Month: May 2024

Council – May 27, 2024

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

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

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

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.

Council – May 6, 2024

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Monday’s meeting was long. Much longer than it had to be, frankly, considering the short length of the Agenda, but again we got the work done. We went a little off schedule as far as which items were covered when trying to accommodate the public and staff time as best we could, so the list below may not be in order, but you can always watch the video here and select the agenda item on the left that you are interested in, and the video should skip right to that item. Pretty slick.

It started with three Reports to Council:

2023 Consolidated Financial Statements
These are the annual financial reports detailing the financial results of the previous year (as opposed to forecasting the next year, which is the budget). It is also when we received the Audit Report based on the Audit Plan we approved back in January. The audit report is pretty simple: “no problems found”.

The Financial Statements show we are in solid financial shape. We are in a period of significant investment in the city, both in getting infrastructure built (our $78 Million capital spending in 2023 included $33 Million towards təməsew̓txʷ , $5 Million in sewer separation work, $5 Million in pavement management, aka. “filling potholes”, $4 Million toward our on-time-and-under budget Q’boro substation, $3 Million toward waterman replacement, and more) and in solidifying our capital reserves to assure we can continue to maintain what we build.

We also did pretty well at getting senior government investment in the City – more than $25 Million between the feds and Province, to help pay for that work. With that support, we had a an “operational surplus” of $105 Million, which is how we finance that capital plan, and is key to our meeting our longer-term Asset Management plans.

We are also taking in debt to pay for some larger items, including təməsew̓txʷ and the Substation. This is purposeful, and we can get into debates about how local governments finance infrastructure like this (as I have in the past – wow – reading that now, I used to be so wordy!). Our debt payments are in the order of $8 Million a year, of which about $6.7 Million is interest (representing a very manageable 2% of our revenue). At the same time, we had a significant increase in the interest earned on our reserves (up to $13 Million), which is due to some great treasury management work by our finance staff.

Council approved the Financial Statements, which allows staff to submit them to the province by the statutory deadline of May 15th.

Train Whistle Cessation – 2024 – Q1 Update
This is just the quarterly report on whistle cessation. It looks like one of the most prominent intersections in Q’Boro is very close to completion, and we are continuing to be challenged by CN on the key crossings in Sapperton. Not a lot to update here.

Recommendations for Council on Belonging and Connecting from the Community Advisory Assembly
This was the first presentation from the Assembly, and it could not have gone better. The first item they were asked to look into is our perhaps vague Strategic Plan pillar around “Community Belonging and Connecting”. The Assembly members provided a report with a lot of ideas around making better spaces for public participation in art and performance, the need for outdoor weather-adaptable gathering spaces, and public toilets. They highlighted the need for sports facilities in Queensborough, in updating our Renter Protection bylaws, and had an idea around a different kind of Community Ambassador program.

There was a lot there, and I appreciated they way they were open about recognizing this is a lot. They balanced well the desire to tell us what they want with leaving it to us as Council to determine what is feasible and what is not, and to set the budget and timelines. Most importantly, I liked how they spoke of the deliberative and consensus-building model they used. I am absolutely enthused about how this report came, and am even more excited about what is to come next.

The following item was Moved on Consent:

Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption Request: 220 Salter Street
Inspection of major sewer conduits under the Fraser has to happen at night when flows are lowest, and a bit of noise is generated at the ends of the inspection routes meaning we need to issue a Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption. Gotta keep the poop flowing!

We then adopted a LOT of Bylaws:

Tax Rates Bylaw 8445, 2024
The Bylaw that sets the property tax rates for 2024 was Adopted by Council.

Code of Conduct for Council Members Amendment Bylaw No.8457, 2024
This bylaw that amends our recently-adopted Code of Conduct to facilitate the hiring of an Ethics Commissioner was adopted by Council.

Riparian Areas Protection Bylaw Amendment Bylaw No 8413, 2024
Bylaw Notice Enforcement Bylaw Amendment Bylaw No 8421, 2024
Municipal Ticket Information Bylaw Amendment Bylaw No 8422, 2024
These three Bylaws that update our RAPR Bylaw to align with provincial changes was adopted by Council.

Zoning Amendment Bylaw (812 Twentieth Street) No. 8443,2024
This rezoning bylaw to permit a liquor store on Twentieth Street was adopted by Council.

Official Community Plan Amendment (909-915 Twelfth Street) Bylaw No. 8399, 2023
Zoning Amendment (909-915 Twelfth Street) Bylaw No. 8400,2023
Road Closure, Dedication Removal, and Disposition (909-915 Twelfth Street) Bylaw No. 8401, 2023
These Bylaws that support the building of a 40-unit residential building on Twelfth Street was adopted by Council.

Then we had a couple of Motions from Council:
Supporting increased openness and transparency at City Hall
Submitted by Councillor Fontaine and Councillor Minhas

BE IT RESOLVED THAT Council commit to publicly releasing all in-camera minutes on the City’s website as soon as practicable and once a decision or discussion is no longer required to be secured as confidential.

This motion is asking us to commit to doing something we already do, in that decisions Council makes in closed under Section 90 are effectively released to the public once we those decisions result in public expenditure or new Bylaws. We may discuss a property purchase of sale in Closed under section 90(1)e – because it would be terrible for our ability to get a good deal with public money if we negotiated in public – but we cannot actually close the purchase or sell a property without publicly disclosing we did it. We may discuss HR issues in closed under Section 90(1)a to protect people’s privacy, but cannot hire or fire people without disclosing this publicly. Excepting legal issues that require client-solicitor privilege covered by Section 90(1)g, everything we discuss in closed either goes nowhere, or if it goes somewhere, ends up in an open meeting.

I look at the City of Vancouver’s releases over the last few months, and what do I see? A decision made three years ago about a lease of public land that was already public, an agreement to a collective bargaining agreement made a year previously, a Corporate Officer hiring from a year ago that was already announced on the City webpage. There is nothing here that wasn’t public information already, so the level of transparency this offers is questionable.

Of course increased transparency is a good thing (I mean, I’ve written hundreds of these blog posts now), but I have a bit of a concern about the extra bureaucracy required to track and process item-by-item closed decisions over several years so they can be released in a systemic way. Is this a good use of staff time, considering the item has already, by definition, become public? So in Council approving this motion (with the minor edit of changing “minutes” to “decisions”), we also asked staff to report back on the resources needed before we make the change.

Appointment of new Chair of the Arts Culture and Economic Development Advisory Committee
Submitted by Councillor Minhas

BE IT RESOLVED THAT Council recommend to the Mayor that Councillor Daniel Fontaine be appointed as the new Chair for the Arts, Culture and Economic Development Committee

This is, frankly, a bizarre political attack at one of our hardest-working City Councillors. There is currently a Chair of the ACEDAC, and it is Councillor Campbell. Councillor Minhas also serves on that committee, but has (according to the publicly available minutes) failed to appear at a meeting. Why I would take the recommendation of a non-participant to replace the one Council member who is actively doing the work on that committee is… not clear to me. Council did not vote to replace the Chair.

Then we had one item of New Business:

Community Vancouver Canucks Viewing Feasibility
This arose out of a suggestion made by Councillors Fontaine and Minhas that we find ways to support viewing opportunities for the Canucks playoff run. We are starting a bit late at this, but over the last two weeks, staff have burned a bit of midnight oil and come up with a bit of a menu of options for us, but we have to move fast.

I have been told “all this takes is political will”, and nothing could be further from the truth. I hate to break it to you, but politicians don’t do the work of making things like this happen, staff do, and our staff already have full work plans. We say “we should have a public viewing party”, and staff have to scramble to find screens, broadcasting rights, facilities, security, staff, public bathrooms, etc. There is work to do here, and real costs.

That said, Council was generally supportive, and staff did a good job bringing us a scale of options, giving us the opportunity to start with round two, ramp it up for round three, and ramp it up again for the finals (because Vancouver has never lost in the third round). Of course, we want to do this in a way that supports our businesses, not taking away from them, and in a way that our police are confident will result in a safe time for families. So it is happening, and you can get info here.

Go Canucks.

LMLGA 2024

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Last week was the Lower Mainland LGA annual conference and AGM. This is the annual convention of local government elected folks from all of the municipalities and regional districts from Pemberton to White Rock and Hope to Bowen Island.  As I have done in previous years (here, here, here, etc…), I like to provide a bit of a summary of what happened at the conference. Over in my Newsletter I provided a bit more behind-the-curtain stuff for those who want to read that kind of stuff, all you need to do is register here to get the juice directly into your mailbox every Wednesday.

The LMLGA has three main public-might-be-interested parts. We have a Resolutions Session where we agree as a group on areas of senior government advocacy, Panels/workshops where we share strategies and challenges around emergent local government issues, and political speeches from provincial folks. Maybe I’ll talk them in reverse order here.

Unlike previous years, the Senior Government sessions were structured as Q&A sessions moderated by members of the LMLGA Executive, instead of stand-alone speeches. I appreciated this change, especially as it is an election year, and we didn’t want to hear stump speeches, we wanted to hear their party’s approach to issues that matter to our members.

Like previous years, Sonia Furstenau seemed to connect best to the audience. She worked in Local Government, but also has that third-party opportunity to speak truth about power (something I frankly think the Federal NDP could do more of). One favourite (paraphrased) quote: “You don’t run for MLA with the greens if power is your motivating goal.” A policy wonk after my own heart, she spoke to the flaws in the current Carbon Tax regime, issues with the Water Sustainability Act, and the dismal state of the current political discourse, which is eroding much of the ability to get the actual work of governing done.

Also like previous years, Kevin Falcon sometimes missed the mark in ingratiating himself to the crowd in the room. Local government elected trying to get housing built don’t need to be told “bureaucrats” are the problem, or that his experience as a for-profit developer is all BC Housing needs to fulfill our affordable housing needs while suggesting taxes are the reason the $400k townhouses he built in Surrey are now selling for $1M. He also, unknowingly I suspect, countered Fursteneau’s message around public discourse by suggesting “Decorum is great when you are in government, not great when you are in opposition”, following up with a passionate defense of fearmongering as political rhetoric. Meanwhile, there was no representative from the BC Conservative Party at the conference, so I guess he owned that space.

Anne Kang spoke of the work she did over the last year-and-a-bit as Minister of Local Government, including extensive touring around the province to meet with as many leaders of local governments as possible, and her championing for the turning over $1 Billion of infrastructure money directly to Local Governments through the Growing Communities Fund. She also emphasized the increased support her government is providing to Libraries across the Province. She spoke to challenges she hears from local government on the overlapping homelessness, poisoned drug, and mental health crises, though didn’t really get into the discussion about new legislation coming from the Ministry of Housing that is challenging many communities. She was light on new promises (with two more weeks in this session and an election pending), but was clearly very engaged and informed about the issues Local Governments are facing.

There were several Panels this year, but I found the first one the most interesting. The topic was “Public Safety Challenges in Public Spaces”, and I can imagine the direction of the panels shifted several times over the last few weeks, as the conversation province-wide around decriminalization has evolved. The panels was deftly (and very entertainingly) moderated by Andrea Derban from the Community Action Initiative. Her framing of the challenge really set the discussion up: we are at the Moral Panic phase and need leaders to push past that; This is not an OD crisis, it is a toxic drug supply crisis and there are material differences; the data is crystal clear that safe supply is not causing deaths; the people who are dying are not who you first think, and that flawed assumption is in the way of us saving lives.

The panelists included a police member from Abbotsford talking about their revised approaches to addressing mental health and addictions issues as health issues, not criminal ones, and collaboration with businesses being impacted by people seeking shelter. A Fire Chief from Surrey talked about their Second Responder program (which I wrote about New West adopting here) and signs of its success. Councillor Nadine Nakagawa spoke of our Three Crises Response Pilot and other work the City of New Westminster is doing. My phone lit up when she was speaking about it with texted questions from our colleagues about the Pilot, from how we paid for it to how we are measuring outcomes.

There were some take-aways around the need to collect data on measures we are taking – New West again providing the example of our Second Responder and Pilot Project both include collaboration with academics to measure outcomes). But it was Andrea who told us we need to tell better stories (“compassionate, evidence based, action-oriented”) about who is being impacted, and what success looks like.

The resolutions session is where resolutions from member jurisdictions are put before the membership for support. If endorsed, they effectively call on senior government for anything from policy changes to financial support for various causes. This year there were 60 Resolutions considered (you can read them all here), including the following 6 submitted by New Westminster:

R3- Additional Funding for Overdose Prevention Sites:“…be it resolved that UBCM ask the Province of British Columbia to increase funding for Health Authorities to augment existing, and to open new, supervised consumption and overdose prevention sites, including related inhalation services, across British Columbia and including local governments which do not currently offer this service to residents”.

This was endorsed by the LMLGA executive, and then endorsed by the membership On Consent. This is actually a pretty significant and clear message to the province that the municipalities of the Lower Mainland want to see harm reduction in every community.

R4 – Eliminating Barriers to Publicly-Owned and -Operated Home Care Services and Long-Term Care: “…be it resolved that UBCM ask the Province to eliminate financial and accessibility barriers by investing in more publicly owned and operated and not-for-profit home care services and social supports required to age in place, and by further investing in publicly owned and operated and not-for-profit long-term care to ensure seniors are well supported in the continuum of care.”

This resolution was endorsed by the executive, but was pulled from consent to facilitate an attempt by some members to amend it to also call for more public funding for for-profit care providers, which was wisely defeated when folks argued effectively that the intent of the motion was to build capacity in the public provision of seniors care, as the Seniors Advocate is asking for. The main motion was then supported by membership.

R11- EComm Governance Review: “…be it resolved that UBCM ask the provincial government to engage local governments in a comprehensive review of the governance structure and delivery model of 911 emergency call taking, related non-emergency call taking, and emergency dispatch services across BC with a goal to assure reliable, affordable, and sustainable services for all communities”.

This was also endorsed by the LMLGA executive, and then endorsed by the membership On Consent. It’s clear that much of the province is frustrated by escalating EComm costs and continued failure to meet the expectations of the community. The clear support for this motion is perhaps a bit surprising because EComm currently belongs to Local Governments, and this could be interpreted as us asking the Province to step in and take the management of it over – to upload the problem.

R34 – Creating Safer Streets for Everyone with Intersection Safety Cameras: “…be it resolved that LMLGA and UBCM call on the provincial government to expand the implementation of speed and red light intersection safety cameras in local governments across BC, prioritizing intersections near schools and those with a high rate of crashes that result in injuries or fatalities as identified by ICBC, and that the provincial government provide all revenue from additional speed and red light cameras to local governments as grants to be invested in implementing local and safety improvements;
And be it further resolved that the LMLGA and UBCM request that the provincial government allow BC local governments to install speed and red light cameras at their own cost and set and collect fees directly to be earmarked for road safety improvements”.

This motion was debated well by the members, as was a similar one from the City of North Vancouver that didn’t include the mention of school areas. It was supported by a healthy majority of the members, which reflects the current public opinion about speed and intersection cameras – the majority support them.

R48 – Allowing Local Governments to Apply Commercial Rent Controls: “…be it resolved that UBCM ask the Province of British Columbia to provide local governments with the legislative authority to enable special economic zones where commercial rent control and demo/renoviction policies could be applied to ensure predictability in commercial lease costs, so local small businesses and community-serving commercial tenants can continue to serve their communities”.

This motion was also well debated by members, after being motivated by Councillor Henderson. In the end it was supported by a thin majority of the members. I might expect this one will not do as well at UBCM, but that is some advocacy work we need to do.

R56 – Creating a Ministry of Hospitality: “…be it resolved that UBCM ask the Province to 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 motion arose out of advocacy from the BC Food Service Association’s “Save BC Restaurants” campaign, and lead to an interesting debate, but was ultimately defeated by a slim majority.

One more bit of voting news was that Ruby Campbell was elected as a Director at Large of the Lower Mainland LGA. This continues the tradition of Lorrie Williams, Chuck Puchmayr, and myself in representing New Westminster on that executive.

Finally a major part of this, like any conference, is the opportunity to network with leaders from around the region. We can laugh about our horror stories with the only cohort who really understands, learn from each other by sharing successes and challenges, and remind each other that we aren’t alone in this work. As it seems the media is filled by stories indicating (to quote my friend Mary) “we are not always sending our best”, it is great to connect with some of the most dedicated, serious, and accomplished people doing this work for all the right reasons.