Community Update update

Posted on May 10, 2016May 9, 2016. by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

I’m having a little trouble with the “community” posts here. I was hoping originally to give a weekly update of what I have been doing in the community when I’m not in Council meetings, to give people a better idea of what Council life is like. It is also (apparently) obligatory for politicians to post regular pictures of themselves smiling in the community to remind people that they exist. So mix those together, I figure, and it can be all about Pat once a week.

Two problems: much of what I do is boring subject matter for a blog post, and doesn’t necessarily come with a good photo. If I summarize most evenings, it looks like this:

With a fair smattering of this:

And, if I’m lucky, occasional moments of excitement like this:

Which is all positive, good stuff, but not usually compelling blog info.

The second problem is I usually forget to take photos. #BadPolitician.

So once a week became one every fortnight, and occasionally irregular, and by then there are 20 events piled up and I get this long-winded “Community” post with many dull things and terrible photos.

So I’m going to try to post more frequently with very short posts, essentially Instagram-style, maybe as often as one every couple of days, between my regular posts that are more topic-based. As a result, I may put a few in the queue and have them come out on a regular basis, not necessarily the day the events occur, to sort of meter these things out. Let’s see how this works.

My big highlight last weekend was giving a Jane’s Walk on Saturday. I blended talking about history (of which I know little), architecture (of which I know less) and geology (or which I know a lot) in a talk and walk looking at building stones of New West.

As it was a Jane’s Walk, I also interspersed my talking part with a few quotes from Jane Jacobs’ monumental book on the nature of neighbourhoods The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Including this one, where I asked my walkers to think and chat about whether New Westminster fits the bill to realize its full potential:

To generate exuberant diversity in a city’s streets and districts, four conditions are indispensable:

1. The district, and indeed as many of its internal parts as possible, must serve more than one primary function; preferably more than two. These must insure the presence of people who go outdoors on different schedules and are in the places for different purposes, but who are able to use many facilities in common.

2. Most blocks must be short; that is, streets and opportunities to turn corners must be frequent.

3. The district must mingle buildings that vary in age and condition, including a good proportion of old ones so that they vary in the economic yield they must produce. This mingling must be fairly close-grained.

4. There must be a sufficiently dense concentration of people, for whatever purpose they may be there. This includes dense concentration in the case of people who are there because of residence.

In combination, these four conditions create effective economic pools of use. The potentials of different districts differ for many reasons; but, given the development of these four conditions, a city district should be able to realize its best potential, wherever that may lie.

By this accounting, we are doing pretty well…

ASK PAT: Housing idea

Posted on May 9, 2016May 6, 2016. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Terran asks—

What do you think about the recent Vancouver idea to buy homes and undervalue them? Do you think this could work in new west? http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/city-of-vancouver-affordable-home-ownership-pilot-program-1.3539688

I can’t quite get my head around the City of Vancouver plan. They appear to wan to buy 20% of the housing value, and hold that portion while the market still influences the pricing of the units. If I understand it right, a middle-income-family would by 80% of a home, live in it, sell it off and receive 80% of the sale price. If the value goes up (as is likely today) when they choose to upgrade or move to Temiskaming, do they get 80% of the capital gain and the City the 20%? There are devils in details here.

My first question when putting this in the New West context would be –is it legal? Vancouver seems to be floating the idea of making changes to the Vancouver Charter to make it work, and I’m not sure how this model would fit into the Community Charter that governs New West.

There is another simple resource problem: New Westminster does not have a lot of money. We don’t really have a longer-term land acquisition strategy to speak of (we are working on developing one now), nor do we hold a lot of property relative to many of our surrounding communities. Investments that could have (should have?) been made decades ago when land values were low were not done for what I’m sure were very practical reasons at the time. Our finances are pretty good, but the few capital projects we have coming along in the next few years (Massey Theatre, Q2Q, Canada Games Pool, etc.) are going to tighten things up quite a bit.

This raises the question if this is the most effective way to leverage the money we do have. The City holds about $1Million in our Affordable Housing Reserve, and we have a task force working on a couple of strategies to leverage partnerships to assure those funds go to where they can make the best impact.

Finally, I wonder if the Vancouver solution (making apartments 20% more affordable for essentially middle-income workers) is really the affordability problem we need to solve in New West. I get the sense that New West is affordable for middle-income earners, especially if they are happy to live in an apartment setting. Single Family homes are getting out of reach, but building more “missing middle” housing types like townhouses, laneway houses and cluster homes might help provide better options to those earning family incomes in the $70-90,000/yr range (the target of Vancouver’s plan).

In New West, we are seeing creeping land costs and a paucity of rental availability that is putting a lot of stress on the lower-income cohort of our population. As the working middle are pushed to New West, they are displacing the working poor and underemployed who need affordable housing within transit or walking distance from their jobs, their schools, and their support systems.

Unfortunately, this situation is getting worse at the same time that the largest community network of affordable family homes – Co-op Housing – is going through an existential crisis caused by the federal government cutting off support, and the provincial government failing to fill the gap (as is their constitutional role).
In the meantime, New West is doing what it can to get both market and non-market rental built as soon as possible, and to develop a new Official Community Plan that emphasises diversity of housing choice. Meanwhile, the Mayor has an Affordable Housing Task Force that is working on the best potential use of the affordable housing reserves, and the Mayor himself is working with the Metro Vancouver Housing Board to develop regional affordability strategies.

Not that I am disparaging of Vancouver’s idea. In this strangely super-heated market, coupled by a booming economy where everything but wages are going through the roof, we are going to need a variety of strategies to keep our region livable. Housing is a symptom of a larger economic malaise that points back to decades of neo-liberal economic “progress” where the building of wealth is prioritized over the building of society. But that is a talk for another day.

ASK PAT: Front Street trucks.

Posted on May 8, 2016May 6, 2016. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Brad asks—

During Front Street’s closure over the past couple of months, trucks have been re-routed to Columbia and Royal. This doesn’t seem to have had that bad of an affect on New Westminster’s traffic (at least, to my eye), so what are the thoughts about banning truck traffic from Front Street entirely? Can this be visited when the Pattullo Bridge gets replaced? Front Street isn’t part of TransLink’s Major Road Network, so we shouldn’t have to ask them, right?

Although I agree the “Carmageddon” promised by Front Street closing has not arrived, there has been a shifting of trucks to Columbia Street, and anecdotal increases in trucks on Royal and 10th Ave. The City is collecting data on the traffic during the closure in order to get good numbers on the shift, and that report is not available yet, but preliminary info seems to suggest about a 30% increase in trucks on Royal. There has also been a diversion of trucks to Columbia and 10th Ave, but these three increases do not add up to the number of rucks that used to ply Front Street. It is pretty clear that a large proportion of the tucks that were on Front Street have, indeed, gone away. Presumably most of them have gone to the $5 Billion of freeways we have built for them over the last decade, as ~~the Lord~~ Kevin Falcon intended.

Front Street is not in the Major Road Network, but it is a designated truck route. To change that, we need agreement from the Ministry of Transportation and at least consult with TransLink. The current policy is that trucks routes cannot be removed unless appropriate alternatives are offered. So if closing Front Street to trucks means we need to allow 24/7 access to Columbia Street, then it is probably not a good deal for the City.

If the closing of that route means accepting a measured increase in Royal Ave and 10th Ave, then perhaps it is a discussion we should be having as a City. However, to have that discussion, we need some solid numbers to support the cost-benefit, and those numbers are being collected. Of course, this ends up being a political discussion – the people who live on Royal are not going to like it, and it will do nothing to make people feel better about the Qayqayt school transportation situation.

Offsetting these reasons to avoid the discussion, people need to go down to the Front Street right now and look around. I think we can, for just a moment now, have a vision of what could be. I’m not even talking about removing trucks from Front Street, I’m thinking we should explore the possibility of closing Front Street to all but local traffic. Build the Mews, turn the rest into greenway, parkland, open space for any of a thousand public uses we have not yet imagined. I don’t want to close Front Street to traffic, I want to open it for the use of human beings who aren’t dragging tonnes of internally-combusting metal around with them. There is a huge amount of space there, let’s start to dream.

The primary argument for keeping trucks in Front Street is, of course, “Goods Movement”. The Gateway Council, the Port, the BC Trucking Association, and the Ministry of Transportation make the argument that the regional economy relies on free-flow of trucks along Front – this route is critical. This assertion will not likely be supported by any measureable dip in the regional economy caused by this 6-months closure. But don’t bring facts into this discussion.

Fitting the use of Front Street into the context of the larger Pattullo replacement strategy is important, as is fitting it into the model for the Brunette overpass replacement, which is an ongoing discussion between Coquitlam, New Westminster, and the Ministry. There are well-connected regional voices continuing to reiterate that New Westminster is a through-route, not a community, and are planning with this in mind.

Even as New Westminster aggressively pursues a smart growth strategy reflecting the Regional Growth Strategy; even as we push towards building a compact, mixed-use, transit-oriented community where most commuting and shopping trips are by foot or transit, reducing the need for expanded road capacity; even as we take a leadership role the region in meeting the mode shift goals of the long-term regional transportation vision, those very goals are challenged by our tacit acceptance that our community must play second fiddle to the commuting needs of outlying regions.

We have been leaders in planning and development to reduce our reliance on the traditional transportation models, we are becoming leaders in our transportation policy, but to see the benefit of those changes here at home, we may need to stop leading by example, and start forcing our neighbour’s hands.

Does the region need trucks on Front Street? No. Is there a better way to make use of that 5 acres of public space in New Westminster? Yes.

The rest is politics.

Sowing Doubt

Posted on May 7, 2016May 6, 2016. by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

The Earth is currently warming at a rate unprecedented in recent history, almost entirely due to human activity, primarily the digging up and burning of fossil carbon and introducing CO2 to the atmosphere at a rate much faster than natural biosystems can remove it. This is not a controversial set of facts.

However, much like people who refuse to believe that natural selection shaped the evolution of life on our planet, or those that believe there could be a breeding population of large bipedal hominids lurking just out of sight in the woods of the Pacific Northwest, there are some for which this set of facts cannot fit within their political, religious, or economic ideologies. No problem, it’s a big world, reality isn’t for everyone.

Problems do arise, however, when those so separated from reality are given the power to shape public opinion and political will. I provide for your review the most recent opinion of Black Press’ go-to climate change correspondent, Tom Fletcher. I recognize the Streisand Effect of even calling attention to this bunk, but perhaps we can glean from this a teaching moment.

There is a lot in here, representative of Tom’s liberal (ahem) application of the Gish Gallop on this topic, so I will only pull out two major themes, where he brushes up against the science. I’ll touch more on the politics later.

“According to the environment ministry’s 2015 Indicators of Climate Change report, B.C.’s average temperature has increased about 1.5 degrees from 1900 to 2013, slightly more in the north and less in the south. That’s one one hundredth of a degree per year”

See how only little cherry-picked factoid stripped of context can be used to sow doubt about the seriousness of the situation? The report (which you can read here) says 1.4°C per century from 1900 to 2013 (doing the math on that strange bit of language, that means 1.6°C in the 113 years between the two dates). At the risk of pedantry, this is 40% more than one one hundredth of a degree per year – an annual change of 0.014°C.

Still, a number so small, it can’t possibly a problem, right? Except…

We can all agree the climate has changed before. During an era 10-20,000 years ago there was a dramatic climatic change that saw continental glaciation in North America come to an end. What is now British Columbia went from being about 95% covered with ice to less than 1%. No doubt this type of dramatic climate shift had devastating effects on the extant biosystems, not to mention any society that existed during that time. Some survived, others didn’t. It was monumentally disruptive.

However, that dramatic landscape-shifting shift in climate came with a 3.5°C shift in temperatures over about 8,000 years. To simplify this trend to Tom Fletcher math, that is about 4 ten-thousandths of a degree per year – an annual change of 0.0004°C. The current temperature shift is happening at more than 30 times the speed of the previous, devastating one.

Except it isn’t, because the current trend has been accelerating over those 113 years. The rate of warming now is more than twice that of the first half of the century. If one looks only at the trend from 1960 onwards (as the ubiquitous use of fossil fuels and resultant exponential increase in energy consumption has expanded from the socio-economic “First World” to the majority of the planet), the rate is not only faster, but the acceleration is accelerating.

“The B.C. report ritually attributes this to human-generated carbon dioxide, the only factor the UN climate bureaucracy recognizes. And here lies a key problem for the global warming industry.

“More than 90 per cent of the greenhouse effect in the Earth’s atmosphere is from water vapour. Antarctic ice core analysis shows that over 400,000 years, increasing carbon dioxide has lagged centuries behind temperature increase. This suggests that rising temperatures lead to increased CO2, not the other way around. (Scientific American, working hard to debunk this, found a study that shows the CO2 lag is only 200 years, rather than 800 as others calculate. Still, it can’t be causing warming.)”

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and the measure of Fletcher’s knowledge of this topic is most generously described as “little”. So let’s unpack that paragraph a bit and see where his failure to do his reading has failed his keenly skeptical mind.

On water vapour, Mr. Fletcher is almost right. Water vapour is indeed a strong greenhouse gas, however the behaviour or water in the atmosphere (where it enters as a vapour, exists in all three phases at a wide variety of temperatures, and exits primarily as a liquid, influencing upward and downward energy fluxes at all times) is horribly complicated. The best estimates modelling these fluxes (and I’ll refer to Kiehl and Trenberth, 1997 here) suggest water vapour represents about 60% of the total radiative forcing under clear skies, and somewhat more under cloudy skies (at any given time, the planetary cloud cover is about 62% – a pretty cool factoid to pull out at your next dinner party). There are more complications here, as we can get into debates about defining the “greenhouse effect” relative to the impact on the planet’s surface vs. that in the atmosphere, about difficulty defining latent heat fluxes from precipitation, and other details that were definitely discussed in my upper-level boundary layer climatology courses, but that was 20 (ack!) years ago, and I am not as well versed as I once might have been.

Those caveats aside, the inference by Mr. Fletcher is that water vapour is a higher percentage than CO2, and therefore CO2 doesn’t matter. Nothing could be farther than the truth.

The same estimates put CO2 forcing at around 26%, based on historic CO2 concentrations (the 1990 concentration of 353ppmv was used, although the global concentration in 2015 is at least 13% higher than this). More importantly, one needs to recognize that the two gasses exist in the atmosphere in very, very different ways.

When we emit CO2 into the atmosphere, it essentially stays there until sorbed into the ocean or is made into rock through biogenic systems – two very slow processes. Respiration by plants is, at best, a temporary storage, as the majority of CO2 that enters plants is returned to the atmosphere within a year or a decade, and almost all of the rest within a century. Stick extra CO2 in the atmosphere, it stays there for a long time.

Conversely, the concentration of H2O in the atmosphere is controlled by atmospheric pressure and temperature – because in normal atmospheric conditions H2O exists in all three phases (CO2 only exists as a gas in the atmosphere of earth- there are no conditions here where liquid or solid CO2 form naturally). Stick more H2O in the atmosphere, and it exits again almost immediately as rain or snow when the saturation level of the air at that temperature and pressure is met. If we double or treble human inputs of H2O into the atmosphere without changing atmospheric temperature, the net concentration of H2O in the atmosphere a decade later will be unchanged (notwithstanding the sheer enormity of the natural H2O cycle of evaporation and precipitation, where the most generous estimates of human inputs account for something like 0.005%).

So the only thing we can do to influence that 60% of forcing is to increase the temperature of the atmosphere (as meaningfully changing the pressure of the atmosphere, globally, is beyond our current terraforming technology). In contrast, by effectively doubling the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, we are wreaking havoc with that 26% of forcing – it is going up. And that’s the part we are talking about.

Now, onto ice those pesky ice cores. Those pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 changes over the last 400,000 years did lag behind temperature increases (by how much is a debated point, see Caillon et al, 2003). That should actually frighten us, not make us confident. It also in no way refutes the observation that anthropogenic combustion of fossil carbon is the primary driving force for the current temperature increases.

When the ice in those cores was being deposited (and ice cores are not the only temperature/CO2 proxies we have, but let’s keep this simple) it was recording long-scale shifts in global climate caused by Milankovitch cycles. Short version: cyclic wobbles in the axis of the earth’s rotation relative to the sun along with changes in the shape of our orbit give rise to 100,000-year long cycles of increased and reduced solar input. These shifts continue today, indeed we are just past a “peak” that occurred ~10,000 years ago, and are in the downward part of the cycle with solar input slowly decreasing right now. Global CO2 levels also shift in lockstep (or slightly after) these cycles, from 180ppm to 290ppm.

I cannot emphasize this enough – the historic climate effects of Milankovitch cycles occur at a rate orders of magnitude slower than what we are currently observing: Heating at a scale of 0.0005°C per year, cooling at a rate of 0.0001°C per year.

These historic shifts in temperature were not caused by changes in greenhouse gasses, and no-one has suggested they are. They are caused by shifts in the solar energy hitting the earth. So the cause of the much slower heating and cooling cycles recorded in the ice cores is not, in any practical way, related to the cause of the much faster heating today. They are two separate phenomena, operating in different ways, at different scales. To compare them is like comparing the tide coming in to a tsunami – both cause the sea to rise, but in different ways, through different processes with, different effects.

So Fletcher is right- the initial cause of warming 25,000 years ago, 130,000 years ago, 250,000 years ago, was not CO2, but that does not mean the cause of the present warming isn’t CO2. In fact, we know it is.

More problematically, the ice cores demonstrate that increases in temperature related to outside causes can (and do) result in increased atmospheric CO2, for a bunch of reasons relating to carbon storage in soils and the sea. This, in turn, creates a positive feedback loop. As the earth gets warmer, more greenhouse gasses (GHG) are released, and that increased GHG concentration warms the earth further. This is the primary reason why the cooling phase related to Milankovitch cycles operates at a quarter of the speed of the heating phase – once that GHG blanket is thrown over the warm earth, it takes much longer to cool off.

That should scare us, as should the other data from the ice cores. Even at the “peak” of the previous cycles observed in the ice cores, planetary CO2 was only 290ppm. We are now over 400ppm, and the trend is continuing up. It also means that once those GHG hit the atmosphere, their effects are long-lasting, and getting back to start gets much harder the further we move away from what I can only loosely call a “baseline”.

In the end, the reality of this information doesn’t matter. No amount of science-based explanation is going to change Mr. Fletcher’s mind about this topic. He will continue to believe that the hundreds of thousands of scientists at NASA, NOAA, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, the Royal Society, the U.S. National Academy of Science, (and every other national academy of science on earth, from Bolivia to Zimbabwe), are either pulling a monumentally complicated con only he and a few of his buddies can see through, or are fools lacking his brilliant insight into global climate systems.

His views are so separated from reality that he may as well be casting Bigfoot footprints, and should be treated as a crackpot. Instead, he is paid for his misinformed opinion, which is subsequently circulated widely throughout BC, as the lead columnist for the only newspaper that much of BC ever sees: their local Black Press iteration resulting from our era of old media consolidation.

Although the facts of anthropogenic global warming are strictly scientific, discussing these facts is unfortunately political, because the implications and any solutions to address them will require political will. By using his bully pulpit as one of the most widely-distributed columnists in the province and President of the Legislature Press Gallery to spread misinformed crackpottery about this topic, he deliberately undermines the political will required to take action. He helps relieve our leaders of the responsibility to lead. His ongoing efforts towards agnotology are a real disservice to his industry, and the public he claims to inform.

Council – May 2, 2016

Posted on May 5, 2016. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Our Regular Council Meeting of May 2, 2016 had an interesting flow, with lots of Proclamations, most of them read twice. I’ll skip the formalities, and keep the business at hand:

Review of Council Remuneration Policy
The City has a policy on how Council pay is calculated. (yes, we get paid).

The process allows a review every term (now 4 years, it used to be every three years) that compares the pay level to that of 11 comparator Municipalities – those of similar size (so big municipalities like Vancouver and Surrey are not included, nor are small ones like Anmore). We compare our pay to theirs using a regression analysis using population and the size of the Municipal budget. The HR department them pulls the mid-range value and recommends that we try to match that.

The analysis has recommended a one-time raise of about 8.9% for Councillors, and about 3.5% for the Mayor to bring us back to the middle of the regression. Over the term, Council will get annual raises equal to the CPI.

This was announced a couple of weeks ago, and notices were put in the paper. The Record did a nice little story, and I personally receive a single piece of correspondence from someone I know well who thought it was outrageous. He was unable to provide to me a better system to determine how council wages should be regularly adjusted, other than linking it to the Collective Agreement of our Union Members, which (arguably) creates a perception of conflict.

No-one came to Council to speak on the issue, and Council voted to approve the process, which will come back to Council after the formal report is created by Human Resources.

The following items were moved on Consent:

Recruitment: Sapperton Old Age Pensioners Representative to
the Seniors Advisory Committee
This nomination came from the Sapperton Pensioners, the organization that owns and operates the Sapperton Pensioners Hall, where a lot of seniors programming takes place. Council move to approve the nomination of Calvin Donnelly as rep the to Seniors Advisory Committee. And you all know who he is!

Amendments to the 2016 Schedule of Regular Council Meetings
We are adjusting our meeting schedule a bit to make workshops work better. Please update your VCRs.

810 Quayside Drive (River Market): DVP No. DVP00606 to Vary Sign Bylaw Requirements – Consideration of Issuance
The River Market wants to add some colourful banner signage to the north side of their building to call attention to their tenants. The signs to not fit the strict language of the Sign Bylaw, but do not (to my eye) look too out of scale or obtrusive. As the variance of the Bylaw requires public notice and an opportunity to be heard, we will review this application at our meeting of May 30, 2016. C’mon out and let us know what you think.

Repeal of “Downtown Parking Commission Bylaw No. 5769, 1988
DTPC was set up to manage the Downtown Parkade, back when it was a BIA/City joint venture. Since the refurbishment of the east half of the Parkade and the removal of the West Half, there is much less to manage, and the actual day-to-day operation has been contracted out for years. As such, the DTPC has lacked much to do. With the consent of the chair of the Commission and on the advice of staff, it was thought best to simply disband the Commission, which requires a repeal of the Bylaw.

2016 Spring Freshet and Snow Pack Level
This report comes from the Province every year, and provides guidance to our Emergency Services staff to determine the threat level for flooding during the Spring Freshet. Things look good this year, with slightly below normal snowpacks, reducing the risk of freshet floods. We are still going to stay vigilant and ready to react, as the rate of melt-off also impacts the flood risk, but the message right now is positive.

325 and 329 Ewen Avenue: Proposed Rezoning from (M-1) to (RQ-1)
These are a couple of properties in Queensborough that are part of the “Special Study Area” where Platform Properties is working on a mixed commercial and residential development. This an area that will likely remain single family residential, but are zoned industrial. This causes some problems for the people who are currently living in these homes around insurance and such.

Additionally, these properties cover areas where a right-of-way would be useful for providing servicing to adjacent properties, as there are rights-or-way on either side of the properties that don’t connect. So rezoning will coincide with dedication of these rights-of-way for future use.

This Rezoning will go to public hearing on May 30, 2016. C’mon out and tell us what you think!

518 Ewen Avenue: Proposed Rezoning from (C-1) to (RQ-1) to Permit
Construction of a Single Detached Dwelling
This property is also in a Single Family Detached area, but is zoned for commercial. The owner would like to build a house, and a Rezoning is required.

This Rezoning will go to public hearing on May 30, 2016. C’mon out and tell us what you think!

129 Tenth Street: Proposed Rezoning
This development in the Brow of the Hill is an interesting example of the “missing middle”, eight ground-based townhouses in two separate buildings on a single large lot between a high rise apartment building and single family homes.

This Rezoning will go to public hearing on May 30, 2016. C’mon out and tell us what you think!

602 Ewen Avenue (Spagnol’s Townhouses) – Proposed Rezoning
This proposal in Queensborough is also a good example of “missing middle” housing types – 16 townhouses that are effectively small detached homes. The goal here is to get family sized homes on small footprints to increase the affordability.

This Rezoning will go to what is starting to feel like a very busy public hearing night on May 30, 2016. C’mon out and tell us what you think!

ACTBiPed – Request for Endorsement of the Bike Right BC Initiative
Teach a youth to ride a bike safely, get them to realize that a bicycle increases their freedom in a way rides from Mom and Dad never do, and they are more likely to keep using bikes as adults. All evidence is that they will be healthier, happier adults.

We are working on building safer bicycle infrastructure in the City, and have created safe routes to schools. We even help (through grants) the cycling advocacy group HUB New West teach safe cycling to school kids. I am amongst those who believe that cycling safety should be part of the regular school curriculum, just as other health education is.

Adopting this Framework shows the City’s support for working to develop a generation of engaged, confident, and safe cyclists.

We then discussed this Report for Action:

Tree Bylaw – Review of Implementation
We are a few months into having a Tree Bylaw, and several people working on development are starting to become aware of the Bylaw, so naturally, concerns are beginning to be raised in the community by people who realize the Bylaw applies to them.

There is a concern about how a Tree Bylaw may restrict your ability to build to your full allotment – which speaks to how a Tree Bylaw is going to allow us to manage infill density while protecting trees, which many would include on the fuzzy idea of “neighbourhood character”.

It is probably a good time for Council to get feedback from staff about how the roll-out of the Bylaw is going. Are we getting push-back or problems cropping up? I had a resident call me to raise concerns about a large Holley Tree in her yard that meets the size measurement for “protection”, but is an invasive species which may not be of a net benefit when we talk about the ecology of the City. We don’t want to protect trees at the cost of ecology.

There are other details around the security deposit we take for tree replacements, and what we are doing as far as the other parts of the urban Forest Management Strategy. We should get a report back in the next few weeks.

The following items were removed from Consent:

Recommended Actions in Response to the Issue of Tenant Evictions Through Renovations
This issue has been talked about regionally for decades, but I fear we are seeing the beginning of a wave here in New Westminster. I have been involved in three situations in my short time on Council where residents have brought this issue to them, as it was affecting them personally. The regional craziness with land values has reached us here in New West, and we are the City with the highest proportion of our residents living in rental housing, with a significant proportion of that in an older and more affordable rental stock.

Both “reno-victions” and “demo-victions” are going to increase in New Westminster, and although there is a difference in how the City becomes aware of them, there is very little difference for the person, often living paycheque to paycheque, who has two months to find a new home in a remarkably tight regional rental market.

We are severely limited in what we can actually do, as the Residential Tenancy Act if a Provincial law, but we can assure that residents in our city know their rights, and renters know their responsibilities. We can also point residents towards resources, government and not-for-profit, that can help them.

I hope we can find creative ways, through our permit application processes at City Hall, to determine when evictions may be triggered, and use that reach out to renters, deliver information to impacted tenants about their rights and responsibilities, and provide contact information for services.

Stop work orders and tickets are available for us as enforcement if building manager fail their permitting responsibilities, but those penalties are pretty small, and not much of a deterrent.

Council moved that we take a motion requesting stronger protection for tenants against reno-victions to the LMLGA and UBCM, as our conduit towards lobbying the provincial government for changes in legislation.

1031 Sixth Avenue: Heritage Revitalization Agreement – Update
This topic was discussed last meeting, and it appears that the owner and Planning staff are once again back to exploring Heritage Restoration Agreement possibilities, and demolition is not imminent. More to come…

Amendment to Water Shortage Response Bylaw
Last year, we saw some pretty severe water restrictions, which saw high compliance across the regions, and we got through a slightly scary drop in our reservoirs without reaching an emergency level of depletion. The snowpack is a little better this year, but the spring has not been all that rainy, so we have yet to know what our forecast hold for this summer.

Metro Vancouver is forecasting enough concern that stage 1 water restrictions are going to start a little earlier than last year. Stage 1 is not very restrictive, and with any luck we can get through the summer at that level.

Last year, we at the City heard some complaints from residents that our enforcement measures were not what the public expected. I think we can all go back 8 months and remember seeing that bright green lawn that stood out from all of the neighbours…

This year, Council has asked staff to track complaints, responses, warning and fines, and to report back to council on this compliance so we can assure the public that our Bylaws are being enforced. On a similar note, we are making adjustments to our Bylaw to facilitate nematode treatment of lawns at the appropriate time (that can only happen in June when the grubs are at the right life stage that the nematodes will infect them). There were a few language changes to make to the Bylaw before we give it first reading, so watch for that at a Council meeting coming your way soon.

We received some Correspondence to discuss:

Letter dated April 11, 2016 regarding Fraser River Middle
This issue is an interesting one. With the development of the new Middle School in the Brow of the Hill neighbourhood, some parents at the west end of the catchment are concerned about the distance to the school. There is some irony in the fact that the School District’s first proposal to place this school in the West End was vociferously opposed by the neighbourhood, but we are here in 2016, and that ship has sailed.

Schools don’t run buses anymore – it simply isn’t in their budget. TransLink is not interested in getting into the school bus business. Running buses for schools is well outside of the normal jurisdiction of a local government, and could be read as a significant downloading of a provincially-funded responsibility to local government. The division of powers is pretty clear – we build the roads, sidewalks and bike paths, the province builds the schools and gets kids there.

That said, we are all the same community, and if we can help facilitate talks with funding partners, TransLink, the School District, and the parents, then we will do what we can. I’m not sure how a bus system would operate – a significant number of legal and liability issues exist. And I am sure that the parents in Queensborough sending their kids to NWSS will be paying special attention to this discussion, as transportation has long been an issue for them.

Letter dated April 22, 2016 from the Rivershed Society
This is a request for some festival or partnership grant money outside of the regular cycle. We referred to staff, although Council did not sound very receptive to the idea…

We then moved onto everyone’s favorite call-and response chorus where we read Bylaws:

Zoning Amendment (325 and 329 Ewen Avenue) Bylaw No. 7811, 2016
As mentioned above, this zoning amendment for two adjacent properties in Queensborough received two readings.

Zoning Amendment (518 Ewen Avenue) Bylaw No. 7833, 2016
As also mentioned above, this zoning amendment for a single family house in Queensborough received two readings

Zoning Amendment (129 Tenth Street) Bylaw No. 7839, 2016
This townhouse project in the Brow of the Hill received two readings.

Zoning Amendment (602 Ewen Avenue) Bylaw No. 7840, 2016
This townhouse/small home project in Queensborough received two readings.

Downtown Parking Commission Repeal Bylaw No. 7844, 2016
As discussed above, the dissolution of the Downtown Parking Commission requires a Bylaw, and we gave that Bylaw three readings.

Downtown New West BIA (Primary Area) Parcel Tax Bylaw No. 7828, 2016
Downtown New West BIA (Secondary Area) Parcel Tax Bylaw No. 7829, 2016
Uptown New West BIA Parcel Tax Bylaw No. 7830, 2016
The three Parcel Tax Bylaws to support our BIAs, as discussed last meeting were officially adopted. This is now the Law of the Land, adjust your behavior accordingly.

Tax Rates Bylaw No. 7831, 2016
The final piece of our 2016 budget and taxation process, the Bylaw to support our property tax increase was officially adopted. This is now the Law of the Land, adjust your behavior accordingly.

Meta-engage!

Posted on May 3, 2016. by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Are you a member of the public? The City could really use your help.

I’m a member of the Mayor’s Public Engagement Taskforce. We are one of the groups tasked by the Mayor to report on strategies to further the key initiatives of this Council Term. Assuring our City is communicating effectively with the public is a keen interest of the Mayor, and an interest of mine.

Part of what got me into this entire being-a-politician thing was an interest in public engagement. As I became more involved in the community I love, I tried to become more aware of what is going at City Hall. This was sometimes enlightening, and sometimes frustrating. I found the people at City hall easy to engage with, open and, for the most part, friendly. The hard information, however, was rarely easy to access.

I attended Council Meetings on topics that were important to me, went to a lot of community events, and got to meet a few City Councillors and senior staff. I even ended up serving on a few advisory committees. I felt very engaged.

However, I also recognized I was in relatively small company. I saw the same members of the public at community events. Like me, they were engaged, interested, and vocal, but they clearly represented a small fraction of the City’s population. Democracy has been described as “decisions by those who show up”, and very few people were showing up.

I started blogging, and started telling other people about what was going on 9through the lens of my opinions, of course). I worked with the NWEP to push sustainability further up the agenda, and to empower more people to get actively engaged. Then I went and got elected.

Now I am still blogging, in the hope that people will read about what is happening at City Hall, and care a little more about the decisions that shape their City *before* those decisions are made, not just complain about them after.

The Public Engagement Task Force is trying to figure out better ways to make that happen. We have been meeting for more than a year, and have spent a lot of time talking about just what “engagement” is. We have explored ideas as far reaching as a City-run 311 system, Pop-Up City Halls, better web tools, creating a City Hall Ambassador, and using our media assets in more innovative ways.

I have also learned that there are people who study this kind of stuff for a living, and learned about the IAP2 Spectrum of Public Engagement:

Inform: make sure people know what’s happening;
Consult: asking people what they think about things happening;
Involve: seek input, and use that input to inform decisions;
Collaborate: Partner with the people in developing options and choosing from them;
Empower: Give the public the decision-making power.

I think (and this is just my opinion, from my experience on both sides of the fence) that New Westminster does an OK job informing, a good job consulting, a good job involving, a no-so-good job collaborating, and is generally resistant to empowering. That varies somewhat between departments and initiatives. I think the current OCP process is demonstrating a new level of collaboration and the results have been great (so far). However, something as technical and far-reaching as an OCP perhaps also demonstrated that empowerment is not appropriate for all decisions – at some point political leadership is required to move such a complex plan forward.

Maybe you disagree with me. Maybe you think the City needs to do a better job connecting, and you have a great example of how another City has done a great job? Wouldn’t it be great if you could be consulted on public consultation?

The City is actually getting meta next weekend and holding Public Engagement on Public Engagement. There are two workshops on Saturday, and you can test our engagement skills, and help improve them. They are free, and anyone can go, but it really helps us pout if you register first so we can properly gauge the number of people we need to prepare for.

So go to the website, register, and come out Saturday. Be one of those people who show up and make democracy work, and let us know how we can hear you better!

Council – April 25, 2016

Posted on April 29, 2016June 18, 2016. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

As is standard for our last meeting of the month, we started our April 25 meeting with a Public Hearing.

This was to discuss amending the zoning language for 805 Boyd Street (the Westminster Landing retail area) and granting a Development Permit to allow the construction of one of those drive-through oil change places. This would be located on a relatively unused part of the parking area, adjacent to the Nando’s.

We had one person speak in opposition to this Zoning Amendment. They were a nearby property owner who leased to businesses of a similar type. He raised concerns about the timing and level of notice given to the surrounding areas. Staff confirmed that a complete mailout had been done to businesses and property owners, and that the signage and notice had met all of the requirements of the Bylaw and were appropriate for the development.

Council moved to receive the comments and referred the subject of the Public Hearing to Council.

That launched our Regular Meeting:

Zoning Amendment (805 Boyd Street) Bylaw No. 7827, 2016
Development Permit DPQ00096 for 805 Boyd Street
Council moved the Zoning Amendment and Development Permit. The change will allow “small box” automotive repair in Westminster Landing, and will allow the construction of the drive-through oil stop place. I was not given any compelling reason to vote against this proposal, and will continue to support my local independent mechanic (200,000+km on my 1996 Civic, still runs like a top!).

We then had a formal Opportunity to be Heard:

Development Variance Permit 00605 for 322 Sixth Avenue
After the required notification had been completed, the City received no correspondence on this project, and no-one came to speak in opposition to it. This is a slightly unusual corner lot in Queens Park, the heritage home is set a long way back from the street on two sides, and the owner wishes to build a relatively modest garage on the laneway. There simply isn’t enough room to build a garage with the required 5’ setback, so the owner asked for a variance to move the garage closer to the lane. This would align this new garage with the legally non-conforming garage right next door.

I have no reason to oppose this variance, and Council voted to approve it.

Queen’s Park Neighbourhood Heritage Conservation:
This might be the big story of the night. Following a couple of high-profile demolitions of heritage homes in Queens Park a couple of years ago, a large group of community members got organized and asked for the City to help them develop strategies to prevent the loss of more heritage homes in Queens Park.

This resident-driven process has been very proactive, and has developed a list of recommendations for the City, including developing a Heritage Conservation Area. There are many details to work out, but the short version would be the designation of all residential areas of Queens Park (essentially the residential areas between 6th and 1st streets and 6th and Royal Aves) as an area-wide heritage protected area. Within this are, homeowners would need to apply for special permission to do any demolition or significant alteration of their houses. Presumably, a heritage Conservation Commission would provide advice to Council on how to protect the heritage values of the property through the process, which may simply be impossible if someone wants to knock down a 100-year-old house. This would effectively permit Council to refuse to issue a demolition permit if it threatened the heritage value of the neighborhood.
There are other recommendations put forward to help preserve heritage homes, including incentives to make renovation and conservation easier, and the launch of a major effort to identify, characterize, and catalogue the heritage assets of the neighborhood. However, it is the proposal to designate the area and put processes in place to legally prevent demolition that will, no doubt, generate the most conversation.

Council moved to receive the report, and Staff will be working to evaluate the recommendations: some, such as “California Mills Act” type property tax changes may not be legal under the Community Charter, and others will need to find a funding source. In the meantime, the conversation in the neighbourhood, and indeed across the City, about how private property rights bump up against heritage conservation is sure to be an exciting one.

Bus Passes Reinstatement
The provincial government recently stripped funding from a special transit pass program for disabled seniors and people on disability assistance. I often get outraged about decisions made by senior governments, but I don’t usually bring that rage to the Council table. When Councillor McEvoy raised this issue, and suggested Council raise its voice, I heartily agreed, because it impacts our community so acutely.

New Westminster is a transit-oriented city, and we are doing so much work to make the transit in our City more accessible. This isn’t just something we are talking about, we are investing money in this – We are on track to have 100% accessibility for our bus stops ahead of any City in the region, we are accelerating our curb-cut program and working to improve accessibility for those with dementia, with vision impairments, and with mobility barriers. We aren’t doing this to fluff our own feathers, we are doing it because an accessible transit system is fundamental to the livability or our City, and the right thing to do

So I find it unacceptable that this government has decided without consultation to take that accessibility away from the most vulnerable members of our community, those who need it the most. It is mean, it is punitive, capricious, and wrong.

228 Nelson’s Crescent (Second Residential Tower, Brewery District):
Master Development Permit Amendment and Consideration of Development Permit Issuance
The deal that was originally signed with WesGroup set several conditions on the approval of the residential building, to assure the development met the City’s goal of “mixed use” and brought amenities to the community prior to an influx of new residents. WesGroup build and leased out most of the required office space and the major shopping amenities of the Brewery District prior to starting the first residential tower, but now want to proceed with further residential development prior to completing the entirety of their office space commitments. Their argument is that the office demand simply isn’t there right now, but will be once the RCH development is further along, but the demand for residential space is feeling no relaxation. The City will not let WesGroup off of the commitments they have made, but are at this time OK with making some changes in the timing, recognizing that WesGroup has already made good on the majority of the work.

There are still a few concerns long-term with the Brewery District development, mostly around traffic management. I have emphasized many times that the entire development cannot rely on East Columbia Street for all ingress and egress for cars, and that work needs to be done between the City, RCH and WesGroup to re-imagine how the foot of Keary (below East Columbia) is going to operate if WesGroup and RCH both have underground garage entrances there. I would be happy to see those garages not connect at all to East Columbia, but to have Keary dead-end mid-block between East Columbia and Brunette, with a signal-controlled intersection at Brunette and Keary. There are also concerns regarding how Nelson’s Crescent and Nelson;s cOurt interact with East Columbia, which will likely need ot wait until the Sapperton Traffic study is completed.

Qayqayt Elementary School – Transportation Update
There are ongoing concerns in the community about safe routes to Qayqayt School. This is something that has been going on since the school opened. I have toured the site several times, it has been discussed at NTAC and ACTBiPed meetings, and as part of the Master Transportation Plan implementation work. Compared to where we were two years ago, a lot of progress has been made. Notably, there have been many improvements on Agnes and with vital downtown intersections along 4th Street. The “slipway” off of Royal onto Merryvale has been re-designed, with some pavement, signage, and geometry changes.

However, proximity to Royal Ave still causes concern. The homes north of Royal adjacent to Qayqayt are actually in the Herbert Spencer catchmnent, but some students do still make this crossing. There was an incident a couple of weeks ago where the crossing was green, a crossing guard was present, but won child advanced ahead of the guard. Unfortunately, at the same time, a car failed to stop behind the white line, and rolled a few feet into the crossing, striking the child, who was knocked off of his/her bike. Fortunately, the child was not seriously injured, but this incident raised awareness of the potential for danger at that intersection.

Our engineering group is working with the School District and PAC to evaluate ways the intersection can be improved to emphasize pedestrian safety. The initial assessment indicated there were no engineering failures – the intersection is designed with adequate sight lines, controls, and geometry that it is ostensibly as safe as the design code requires. However, nothing in the code prevents us from exceeding those safety requirements, and in light of the type of traffic we get on Royal, and the vulnerability of the pedestrians using the crossing, our engineers will be looking at creative methods to increase the safety.

The following Item was removed from the Consent Agenda:

Westminster Pier Park 2015 Food Services Overview
We were provided a report on the food service operation at Pier Park. It has been a bit of a struggle to get an operation up and running, but now that we have better access to the Park via 4th Street and some potential for increased programming in the Park, the trend is going the right direction.

Councillor Trentadue raised an interesting question about whether it is possible to license this operation so people could get a beer or a glass of wine while enjoying the Park. I agree this is an area for further exploration, as is opening up the Park to Food Trucks and other temporary vendors. The model we have now is very similar to the Treats concession stand in Queens Park, which has been run on what is essentially a cost-recovery basis for years. It is possible we can get to that place with the Pier Park concession as the Park gets more established. It is also possible that we can look at alternative delivery models for the site… more to come!

The following items were moved on Consent:

2016 Downtown BIA Parcel Tax Bylaw
2016 Uptown New Westminster BIA Parcel Tax Bylaw
These are our annual bylaw updates to support the Parcel Tax that funds the Downtown Business Improvement Areas. This Bylaw formalizes the agreed-upon tax rate: the amount of levy charged per linear foot of business frontage, which is ~$20 in the primary part of Downtown, ~$15 in the secondary part of Downtown, and ~$20 in Uptown. This money is collected by the City, but it returned back to the BIA organization for them to use in promoting and developing their commercial neighbourhoods.

2016 Tax Rates Bylaw
This Bylaw formally adopts the Property Tax increase required to support he now-adopted 2016-2020 5-Year Financial Plan. That increase is 2.73%. I’ve got one good blog post left in me about this increase, answering the common question: Why is it always more than inflation? Coming soon!

We then moved on to our ever-popular Bylaws:

Downtown New Westminster BIA (Primary Area) Parcel Tax Bylaw No. 7828, 2016
Downtown New Westminster BIA (Secondary Area) Parcel Tax Bylaw No. 7829, 2016
Uptown New Westminster Business Improvement Area Parcel Tax Bylaw No. 7830, 2016
As mentioned above these Bylaws were each given three readings.

Tax Rates Bylaw No. 7831, 2016
As mentioned above this Bylaw was also given three readings.

…on the bike race

Posted on April 22, 2016April 22, 2016. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I didn’t want to write this blog post, for a few reasons.

First of all, I hoped that we would be building excitement right now for a bike race in Uptown a month from today, but that is not going to happen. Secondly, I had hoped that the process through which we got here was respectful and transparent enough that I would not have to engage in after-the-fact record straightening, because my doing so will be perceived by some in the community as my being unnecessarily confrontational, accusatory, or “political”. I hope I can demonstrate that is not my intention, as apportioning blame is not my interest, improving the process is.

My disappointment that the race is not going forward in 2016 has been shadowed by my disappointment that withdrawal of support for the road closure is being characterized as an arbitrary and capricious decision by City Hall. The quote

…the City of New Westminster, for unspecified reasons, has unilaterally cancelled the Hyack Grand Prix…”

does not fairly reflect my experience, and I have to address it.

For context, I was pretty excited about this race, and even attended a couple of organizational meetings to see if there were any potential hiccups I could help smooth out at City Hall, and so I could be more in the know in case Council had any questions or concerns. I didn’t have time to join the organizing committee, but hoped there was a way I could (with my limited free time) help out. I was actually looking forward to spending May 28th volunteering at a corner with my FR Fuggitivi friends and enjoying the race.

I should avoid speaking for the City, staff, the rest of Council or the Festivals Committee (I don’t serve on that Committee), but every impression I got from Council and Staff is that they were enthusiastic about this event, that there was good potential ROI for the City, and that there was no reason it should not happen. I never heard anyone at 511 Royal Ave speak against the idea.

It did become clear in early March, however, that some of the groundwork had not been laid to get the race going. Nothing was critical yet, but there were a collection of small issues that were not being addressed in a timely manner, giving staff reasons to be concerned about the organizing committee’s capacity to get them done in time. Most of them looked like details that were a little behind but were not yet on the “critical path”.

There were some negotiations on the course layout and safety issues, where I (frankly) was on the side of the organizers in negotiating with the City, but that was a discussion I felt was going to work out fine when CyclingBC folks were able to provide their professional guidance. There were issues around asphalt that were worked out, etc.

However, the sticking point became the road closures and impacts on the local neighbourhood. Closing several blocks of roads in the middle of the City on a Saturday has the potential to impact residents and businesses in unanticipated ways. Between the parade and the bike race, these closures were stretching to 8+ hours. If you ran a service business that had limited access to its front door on your busiest day of the week, you might be concerned (alternately, if you ran a pub or restaurant with a thousand people outside of your door all day, you might be exited!). If you had no access to the driveway of your house for 8 hours on a Saturday, you may equally be concerned. God forbid if you had a concrete pour on your construction site or a backyard wedding planned that day.

No problem, the City does this type of thing all the time. We have street festivals, we have parades, we do utility work. There are protocols for communicating with residents and businesses, assuring organizers have approval from them (or not) and that those approvals are crystal clear about what the type and duration of the disruption will be. It is clear with the organizations running these events that this is their responsibility, and although the City will provide guidance, the leg-work to get this work done to the satisfaction of the City is up to the organizer. It is simply a resource issue for a small municipality.

There will (almost) always be a small number of people who oppose the closure for whatever reason, valid or not. As the event is something the City and Council supports, staff are ready to deal with that small number. If there are a small number of residents or businesses that oppose it, we will talk to them, try to figure out how to accommodate their needs, make adjustments, or even (at times) tell them to get over it, because this is coming, and your neighbours all want it, so heads-up!

In early March, it was becoming clear that this consultation with the neighbourhood was going slowly, partly because of resource limitations of the organizer, partly because of some communication problems between the organizer and the City, and partly because of some disagreements/negotiations around expectations. This aspect of the organization was becoming the critical path, because if public notice was not completed to a level that made the City comfortable, then the City was not going to dump a bunch of resources into the following steps, knowing that the event may not go on. Again, limited resources require careful governance of those resources. Timing of this consent is also critical because the City needed time to manage those few residents or businesses that may not agree, to be fair to those people.

Through March and into early April, there was a significant back and forth between staff and the organizers, it was clear that the organizers felt they were doing an adequate job in this outreach, and staff were not as confident. Deadlines, first soft then firm, were set and passed. When the Festivals Committee reviewed the level of preparedness for the event, this critical gap was identified, and the Committee recommended to Council that we consider cancelling the event. Staff felt that this work had dragged on too long, and there was limited time to complete a long list of critical next steps.

The week after that recommendation was challenging for me, for staff, and for the organizers. I personally contacted the organizers in order to better understand the situation form their point of view. I had other concerns about the event (management of timing, parking arrangements for racers, a few course layout concerns, etc.) but I honestly thought they were going to get over this gap with liberal application of shoe leather, elbow grease, and salesmanship. I had enough experience with smaller bike races in my earlier days that I know how things can come together at crunch time.

I met with staff and looked at the public outreach data they were using to make their assessment, and I agreed with them. I was sent data from the organizers, and was challenged to rectify the two datasets and change my opinion about staff’s assessment. I arranged for a meeting with the organizers and representatives of the Festivals Committee to sit down and discuss how the data the organizers provided did not fulfill staff’s expectations about public contacts. following this, there was yet another meeting the between staff and the organizers to further compare notes. I cannot emphasize enough that all of this took place in an effort to make the event happen. We burned a lot of staff time (and overtime), at a level we would not have done for a commercial enterprise, film company, or most other volunteer events. City staff bent over backwards trying to see the situation through the organizers’ lens, and I feel they tried earnestly to get to a place where they could responsibly recommend further support.

Councillor Harper (representing the Festivals Committee) and I took the extra time to set up and attend these meetings, to dig into the data, and to consider the options. In the end, we had to agree with staff that moving ahead in 2016 was not the responsible thing to do. It didn’t serve the City, the organizers, or CyclingBC.

At every step of the way here, we were in communication with the organizers, and the City repeatedly made clear what its expectations were. There was nothing capricious in the decision, nor should it have been surprising to the organizers. I think staff made the right call in a difficult situation, and I support them, even if it means we cannot have an event in 2016 that I was very much looking forward to.

I hope that we can try again in 2017, and through this experience we can tighten up the way we set and address the City’s expectations. It appears we need to start consultations earlier and perhaps the City needs to set firmer deadlines instead of only giving guidance. Lessons were learned through this.

I think the relationship between the City and the organizers, clearly fractious in the past, was in this case business-like and respectful up until the end, and I hope this disappointment does not erode the progress made. That is part of the reason I was reluctant to write this blog post, as I don’t want fuel thrown on a spark. However I equally cannot stand silent while the motives and professionalism of the City’s staff, Committee, and Council are questioned in the social media. I think there are things the City could have done differently, but there are definitely things that the organizers could have done better, and should have done better. I own a bit of this, as I was probably not as proactive as a self-assigned liaison as I could have been, especially earlier in the process. However, both Hyack and the City were pushing the envelope a bit, getting into organizing an event they had little experience with, and I think it was valuable learning experience. I hope it pays off with a great event in 2017.

That will require a continued business-like relationship and respectful communications on both sides.

Council Report – April 18, 2016

Posted on April 19, 2016June 18, 2016. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Sometimes you know ahead of time you are in for a long night at Council. Other times they just kind of sneak up on you and keep you up until midnight. If I had any idea April 18th was going to be the latter, I might have had a little more dinner.

I am not going to comment on the Public Delegations here, because I want to keep these Council Reports limited to the business we did on the day, and they are already too long for a reasonable person to read. Some of the issues that came up at Delegation later came up in regular business, so I will talk about them there, others I will probably find another occasion to cover in this blog. I can summarize the delegation period as mostly about frustration, though with moments of true inspiration. So about par for the course.

Our April 18 meeting started with the Parcel Tax Role. These are various special initiatives for which the City collects taxes from a specific set of property owners for dedicated purposes. The people paying these taxes voted at some point in the past to have this special assessment in order to receive the benefit the assessment pays for. The BIAs use the City to collect their operational costs in the Uptown and Downtown, and others pay to have special paving projects, sewer/drainage projects that may not have otherwise been completed. Once a year, we need to complete a report and provide public notice to all being charged so they can appeal if the tax doesn’t apply to them due to clerical error or some other special condition.

On to the Regular Meeting, which started after our Poet Laureate celebrated World Poetry Day as part of the Mayor’s Annual Poetry City Challenge, and three other Proclamations.

618 Carnarvon Street – Rezoning from C-4 to CD to allow a Mixed Use
Commercial Multi Unit Residential Development
Council moved to approve the further development of this project, through Public Consultation and Committee review. This is a pretty significant project in the Downtown which will fill several lots just down the hill below the Point, where Bricks & Mortar Living and several other small businesses are currently operating.

The conversation was interesting, and there is a lot of detail to cover here, but this process is very early in the process, so I don’t want to put to much of my judgement into it prior to the consultation and Public Hearing. I’m sure it is going to be an interesting discussion in the community for the next few weeks.

After a half dozen 5-minute Public Delegations that somehow took us three hours, we moved onto:

PIKNIC ELECTRONIK Concert series Proposal
Since the Pier Park was opened, there have been several ideas to “activate” the space beyond just the passive uses that are already embraced by the community. The International Festival on Canada Day and the outdoor PechaKuchaNW event were both smaller-scale free events that showed the space off, and several proposals have been discussed to bring ticketed music events in the summer.

PIKNIC ELECTRONIK is a well-known festival held all summer in Montreal, expanding to Melbourne, Dubai and Barcelona. Electronic music is usually (to lame old people like me) associated with clubs and raves, but this is a daytime outdoor family friendly event which should be fun for all (especially that all-important “significantly cooler than me” demographic).

This year, we are being asked to waive the rental fee for the Park, and expect that the event will cost the city about $3,000 in extra staff time for maintenance, etc. This is the first year, and an unproven venue for this type of event. This looks like a good way for the City (for a low cost) to let a group with lots of experience in this type of event work the bugs out, with potential for more events of a similar nature next year.

Council likes the idea, and supported it, with some direction to Staff to evaluate and address the potential for conflict with other events happening that weekend – the StrEAT Food Truck Festival will directly overlap with this event (both occur in the afternoon and evening) and the Downtown BIA is supportive of another event next door, recognizing potential synergies and benefits. The Quayside Boardwalk Sale is also on the same day, although it occurs earlier in the day, and the QCB has indicated they are NOT in support of having this event on the same day as theirs, although the conflict seems much less pronounced. Regardless, it sounds like the organizers are happy to accommodate other groups, and I am confident a solution will be found.

No word yet on whether noted local punk polymath HARGOW will be playing.

After taking yet another break, we had three accelerated presentations from staff on progress of three of our Strategic Initiatives, which I will condense here:

OCP update is moving on, another workshop with Council next week, and landuse plans are going to be getting sketched up soon, with OCP framework will be going to Public Consultation hopefully before Summer!

Mayor’s Transportation Taskforce is rolling out the priority capital program, emphasizing getting our sidewalks, transit stops and cycling facilities improved, and working on Safe Routes to School Programs. We are also working with our regional partners on Truck Route strategies and the Fraser Trade area study.

Mayor’s Public Engagement Taskforce has been working on a report the outlines the many ways we can communicate better with the public, and make it easier for people to interact with City Hall. Believe it or not, we are taking the Public Engagement plans out to the public for engagement. The most meta event ever held by the City will happen on May 7 – its free but you should click this link and register to make sure you get a seat.

We then moved the following items on Consent.

Community Banners Program
You know those banners that hang off of light poles, but you might not know that they are designed through two local programs. One program gives themes to local artists, and a competition is held to come up with designs that fit that theme. The second program matches local artists with artistic youth in the community through the Anvil Centre community arts programs, and they work collaboratively to develop banner designs. The banner program costs about $10,000 and comes out of the community Public Art Reserve Fund.

700 Royal Avenue (Douglas College): Exemption to Construction Noise Bylaw
Douglas College is doing some work during the very short inter-semester period, and needs to exceed the usual hours, requesting a noise Bylaw exemption to allow that. It is a short period of time, and most of the work is indoors, so if you live right next door, apologies in advance, but you might hear some noise a few nights this summer.

New Westminster SkyTrain Station: Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption
Move similarly, some of the works around the renewal of the New Westminster SkyTrain Station will require night work when the trains are not operating. This has been going on intermittently for several months, and the City has received only one complaint. Hopefully, it will be over soon and we can have our SkyTrain station back.

350 Gifford Street (Starlight Casino): Application for New Liquor Primary License
The Casino wants to shuffle their pub/restaurant layout, and this requires a new Liquor Primary License. This is a pretty typical application process, with no concerns raised. The part of it I found interesting is that ample nearby parking is a consideration in a Liquor primary establishment. Let that sink in for a minute.

Affordable Housing Small Sites: Recommend Proponents
The City is working on a few partnerships to developing a couple of small affordable housing projects, using money from our Affordable Housing Reserve Fund. Two sites have been identified (one Downtown and one in Queensborough) and two partners identified through a competitive procurement process (Catalyst/Community Living Society and Women in Need Gaining Strength). There is a bunch of work to do yet, from setting up agreements to rezonings and other approvals, but Council has provided preliminary conditional support, and things are moving forward.

Gas Works Site Land Use Plans and Response to Roof Collapse
This report is updating Council on what the province is doing about the recent collapse of the roof at the Gas Works building. The building and lands belong to the province, but the City has, in the past, expressed interest in partnering with the province to preserve the building and/or remediate the contaminated site it sits upon to re-purpose it for community use. We have a longer conversation to have, and some discussions with the province will have to be accelerated in light of the building damage. In the meantime, the Province is going to be removing the debris and shoring up the building to make the structure safe enough that it can be left unguarded (but not, I suppose, enough that it can be re-occupied).

30km/h Speed Limits on Residential Streets
I really wanted to make a speech here, but time was tight, so I let the report be received on Consent and saved my speechmaking for another day.

The report from staff importantly acknowledged that the Office of the Provincial Health Officer released an annual report on March 3 2016 that was directed towards “Reducing the Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes on Health and Well-being in BC” . It noted that although motor vehicle deaths have been on a downward trend for decades (it is getting remarkably safer to be inside a car), that pedestrian deaths are NOT declining. And speed is still the #1 factor in crashes – more than impairment, more than distraction.

The Provincial Public Health officer made 28 recommendations, from tougher graduated licensing to better road design and maintenance, but #12 stands out :

12. Amend the Motor Vehicle Act to reduce the default speed limit on roads within municipalities and treaty lands from 50 km/h to a maximum of 30 km/h (the survivable speed for pedestrians and cyclists).

I will be following up with staff through the ACTBiPed and Mayor’s Transportation Taskforce to determine if any of the other recommendations in the Public Health Officer’s report could be implemented by a local government and is not already part of our MTP or other plans. In short: is there anything they are recommending we could be doing to make our roads safer, for vulnerable users especially.

I think that is something this Council would be quick to support, but we can only hope the Provincial Government takes the same serious attitude about this public health issue and gives City the ability to protect their residents by implementing defensible speed limits that emphasize safety and survivability. .

BC Penitentiary Cemetery – Restoration and Preservation
There is, little known to most, a small cemetery to people who died at the BC Pen on the edge of Glenbrook Ravine. It is mostly invisible, though city staff do a basic amount of care ot it to assure it is not destroyed, but is kept to a standard of the provincial act that regulated cemeteries. There is a local heritage group interested in working to improve the conservation efforts around the site, and Council has agreed to set up a committee of volunteers with a small City staff contingent to help coordinate this effort.

Application for Strata Conversion of the Industrial Warehouse at 407 Wood Street
A property owner in Queensborough who operates a mutli-tenant light industrial warehouse wished to convert it to a Strata Ownership model. This is one of those semi-provincial semi-local government processes, but under the Strata title Act the City does need to administer it issue approvals. And Council did approve this application.

Pattullo Bridge Rehabilitation
This is an information memo on the plans for the Pattullo Bridge renovation. If you haven’t heard by now, the Pattullo will be reduced to one lane each direction from the end of April to the beginning of October, and everyone is anticipating traffic chaos. I suspect it will not be that bad once people get used to the fact that the capacity is reduced and move their plans to other routes. The Queensborough will probably feel some pressure, and I anticipate extra toll revenue for the Port Mann. We will be doing traffic counts to collect data for better traffic planning, and the NWPD will be out doing extra enforcement in residential neighbourhoods to try to make life more difficult for rat runners. Let’s all hunker down and get through it, folks, because there isn’t going to be a new bridge any time soon.

The following items were (reluctantly, due to the time), pulled from Consent.

New Reference Concept for Q2Q Pedestrian and Bicycle Bridge
Speaking of bridges and difficult projects. As someone who enthusiastically supported the fixed link concept prior to being elected, It has been a real dose of reality to now be in a position where I have to try to get the darn thing built. I think our staff has done an excellent job dealing with constantly shifting realities in this project, and I know that they are feeling the stress like we are, and I thank them for their efforts..

I have had a lot of conversations with people on the Quayside, where most of the concern regarding this project has arisen. However, much of the angst I felt from the neighbourhood arose from an impression that the City was not consulting enough on this project, but was barging forward. For me, it was important to let them know that the City is still working out details, and any design you have seen before is not necessarily the “final” design, but a concept used to gauge the possibilities, to guide the consultation and engineering work.

Indeed, there have been several different designs, some higher, some lower, different locations and different construction concepts taken to public consultation and evaluated by the engineers and regulatory authorities, and those plans keep changing as a direct result of those consultations. To me, this is a sign of a consultation and design process that is working well, not one that is failing.

To me, this bridge is and has always been about connecting communities. It is a transportation link no different than the McInnes overpass or the Central Valley Greenway. It needs to be accessible, it needs to be reliable, it needs to be safe, and it needs to fit the human scale of the neighbourhood it serves. We are getting there, and this shifting of the reference design to a low-level bridge that is much more accessible, should reduce cost and impact on the neighbourhood, but we going to have to have a discussion with the Marine Carriers and the Port to get approval for this. There is a lot of work to do yet, and of course, just as before, this may not be the “definitive” design, but I think we are headed in the right direction.

However, being cognizant that those regulatory challenges exist, I think it is time for the City to look seriously at Plans B. There has been much talk about a passenger ferry system, and there are good urban planning and community connecting arguments for why a fixed link is a better way to go (and we would most likely be letting the $6Million in DAC funding go away if we cannot meet the fixed link solution). So I added to the recommended motion that we ask staff to do some preliminary scoping of alternative plans, whether that means updating the previously-evaluated ferry option and other alternative methods to “bridge” the North Arm.

New Westminster Street Food Policy
We are working towards a pretty good policy here I can support, but share the Mayor’s concerns that Pier Park was being dismissed for poorly supported reasons, and want to set some guidelines around how the Parkade can be used in ways that does not challenge the structural integrity of the Parkade. A Bylaw will be sketched up and we may have a functional food truck Bylaw by the Sumer food truck season!

1031 Sixth Ave – Cancellation of Proposed HRA
This is a terrible situation. The owner of this 120-year-old house in Moody Park ran into unexpected issues renovating the house, and decided to demolish it to build a new house. his Demolition Permit application caused the City concern, as the house, though it is not designated or protected by law, it has significant heritage value to the neighbourhood and the entire community.

Staff worked for several weeks with the owner to try to find a way to make the house salvageable, and the applicant some time and money putting together plans where the house would be shifted to the back of the property, protected with a heritage Designation, and a second house could be built on the lot for his family.

This innovative approach was taken to neighbourhood consultation, and the Moody Park Residents Association voted against allowing the project. The resistance to the project was such that the owner, already reluctant, decided to no longer invest time and money in the approach, and 9 months of progress was apparently lost.

The City will be evaluating if we have further options to protect the house in or next meeting.

We then wrapped a long night be adopting a few Bylaws.

Development Approval Procedures Amendment Bylaw No. 7825, 2016
Development Services Fees Amendment Bylaw No. 7826, 2016
As discussed at the April 4 meeting, these Bylaws that adjust how the city does Pre-approvals of projects in now the Law of the Land. Please adjust your behavior accordingly.

Five-Year Financial Plan (2016-2020) Bylaw No. 7821, 2016
As discussed at several meetings, including March 14, the Bylaw supporting our new 5-year Financial Plan was officially adopted.

And that was, for the most part, that. See you next week.

Myths and Lies

Posted on April 18, 2016April 22, 2016. by Patrick Johnstone. 26 Comments.

There is a lot going on right now in the transportation file in the Lower Mainland, both good and bad news, and I can hardly keep up, never mind blog about it. So while the local radio stations stoked anger a couple of weeks ago about another TransLink “outrage”, I had something completely different to get angry about: this “Fact Scheet” produced by the provincial government in regards to the Massey Tunnel replacement project:

After venting into a Word document, I put it aside and relaxed. Writing is good therapy, and I figured I would edit it up and make use of it later. Anger abated, back of mind, life goes on. Then last week I was triggered to pull it back out by this post by Transportation Economist Stephen Rees (someone you should be reading – his knowledge and insight are unique and powerful), and his writing:

I must admit that when I read it I became almost incoherent with rage.

Amen, Brother.

Why “rage” about a seemingly innocuous two-page fact sheet produced to hard sell a key government project to the business community? Because almost every proclaimed myth-busting point presented on this definitive piece of Government paper is a lie. A stinking pile of bullshit that anyone who has spent any time learning about transportation policy in the western world over the last three decades can smell from a mile away. And it is printed on Government letterhead. I’m angry that either people in the Ministry of Transportation don’t know it is all bullshit, or they do know and are still willing to publish it. I’m not sure which is worse.

That last paragraph may seem inappropriate to some of my readers (Sorry, Mom!), but please let me assure you, I use the term bullshit in the strictly technical sense of the word. And someone needs to start calling this government out on their lies.

The “myths” hit the news two weeks ago when the Minister presented his case for a 10-lane bridge to the relatively receptive audience of the Richmond Chamber of Commerce. At the event, he was suggested to have “busted” some myths about the project, being spread by what he called “rumour-mongers, conspiracy theorists and those with apparently ill-informed opinions”.

Let us look at the Myths seemingly busted:

If we define “The project” as a 10-lane high level bridge, then clearly it is not the only solution to the problems presented here. Traffic congestion in the tunnel has been demonstrated to be getting better, not worse, over the last decade, and the Ministry’s own data shows that 87% of vehicles in the tunnel are cars (almost all single-occupant) while more than a quarter of the *people* going through the tunnel are in the 1% of vehicles that comprise the inadequate transit service through the tube. Providing better options for only 15% of the people who use the tunnel would virtually end congestion, leaving a bunch of money left over to finish the work to make the tunnel earthquake safe again. Saying “we need to do something” is not the same as saying “we need to do this thing”. This project is not needed. Myth not busted.

There is no doubt the Ministry has talked to many people, but to say they have “consulted” is quite the stretch. The City where the majority of the project has taken place is claiming they have not been listened to, and are not in favour of the project, the regional government is opposed, as are all of the local governments (save one). No defensible business case has been presented answering for the project. The parts of the “3,600 pages of Project Information” that referred to costing and SWAT analysis were redacted.

One way to tell that “consultation” has not occurred: No aspect of the plan has demonstrably been changed to address the concerns of people consulted since this 10-lane bridge solution was first presented to the public. They started with a 10-lane high level bridge solution, and ended at it. Myth not busted.

They are right, no Federal Review is required by current legislation (assuming that other accessory projects like removing the old tunnel and re-routing of the BC Hydro line that uses the tunnel are separate projects). This is because the gutting of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act by the Harper Conservatives in 2012 significantly cut back on Federal Review guidelines. Myth busted, but probably not something to be proud of.

What a steaming pile this is. “keeping traffic moving to reduce GHG emissions” is a perfect example of bullshit: it’s not wrong, it’s just stupid. Ways to reduce GHG impacts of transportation have been studied to death, and yes, idling reduction (depending on conditions) can reduce gas consumption per kilometre, but it does not reduce GHG emissions anywhere near as much as dozens of other available techniques, including modifying trip-making choices, increasing vehicle occupancy rates, shifting (freight and passengers) to more efficient modes, compact community planning, etc. etc. – policies that are directly undermined by this very project! Claiming that “free flowing traffic” induces transit use boggles the mind. The other “improvements” and “enhancements” listed here could easily be funded at a fraction of the cost of building a $3.5Billion bridge, without the boondoggle hanging over it. Why is planting a tree contingent on laying asphalt, what does one have to do with the other? Myth not busted.

This may very well be true. But you know what is cheaper than building a new tunnel and cheaper than a new bridge? Making the infrastructure you already have work better. One of the more galling parts of this entire project is that no-one seems to be looking at the opportunity cost of a $3.5Billion infrastructure investment – what real improvements could we build to the regional transportation system with that kind of money. Perhaps start here. Myth busted, not that it is relevant to the argument.

Seriously. The Ministry is arguing that the route that now has 4 lanes will be congested on opening day if it has 8 lanes, but will allow free-flow until 2040 if it has 10 lanes. Chew on that for a bit. Just let the magical thinking sink in. Then remember, these are the guys who projected traffic demand for the Port Mann. Myth not busted.

There is a lot of creative work here to not directly address the assertion that is being made. The bottleneck is irrelevant to this point (as we know there are too many other more affordable ways to address a bottleneck that is 85% single occupancy cars). The height of the Alex Fraser is irrelevant as well, as that is not currently a limit to crossing the tunnel. The word “dredging” is not raised at all in this retort, nor the evidence that deeper dredging in the river is a long-established goal of the various port authorities and port operators on the south arm, or that the tunnel is currently the largest impediment to a deeper channel. Myth not busted; Myth deftly avoided.

This is the “myth busting” that caused Stephen Rees the most rage, because it is completely separated from reality, the reality that he has spent a distinguished career studying on two continents. There are no transportation planners, transportation economists, transportation engineers, or rational human beings who believe that more than doubling the capacity at the tunnel will not increase traffic congestion at the Oak Street Bridge. Their denial of this basic reality is simply a lie. To get the count of “60% stops in Richmond”, they had to count all of the traffic leaving the 99 to go on the East-West Connector and the Knight Street Bridge as being “Richmond” traffic. And yes, those routes will also become more congested, calling for more future “improvements”, because of the induced demand this project will bring (more on that under Myth #1). Myth not busted.

Did you know that Highways are allowed in the ALR? Much of the South Fraser Perimeter Road is actually in the ALR, no exclusion necessary, just compensation paid to the property owner who has his acreage bisected or cut off. So the Ministry can put the entirety of this project on ALR land and claim “no net loss” of ALR land- although admittedly it is hard to farm asphalt.

I cannot find any evidence (outside of Ministry pieces like this) that farmers on either side of the river support this project, nor does their business case or other consultation material explain how putting hundreds of acres of farmland under asphalt could result in “net gain”. I have read stories of farmers expressing concern about various aspects of the project. I have also heard farmers speaking about the increased pressure on farmland, the inability to afford to farm on farmland with price speculation pushing up farm land prices because of projects such as this which encourage auto-oriented sprawl in valley communities. I have also read about the Port buying up farmland in Richmond to build cross-docking facilities that will be linked to this project with shiny new roads. Myth not busted.

And to top it all off:

This is pure, unadulterated bullshit. If the Ministry of Transportation can show us an example (from their alleged “experience here and around the world”) from a growing industrialized economy where adding highway capacity has not resulted in increased highway use, they should bottle it and sell it to Los Angeles, or Dallas, or Houston, or Atlanta, or freaking Hanoi. This magic solution to congestion will pay off better than LNG. That increased capacity equals increased congestion is such a well-established concept in transportation planning that it is actually called The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion by the people who study this stuff as an academic discipline. To deny this is to deny gravity, or evolution, or the atomic model. Myth not busted, but supported by a Fundamental Law.

On this blog, I’m trying to be solutions-based. I often write things that sound critical as a search for solutions, as a way to force myself to look deeper at issues, do some research, understand the counter-arguments against my point, so I can do a better job when I have to make a decision. The Q2Q bridge is an example where I am less and less certain about how to move the project the more I learn about it. Although I am still hopeful we can find a good solution, I am increasing cognizant through stages of planning and public consultation of just how complicated a project it is, and that no matter what we do, someone isn’t going to like it. And I’m trying, really hard, to stay realistic and evidence-based on this project. When I point out numerous flaws to one specific approach, it isn’t just to be a boo-bird or support “the forces of NO”, it is to challenge assumptions and try to understand *if* the idea will work, which is often easiest to do by figuring out why it won’t. That is, I suppose, a result of my training in science, where we work to find reasons to reject null hypotheses. Or maybe I’m just a detail-mining jerk.

Then I get confronted with a project like the Massey Tunnel Replacement. This is a project with no reasoned justification, no supported business case, no alignment with any other regional plan or transportation initiative. It is a megaproject that stands in opposition to regional growth plans, regional transportation plans, and provincial and federal GHG reduction plans, and will undermine them all. It’s a bad idea at a bad time, badly presented for bad reasons. It is a bad idea so bad even most of the arguments against it are bad, but are still better than the arguments for it. And this is why I get angry even writing about it.

That is what your money is building, folks, a 10-lane $3.5Billion concrete edifice to bad ideas, now being bolstered by bald-faced lies by people you are paying to tell them to you. If you are not angry about this, you need to start paying attention.

Patrick Johnstone

Fan of cities; Mayor of a great one.

Author: Patrick Johnstone

Community Update update

ASK PAT: Housing idea

ASK PAT: Front Street trucks.

Sowing Doubt

Council – May 2, 2016

Meta-engage!

Council – April 25, 2016

…on the bike race

Council Report – April 18, 2016

Myths and Lies