the most accident-prone intersections, is a comfort and safety barrier to pedestrians walking to Queensborough Landing from south of the freeway, and has abhorrently bad bus stop conditions for such a key bus stop location. The City has little more than advocacy power on the intersection, because it belongs to the Ministry of Transportation, but we need to be taking that advocacy to a new level to get this gap fixed.

One other key topic in Queensborough is the general lack of sidewalks in many of the residential neighbourhoods. This is a long-standing grievance, and though the City has had preiovus plans and policies ot address this gap (mostly waiting for redevelopment of older neighbourhoods, or doing a special assessment to share costs with homeowners), it is complicated by Lulu Island’s special conditions – soft soils and open ditches. Very long story made much shorter it costs a LOT to cover ditches, and it is simply not possible in some areas, and traditional road-curb-sidewalk structures would need enclosed storm drainage, meaning $500/m sidewalks become $10,000/m infrastructure programs.

We asked staff to come back to Council with some updates on how we might prioritize some of this work. “It’s expensive” is a good argument against making a quick commitment to just do it, but I think folks in the ‘Boro have reasonable expectations that at least one side of a road has a sidewalk of we expect the neighbourhood to be walkable and safe for everyone.

This report also talks about a commitment the City is making to the QtoQ ferry, and though it’s cost is increasing (diesel and staff costs are not going down!), its ridership is rebounding a bit after COVID. Some folks rely on this service, but we are going to have to continue to keep an eye on costs. The provider contract is running out this year, and we will have to go to RFP for a new contract, and that process should give us some clarity on the future of the service.

Report Back on Provincial Electric Kick Scooter Pilot Program
Electric kickscooters and other forms of new electric mobility are, for the most part, illegal in BC. This is because the provincial Motor Vehicle Act has not been updated to recognize them, and the City can’t really overrule provincial rules. The Province is running a Pilot Program in some communities to legalize them, with the local government committing to amending its local street and traffic bylaws, and aligning requirements with the MVA. Essentially, the scooters have the same rights and responsibilities as cyclists, except the rider must be 16 years old, and cannot exceed 25km/h.

The recommendation that New West join the Pilot is one I nominally support, but some good questions were raised around how enforcement works now, and how it will change if we enter the Pilot Program that could not be answered in the meeting, so we referred the decision here to allow more consultaiton with NWPD.

Response to Council Motion: Ensuring that ground level retail spaces in new developments prioritize community-supporting businesses and organizations
This is a follow-up to the discussion Council had regarding (ugh) dentist offices at retail grade. Staff are reporting back that they are prioritizing this component of the Retail Strategy, and will come back with some policy options in later June. There was a bit more instruction provided to staff from Council to not just report back on the Retail strategy components, but our planning and development policies and bylaws.

Response to Council Motion Regarding “Supporting Child Care Development Across the City”
This is also a follow up to an earlier motion from Council asking about opportunities to expand the range of properties in the City where childcare will be permitted without rezoning. It is noted here that New Westminster is already a regional leader in childcare-supporting policy, and as a result has one of the highest levels of childcare availability per capita in the Metro region (34.4 per 100 children, compared to a regional average of 25). The last time we expanded childcare zoning was 2011, and a re-look seems timely, especially as we are the fastest growing Metro Vancouver City in the “having kids” demographic of 25-44 years old.

Staff are going to review permitted childcare spaces as they implement the new Provincial housing regulations, as the pretty substantial zoning rewrite resulting from that regulation is a great opportunity to get it right at the same time. There are, notably, some (provincial) building code barriers to larger childcare facilities in typical residential buildings, but we want to make sure there aren’t municipal barriers if people want to make that investment.

Rezoning: 88 Tenth Street (Columbia Square) – Introductory Report
The owner of Columbia Square wants to redevelop the site to provide a significant number or residential homes, while maintaining the existing volume of retail and commercial spaces. We had a preliminary look at this back in April, and now staff want to work with the applicant to go to public consultation and move a more detailed design forward, so that rezoning can be considered by Council within this year.

This is a slightly different process, in that rezoning (which defines landuse, density, heights, and amenities) would be read three times, and if approved, some of the more detailed Development Planning part would come after. This two-phase process is more common in some other cities, but not as common here.

The challenge on this site is that the retail preservation and redevelopment and cost of building on the site do not provide economic viability if a significant below-market housing component is included. It being within the Province’s Transit Oriented Development Area defines in Bill 47 also complicates our ability to require affordable housing on the Site. We can receive Density Bonusing, which is money the developer pays the city to exceed the maximum density granted as right on the site, and the City can invest that DB into amenities.

The request from staff here is to work with the applicant to proceed with public consultation and the work needed to frame a rezoning Bylaw, which council will in turn be asked to consider some time later in the year.

Train Whistle Cessation Resolution at the Furness Street Rail Crossing
Whistle Cessation is complicated process. Once the engineering is done to make the crossing safe enough for the Railway and Technical Safety BC to agree whistles are not necessary, Council must pass a resolution deeming that whistles are not sounded. After significant engineering work (funded by an adjacent developer), and the City’s commitment to maintaining the engineering controls, we are ready to pass this resolution for a high-profile crossing in Port Royal. The train operator can still sound a whistle if they see a track intrusion or other hazard, but won’t sound it every time they cross, which should slightly improve the quality of sleep for a few folks in Port Royal.


We then read some bylaws including the one Bylaw for Adoption:

Zoning Amendment Bylaw (114-118 Sprice Street) No. 8387, 2023
This zoning amendment to permit 10 new houses on compact lots in Queensborough was adopted by Council.


We then addressed a single Motion from Council:
Encouraging the BC Government to Terminate the Failed Decriminalization Experiment
Submitted by Councillor Fontaine

BE IT RESOLVED THAT the Mayor write a letter to the Premier and Minister of Mental Health and Addictions requesting they immediately halt the failed decriminalization experiment pilot project in BC.

This motion was, for anyone paying attention to the news, redundant when it landed, but the mover decided not to withdraw it, but to instead take some Council time to have their say on the topic. Because of this, we were treated to several well-worn BC United fearmongering speaking points, and an argument that instead of harm reduction, we need to equally fund all pillars in a “four-pillar approach”, which demonstrates a stunning ignorance about the very “Four Pillars” the mover is advocating towards.

This is not just because harm reduction (every aspect of which the mover steadfastly argued against for five minutes) is not only one of the four pillars – it is consistently the least funded of the four pillars. Don’t take my word for this, the Government of Canada tracks these things. So how do we unpack what the mover is actually arguing for? Clearly he is not asking that we increase by 7 times the funding we put into Harm Reduction (safe consumption, safe supply, etc.) to bring it up to the amount we spend on enforcement, so I have to read it as a radical Defund-the-Police motion advocating to cut by 80% our drug enforcement budget in order to bring it down to where harm reduction spending is. I’ll have to remember to ask the mover about that.

I have more to say about this entire debacle of a motion, and will perhaps follow up in another post if I can stomach it, because not only were people stigmatized by the comments in council, there was a woefully unfirmed argument in favour of stigmatization. Ugh. I’ll just wrap this report by saying Council wisely voted against supporting this redundant and ill-considered motion.

This Happened

Every week or so I put out a newsletter to subscribers. Usually Wednesday afternoon/evening. It’s generally shorter-form than my posts here, provides updates on what I’ve been up to, with occasional opinion and politics that can get spicy. It’s free, no hassle to subscribe, just hit that “newsletter” link up at the top of the page.

And every once in a while I provide a reminder here, with a hint of what is in last week’s newsletter, where I wrote a bit more about these things:

ReDress day at Hyack Square to mark the annual National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and Two-Spirit People.
Attending the New Westminster Hospice Society annual River Walk for Hospice.
Standing at the Dias speaking during the Mayor’s State of the City address.
New Westminster won the Walk30 Challenge, and a class from QayQayt Elementary went the extra mile.
Taking part in the S&O Beer Run with a couple of council colleagues.