Community – end of Summer!

Posted on September 14, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

It has been a while since I did an update of my non-council activities. It was a long, glorious summer, but like a student going back to school, Labour Day passed and I am right back in the middle of it, shuffling schedules and trying to figure out how I will survive this semester!

After a long weekend for the record books (yes I will blog about it), Tuesday evening I had a meeting with the Mayor’s Public Engagement Taskforce. This group is tasked with developing new and better ideas for the City to “engage” with the public – a slightly jargony term that includes outreach, consultation, and listening. We will be reporting out on our progress, but after a few early meetings where it seemed we were tying ourselves up a bit in process and definition, this meeting I felt like the group really had its legs and some great ideas and visible paths forward are happening. It is a really great group of staff and public, and I expect good things will come out of it.

Wednesday I had the first ACTBiPed meeting of the fall, and having not been invited to the “State Dinner” apparently happening in town, I consoled myself with some good discussion of sustainable transportation improvements the City is working on, and some others the City should probably be working on. The ACTBiPed group is heavy with very vocal advocates who have no trouble assuring their concerns are heard. Progress is slow and steady on the City’s Master Transportation Plan, and we are improving, but progress sometimes seems as glacial as the timing for the walk signal at 8th Street and 7th Ave.

Thursday was an Open House at the Sapperton Pensioners Hall for the Sapperton Green development. This long-discussed and slow-to-progress development project between the Braid SkyTrain Station and Hume Park has the potential to be the largest single development in the history of New Westminster, so it is important that we get the planning and public engagement right.

The open house was well attended, and although the plans are still rather preliminary, people’s reactions were quite varied. The scale is large, but the location is right for higher-density residential space and for increased employment lands, and this is the owners’ long-term plan for the site. The conversation is ongoing, and you can keep up here. The large warehouse currently on the property was recently leased for a long term, which is testament to the timeline of this project. Build-out is probably 20+ years, as you would think when you compare to the timeline of the (much smaller) Brewery District and Victoria Hill developments.

So please get involved in the conversation, but I want to correct one thing in the record: my phone number and other contact info is on the bottom of this webpage. I have no idea whose number is beside my name on this handbill posted on a telephone pole in Lower Sapperton. I don’t necessarily support the positions on this handbill, but actually want to hear from you, so better if you have the right number!

Finally, on Saturday, I was honoured to be able to “officiate” at the wedding of my friend Matt Laird and his amazing wife Mila. I hasten to mention I am in no way empowered to marry people, but through the the mechanistic shenanigans of bureaucracy and shadowy Beer Friday commitments, this duty was thrust upon me. I was proud to stand up there with a great couple, and it gave me an excuse to pull out the official jewelry.

If I think about my current role as a City Councillor, I have to count Matt as one of the most important people in making it happen. Not directly – he didn’t convince me to run, he didn’t take a big role in my campaign, and he didn’t even vote for me (having moved to Vancouver before the election) – but by being a friend, co-conspirator, advisor, and advocate when I started to get involved more seriously with community activism in New Westminster a decade ago. He was an early champion of the New Westminster Environmental Partners, and he was a tireless advocate for a more sustainable community, for better transportation infrastructure that protected our neighbourhoods, and for social justice in the City. He was a conduit to hooking me up with other people who believed in these things. He ran for election in the City, and never quite got over the top, but he made a huge difference in this City in the decade he lived here, evidenced by the “Who’s Who” of New Westminster Elite Undesirables® who trekked up to Grouse Mountain to celebrate his marriage.

When Matt met Mila a couple of years ago, there was a huge sigh amongst his friends (and apparently his family), as he found a whip-smart and down-to-earth counter to his sometimes pie-in-the-sky idealism, a calm voice to his endless excitement, and a ready retort to his occasional idiocy. The two of them make a fun and beautiful couple, and I wish them all the best as they start their new adventure in Cambridge (the one in Jolly ol’ England) where I think Jeremy Corbyn just found a supporter.

Finally, I took a short break from Sunday’s council preparation to attend the Massey Heights RA’s Hurrah. The RA President Jason Lesage took the photo at the top with Becky and I sporting the bedazzled paper hats being produced by kids at the Arts Council booth. It was good times and great weather at the top of New Westminster (WestBurnCo Park). Congrats #MVRA!

Council Report – August 31, 2015

Posted on September 2, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Welcome back. We took Council on the Road for the last meeting of August, meeting at the Anvil Centre in beautiful, historic Downtown New Westminster – Western Canada’s Original Downtown^tm.

For the first meeting after a month-long break, it wasn’t as packed an agenda as one might expect, although there were a significant number of proclamations and presentations that are worth your time to watch on video.

We also had a bit of commentary about the windstorm from the Chief of Police and the Director of Parks. The short version is that our Fire and Electrical Utility folks did an exemplary job, got almost everybody’s lights back on within 24 hours, and managed a huge call volume through activation of the new Emergency Operations Centre at Firehall #1 to take a bit of the load off of the swamped central E-Comm system. This was a relatively small emergency, but was a good test of our response capabilities, and will be a learning experience going forward.

It should also be a learning experience for people like me, who were found wandering the streets of Uptown on Saturday Night trying to find a meal and a place to plug my mobile phone in (both successfully located). I will try to pop out another blog post this week about Emergency Preparedness, and what we should learn from this event.

As usual (but for the last time ever?) the meat of the meeting involved covering Recommendations from the Committee of the Whole.

FCM encouragement for Federal Leaders Debate

I don’t know if you noticed, but there is a federal election happening, and Federation of Canadian Municipalities is attempting to the get the leaders of the major parties together to hold a debate on the topic of “municipal issues”. As a Council, we support this initiative, as there are numerous Federal issues (the Long Form Census and reinvestment of the Federal Gas Tax pop immediately to mind) that have a direct impact on Municipal governments, including New Westminster.

Land Use and Planning Committee

This is part of our new Council format, where the Council will no longer be meeting as Committee of the Whole. In part to reduce the workload on the newly expanded evening meetings, and also with the intent to serve the public better in providing more timely responses to “development” questions, we are setting up a Land Use and Planning Committee. This will comprise two Councillors and the Mayor, supported by a few relevant staff members, with the plan to meet earlier in the development process and provide more detailed reviews of potential projects and potential pitfalls. The LUPC will serve as advisory to the whole of Council, and will hold their meetings in public.

I’m excited to be serving on this committee for an inaugural two-year term, and am interested to see how we can make the development process smoother for developers, and more open and transparent for residents.

Development Variance Permit – 302 Fifth Ave

This is a simple request to replace a garage with one that is quite a bit taller than is allowed in the zoning. The City limits garage or outbuilding heights in part to reduce the unregulated conversion to living space, and also to reduce the visual impact on adjacent properties. In this case, the proponent was requesting a taller height so the garage matches better the unique roofline of the house, was building the garage with a truss design that prevented the upper part of the garage from ever being converted to living space, and the two closest neighbours provided letters indicating they were not opposed to the larger size.

With that information in hand, Council agreed to consider the requested Development Variance at the September 28 meeting. If you have an opinion, you should let us know before then!

Development Variance Permit – 1258 Ewen Ave

This is a request to build a new house in Queensborough 10 inches higher than permitted, which would make it the same size as the adjacent houses. Council agreed to consider the requested Development Variance at the September 28 meeting. If you have an opinion, you should let us know before then!

Housekeeping Amendment Bylaw

This is to make several housekeeping changes to the existing zoning Bylaw. The changes are:
• Changing the wording of the bylaw so the reference to the professional organization that oversees massage providers matches the language of the actual professional organization;
• An adjustment of the density formula for RM-6 and C-4 districts to make the formula actually work properly and as intended for smaller sites;
• Clarifying some language in at-grade commercial requirements in the C4 district;
• An amendment to allow animal care operations in CD-19, to bring it in line with other commercial districts of the type; and
• An amendment of the language for how corner cuts are defined for properties with front lawns.

Exciting stuff, I know, and these changes will go to Public Hearing on September 28, 2015. C’mon out and tell us what you think!

Development Permit 26 E Royal

This is the final development site at Victoria Hill, which will provide some long-awaited commercial property in the centre of the neighbourhood as part of two 4-story residential buildings. The unit mix here is very family-friendly, with almost every unit being 2- or 3-bedroom, and many of them ground-oriented with access to a large public courtyard and parks.

Council voted unanimously to consider issuance of the Development Permit.

404 Ash Street Development Permit and Housing Agreement

This is the plan to replace the building lost to fire at 4th Ave and Ash in February, 2014. The rental building had 29 units, and will be replaced with a slightly larger building featuring 38 units, and will be a secured rental building.

In Committee of the Whole, I asked that we have staff report back to us prior to the DP being issued about the potential to save the row of about 18 trees that line the north side of the property.

These tall, mature evergreens trees were impacted by the fire, but survived and appear now to be healthy – they even came through last weeks’ windstorm without a scratch.
They are essentially limb-free for the bottom 25 feet, but have healthy crowns that rise to probably 50 feet. Besides all of the community amenities trees provide in regards to the sustainability of our community, this particular line of trees provide an incredible weather buffer to the apartment building to the north – shading the three-story walkup from the worst of the summer heat, and reducing wind and noise.

The trees are planted just within the property line of 404 Ash, and are prospering despite only taking up about 3 feet of soil between the driveway to the north and the excavated underground basement foundations of the building that was burned. It would be a shame if we lost these trees now. It would be a loss to the Brow of the Hill community that lacks tree coverage, to the neighbours to the north, and ultimately to the residents of this new rental building (as was pointed out recently in a news story).

The trees look healthy to me, but I am not an arbourist. Therefore, I asked that Staff provide us a bit of guidance about the viability of these trees, and to opine on whether they could be saved. If the new building’ footprint is going on top of the foundation footprint of the old building, then the trees should not be effected, and just might need a bit of protection during construction. If the planned foundation of the new building is closer to the north property line than the existing building, then I would even be happy to see the entire building shifted 3 feet south to allow these trees to remain for the entire neighbourhood.

I don’t want to hold up this development, I just want to assure that every possible step was taken to protect these trees, so they are not lost out of general neglect of their benefits.

Council will be reviewing this Development Permit at the September 14 meeting.

Queensborough Special Study Area – Consultation and preliminary zoning

Council was asked to approve an ongoing consultation plan on the comprehensive redevelopment of a large area of Queensborough. The plan outlines the stakeholders that must be consulted under the Local Government Act (like Metro Vancouver), and those that probably should be consulted (Port Metro Vancouver), along with the next stages of public consultation, especially with property owners within the Special Study Area.

This is a large redevelopment, which will bring a commercial hub to the east part of Queensborough adjacent to Port Royal, along with residential development of family-friendly ground oriented housing. I attended a Publci Open House at the Queensborough community Centre back in June, and the reception we generally very positive about this development. There were a few traffic-impact details to work out at that time, but the most frequent comment I heard was “how soon can we get those stores?” There is a real desire to get a bit of local retail around Port Royal, and I hope it can be built early in this development plan, if the plan is approved.

There are more details to be worked out yet, but Council is happy at this point with moving the project ahead to the next steps.

800 12th Street, Text Amendment to Zoning Bylaw

A business wants to move their operation to New Westminster at 12th St. and 8th Ave, but the strict wording of our Zoning Bylaw does not allow part of their business plan. They currently offer a variety of pet services, but boarding for cats is one of them, and that does not fit the zoning of the property. There are several steps to make the required change to the Bylaw, including informing neighbours, committee review, and Public Hearing. Council is happy to allow the process to proceed as required by the Bylaw and the Local Government Act.

Street and Traffic Bylaw changes
We moved 3 readings of the changes to our Street and Traffic Bylaw back on July 13th, but before it is adopted, the Bylaw needs to pass Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure muster – one of those gentle reminders that Local Governments and Municipal streets exist at the pleasure of the Provincial Government. The MoTI review found our definition of “street” was not strictly appropriate, and needed a bit of modification. No problem there, but to make the change we need to rescind our original Third Reading and replace it with a Third Reading of the text of the Bylaw that reflects the new definition.

Yes, this all makes perfect sense, although it is a pretty good argument for why Government can’t just “run more like a business”. Checks and balances, my friends. Checks and balances.

2014 Annual Water Quality Report

There has been a lot of talk this year about water quantity, but not as much about water quality. The water that comes out of your tap is remarkably clean, and we take extraordinary measures to assure it is some of the cleanest, safest water in the world. Our Water crews in the City and our supplier the Greater Vancouver Water District do excellent work, and it is something we should trumpet more. If nothing else, we should use it to point out the silliness of paying for bottled water.

This annual report is the public disclosure of how, where and when the 966 water samples for 2014 were collected, and the detailed results of their analytical testing. Data geeks might want to have fun there, but for everyone else- the water is safe, and we are going above and beyond the requirements to assure it stays that way.

Sewer separation budget re-allocation

If you noticed all the digging activity along Queens Street near Tipperary Park of late, that is part of the ongoing “sewer separation” program, where the City’s archaic combined-flow sewers are being replaced with separate sanitary and storm systems. A legacy of being a very old city, and a lack of infrastructure investment in previous decades, much of New Westminster’s sewers still combine storm flows with sanitary flows, which means our sanitary system carries more water than it needs to, treatment costs are high, and occasional very large storm events can result in sanitary sewer spills. Replacing these systems City-wide is a decades-long process that will cost the City hundreds of millions of dollars – we do what we can when we can.

In this report, Engineering is asking Council to approve a plan to accelerate separation in an area of Sapperton where there are current plans to pave and install gutter/drain systems. It makes sense to do the separation at the same time – you only have to tear the road up once, and you are not hooking your new surface works to obsolete infrastructure. So Council approved the plan to move some money over to facilitate this and save us money in the long run.

Update 2016 Budget Survey

The City commissions a survey every year as part of our outreach efforts during the budgeting process. The questions are very opinion-poll-like (“What do you like more or less about the City? Where do you think we should put more/less emphasis?”), but the study has been asking similar questions for several years, so longitudal trends can be tracked. This report was just a final “OK” on the survey questions from Council before the poll is commissioned.

Sole Source Multi-year Maintenance Agreement

The City has enterprise software it purchases from a large company. That software is proprietary, and requires regular maintenance. We need to pay the supplier for that maintenance, as no-one else can do it. Our purchasing Policy requires that only Council can authorize sole-source procurement for the necessary ~$150,000 per year spent on this software system. We did so.

Front Street Public Art Installation

Back in July, Council decided it didn’t like the Public Art proposal for the Front Street Parkade that we chosen by an independent jury of professionals working under the guidance of the Public Art Advisory Committee. So the project was punted back to Staff and Committee to come up with a better proposal.

This is a topic where I respectfully disagree with some of my Council colleagues, in that I think that judging the aesthetics or artistic merit of Public Art is not the role of politicians (as wise and intelligent as we may be). I won’t go into this at length here (another blog post, another time – a short version can be heard in my comments at Committee of the Whole). Regardless, I agree with the idea that we need to get the PAAC involved and get a project approved for this site.

Capital Budget amendment

The NW Police Department needs to renovate its space to reflect the results of their successful recruiting of female members. The Old Boys Club needs a few more lockers for the New Girls. This approval by Council is a preliminary step towards the NWPD including the improvements in their Capital Plan, and securing cost estimates. Council will once again be able to opine on the project once some more detailed costs and timing are worked out.

Rental Displacement Policy

This is a topic I brought before Committee of the Whole for consideration. I wanted to hear how the City’s existing rental protection policies and practices, and those of the provincial Residential Tenancy Act are working to protect individuals who are living in the City’s rental properties. I also want the report to identify potential policy gaps, and how we could do better.

There have been a couple of events recently that have raised the profile of people displaced from affordable rental accommodation. During the Urban Academy debate in the spring, there was a situation created where residents of a Manitoba Street residential building were evicted in preparation for a development that was (in the end) not supported by Council. During those discussions, it was clear that the proponent felt they took measures well above and beyond to help the displaced residents, however it was also clear that some of the families that were displaced suffered tremendously, and felt that their rights were not respected by the proponent or by the process. I also had a conversation a few weeks ago with a neighbour who knew of two other men who were being displaced right now by a new small residential development in the West End.

There is increasing media attention in some of our neighbouring communities around “renovictions” and loss of affordable and rental housing that results from rapid development (especially around SkyTrain stations) and our rapidly increasing cost of housing.

There are already some policies in place in New Westminster to prevent the loss of rental properties and to reduce the impact on affordability that comes with redevelopment, but I think it is timely for us to review the policies and have a closer look at provincial and municipal standards compared to the expectations we have as a City about how rental property and affordable housing will be protected as our building stock is updated.

After all of that Committee of the Whole action, we had a few Bylaws to read:

Zoning Amendment No. 7779, 2015
Housekeeping changes to the Zoning Bylaw mentioned above, Received First and Second reading.
Housing Agreement Bylaw No. 7775, 2015
The agreement that assures this development will be secured for rental, also mentioned above, received First, Second and Third Reading.
Street and Traffic Bylaw No. 7664, 2015
The changes made by the Ministry (mentioned above) required rescinding of Third Reading and a new Third Reading.

And that was an evening’s work.

Stroads

Posted on August 29, 2015August 28, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Can we avoid a stroad problem in New West?

The word “stroad” is a slightly tongue-in-cheek portmanteau combining “street” with “road”, and it is becoming such common parlance in city planning that even small towns in Pennsylvania are talking about how to deal with them. The term came from people who understand the difference between how a “street” operates, and how a “road” operates. The former is a place where people do things, like socialize and perform commerce; the latter is a conduit for travel to get somewhere else. The term “stroad” pinpoints the problem created when you try to combine those two mutually exclusive uses into the same space.

I would argue that New Westminster has very effectively dealt with one stroad in its midst when the Council of the day put Columbia Street on a road diet. I remember the boo-birds talking about the disaster that would befall the City, and many of them still pop up to complain about pedestrian bumps or crosswalks or any other thing the City does to make the pedestrian space safer. Columbia is not back to being the Miracle Mile of the 1940s, and it never will be. However there is no doubt it is a better place for walking, for shopping, for living and for driving, than it was in the 1990s.

Stroads are rarely created intentionally, they evolve into existence, with a bunch of small (and at the time, seemingly rational) decisions. Most commonly, a city finds one of its shopping streets is increasingly used by through-commuters. In hopes of eking some value out of this apparent windfall, automobile-oriented development happens along the route, displacing the existing landuse with the intent to capture the fleeting attention of through-commuters. This (often strip-mall commercial) development also attracts local drivers who used to shop on the street, and now blend with the through-commuters. Congestion is exacerbated, and the engineering solution is to increase capacity. You widen the road, removing on-street parking if necessary, which requires you to build parking lots, further separating the road from the businesses, and creates in-out driveways or more light-controlled intersections, which slows the through-drivers. To fix this, you put in a left-turn lane or two so the through-traffic doesn’t get stuck, then a right-turn lane to get them even further unstuck. Which kind of works for a while (see Byrne Road and Marine, or Kingsway at Metrotown), as long as you have a bottomless asphalt budget.

All of the sudden, you have a road in the middle of your City right in the middle of the street in the middle of your City. Anyone who wants to try to put value into the street by using their local commercial businesses discover the shops are behind expansive parking lots that are hard to get into or out of, and walking across the street means braving 40 metres of asphalt where the people trying to turn right through the crosswalk are separated from the people trying to pull a left turn across traffic by the people in between speeding along to be the first to get to the next red light, frustrated by all the traffic. So, complicated light timing, “pedestrian islands”, or expensive overpasses are required to make the space marginally safe for people who failed to bring along 3,000lbs of metal when they went to buy a loaf of bread. And we have built a stroad.

Stroads are expensive to build and maintain. They move traffic poorly, yet provide the appearance of moving it well, which paradoxically increases induced demand while not actually increasing capacity. They are dangerous for all users, but especially for cyclists and pedestrians, who end up avoiding their chosen mode because the stroads are so uninviting. Worst of all, they strip away the value of expensive and precious urban land space, and contribute less to the local economy than an active street. They represent a planning failure, an engineering failure, and a leadership failure that must be avoided in modern urban areas.

So when you hear about plans for East Columbia Street, 12th Street, Ewen Avenue, 6th Street or 20th Street, or any of the busy streets in New Westminster, think to yourself: do we want this to be a street, or a road? Without first making that distinction, we will inevitably hedge towards a stroad, and end up with neither.

Thermodynamics

Posted on August 25, 2015August 24, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. 4 Comments.

Now that we are deep enough into the Anthropogenic Global Warming crisis that only the whackiest of whackaloons are still denying its existence or the serious impacts it is going to have on planetary livability, a whole different type of whacky thought is filling the airwaves. These have to do with a variety of techniques to suck CO2 out of the sky and turn atmospheric carbon into something useful like carbon nanotubes or alternative fuels.

These schemes are no doubt possible. The problem is that they don’t solve the actual problem, which isn’t carbon in the air, it is about making energy by putting carbon in the air. To talk about that, we need to talk about thermodynamics.

The Laws of Thermodynamics are pretty fundamental science. They cannot, in the normal universe where we live, be violated. They were once summed up to me in this analogy which helps to keep track of them*:

1st Law: You can’t win.
2nd Law: You can’t even break even.
3rd Law: You can’t get out of the game.

The one we are most worried about here is the 2nd Law, which essentially says that any time energy changes states, there is a net increase in entropy. In other words, every time you use energy to do something, you lose a bit of energy. It is the 2nd Law that makes perpetual motion machines impossible.

Relating this to schemes to pull carbon out of the air and make it useful, it is important to realize we don’t just toss CO2 into the air for the fun of it. For the most part we do it to use the energy released when you combine carbon with oxygen, be it energy to drive our cars/planes/ships or energy to generate electricity. We do this because the act of combining carbon with oxygen releases energy in the form of heat (which is a whole different chemistry lecture we should save for Beer Friday). We can do the same thing backwards, strip the oxygen off of the carbon, but that takes energy, and (this is where the 2nd Law comes in) a little bit more energy than it produced during the original combination.

So all of those schemes you see that will turn CO2 into something useful, no matter how efficient they are, will require more energy than we gained when we created the CO2 in the first place. So it makes way more sense to simply not produce the CO2 in the first place. instead, we could use the energy we would dedicate to sucking it out of the air and making carbon nanotubes out of it back into doing whatever job we wanted to do with the energy we gained in the first place when we added the oxygen to the carbon. As a bonus, we can still make the carbon nanotubes out of any of a zillion existing carbon sources we have on the planet, be they plants, rocks, or hydrocarbons, without the need to waste a bunch of energy stripping oxygen off of the carbon. That way the carbon stays out of the atmosphere, we use less energy, and we are all better off.

The reality is that the “technological fix” of climate change is nothing shocking, cutting edge or freaky; it is in our hand right now. It is no more complicated than stopping the taking of carbon out of the ground to combine with oxygen for cheap energy when there is an abundance of alternatives available. But it starts with recognizing this “cheap” form of energy is a false economy, as is betting the future on big fans and diamonds from the sky.

*there is a 4th Law, but since it was developed later, and then determined to be more fundamental, the physics community called it the “0th Law”, just to reinforce those points. In the analogy above, it would be translated as “We are all playing the same game”

Opening Streets

Posted on August 22, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Much like this earlier post, I want to address a common use of language that has been bugging me of late: that around “closing” streets to hold events. It is a convenient term we use in a City to organize traffic management, emergency planning and engineering needs, but it is wrong. It implies that our streets are only there to serve people driving along them, or for temporary storage of your vehicle while you are off doing other things. There is so much more we can do with our streets when we stop worrying about “closing” them, and start creating better ways to “open” them.

Last weekend, I was at the New West Pride Street Party on Columbia Street, where two lanes of road was indeed closed for 10 hours so that people could walk, sit, talk, drink, dance, shop, share, eat, sing, and celebrate. I defy anyone to look at this picture of Columbia Street (which I borrowed from Bif Naked, because her view was better than mine!) and tell me that street is closed:

A photo posted by Bif Naked (@missbifnaked) on Aug 15, 2015 at 9:50pm PDT

This weekend, we are doing it again, with 70 food trucks and (if last year’s event is any evidence) tens of more thousands of people will be enjoying themselves on Columbia Street. These are not just New Westminster people, but folks from around the region coming to New Westminster to add to the vitality of our downtown, support local businesses and entrepreneurs from around the region, and hopefully discover that Downtown New Westminster is a great place to spend some time, not just a place to drive through.

I also noted a news story this week about the Royal City Farmers Market plans to move uptown for their winter market season. The story mentions “Belmont Street will be closed to traffic from 11 am to 3 pm”. This statement is only true if you define “traffic” as cars. I am willing to bet that there will be more people using Belmont Street for those 4 hours every second Saturday than on any other day – it is just that the “traffic” will be on foot. By being on foot, they are more likely to stop, to shop, to talk to their neighbours and enjoy a laugh. People can, just with their presence, bring several hundred square metres of dead asphalt to life by making it a place of human interaction and commerce, not just a place for cars to drive and park.

Language matters, so let’s stop talking about a day where tens of thousands of people flood onto our streets as a “Road Closure”; let’s start calling it a “Street Opening”.

Ask Pat: Pier Park shade

Posted on August 19, 2015August 20, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. 5 Comments.

Liz D asks—

Hey Pat, the New West Moms Group (#NWMG) loves Pier Park for the playground and sandbox and grassy space by the parking lot, but it is in dire need of some shade. Any chance some umbrellas or something can be added? Thanks!

Yikes! I’ve seen the #NWMG button on a lapel or two, I’ve heard rumours, but not being a Mom (and my Mom not living in #NewWest), this is my first personal encounter with this shadowy cabal…

So here’s the deal: you are probably asking the wrong guy. I can suggest such a thing to Parks staff, and they can let me know how much it would cost to do it, and if it is totally within some discretionary budget and fits the larger Parks plan, then it can probably happen pretty quick. But in that case it is just as likely to happen if you contact Parks folks yourself. It seems like one of those obvious ideas to make the park easier for people to use, and they can add it to their capital plan for improvements/maintenance on the park.

PCR have a great Contact form here that makes it easy for you to drop them suggestions like this: http://www.newwestpcr.ca/about_us/contact_us/contact_form.php

Now, this might raise the question: if I am a Big-shot Councillor, why don’t I just tell them to do this? What use am I? The answer is that I am still working out this entire being-a-politician thing, and I am still trying to figure out where my boundaries are, and where they should be, when asking staff to do things. And that probably takes a longer explanation.

There are obvious times when asking staff to do stuff is totally within bounds. I have asked staff to do administrative tasks related to my role as Councillor – dig out old reports for me, explain to me how a current policy works, reply to official correspondence, coordinate meeting schedules, etc. I have even given (and received) a fair number of opinions about what we should or shouldn’t be doing as a City. This is all obvious and above the board.

There is another level of asking staff to do stuff that is rather out of bounds: I cannot directly ask staff to change City policy or provide a direct service to me or my neighbour, or move their paving schedule or shift how parks operate. Directly asking staff for (as an example) specific roads to be paved is outside of the legislative power of a single Councillor, and is (IMO) a shitty way to wield influence. I just don’t think that is my role as an elected official, and to do so messes up the entire organization structure of how a complicated corporation like a City should work.

The sticky area in between is when someone convinces me (to continue the example) a road needs to be paved. At this point, I think the right path for me to address this is to get the person who wants it paved to write official correspondence to the City making the request (or send in a SeeClickFix). I can follow up and get clarity from the Engineering Department about what the paving schedule is, where that road is on the calendar, and can, in an extreme case, ask staff to go look at a road I am concerned about and make sure their assessment of it is still accurate. They may agree with me, or they may not, but I cannot (and should not) as a single elected official try to unilaterally override their professional opinion. That is bad for the organization.

However, just like I can sometimes be wrong, so can (again, only for this example) Engineering staff. If I feel this is the case, the proper path for me to try to change their mind is to take the idea to my Council colleagues, through Committees and/or Council Meetings. If I can convince the majority of Council to override the existing paving schedule to fix my favoured road first, then at least we have done it publically, any implied conflict is open and transparent, and Council can take the political flak or credit for it.

Now, this example is embarrassingly simplistic, and there are other paths a Councillor can take to make change in the City, but I am still new enough and idealistic enough to think that for me to give orders to staff that includes changing policy or spending money that would otherwise be allocated for other purposes, it needs to go through Council. What a newb.

So much like an earlier Ask Pat request regarding baby change tables at Pier Park, I think it is a good idea, am happy to suggest it to staff, am making no promises, and request that you make the same suggestion directly to Parks!

Thanks Mom.

On the Election

Posted on August 16, 2015August 17, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Why am I going to hate this election (and you should too)? It’s not the falsehoods, the equivocation, or even the lies. It is the willful and purposeful denial of any kind of objective reality.

There was a blip of faux outrage last week when a prominent NDP candidate in Toronto suggested that the secret NDP plan was to shut down Canada’s oil industry (the sarcasm there is mine). In the Conservative social media echo chamber, this is how it played out:

Now compare this faux outrage to the actual quote:

“A lot of the oil sands oil may have to stay in the ground if we’re going to meet our climate change targets”

This is about as innocuous a statement as can be made about the future of the Bituminous Sands and their impact on Canada’s greenhouse gas targets. Nothing in that quote is the least bit controversial, except perhaps to the small number of people who still think Anthropogenic Climate change is a hoax.

Our current government, under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has committed to reducing our greenhouse gasses, meeting internationally-agreed-upon reduction targets by 2030, and to transitioning to a carbon free economy by the end of the Century. Those are the stated aspirational goals of the Canadian government, announced by the Current Prime Minister back in June. These targets exist, and every party running in this election wants to meet or exceed those targets.

Similarly, there can be no dispute that the complete extraction of all 168 Billion barrels of proven reserves from the Bituminous Sands of the Alberta Basin will result in greenhouse gas emissions that would not allow us to meet those targets – the ones set by the current government of Stephen Harper. If we take them out of the ground, those oil reserves will represent all of our countries’ GHG emissions in 20 years, where currently, oil and gas only represent about 25% of our total emissions. So if we want to extract all of the oil and gas and meet our targets, we will need to do none of the other stuff… no cars, no agriculture, no aircraft, no cement plants or burning coal or heating our buildings. If we wish to keep doing those things, and if we plan to meet our GHG targets, then, sorry, folks, some of the bitumen is going to have to stay in the bituminous sands. It is simple math.

Back to that quote, though. Note the statement “A lot of the oil sands oil may have to stay in the ground if we’re going to meet our climate change targets” is not a policy statement, it isn’t an aspirational goal or a controversial idea – it is a simple statement of mathematics. How can this be controversial?

If there is a controversy to be found here, it is in the fact that no-one from the current government (or, for the most part, the opposition parties) has yet made this math explicit to their supporters: the plans of this government are fundamentally at odds with the stated goals of this government, once you take the time to do a little math. Perhaps the controversy here should be that she equivocated by saying “may” instead of “must”, and “if” instead of “when”.

After watching the interview, it was clear that the concept was goaded out of the NDP candidate by the Conservative on the panel by placing a quote from arch-conservative former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed into her mouth in an attempt to re-direct the discussion from the topic at hand (that the Prime Minister had shifted his position on the existence of a recession). When confronted with the math, the Conservative somehow thought admitting that math to industry sends the wrong message, she suggests we should somehow “stand up for the energy sector” in the face of this math.

Which, I presume, means lying about the math. To the Industry, to the Canadian public, to your voting base, to pretty much anyone who will listen.

But when the social media took over, this was somehow a reckless “policy” that was going to cost Canada 100,000 jobs, a number either pulled out of someone’s arse, or (more likely) an appeal to Ontario voters who still remember the “100,000 Job Cut” quote from the disastrous Tim Hudak Conservative campaign in that province (which circles us back to here, ugh).

The entire meme is as idiotic as it is predictable. Instead of having a discussion about what our international commitments mean to Canada, instead of talking about what those commitments mean to our employment prospects, instead of discussing the multitude of other jobs that could be created by investing in the climate change solutions instead of doubling down on the cause of the problem, we have this stupid meme where people are raging about how admitting the math of the problem is Bad for Bidness.

Fortunately, since the “story” broke, a few sources have called out the math-denying tactics of the Conservatives here, but not enough. This raises the question of how our discourse degraded to the point where stating a simple scientific fact, even one littered with weasel words like “may” and “if”, really so controversial? Is it any wonder that message control is so tight in this new era? And what does that mean for representative democracy?

So as much as I want you to pay attention and get informed this election, I don’t want that topic to dominate this blog site, so after this post, you will (probably) not read much about the Federal Election here. If you really want to hear my updated and ongoing opinions on this topic (Hi Mom!), go over to my Facebook Page, where I will be counting down the days to the election, with a thought of the day. Or, you know, buy me a beer and ask me.

Council Report – August 4, 2015 (!)

Posted on August 14, 2015August 14, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

It occurred to me that I didn’t do a Council Report for the strange little council meeting we held on August 4th. It was so quick, I almost missed it myself, which is interesting as I (as acting Mayor) was the chair! (see photo above, courtesy Councillor Puchmayr)

The meeting was called to allow a public opportunity to be heard on Bylaw No. 7772, 2015. There is a bit of a background story as to why we called a special meeting for this.

There are various rules about how a bylaw can be adopted, and some require public Opportunity to be Heard. The public must be given adequate notice, and have the opportunity to provide a written comment or appear before Council to plead their case about why the Bylaw should or should not be adopted. “Adequate notice” is defined in the Section 94 of the Community Charter (which is why big billboard signs are in front of lots undergoing rezoning, and why there are all those boring drawings in the City Page in the newspaper). There is also a requirement (in Section 135 of the Community Charter) that there must be at least one day between the third reading of a Bylaw and adoption, meaning a Council cannot write up, read, approve, and adopt a bylaw all in one day.

As amendments to Bylaws take Bylaws themselves, the factors above caused us to not be able to amend Bylaw 7509, 2012 during our last meetings of the summer, as it require an amending Bylaw, the aforementioned 7772, 2015. The reason we needed to amend it is just as arcane and bureaucratic.

Bylaw 7509, 2012 was essentially a land-exchange deal between the City and a couple of land owners on Queensborough. You can go through the report and look at the drawings, but essentially, pieces of road allowance were sold to the adjacent land owners to rectify an historic alignment issue. Apparently, one of the landowners never executed the agreement, leaving a stranded piece of land, and was now ready to execute, with a fairly tight deadline for closure. Problem is, the Provincial Land Title Office requirements for registered drawings have changed since 2012, so the work had to be re-surveyed, and since the drawings referred to in the 2012 Bylaw are not the same as the drawings being used in 2015 for the land exchange, an amendment to the 2012 Bylaw was required to refer to the 2015 drawings.

So in the interest of public service, Council agreed to a Special Meeting to allow for proper advertizing, an opportunity to be heard, and adoption of the Bylaw. As no-one submitted any written correspondence, and no-one took the opportunity to be heard at the Special Meeting, council voted to adopt the new Bylaw. The updated drawings are no the Law of the Land.

We also (since we were getting together anyway) adopted Bylaw 7771, 2015 (Development Agreement for Riversky, which was given Third Reading on July 13, 2015), and Bylaw 7740, 2015 (Zoning Amendment for 318 and 328 Agnes, which saw Third Reading on April 27, 2015).

And we were done in 5 minutes, my short tenure in the Mayor’s Chair over in the blink of an eye.

We will see you all on August 31st, where Council is Meeting at the Anvil Centre. Yes, we are taking Council on the Road at the end of Summer, meeting in three different neighbourhoods. After the Downtown meeting, we will meet on September 14 at the Queensborough Community Centre, then on September 28th at the Sapperton Pensioners Hall. Should be fun!

Art in my absence

Posted on August 6, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I’m going out of town this weekend!

Yes, I am actually leaving New Westminster for a weekend. I’m visiting my favourite Mom-in-Law on Saturna Island and giving a talk at the Gulf Island National Park Reserve sunset stories series on one of my favourite topics.

That means I am going to miss one of New Westminster’s best annual events – so I am making up for it by encouraging you to attend in my place and give the organizers my regrets.

The New Westminster Cultural Crawl is happening Saturday and Sunday, has been powered by the indomitable Trudy at the Van Dop Gallery for 12 years now. The Crawl is an opportunity for you to have a New West weekend staycation, and interact with literally dozens of artists across several venues. It is self-guided, no stress, and many events are interactive, so like the best of Staycations: all fun, no pressure. It doesn’t matter what neighbourhood you are in, and there is enough variety to keep everyone entertained.

Yes, there are a lot of galleries, including the incredible Van Dop, the Arts Council one in Queens Park, where the current showing explores local LGBTQ artists (fitting for the start of next week’s New West Pride week), and the amazingly popular 6th Street Pop-up space brought to you by everyone’s favourite brick & mortar shop. There are also various other ways to interact with art and artists. I may be biased, but I share Gord Hobbis’ opinion that the craftsmanship in old bicycles is a beautiful expression of art. There will be a family-friendly outdoor movie at Port Royal Park, an interactive celebration of Irving House’s 150th birthday, and the entire City will be, apparently, awash in “Capital” Teas.

The entire program is available here, so stay near home, enjoy some creative local artists, have a cuppa tea, and be inspired by your neighbours.

As a bonus, if the artists inspire you and/or your kids, take that inspiration out on a concrete wall! Another amazing young community leader has coordinated a fun opportunity to help beautify a bit of Downtown. You and yours can take a paint brush and add to a mural to a currently-uninspiring concrete wall. This is a neighbourhood-driven neighbourhood improvement project that will leave a fun legacy, who couldn’t support this?

Or you can came to Saturna Island and snooze through some boring former academic droning on about geology.

PS: I’ll be back for the Rainbow Flag Raising at City hall on Monday, and hope to attend several of the New West Pride events, but maybe I’ll go on about that more next post…

PPS: Except to say if you like Whitecaps soccer, and who doesn’t, you can get discount tickets and a pre-game party in New West by going to the Pride Kick-off this Satruday! Enter here, and use the promo code PRIDENEWWEST.

FPS: And you should probably also pick up some tickets (while they are still available) for the 80’s and 90’s Dance Party at Match Pub next Friday. They are ridiculously cheap, and the Starlight Casino is a huge supporter of New West Pride. More on this next week, but I didn’t want to wait until tickets are sold out!

Voting Hardly Matters.

Posted on August 4, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Contrary to the main narrative in the media this past weekend, the longest-ever election campaign in modern Canadian history was not launched by the Prime Minister’s speech on Sunday. It was just the moment when the longest-ever election in Canadian history entered a new phase. The election has been going on since the day of the first ham-fisted “He’s Just Not Ready / Nice Hair” video. We have now just entered a new phase of enhanced advertising, before the post-Labour-Day orgiastic full-court-press.

All along, you will be encouraged to vote for change or to stay the course; for the good of your children, for the good of your job; to protect yourself from terrorists or taxes or something called the TPP. I am not going to discourage you from voting for whatever is important to you, but I will suggest that voting on October 19th is the least effective thing you can do for democracy this election.

Your vote will be one of the 15,000,000 cast in October. It may even be one of the handful that swings a riding one way or another, but it is more than likely going to be lost in the crowd. Your chosen candidate will win or lose your riding by thousands of votes*, and it is only through accumulating those vote gaps of thousands across the country that we will determine who gets to make choices that impact your life, taxes, and the future of the planet.

Yes, the end of that previous sentence underlies the reason why you should vote, but it also emphasizes why you should do more than just vote.

Here are the three things you should be doing before October 19, all of which will be more important than voting on October 19.

1: Inform yourself. 15 Million people voted last election, but almost 10 Million who were eligible to vote chose not to. The most commonly cited reason for this mass disenfranchisement is that it doesn’t matter. That sounds vaguely like my initial point, but it is strikingly different: election results matter.

I have no doubt that Canada would have gone in a different direction domestically, regionally, and internationally if Michael Ignatieff or Jack Layton had become Prime Minister in 2011, or even if Stephen Harper was forced by minority status to find support across the floor. People who say “elections don’t matter” are cowardly avoiding the issue, and are shirking their responsibility to inform themselves about the issues in their community and their nation.

Informing yourself is hard. You need to get out of your echo chamber and hear opinions that disagree with your opinions, or even your deeply held convictions. The Social Media encourages these echo chambers, these individual bubbles, where you are so drowned by self-supporting noise that you can’t hear anything else. Two perfect examples from my Twitter Stream today:

The elections is going to be filled with this kind of hyperbole and ridiculosity**, and you have to filter past that stuff and try to find the core of the ideas. You also have to get past “I’ll never vote for X, because I’ll never vote for X” type of tautology, and understand what you are voting for. Do the policies offered by the Parties approach your concerns in different ways? What do independent organizations say about those approaches? What are the built-in biases of those independent organizations? Perhaps more effectively: What other nations have been more or less successful at dealing with these issues, and which Party’s proposed policies closest match those successful nations’ approaches?

Yeah, this seems like a long approach, but we have an 11-week campaign, you have the entire world’s database of knowledge at your fingertips. Who knows what you might learn along the line. And you might just find a reason to vote.

2: Get Involved If you think you know the issues, and know how you want to vote, the biggest thing you can do is help your chosen candidate. Campaigns are run on money and volunteer energy, and you can provide both.

You can donate up to $1,500 to your chosen candidate, and for every candidate you would like to support, you can give each of them up to $1,500. Political donations qualify for tax credits, as well, so you get a chunk of them back in the spring with your income taxes. Donate up to $400, and you get 75% of it back in your tax return, regardless of your income level. Donate $1,500 and you get $650 back.

Volunteering is even more important. You can walk down to the local campaign office and there are any of a thousand tasks you can help with. You might be able to work the phones, collect and manage data, help coordinate other volunteers, go door-to-door with a candidate, manage data, stuff envelopes, deliver and construct lawn signs, bake cookies, sharpen pencils, drive a person to the polls… there are a million little tasks that take a bit of human help.

3: Spread the word Decided you are going to vote? Informed yourself on the issues, and chose your preferred candidate? Tell people about it, and take someone with you to the polls! We live in an era of social media where it has never been easier to spread and share ideas. If you like a candidate enough to vote for her, you probably like her enough to tell people why, in the hopes they also will vote for her. The best way to make your vote count more is to take a half a dozen people to the poll booth with you! Car pool, go for coffee or beer after.

So vote, because you can and because you should. There is a tiny chance it will shift a riding, or the fate of the nation, but more likely your favourite will win or lose by thousands of votes – one of them may as well be yours. The only way you are sure to win is if you get informed and get involved in the election, because you will be living and learning and taking part in this messy democracy of ours. And who knows where that will take you?

Patrick Johnstone

Fan of cities; Mayor of a great one.

Author: Patrick Johnstone