A busy week in the community even without Council Meeting. The Downtown BIA had their AGM at el Santo last Tuesday, and I had a meeting one evening with some residents on the Quayside concerned about the Q2Q project. I also attended the first NWEP Green Drinks get together of the year (pic above), which was my first chance to check out Rain City Juicery.
Both Councilor Harper and I attended the Queens Park Residents Association meeting, where there was a great discussion about the City’s OCP process and Heritage Preservation in Queens Park.
We had a quorum of Council show up for the annual Coldest Night of the Year fundraising walk for Senior Services Society of New Westminster. It was a slightly chilly but dry evening on Saturday, and it was great to get caught up with our MLA and MP, while raising money for a great cause!
Finally, I spent a lot of time at the Royal City Curling Club last week, playing my regular league game on Tuesday, doing my volunteer shift as bartender on Saturday, and then standing in on Sunday as Acting Mayor, when His Worship couldn’t make his league curling game, and he needed a spare!
My Council meeting report is a little late, but its been a heck of a week, and with no meeting this Monday, I figured I would have some free time Sunday. Then my “Sunday without a Council package to read” came along and I slept in a bit, did some yard work, pruned a fig tree, put the compost on the garden, attended a Residents Association meeting, made my award winning meatloaf for dinner, and spared for a curling team in the evening. Time flies when you have free time…
But the belated report is finally here, and you can follow along with the Agenda here. We started by moving the following items on Consent:
Amendment to the Delegation Bylaw
The City has a Delegation Bylaw, through which Council allows our Staff to make decisions, mostly smaller spending decisions, that are strictly the duty of the Council. This allows the City to operate more efficiently, as we don’t need a Council Report every time we order a ream of paper. As we are doing a bit or re-organizing within the City, the Delegation Bylaw needs to be adapted a bit to fit the new Org Chart.
Recruitment 2016: Advisory Planning Commission Appointment
The Advisory Planning Commission advises Council on planning applications to bring a broader community focus to those discussions. We have filled a recently-vacated position.
Recruitment 2016: New Westminster Design Panel Appointments
The Design Panel provides Council advice on the design and planning aspects of developments, and is usually populated with people with professional skills in those areas such as builders, architects, and landscape architects. We have filled two vacancies on the Panel
Recruitment 2016: Chamber of Commerce Representative to the Access Ability Advisory Committee
The Access Ability Advisory Committee has a spot for a member of the New Westminster business community, and we have formally accepted their nominated representative.
Official Community Plan Amendment for the (UC) Uptown
Commercial Designation:
The idea here is to increase the viability of 6th Street between Royal and Fourth Ave by providing more flexibility in how that stretch is developed. The thinking is that at-grade residential use here may enhance the commercial operations that already exist. This Report was just to get approval to start the statutory consultation for the required OCP amendment under sections 475 and 476 of the Local Government Act, which was granted.
320 Salter Street: Housing Agreement Bylaw
This is a Bylaw through which the aforementioned development on Salter Street will be secured as market rental units. As the Mayor was on CBC radio this week talking about the rental squeeze in the Lower Mainland, it is good to see the incentives that New West is providing is resulting in more developers looking at rental as a marketing strategy. Council agreed to give this proposed Bylaw 3 Readings.
After the Consent agenda, Council went through the Regular Agenda items, which started with a presentation:
Reflective Products for Non-Professional Road Users
After a presentation from Staff and Vic Leach, and a bit of discussion, Council moved resolutions to support calls for CSA standards for consumer reflective safety products, and to ask staff to draft a resolution calling on the Province to make 30km/h the statutory speed limit for urban areas. I’ve already blogged on that topic here with a little more detail, so I won’t belabor the point.
Front Street Security
Councillor Puchmayr brought to Council the concerns of Front Street businesses around security issues around the ongoing work to remove the Parkade and build the Front Street Mews. Although the construction company has security, the NWPD has just begun to work with the businesses down there to improve come of the lighting and other security issues on this expanding construction area.
Port Metro Vancouver and Marina Fees
We had a delegation a couple of meetings ago around several City residents in Queensborough feeling pinched by rapidly increasing water lot rental costs from the Port. Council moved to send a letter of concern to the Port, and engage senior governments in a review of the recent, seemingly quite onerous, increases.
These items were removed from Consent for discussion:
Proposed Amendments to Commercial Vehicle Bylaw
Remember those discussions we had about Uber? This is part of the complex regulatory environment we were talking about that was designed to make the taxi industry safer and more accountable. After a couple of denied chauffeur licenses over the last year or two, staff have provided some feedback with suggestions on ways we can make the administration of our responsibilities under the Motor Vehicle Act better. Some amendments to the City’s Bylaw were recommended, that Council moved to support.
100 Braid Street (Urban Academy): OCP Amendment
This proposed development in Sapperton is beginning its public consultation process, and again, this report was to outline the statutory consultation process that all OCP amendments are required to follow (due to sections 475 and 476 of the Local Government Act), including senior governments and external agencies. The public consultation on this project is progressing quickly!
Metro Vancouver Draft Regional Food Systems Action Plan:
I went on a bit of a rant here, as food security is a major component of regional sustainable planning, and I am generally supportive of the regional vision being put forward by Metro Vancouver. Councillor Harper brought up the interesting link between food security and food waste, which dovetails with the good work that Danison Buan is doing right here in New Westminster to crack that troublesome nut.
There is another aspect of food security that we rarely talk about in New West, because we are one of the few communities with no ALR land. But that does not mean we cannot support the protection of life-sustaining farmlands in the region. The two largest threats to farmland and our domestic food security are the development of farmland for residential sprawl, and the re-purposing of farmland for industrial use. We need to continue to oppose both of these, and make it part of our food security policy.
The first threat is enhanced by the current emphasis on building our regional transportation system to facilitate sprawl – the insane proposal to build a 10-lane bridge to replace the Massey tunnel, even the proposal to increase road capacity over the Pattullo Bridge – act to facilitate further sprawl, in contravention of the smart growth principles embedded in the Regional Growth Strategy. This is part of the reason we are looking at an OCP update that allows more intelligent growth near the regional transit spine. We often hear in New West talk about the traffic impacts of that sprawl to the south and east of our City, because of the traffic impacts we continue to suffer because of it, but we rarely talk about food security and other aspects.
The second issue – the ideological position of the Vancouver Port Authority that we will achieve food security by replacing farmland with warehouses to move imported food around – is something that we again have to continue to oppose.
Metro Vancouver Draft Regional Affordable Housing Strategy
Council also moved a motion in support of the Metro Vancouver regional Affordable housing strategy. More to come on this soon, I hope…
We then read some Bylaws:
Commercial Vehicle Amendment Bylaw No. 7777, 2016
As discussed above, these are the changes to the Bylaw relating to how we regulate Taxi drivers in the City. Council gave the Bylaw changes two readings, and will provide a Public Opportunity to be Heard at our February 29 meeting. Come on out and tell us what you think!
Amendment to Delegation Bylaw No. 7820, 2016
As discussed above, these are the changes to the Bylaw relating to how we delegate powers to staff. Council gave the Bylaw changes three readings.
Housing Agreement (320 Salter Street) Bylaw No. 7805, 2016
As discussed above, this is the Bylaw to secure Market Rental as the housing use for this development. Council gave the Bylaw three readings.
And that, after the Announcements and the receipt of some correspondence, was council for the week. Which explained to people why some of us were in hockey Jerseys.
We had an interesting discussion in Council this week about pedestrian safety, a particular concern of mine. And although I have not yet completed my Council Report for this week (its coming…I promise), I wanted to get some words out about this story, as it appears in the newspaper under my photo this week, so I expect some feedback.
The conversation arose out of some good work Vic Leach has been doing in the Sapperton neighbourhood about increasing pedestrian safety through encouraging higher visibility. I support his call for the federal government (through the CSA) to produce standards for reflective products, so that consumers who know when they buy what are essentially safety products, that those products represent an actual increase in safety. This is a great idea.
But I also need to emphasize that I do not think lighting up pedestrians like Christmas trees is the solution to road safety. Putting responsibility for pedestrian safety wholly on the pedestrian is a perverse form of victim-blaming, akin to asking if a cyclist run over by a truck was wearing a helmet, implying that if there was no helmet, the truck driver and crappy roadway infrastructure that made them share space was immediately absolved of blame.
Ultimately, the responsibility for the personal safety of persons sharing space with 1,500kg high-speed metal boxes should fall on the persons operating the 1,500kg high-speed metal boxes and the persons designing the infrastructure where pedestrian and the metal boxes are expected to share space.
As the City, we are responsible for creating those safe spaces, and we are working towards that goal. We have a long way to go, but the emphases in our Master Transportation Plan are on protecting the pedestrian and in making all forms of active transportation easier and safer. We are prioritizing our spending on those aspects, truly putting our money where our mouth is.
However, there is one proven way to improve the safety of the pedestrian realm that is (for the most part) outside of the authority of the City, and that is speed limits in residential and urban areas.
During his presentation to Council, Mr. Leach cited how long it takes a car going 50km/h to stop, how much distance a car going 50km/h covers in 2 seconds. But there is another statistic we need to talk about: a pedestrian struck by a driver going 50km/h has a better than 50% chance of being killed (up to 80% according to some studies)* where a pedestrian struck at 30km/h have a less than 10% chance of being killed. This does not even factor in the fact that the collision is more likely to be avoided if the car is going 30 km/h. The fact that Stockholm, a City similar to Vancouver in weather, size, population, and transportation patterns has such a remarkably lower incidence of pedestrian fatality is a product of many things, including the higher reflectivity standards in Sweden, but it is notable that pedestrian deaths dropped there in 2007, when urban speed limits were reduced to 30km/h.
It is my opinion, backed with a significant amount of accident research, that 50km/h is a dangerous and unsupportable speed for automobiles to be traveling on residential streets. If we want to take the next steps in supporting pedestrian safety, to make a real change to the conditions that cause 400 pedestrian deaths in Canada every year, 60 deaths in BC annually, we need to make changes to how the automobiles operate, not limit ourselves by making the pedestrians – the victims – more visible.
The Province has a “statutory” speed limit of 50km/h for municipal areas. A City like New Westminster may choose to do local speed reductions around schools, parks, or high-pedestrian areas, but there is an onerous requirement for signage to make this enforceable. I would like to see the statutory limit in urban residential areas reduced to 30km/h, and provide the Cities the authority to allow 50km/h on major arterial streets where they see fit.
The potentially most effective way for us to move this forward as a City is to get the Lower Mainland Local Government Association to pass a resolution of support, then take that resolution to the Union of BC Municipalities meeting, where the municipalities can actively lobby the Provincial government to make the change. That is the path we will be hoping to take.
The safety of our citizens is, and should be, the #1 priority for all local governments, and the demonstrated safety benefits of 30km/h make this a no-brainer. I hope we can get it done!
So I haven’t been blogging much, but I have been busy running around town doing things that don’t leave time for the writing about them. One thing that has been pointed out to me is that I haven’t updated that gallery on the bottom of the page with my smilin’ mug in various places in the community. So this post will (hopefully) re-start the regular blogging of Community events I am attending.
There are a few reasons for this, other than my vanity.
I was recently reminded by a long-time Council TV watcher that Council doesn’t really do “council reports” at the end of our meetings, telling everyone what we have been up to over the last couple of weeks, and to many people the idea that Councillors are doing something outside of Monday meetings is really important. Community events are part of the schedule, and we always have more invites than we can possibly attend, so I guess there is a benefit in people knowing what I attended. Secondly, as a politician, I am supposed to make sure there are lots of pictures of me doing things, again to dispel ideas that I am sitting at home doing nothing. Thirdly, I hardly get to talk to my Mom these days, so it is nice that she can receive periodic confirmation of my still being alive. (Hi Mom!)
So here are a few recent events:
MsNWimby and I collecting goods at the winter Royal City Farmers Market, with Market Manager Melissa MaltaisHanging with Danison Buan at the Hyack President’s Tea in Sapperton.
Last Council Meeting, the New Westminster Environmental Partners brought a presentation to council on the topic of water conservation. I summarized Council’s resolutions resulting from that discussion in last week’s report, but it is worth expanding on the topic.
Full disclosure: I was actively involved with the NWEP before I was elected to Council, and even served as President for a few years. I have been less involved since I got elected, but am proud of the work we did in this community, and am supportive of the continued work the NWEP does.
The ideas that the NWEP brought first to the City’s Environment Advisory Committee, then to Council with that Committees’ recommendation, were a result of last summer’s unprecedented drought and the Stage 3 water restrictions. Those events saw most lawns in the City turn brown, and had many of us wondering if this was going to be a new reality with the double-whammy of population growth and climate change pushing our reservoirs to the limit.
It was a rainy day in February when Council talked about this topic, but much like it is easier to patch your roof when the sun is shining than when it is leaking, Council sent recommendations back to staff to review and update our water conservation approach in preparation for the next dry season. The approaches could be summed up as the stick, the carrot, and the meter.
The Stick
If I can characterize a common theme at the Environment Advisory Committee, there was frustration expressed about a perceived lack of enforcement in New Westminster during the water use restrictions in the summer of 2015. I think we can all remember noting a lawn or two that was spectacularly green in August, against all odds. On early-morning Sunday FR Fuggitivi bike rides through New West and Burnaby, we saw a lot of sprinklers or tell-tale wet asphalt deep into Stage 3.
For most situations dealing with taxpaying citizens and Bylaws, the City understandably takes an education-first approach. Make sure people violating bylaws understand they are breaking the law, order them to stop, then pull out the fine book if these approaches don’t work. The cost of enforcement Is rarely covered by the fines that can reasonably be applied, social pressure is essentially free, and many more people are obtuse of bylaws than deliberately flaunting them.
However, there are scofflaws, and for them the Bylaws need to be enforced. Council asked staff to report back to us on how the enforcement issues was managed last year, and whether Bylaws Staff had the tools they needed to make enforcement as easy as possible in the event of restrictions in 2016.
The Carrot
Different cities have different levels of water-conservation programming. In New Westminster, rainwater collection barrels are (were?) available from the City’s public works department at a discounted price, so gardeners have a little extra supply around. Other cities have in the past offered “water savings packages” that include things like aerators for your kitchen sink, low-flow shower heads, and spring-loaded outdoor faucets, or rebate programs for those switching to low-flow toilets, in order to incentivize the reduction of water consumption year-round.
I’m actually a bit embarrassed to admit I had very little knowledge of what type of incentive programs like this New Westminster has in place. We asked staff to report back on opportunities for active conservation programs, and to provide a bit of analysis about what works best elsewhere. Hopefully we can high-grade the best ideas from other jurisdictions, and bring them to New West.
The Meter
A basic truth of resource management is that you cannot manage what you don’t count. When it comes to managing our limited resource of clean potable water, water meters are the basic tool of conservation.
In New Westminster, all commercial and industrial users are metered, and pay for their water per cubic metre consumed. Every multi-family residence is also metered, and residents may pay by the cubic metre or a bulk rate to their property manager. Only single-family residences are currently not metered, with all houses paying a “flat fee” for a year of water service. Those with legal secondary suites pay 50% more for their flat rate, to pay for the alleged extra use of their tenant, and some seniors living alone get a discount on the presumption that they use less water.
According to a 2008 report done by staff on this very topic, about 80% of the water hook-ups are not metered, however almost 75% of water use is metered through our existing system. The largest pipes are metered, if not the majority of pipes. It is also reported that New Westminster has one of the lowest rates of water use per capita in the Lower Mainland, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we have the most conservative practices. Compared to most Cities, we have a general lack of large industrial and agricultural users, and have a high proportion of our population living in multi-family dwellings, where water use is typically much lower. These facts point to why we have not been all that motivated in the past to implement a potentially-costly universal metering program, but some things have changed since 2008.
First off, Metro Vancouver (who supplies all of our water) have indicated that they are going to be studying whether mandatory metering is something they may require for their customer municipalities. The 2015 shortage and monumental capital costs required to expand our reservoirs may force their hand, which may in turn force our hand. It serves the City and our rate payers if the City is prepared for this eventuality.
Second, the cost of water per cubic metre from Metro Vancouver has gone up substantially, as will the cost of receiving and treating our liquid waste (which is directly related to the volume of water use). Where the cost of saving water has in the past been overshadowed by the cost of implementing a large-scale metering program, this gap may be closing. Especially as more municipalities move towards metering, and the technology costs come down.
Council asked staff to update the 2008 report, and provide us some models for how a voluntary or mandatory metering system for single family homes might be implemented and operate in New Westminster.
Most of the feedback we have heard so far is positive, and I am reflexively in favour of water meters for all single family homes (including my own). However, I need to emphasize that Council has not made any decisions about this other than to explore the idea, and there is a lot of work for the City to do, including costing, engineering, planning and public consultation, before we have a deliverable program. In the meantime, take shorter showers, ok?
Hi Pat, I am just inquiring about Sullivan Park on Oliver Street here in the Queen’s Park neighbourhood. It is a lovely park and really close to our home. However, I am noticing that there is a lot of dog dropping being left all around the park. I am not sure if this particular park is monitored but something needs to be done. It is horrible. I refuse to take my 14 month old there anymore as I am worried he is going to fall into it.. or worse. Anything you can do for us?
Shh! I didn’t think we were allowed to talk about Sullivan Park. It’s one of those neighbourhood secrets that we aren’t supposed to let anyone know about.
One general rule about a persistent dog-crap problem in a location is that it is probably just one person. Most dog owners are responsible and don’t want crap lying around any more than the rest of us, but one or two bad apples definitely can result in a lot of… uh… road apples. Unfortunately, catching that one person is probably near impossible.
My first suggestion is to use SeeClickFix when you run into a problem like this, to make sure it gets onto the City operations radar. If you aren’t a smart-phone lover, you can use this on-line form to make sure your issue gets tracked and followed up on. Or call Parks, Culture and Recreation at 604-527-4567.
What can Parks do? That is definitely a small park, and we have limited staff, so 24-hour patrols are not likely in the offing. I am not as familiar with Sullivan Park as my Queens Park neighbours, but having a doggie station with a ready source of collection bags, trash receptacle and signage will usually help most people do the right thing – if the park doesn’t have these at the one or two most common entry point, that may help. Of course, it may also encourage more people to see Sullivan as an unofficial “dog run”, which comes with its own issues.
As it is a unique spot, with a relatively small group of users (until you went and let the secret out!), it might be interesting to see if the neighbourhood has any ideas how to approach the issue. Better signage? Neighbourhood dog-watch? As a non-dog owner, I’m happy to hear suggestions!
Sorry, I’m not blogging much, and I would insert the usual “I’m too busy!” excuse here, but my busy-ness right now is at least partially because I have been doing a little better on the work-life balance thing and have spent some weekends away. I’m sure I’ll fall off the wagon soon, but here is something to hold my readers (Hi Mom!) over.
This is the beginning of a (possible) blog series that grew from a single post on the “Rattled by Traffic in New Westminster” Facebook Group. A regular Poster there, member of the Neighbourhood Traffic Advisory Committee, professional driver and all-around good guy Dave Tate wrote a comment that summarized a series of common questions in the City about traffic planning. I genuinely enjoy talking traffic with Dave, both agreeing and disagreeing with him, as he brings a pragmatic and relatively dogma-free approach to “the traffic issue”, which is pretty rare in this City. Anyway, upon reading his rant long list of suggestions, I commented that it was too much to digest on Facebook, but I would chew on it and provide a Blog response or two. This is the first, on the topic of curb extensions, and I hope I can get around to touching on the others in future posts.
Dave’s (slightly paraphrased) comment was:
“Curb Extensions. I understand their purpose and I do agree that they have a use. Having them in places like 12th St between 10th and 6th on the side streets is a good idea. They help protect pedestrians by making them more visible in uncontrolled intersections. But installing them on Royal and 6th at a controlled intersections is a bad idea. If you had a right turn lane there it would allow cars turning to get over and allow others to pass, rather than stopping an entire lane of traffic.”
With all due respect, I think you only understand part of their purpose, and some purposes are different on Royal than on 12th. Arguably, they are *more* important on Royal, and have more uses. I’ve written this before, and there is a significant amount of published information on the value of curb bulges or extensions, or whatever you want to call them, from the fact they lead to better yield compliance by drivers to how they improve overall safety in the urban realm. However, aside from the dusty boring research, I’ll quickly summarize what I see as the benefits of the specific curb bulge at Royal and 6th, as that one commonly comes up in conversation.
First off, it is a tremendous aid to pedestrians when you have a road like Royal Ave. There are six lanes of traffic (including turn lanes) and a significant median, all on a hill. With the curb extensions, the crossing length is almost 30m. For you and I that is no problem, but not everyone is as young and spry as us. Reducing the crossing length by 6 or more metres at each end makes it more accessible and safer for users from 8 to 80.
Those extra metres have another effect. The timing for a walk cycle is measured based on the distance of the crossing, and a general flat-ground rule of thumb is 1 to 1.2m per second. By adding curb bulges we actually reduce the amount of time that drivers face a red light, and increase the green light time for the cross traffic, increasing the efficiency of the traffic signal cycle for everyone involved.
Another benefit is by extending the radius of the corner, so right-turning drivers have a less extreme curve, and have better visibility through the turn, which significantly improves the safety of pedestrians from being clipped by right turners (one of the most dangerous interactions for pedestrians).
Also, curb bulges tend to slow drivers down when they enter an intersection, regardless of their intended direction (turn or straight through). This is because the narrowing creates visual “roughness”, making the road appear narrower than it actually is, which causes drivers to self-regulate. This is one of those basic road safety concepts: wide straight streets lead to higher speeds and more dangerous conditions for all road uses.
Now back to those right-turners. Why do we want them to skip the queue when traffic is backed up on Royal? Part of the traffic management goals of the City that pretty much everyone can agree on is that through-commuters should be encouraged to stay on the major routes, and not avail themselves of our residential side-streets for their daily rip through town. But you know if you are that through-commuter coming down Royal one morning and see the line-up of 10 cars at the red light, you are more likely to take that empty right-turn lane and go up 6th, and maybe turn left on Queens or Third or Fourth and try to get to Stewardson or places west. Of course, it is a fools errand, because as you mentioned, there is traffic calming in the Brow neighbourhood to make this choice less appealing, in order to make those residential neighbourhoods more comfortable and safe for the people who live and walk there. So it is easier of everyone if people stay on Royal in the first place. The curb-bulge does not reduce through-capacity (unless we made it a through-lane, not a right-turn lane, then we need to talk about making Royal 4 lanes, which is a whole different discussion). Creating a queue-jumping lane for rat-runners is not a great reason to remove a structure that provides so much pedestrian benefit.
So, yeah. You may have to wait an entire light cycle to make the right turn on Royal, and I’m sorry about that. But if that is the cost we have to pay for the multiple safety and neighbourhood benefits provided by that curb bulge, then I’m happy with the choice we’ve made.
I can’t believe it is February already, or maybe it was the jet lag related to my cancelled flight, 12 hours in airports, and waking up in Calgary a few hours before the meeting that had me all worn out. If I was more incoherent than usual, that’s my excuse. Regardless, our first Februarian meeting of 2016 started off with a presentation from the Finance Department on the Draft Financial Plan and the Capital budget.
This topic is going to be the subject of several blog posts between now and May when we finalize our budget. This is an early draft version of the budget, and there will be an opportunity for the public to comment on this (as they have already begun to do), and we will be having further talks before the tax increase (if any) for 2016 is decided. You can go to this page to read about the last 5-year Financial Plan, and can read lengthy reports about the Draft proposed budget starting at page 29 of this document . It’s pretty exciting stuff if you like spreadsheets, but I encourage you to ask questions of me and the rest of council about this; it really is the most important thing that Council does every year, so we need to get it right.
We then passed the following items as part of the Consent Agenda:
Proposed Erosion and Sediment Control (ESC) Bylaw 7754, 2016
I’m actually surprised we do not already have one of these. This is a bylaw that regulates how the sediment and sand that may run off of a construction site is managed. This helps keep our streets clean, but more importantly sand and sediment loading into our storm sewers is both harmful to the fisheries habitat the water will eventually reach, and is damaging to our storm drainage infrastructure, which can result in higher maintenance costs.
It is also part of our Good Neighbor Policy, where we are trying to reduce the impacts of construction and capital works on adjacent property owners, residents, and businesses. Council moved to give this bylaw three readings.
205 Clinton Place: Proposed Heritage Revitalization Agreement and
Heritage Designation Bylaws
This unique HRA project in Sapperton was approved for two readings. I’ll hold my comments until after the Public Hearing.
1407 Sixth Avenue Proposed Heritage Revitalization Agreement and
Heritage Designation Bylaws
This rather more typical HRA project in the West End was approved for two readings. I’ll hold my comments until after the Public Hearing.
The following items were Removed from the Consent Agenda for discussion:
Anvil Centre – VIBE Update and Programming
and Upcoming Exhibitions at the Anvil Centre
There are many aspects to the Anvil Centre. Besides the bustling convention business, there are incredibly successful museum and gallery programs, and a burgeoning performing arts program that is just starting to operate on full steam. The “arts programming” program is also burgeoning and growing rapidly. The big picture of putting art in front of people, putting people in front of art, and (most importantly) getting people engaged in creating and enjoying arts are starting to merge together to make the anvil a fun place to be.
Investment Report to December 31st, 2015
City has $128.9M in the Savings Account, which is $28.7M more than last year. The base capital is largely our “reserves” that are committed to future capital investments (sewer, water, roads, etc.), though some is uncommitted reserves, which is true “savings” put aside for the financial security for the City
This increase mostly reflects the fact that some capital projects are running behind, and the money we have put aside to pay for them has not yet been paid out. Our interest gains are only $2.7M (although 2.7%, is not bad in a year like this). Most of our savings are in the Municipal Finance Authority intermediate and bond funds which are super secure and diverse.
Filming Policy Amendment and Film Permit Bylaw No. 7793
When film companies shoot in New Westminster, they need a permit that covers everything from the fees they pay for police services to the requirements the City sets as far as parking, road closures, noise bylaws, etc. The report indicates that the current policy would be strengthened with a Bylaw to make the permitting regulatory.
I raised a concern about the wording of the proposed Bylaw, which I felt was much too broad in how it defined “filming”. It is intended to catch the professional film industry) and indeed Creative BC was OK with the change), but with the broadest definition of filming (essentially, anyone filming anything in the City except inside a private studio requiring a permit), and no language around giving the Film Coordinator or other senior Staff Member the authority to waive the permit requirement for (as a simple example) three youths at a Skatepark with a DSLR, we create a confusing Bylaw that is difficult to enforce. So we moved to have staff review that language and come back with a better defined approach.
We then moved through the Bylaws part of the Evening’s program:
HRA (205 Clinton Place) Bylaw No. 7800, 2016
Heritage Designation (205 Clinton Place) Bylaw No. 7801, 2016
As discussed above, this HRA in Sapperton was given two readings. There will be a Public Hearing February 29th, 2016. C’mon out and tell us what you think!
HRA (1407 Sixth Avenue) Bylaw No. 7807, 2016
Heritage Designation (1407 Sixth Avenue) Bylaw No. 7806, 2016
As discussed above, this HRA in the West End was given two readings. There will be a Public Hearing February 29th, 2016. C’mon out and tell us what you think!
Erosion and Sediment Control Bylaw No. 7754, 2016
Bylaw Notice Enforcement Amendment Bylaw No. 7819, 2016
As discussed above, this Bylaw was given three readings.
Community Heritage Commission Amendment Bylaw No. 7808, 2015
This Bylaw was discussed on January 18 and given Third Reading on January 25. It has now been adopted. It is the Law of the Land, please adjust your lifestyle to suit.
We then dispatched with one piece of New Business:
OCP Moody Park Meeting
The public engagement on the “housing conversation” stage of the OCP process has continued. I have commented at length about this, but want to point out one of the most insightful comments by one of the other members of Council at this meeting.
Councillor McEvoy reminded us that the conversation (debate?) going on right now around the OCP is a conversation/debate within and between neighbours, not a debate between Council and the public, or even Staff and the public. There is no OCP to debate right now, because staff has not written one yet, and Council has not reviewed one yet. The plan has yet to be developed, and the conversation going on right now is designed to get the residents, businesses and other stakeholders in the City talking in order to inform that plan as it is being drawn up. Surely some preliminary and very conceptual models of things like density increases have been put together to engage people in a conversation, but no-one on staff should be “encouraging” any specific model ,and Council has definitely not advocated for any specific path forward except in the broadest terms.
After a break and Public Delegations we covered one topic that was brought up during the delegations.
The New Westminster Environmental Partners (full disclosure: I used to be President, still a strong supporter!) have been working on making the case for metering residential water in the City, as part of a comprehensive water conservation program. Coming out of the drought of 2015 and Stage 3 Water Restrictions, they did their research and brought a presentation to the Environment Advisory Committee last month. The Committee made some recommendations to Council, and we discussed those recommendations.
As this is already a long report, I’ll write a longer Blog post on this topic soon, but for now will just point out that Council supported reviewing the concept of voluntary and even mandatory water metering for residential customers, and will ask Staff to provide an updated report on what the economic and technological model for this looks like. We also asked Staff to review both water restriction enforcement and our suite of water conservation programs in preparation for next summer’s water shortage season.
We had a very light agenda this council meeting, and between a sparsely-attended Public Hearing and no Public Delegations, it was a pretty unspectacular night. Of course we had a full Council Day with a closed session and an Open Workshop earlier in the day on the City’s Financial Plan, so the little time we spent on TV doesn’t mean we didn’t get work done.
Zoning Amendment Bylaw No. 7781, 2015 (Commercial Storage Lockers)
There are some storage lockers in the Plaza88 development that are not being used by the commercial or residential users of the facility. The owners of Plaza88 want to open them up for commercial rental, but that is not allowed under the current zoning. Therefore a change in the zoning Bylaw to allow that use at this location was required. Such a zoning bylaw change requires a Publci Hearing.
The City received no correspondence on this matter, and no-one appeared to speak at the Public Hearing. The public engagement of the Strata members of the Plaza88 Development indicated no objection to this change of use, and the Engineering Department had not problems. So we moved to send it to third Reading.
Zoning Amendment Bylaw No. 7781, 2015
As just discussed, we moved Third Reading of the Bylaw that would allow commercial storage lockers at Plaza88.
Community Heritage Commission Amendment Bylaw No. 7808, 2015
As discussed last meeting, we moved Third Reading of this Bylaw to change the terms of reference for the heritage commission.
NEW BUSINESS:
Lighting up the Anvil for PEDAW
This follows up on my request from two weeks ago to follow up on a request from the Provincial Eating Disorder Awareness Week campaign to light up Anvil Centre Purple on February 5th to support the initiative. Council voted to support his one-time request, and we will be getting a report back from staff on a longer-term policy to support future requests like this.
Uber is not coming to New Westminster any time soon, and I’m OK with that. Many of my friends, especially the younger, more tech-savvy and “connected”(ugh) cohort, will not like hearing that, but there are many good reasons to question the Uber model, and how that type of service fits into the existing regulatory environment around ride-sharing services. It may actually challenge many of our assumptions about how business operates in the decade ahead. So we need to proceed with caution, as New Westminster Council discussed at last week’s meeting.
Full disclosure: the closest thing to Uber I have ever used was in San Francisco a couple of years ago. We were visiting a friend, staying in Pot Hill, and needed an early taxi ride to the airport. Our host suggested taxis were notoriously unreliable at that time in that neighbourhood, and suggested we call for a Homobile. This was a “ride sharing” service set up to address a specific problem: the Trans community were regularly being passed by the regular taxi services, especially at night, and that even in the (arguably) most queer-friendly City in America, Public Transit and traditional taxis are often not the safest environment late at night for a demographic that still faces disproportionate threats of abuse and violence. Homobile was started as a volunteer service to make sure that everyone could safely get home, and evolved into a collective not-for-profit that returns its revenue right back into a social enterprise that helps the community. We were, of course, white bread tourists looking for an Airport run, but were told up front it was by donation, whatever we could afford. We paid what would have been the “going rate” for an airport run in a traditional cab (with a tip) and got a ride from the actual Lynn Breedlove (who regaled us with memories of the queer punk scene in Vancouver in the 90’s). It was unregulated, non-traditional, and cash-only, but to us it was revolutionary, and operating as a social enterprise that we could support.
Uber is, unfortunately, few of those things.
First off, Uber is an unregulated provider of a commercial service in a highly regulated market, and that lack of regulation provides them a large economic advantage. There is little revolutionary about that. Sure, they use a smart phone app and on-line rating system to manage their sales and billing, but that is more a distraction than the centre of their business model. If we had an unregulated parcel-delivery service without a business license, whose drivers drove un-inspected and under-insured trucks throughout neighbourhoods with drivers not licenced for those trucks, I suspect our community would be concerned. Would we want an unregulated airline offering door-to-door helicopter rides with uncertain pilot training or vehicle licencing? Of course, this is a ridiculous example, but the fundamental argument is the same.
I started writing this post last weekend, and as is typical in the “tech world” (ugh), the story changes fast, as the provincial government has started hinting towards a shift in thinking in Uber, and to put that in context, you need to know the regulatory landscape as it is.
The Taxi industry is regulated at the provincial level. Some powers under that regulation are delegated to local authorities, but the regulation is 100% provincial. If Uber wants to operate in BC, they will need to comply with the B.C. Passenger Transportation Act, and currently, there is no sign they have ever sought a licence to do so.
In saying I am not positive about Uber, I’m not saying the Taxi industry is perfect. Far from it. However, we need to recognize that many of the flaws of the industry are a direct result of the industry trying to remain compliant with an ever more restrictive regulatory environment. Some of those regulations exist for (what I hope are obviously) good reasons: to assure the fleet is safe and reliable, to assure drivers are trained and safe, and to assure the industry is accessible. There are other regulations that appear to exist in order to protect the viability and sustainability of the industry and/or to protect consumers, including regulated prices/meters, and limits to the number of vehicle licences that can be used in any given region. Some of these regulations make sense only in a government-regulated industry sense, to prevent operators from ripping people off or undercutting each other, which may impact safety.
The cumulative impact of these regulations is an industry that is inflexible and at times horribly inefficient, but for the most part safe and reliable with predictable pricing and a constantly-updated fleet. The workers are not getting rich, but can make a decent predictable living, and the owner of the companies are providing a service, paying their taxes, and mostly succeeding, while the incentives to compromise on safety or service by undercutting your competition are few. Depending on whom you ask, they are doing this in spite of – or because of – the grey-market taxi licence sub-industry that puts 6- or 7-figure values on every licence they own. But that market is (and I cannot stress this enough) a product of the regulatory regime forced on these operators and owners.
Uber, in contrast has ignored these regulations, and have leveraged this lack of a fair playing field into a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Their service has the advantage of being more flexible and (usually) efficient, leveraging a remote “rating” application in an attempt to assure higher levels of customer service, though this process alone creates problematic workplace conditions. They do not have employees, but instead have millions of independent contractors who have no control over the terms of their employment, but bear all of the costs and risks of that employment, which is not in keeping with modern employment practices in a post-industrial society. It is not clear who is paying taxes and where, whether an Uber driver is insured in the event of a crash or other incident, or who is assuring the vehicles are safe for operation. Uber spends a lot of money on lawyers assuring they hold no liability for the actions of their “employees”, fighting the established legal principle of vicarious liability. There are no standards of accessibility for their fleet, and pricing is often unclear. Drivers are not required to have Class 4 drivers licences, may not have criminal record checks, and may not even be legally entitled to work in the jurisdiction.
Now, I’m not saying that none of these issues are impossible to address, nor am I defending the complex regulatory environment that currently makes the Taxi industry as frustrating as it sometimes is. This was made apparent to me back in the spring of 2015 when two taxi companies operating in New Westminster applied for more licences, citing the need to fulfill the expectation of their customers in regards to availability and wait times. The two companies applied for a total of 17 new licences, and were given 4 by the Transportation Safety Board. Council of course rubber-stamped the approval after no negative public comments, but the fact the industry sees the need for 4x the number of new vehicles than the provincially-regulated Board is willing to grant demonstrates that the regulation may be as much of a problem as it is a solution.
The Minister of Transportation has spoken out against Uber in the past, even threatening to send in investigators and file charges under the Act if Uber is found to be operating in the province. But as of this week, there appears to be a shift in thinking on this file by the Premier and the Minister, and excuse me for being a little skeptical about the motivations.
This week, the Premier, the Minister, and a candidate in a Coquitlam By-election have come out with announcements showing varying levels of approval of the Uber model. The Minster even saying it was a matter of “When, not if” Uber comes to BC, but there is nothing on the Ministry website suggesting any recent change in ideas about Uber, and their decidedly non-favourable Factsheet on the topic has not been updated in 6 months. So if a conversation in the Ministry is being started about this, it isn’t a public one.
Where the conversation is more “public” is over at the BC Liberal Party, where on-line ads and data-mining pages have already started asking you what flavour of Uber you would like (note the survey includes “yes” and “not sure”, with “no” not an option?):
You need to submit your name and contact info to take part, and as this is a Liberal Party ad, not a government document, it is simply a method to collect contacts for targeted Get-Out-The-Vote action in May 2017. There is nothing unusual or illegal about this, but it is telling that the Government is (in their official role) telegraphing movement on this at the same time they are (in their political role) collecting the names of people who like the idea of the change.
This tells me that the Liberals anticipate Uber being a wedge issue during the 2017 election, and are assembling their resources for that fight. No doubt the Premier’s former campaign coordinator, who is now paid to lobby the government on behalf of Uber, is part of this planning process, and will know how to leverage the needs of his employer(s) to the utmost political advantage of all.
It already appears that the paid comment-section spammers “digital influencers” of the Liberal Party have been characterizing the NDP as dinosaurs, old fashioned and “proponents of videos stores” if ever they call on the Government to show some actual leadership on this file with revised regulations, so that should be fun to watch.
Which makes me suspect that the regulation of “the sharing economy”(ugh) will end up much like the gradual and ultimately irrelevant shifts in liquor laws over the last few years. There will be little useful policy developed and little real change, but a lot of press releases to sell small populist victories at times when the Government needs some good news. And if Uber never arrives in the Lower Mainland, somehow the blame will be shifted to “lefty” cities like Vancouver and New Westminster, despite our lack of regulatory jurisdiction.
But to prove I am skeptical, not cynical, I hope this does not occur. I hope that this forces the Government to take a serious review of the taxi industry and employment standards in the “ride sharing” industry, so that workers and consumers in both industries are protected, and can make clear, informed, choices about their options. And also hope the Government put as much effort into planning and developing those regulatory changes as they clearly are in marketing the political battle to come.
Both Councilor Harper and I attended the Queens Park Residents Association meeting, where there was a great discussion about the City’s OCP process and Heritage Preservation in Queens Park.
We had a quorum of Council show up for the annual Coldest Night of the Year fundraising walk for Senior Services Society of New Westminster. It was a slightly chilly but dry evening on Saturday, and it was great to get caught up with our MLA and MP, while raising money for a great cause!
