A New(!) Year(!!) is here, and we had Council Meeting right off the bat. The open agenda was fairly short, so it was soft landing back into the real world. We started with a piece of Unfinished Business:
New Westminster Police Department letter dated November 26, 2020 and report regarding Response to the Calls for Justice – Listening and Learning through Respect and Understanding
This report was sent to Council from the Police Board in response a motion we passed a little while back asking several of our partners to respond to the Calls for Justice that arose from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
Our request to the Police Board was to respond to the Calls for Justice relevant to policing, and champion and lead a regional police task force to address them. This report provides a summary of the work being done, some of it relevant to the Calls for Justice, some that more generously might be characterized as community outreach. This second category is important and positive, but not specifically relevant to the Calls for Justice, and in not differentiating these, in some ways take away from the value of the report.
I think the parts of the report that speak to relationship building are good, and indeed this probably reflects that the Department has already understood the need for this work, and I think emphasizes a strength the NWPD has from which further work can build. However, fear a bit the report is stuck in the present (if that makes sense) in that it does not do enough looking back at the historic role policing played in building and supporting the systems that failed Indigenous women. It also talks more about what the force is doing now, and less about what the force would do differently if we were able to move past systemic racism.
That said, we did not provide a critique or specific feedback to the report in the meeting, as we determined it was better to have a formal review of the report through Council’s Reconciliation and Inclusion Task Force, who can provide recommendations to Council, and I suspect this is going to be a more detailed conversation between Council and the Police Board.
The following items were Moved on Consent:
718 Twelfth Street (Canadian Islamic Cultural Society): Renewal of Temporary Use Permit – Consideration of Issuance
There is a hall on 12th Street that the CICS has been using for religious assembly of a relatively small group for a couple of years on a Temporary Use Permit. It isn’t a permitted use in the Commercial zone it is in, but Council has previously asked staff to look at this designation and whether this type of use on upper floors of commercial storefront buildings may be appropriate – but we just haven’t had a chance to do that work yet. Council is being asked to consider a three-year extension of the Temporary Use Permit to both give staff time to do that police work and to give the CICS a chance to figure out if they want to stay there or go elsewhere.
1135 Tanaka Court: Rezoning for Cannabis Infused Product Manufacturing Facility – consideration of First and Second Readings
A company wants to use a light industrial property in Queensborough to manufacture cannabis-infused food products (“edibles”). If it was a food manufacturing facility, they wouldn’t even be coming to Council, but the regulations around cannabis are still prohibition-based, so we need to go through an extra zoning process, in this case a zoning amendment. This is a first and second reading, and will go to Public Hearing, so I will hold my comments until then.
Our Bylaws readings included the following for Adoption:
Zoning Amendment Bylaw (Patio zoning relaxations) No. 8246, 2020
This Bylaw that extends the current relaxation of patio rules through to the end of 2021 was adopted by Council. Better put on a wooly hat!
Zoning Amendment Bylaw (805 Boyd Street) No. 8214, 2020
This Bylaw that allows “self-improvement schools” in the big box Queensborough Landing area was adopted by Council.
We had one late addition piece of New Business:
Westminster Pier Park Fire Recovery: Request for Construction Noise Exemption
The Pier Park fire clean-up is complicated. A very short version of the story is that a creosote-and asphalt fire dropped debris in to the river, and we need to clean that up to the satisfaction of the Ministry of Environment, and that work really needs to be done in a way that protects fisheries habitat, and preferably before the salmon start to run down the river. Our contractor is concerned about timelines, and wants to have the ability to do this work outside of our regular construction hours, which needs a construction noise bylaw exemption because part of the work is on City titled lands. Council moved to allow that.
Now everyone get back to work and we’ll see you in two weeks.