Labour Council

As I made clear in my previous post, my “machine” comprises volunteers, friends, donors, and a diverse group of supporters who have made this campaign fun. I really hope I have the stuff to make it successful. But what about the New Westminster and District Labour Council? If it isn’t a “slate”, it isn’t a “party”, it isn’t an all-powerful shadowy cabal bent on power, what is it? 

*I need to emphasise here, I am not speaking on behalf of the Labour Council, nor have I asked their permission to print this or asked them to review this. Everything below is what I have learned from my experience as a first time candidate that has been endorsed by the Labour Council. Other candidates may have different views and different experiences, and I can’t speak for them.*

When I started thinking about running for City Council in the spring, I reached out to several people for advice, including my immediate support group, a few prominent local business people, some volunteers on boards around town that I’ve worked with, and some of the current Council. I also went to City Hall and had a meeting with the Mayor.

I asked basic questions: what’s it like? Is my understanding of the job accurate? Am I electable? Through all of these conversations, I received nothing but encouragement, and more than a little advice.

Several people advised me to send a note to the Labour Council to let them know I was considering running, and so I did. A few weeks later they sent me an application for endorsement. It was a survey similar to the ones I have filled out with the NewsLeaderRecordVancouver SunDogwood InitiativeAlliance for the Arts, etc., and not unlike the questions I am being asked at the doorstep: Why are you running? What is your history in the City? Why should people vote for you? What do you think are the City’s biggest issues? I thoughtfully filled it out, and a few weeks later I received an invitation for an interview. 

At the interview, it was more of the same. I was asked questions about the Pattullo Bridge (something I was happy to talk about!), about solid waste management (another topic I was comfortable with), about examples of my community service (an easy one), and about what my plan was to get elected- did I have a support team? Did I have any idea how to fundraise? Did I have any name recognition in the City? It was a friendly and non-confrontational discussion, and my impression coming out of it was they were mostly interested to see if I knew my stuff, was able to present myself as a rational and reasonable individual.

A month or more later, I was informed that I should anticipate receiving NWDLC endorsement, and that I should contact the other endorsed candidates to determine if we wanted to work together. I noted at the time that there are people that are endorsed by the Labour Council that are not members of labour unions, and there are people running in the election that are in labour unions but were not endorsed. Clearly, “membership” was not a primary selection criteria.

The other candidates and I arranged a meeting sometime in September, and discussed if there was anything we wanted to share resources on. I had already been out on the trail for about two months, and had already done a lot of the prep work, so it was an interesting discussion.

Did we want to share design services? (No, I have my own skilled volunteer). Do we want to share pamphlet printing costs? (No, I already have that worked out). Do we want to share the cost of an office? (Sounds like a good idea). Do we want to pool sign printing costs? (Yes! Darn things are expensive!) Do we want to run a phone bank for Election Day? (yeah, I’ll share that cost), Do we want to hire a staff for the phone bank? (No, I have enough volunteers). Etc. etc. At no step was I pressured to buy into anything I didn’t want to buy, participation was voluntary at every step, and the discussion was between me and the other candidates, no puppet-masters pulling strings here.

Of course, the endorsement meant that labour unions were more likely to provide funds to my campaign. As a proud member of CUPE, I primarily had access to CUPE funding, and up to now, that is the only union that has cut me a cheque. Fundraising is not completely over, but I estimate somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of my funding will come from Labour, the rest from individual donations. Did that money help? Absolutely. Was it essential to my running a strong campaign? Probably not. Besides, non-endorsed candidates had received money from labour in previous elections.

The third leg of the “Labour Slate” bogeyman is that somehow my independence as a Councillor is sacrificed by that endorsement. I can unequivocally say no member of the Labour Council has ever told me what to say on this campaign, nor have they told me how I will be expected to vote at the Council table. If anyone thinks Chuck Puchmayr,  Bill Harper and I are going to agree on everything at the Council Table because of our shared endorsement, they don’t know any of us very well. We all have our own ideas, and our own passions about the City, and I look forward to debating with them. Further, I have a five year legacy of writing my opinions, my ideas, and my vision for this City, long before I sought or received endorsement, and I stand by that record.

As for the fear that “Labour dominated” councils are monolithic and all powerful, pushing taxes up while writing sweet union deals? The evidence just doesn’t reflect that. Here is a table that shows the total Municipal tax paid per resident in the 17 Municipalities in the Lower Mainland, according to those radical lefties at the Fraser Institute. The red bars represent Municipalities where a majority of City Council was endorsed by their District Labour Council last election. I’m sorry, the correlation just isn’t there:

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So instead of tilting at the windmill of “Labour Slates”, I encourage you to go to this page, and see what your neighbours in New Westminster are saying about my candidacy. I have always challenged people in this City to look past the rhetoric and the silliness, and look at the facts. I plan to bring that fact-based straight-forward approach to City Council. That is who I am, and that is why I have received endorsements from many people across New Westminster. I am proud that the Labour Council thinks I am a candidate worthy of endorsement, and I am proud of the other endorsements I have received from people I respect in the City’s volunteer, public service, and business communities.

The Machine

I’m surprised this is the story: that some portion of the 21 independent candidates running for council received endorsement from the New Westminster District Labour Council, like they have in every City in the Lower Mainland for decades. I’m surprised that for some reason this requires three stories and an Editorial in the same edition of a newspaper, all with rather sideways assertions of something untoward, from being unfair to undermining democracy, complete with a nefarious-sounding expression: “the Machine”. Everyone should, apparently, fear “the Machine”.

For a subject that is allegedly “front and centre in the community”, it has hardly been raised at the 1,500+ doors I have knocked on since August. Instead, people want to talk about the Pattullo Bridge and truck traffic; condo development, high rises, and attracting businesses to New Westminster; taxes, spending, and wages; community amenities like Canada Games Pool; and when we will see that high school. You know, actual issues facing our community.

However, as a candidate, it isn’t enough to say “that doesn’t matter”. It is my job to share my view of the issue with you. This is going to take two blog posts, because there is so much wrong in what is being inferred around the NWDLC endorsement. I am first going to talk about my campaign.

Disclosure: Is my campaign backed by a “Machine”? Absolutely! Let me describe this Machine to you:

I have an amazing Campaign Manager (not a member of a labour union, not a member of any political party), who understands how to get my name out, has a keen sense for the mood of the City, knows a lot of people in the City, and has earned (through decades of community service) the respect of the community. She has provided unbelievably good guidance, advice, and planning, and has been quick to call me out when I might be headed in the wrong direction. She is brilliant, dedicated, and effective – a serious “Machine”.

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I have a great Graphic Designer who has taken my pencil sketches and vague ideas and created a clean, crisp, effective look for my signs, ads, webpage and pamphlets. A stay-at-home-dad and freelancer, he is not a member of a labour union, is not a member of any political party, is volunteering at strange hours to meet various deadlines, and has an amazing eye for design. The guy is a total Machine.

 

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I have a sign coordination volunteer (a Machine with a portable drill!), an ad coordinator to keep up with sometimes-frustrating newspaper standards and guidelines (another organizational Machine), a data-management person who is helping with the management of my door knocking (a real database and census Machine). All of them volunteers, one of them is a member of a labour union (I think – I actually never thought to ask), and I have no idea if any of them are members of political parties. Same goes for the guy who took my photos and edited my video, and the great people who volunteered to take part in the video. Add to that the amazingly cool couple who made me neat little buttons as conversation starters, and people who have called me up and asked for signs on their yard. 

I have been door knocking since August, and every two-hour shift I have done includes a volunteer. I have had more than a dozen volunteers stand up and volunteer to go hit doorsteps with me, every single one of them a person I respect and want to have standing beside me at the doorstep, and every one of them has wanted to stand beside me on the doorstep and tell their neighbours that they support me. I set up a Doodle poll, sent out a call for volunteers, and I’m amazed how quickly people step up to fill the roles. Machines, all.

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I had a fundraiser, and had more than 100 people show up on a Sunday evening to show support to my campaign. That room was an amazing cross section of New Westminster: labour activists, environmentalists, business owners, professionals, retired people and students, and yes, there were a lot of NDP supporters, but there were also Liberals and a few true-blue Conservatives. More than a dozen small business owners in New Westminster donated door prizes to make the fundraiser more successful, and local businesses provided the food and drink. Everyone had fun, and we exceeded our fundraising goals. Thanks to a team of 10 volunteers, it ran like a finely-tuned Machine.

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Speaking of fundraising, I have had almost 100 different individual people donate to my campaign. Individuals from across the community: small business operators, union workers and non-union workers, managers, scientists, students, retired people, parents.

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None of them asked for a benefit for donating to my campaign, except that I do everything I can to win, and keep being the person I am. Some people gave $20, some gave a few hundreds, but the amount doesn’t matter as much as their expression of belief in what I stand for and that I can do a good job. These “cogs” allowed me to have a well-financed campaign, better than I thought I might have. This allowed me to buy signs with a little colour splash, to buy ads in the local papers, to make my pamphlets two-sided and colour: the things that make a campaign look professional. I couldn’t have done any of this without them.

None of them donated to me because I was part of a “Machine”. They donated to me because I have interacted with them over the last decade as a volunteer, a community activist, and a vocal advocate for sustainable development and our community. 

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In fact, every person I listed above has donated money or provided volunteer effort to my campaign for the same reason – they know me, and they believe in me. They have seen the work I have done over the last decade in New Westminster, from organizing Community Groups like the NWEP to delegating to Council on important issues and leading conversations about important topics on-line and in print. They started reading my Blog or following me on Twitter, and liked what they read. They saw me seek out and secure grants to help raise the new roof on the Curling Club, and they saw me show up on event day and help set up tables, then show up at the end to take tables down again. They saw me across the committee table at another meeting we were both suffering through because we knew we could make a difference in the City. They know I have been busting my ass for the last decade in this City, and they want to support me. Their support is incredibly humbling, and fills me with a desire to do right by them.

Now, I am not in this campaign to run other people down. I don’t have to, because I would rather run on my positive contributions, my work ethic, my commitment, and my ideas. But a few candidates in this election who have nothing positive to talk about as far as their vision for the City wish to reduce all of what I have said here to a meme about me being supported by a mysterious and shadowy “Machine”. Frankly, I find that insulting. Not just to me and my demonstrated dedication to this City, but to all of those people I’ve described who have volunteered and contributed to my campaign because they know who I am and what I stand for. Those people, they are my Machine.

As for receiving a Labour endorsement? I’m damn proud that the Labour Council also recognized the good work I have been doing in this City, and saw me as someone they could recommend to their members as a good candidate for Council. I will discuss that more in Part 2 of this blog post, in the next few days.

 

Media, Social and Coroplast

There have been a few stories in the extant media about how this fancy new “Social Media” works, and what it means in the election. Speaking as either the local expert in social media, or the third best so far depending on which paper you read, I thought I would talk about the media, aside from the message…

I love social media, because it has been good to me. I enjoy writing, and it gives me an outlet. I love conversations and debates, and one is always available on-line. I have also met many great people through social media connections. Pretty much my entire campaign team (aside from my long-suffering partner and Financial Agent) are people I met in some way through social media, from the cool couple who make my “P@J” buttons to my exceptional graphic designer and the best darn Campaign Manager money can’t buy.  

But if there is one thing I have learned on the doorstep (and there is more than one, but let’s avoid that tangent just for now) it’s that our hyper-connected social media worlds can give us a false sense of connection to our physical neighbours. Many people I meet on the doorstep have never heard of @NWimby, never mind the blog I have spent 5 years stuffing with words. To get those people connected, even in this on-line age, requires traditional media. You need to buy ads in the local newspapers (which is why we candidates sometimes beg for money), and you need to do the oldest form of advertizing ever: hanging out the shingle. 

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The shingle we hang out today is made of Coroplast (corrugated plastic), and we don’t just stick it in front of our own homes, but hope others will hang it in front of theirs, to get the name out into the wild. In a local election, when the TV and Radio exposure is nearly non-existent, this is still the most effective way to get your name out. Of course, I put my website URL on there, hoping to send folks to my website and other social media so they can find out who I am, but the Coroplast still rules. 

So if you “like” me on Facebook, if you “follow” me on Twitter, if you read and enjoyed a “NWimby.blogspot.ca” blog post, then please spread the word, not just through the social media, but by contacting me at info@patrickjohnstone.ca or calling me at 778-791-1002, so I can hang a shingle in your yard and spread the good news.

Thanks!   

Trees and asphalt

Allow me to start with the obligatory apology for not writing more frequently. I’m busy.

This story in the NewsLeader caught my attention, though, because it demonstrates a failure at many levels. That we would cut down mature trees in our City to make it easier for a few cars to move a few hundred metres to the next traffic constriction is an example of a planning process gone wrong.

Where to begin?

The City has recently outlined its consultations on an Urban Forest Management Strategy. At the open house last month at Century House (about 300m from where these trees are slated to be removed), staff and consultants talked about how important a healthy tree inventory is to our City – providing shade to reduce energy costs, evapotranspiration to reduce utility costs and improve rainwater quality, noise baffling, light pollution reduction, critical habitat for pollinators and songbirds, etc. etc. At the same time, the city’s tree inventory is being reduced at a faster rate than population growth, and although our current inventory (as percentage of land cover) is similar o other cities in the region, it lags far behind the North American average and the level identified as desirable to receive all of the benefits that healthy urban forest can provide.

We don’t yet know where the Urban Forest Management Strategy is going yet, but the goal is pretty clear: lets stop cutting down mature tress for bad reasons, so when we have to cut them down for good reasons, it has less impact, and we don’t have to spend so much replacing them.

The story above is an example of cutting down mature trees for bad reasons.

The first-level reason for removing the trees sounds OK – they want to make a bus stop more accessible and functional. I’m all for it, accessibility at that stop is really important, as it is commonly used by seniors to access the nearby Century House and the Massey Theatre, and by students accessing the High School. Constant improvement of our sustainable transportation network is something I have been calling for in my many years on the Advisory Committee for transit, Bicycles and Pedestrians.

However, improving the accessibility of this stop does not require the removal of any trees. What does require the removal of the trees is protecting two parking spots and creating the illusion of “getting cars moving”.

Allow me to explain.

The current bus stop is at a spot on 8th Avenue where there is only one east-bound lane, the rest of the road width being eaten up by a westbound lane and a south-turning left turn bay.

Looking east on 8th Ave, at where The City wants to remove trees and
grass to add more asphalt. Google Maps image.

 One allegation made by the City’s transportation department is that the bus here “holds cars up” and creates congestion, so they want to remove the greenspace of the boulevard to make a “bus stop lane”. This is absurd for two reasons. That bus stop is currently used by the 128 and the C4. The 128 is normally a 30-minute service, but bumps up to 20 minutes during rush hour. The C4 is a half-hour service. That means up to 5 times an hour, for 20 seconds, a bus blocks the lane. A lane that has a stop light that is red for half of every minute 24 hours a day, all day. Today I dropped by the site and noted th 128 was 300 metres east of the bus stop – stopped by the line of cars waiting to get through the light at 6th. Removing the busses completely on this route will do absolutely nothing to reduce the congestion on 8th in the afternoon rush (the only time it is congested in any meaningful way).

I need to be clear here: they don’t want to remove the trees and green space to accommodate the bus, they want to do it to accommodate the cars allegedly “congested” by the bus – to get the bus out of the cars’ way. As a reason to remove healthy mature trees, this argument is silly.

The suggested (and blithely discounted) option is to move the bus stop 100m to the east, where the road expands out to 2 lanes.

100m to the east, where the road expands  to accommodate parking.
This Google Maps thing is pretty cool. 

No-one is saying so, but it is clear that the reason this is being discounted is the need to remove two on-street parking spots. The idea that this spot being 100 m further east will “provide incentive to jaywalk” is ridiculous, as there are bus stops across the City that are located 100m from an intersection, and the City is already resistant to calls from the Students at NWSS for a mid-block crosswalk on 8th Ave to alleviate sidewalk congestion on 8th and stop jaywalking. The loss of parking spots is most likely why they can state “We don’t have consensus in the building”. So to reiterate: we are talking about removing greenspace and trees to accommodate occasional parking needs, not to accommodate a bus.

In summary, the thinking by the City is wrong here, and this is why we need an Urban Forest Management Strategy, and why we need to change our planning of roadspace to reflect the priorities set by the new Master Transportation Plan.

There are often good reasons to remove trees, but none can be found here. Instead, we are given a series of bad planning compromises and post-hoc rationalization that results in the removal of perfectly healthy mature trees. And all the benefits of a healthy tree canopy that were discussed in the Open House? They sound exactly like what Ms. Broad is describing she and her neighbours receive from these trees. The ones the City would not allow them to cut down two years ago.

Support

Last weekend, we held the big event of the Campaign, a “FUNdraiser” at the Royal City Curling Club. We had a few expert coaches come out and show people enough basics of the game that they could have a fun two- or three-end game, and judging by the laughter and smiles, everyone has a great time trying out the Roarin’ Game. We then had dinner, prepared by Michael and Lindsay at Re-Up BBQ, and Jorden from Steel & Oak Brewing tapped a special cask of Raspberry Roggen-Weizen. I made a speech, people pretty much laughed at all the right times, all went well!

You can see the many photos here.

I tried to thank everyone personally: the attendees, the volunteers who helped with the organization, the people who donated to help with the campaign, and the many local businesses who donated doorprizes. If I missed thanking you personally, we will surely catch up in huge coming weeks!

What was special for me looking around that room was seeing the broad support from across the community. There were leaders from the business community, the labour community, and the arts community. There were people voting in New Westminster for the first time, and 4th Generation New Westies. I was honoured to feel the support of that room, and was energized for the race ahead over the next 5 weeks.

The audience also got to see Version 1.1 of the Campaign Video – where people around the City talk about their reasons for supporting my Campaign:

Many thanks the Daniel Fortin for film and edit work, and to the many people who took a few minutes out of their busy lives to talk about what they want in a City Councillor. 

The Race is on!

With only 6 weeks to go, the Campaign is now switching into a higher gear. Our Fundraiser was very successful, both in the sense of raising funds and creating excitement about the race ahead, and I will blog in a little more detail about that in coming days. My paperwork is filed at City Hall, and the field is starting to flesh out – we now know what kind of a race we will be running…

The first phase of doorknocking is over, and phase two begins this week. More importantly, the Candidates are going to start rolling out platforms for your review. I have developed a bunch of policy notes, drawn from my personal experiences, consultation with knowledgeable people from across the City, and two months of knocking on people’s doors.

If you click the “issues” tab, you will see the issues, large and small, I will be talking about during this election. These notes will continue to be added to this website with increasing detail as the campaign rolls on. In the meantime, if you have a specific question or concern, please drop me an e-mail, and I would love to have a conversation about your ideas.

Thanks!

Trees: a Strategy before a Bylaw

Yeah, I am depressingly unproductive on this blog these days. Such is the nature of the adventure I am currently on. I simply don’t have time to write when I am out knocking on doors and doing the thousand other little things one must do to run a decent campaign.

I also don’t want to write about election stuff here. There are some subtle changes to the Elections Act this go-around, and Municipal Candidates have to have those “Authorized by Financial Agent” statements on all advertising materials. The definition of advertising materials in this digital age is a little fuzzy, but one interpretation is that Blogs, Facebook, and twitter could be interpreted as such if someone thinks you are using it to plead for votes. Therefore, I have a separate Campaign Website (with a bit of a Blog there), a Campaign-only Facebook page, and a Campaign-only Twitter account, all with appropriate “Authorized by…” statements. I’ll do my campaigning over there.

That doesn’t stop me from having opinions over here, if I only had time to write about them.

One thing I do have an opinion about is the City’s Urban Forest Management Strategy. I have whinged more than once on this Blog about the lack of tree protection in our City. I am glad to see that action is being taken.

I could go on length (again) about the benefits of trees in the urban environment. instead I want to talk about the difference one tree made. A good friend of mine lives in a mid-century three-floor walk-up in Brow of the Hill. She lives in a nice south-facing third floor apartment. In the spring, The property owner decided the very healthy century-old tree on the edge of the property was a hassle, and unceremoniously had it chopped down. This decision had a huge effect on my friend’s life.

The same tree that dropped leaves on the parking lot of the building also provided shade to her small, top floor apartment. Like most buildings of the era, her home has thin insulation and poor air circulation. In the summer, it sometimes got warm, but the tree kept it tolerable. This year, without the tree, it was stifling for much of the summer. She had to make the hard decision to move, buy an air conditioner, or suffer. With her very modest income, the suffer seemed her only real option, although she is resourceful, and is hoping to get her landlord to paint the roof a reflective colour. If she knew ahead of time, she might have been able to make the case for the tree.

This is just one story, but demonstrates that trees are not just nice things to have around, they have a real effect on the livability of our community. New Westminster currently lags behind most Lower Municipalities on tree protection, and this Urban Forest Strategy aims to bring us into more of a leadership position.

Although the number of trees per square kilometre in New Westminster is pretty close to our regional neighbours, we lag behind the North American average, and even further behind the optimum level to receive all of the benefits of a healthy urban tree canopy. Unfortunately, we are still currently losing trees faster than they are replaced, and the rate of loss has not slowed even as growth of density in the City has slowed. Just in the last 10 years, there has been a 15% decline in the urban forest canopy in New Westminster. It is time for action.

What I am most excited about? The City is taking a more comprehensive approach than just slapping a Tree Bylaw in place. A Bylaw may be part of the eventual strategy, but a well-designed Bylaw needs to be supported by a larger strategy if it is going to protect your right to enjoy your residential property, not be costly to implement, and assure that our Urban Forest stops shrinking and starts growing again.

It is early times for the strategy, but there will be an open house this Wednesday at Century house in the (apropos) Arbutus Room. It is early times yet, but if you care about trees and the livability of our City, you should show up for an hour and provide your comments and support.

There are lots of nice trees nearby Century house you can hug on your way in.

Still Banging on Doors!

Here is a long-delayed update on campaign progress. It has been an incredibly busy last month, and the results of all that work will soon become apparent, as the campaign season is entering full swing. It hasn’t all been eating Salmon Chowder

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Last week was interesting for several reasons:

Other candidates have finally started to pop up. Although none of the announcements so far have been surprising, it is good to know we will have a diverse crowd of interested people ready to share their vision of the community and contribute to the conversation. For myself, I picked up my package from City Hall and am filling in the paperwork!

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Last weekend I knocked on my 1,000th door of the campaign. I have had doorstep conversations in every neighbourhood of the City, from Hume Park to Queensborough, and have learned a lot about how different issues are viewed by the vibrant mix of people we have in New Westminster. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and even the people who I may disagree with on some policy ideas seem to be happy that someone is willing to engage.

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Also, last week was the first chance for multiple candidates to sit down and answer questions for a group of voters. The Massey Victory Heights Residents Association invited the declared candidates to their monthly meeting to have a “living room chat” about issues in the City. Even a few people from Quayside and Downtown managed to show up. The discussion was wide-ranging (common topics: the High School replacement project, traffic, City Hall responsiveness, the Anvil Centre, and how to engage voters better), but the conversation was civil and the ideas were flowing. It was a very positive experience.

This week’s efforts are in putting together a few interesting campaign materials, and finalizing the plans for Sunday’s fundraiser (have I mentioned my FUNdraiser yet? It will be fun, and you really should buy tickets, because there is a good chance we will sell out before Saturday), and working on the next phase of door-knocking and webpage updates. Now that the campaign has started in earnest, expect more of the materials I have been working on with my Campaign Team to arrive here. The campaign platform will be outlined piece by piece with increasing detail on this page, as I find time to write and make comprehensible the amalgamation of what I know, what I am hearing, and what I could see working in New Westminster.

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In the meantime, a big thank you to all the volunteers who have helped so far, and for the much larger number who have offered to help, but who I haven’t put to work yet. I will be in touch soon.

For everyone else: I’ll see you out there on the doorstep!

…and that’s all I have to say about the Whitecaps.

Yes, I am busy these days and haven’t had the writing time I would like, but I thought it was appropriate for me to finish off the Whitecaps story here, to follow up on my earlier optimism turned into creeping suspicion. People on the doorstep are still talking about the issue, and I think there are lessons to be learned from this process that deserve a bit of a debrief.

I’m going to come right out and say I think Council made the right decision, and from listening to their comments at the meeting and in the press, they made it for the right reasons.

As many of us suspected, it came down to the money. A rushed estimate had the City adding more than $11 Million in capital improvements to Queens Park to accommodate the needs of the Whitecaps and the other park users. This compared to $3 Million the City was already budgeting to spend in similar projects over the same timeframe. The “gap” between those two amounts was the central debate.

The breakdown, from the September 15th Meeting. 

Was this the best way for the City to spend $8 Million in capital improvements for Parks and Recreation right now? How does this priority line up against the need to address the Canada Games Pool, or to provide a second sheet of ice in Queens Park, as was included in the Master Plan? (admitted bias here: Ms.NWimby is tired of having to drive to Coquitlam to play hockey when we have two skating rinks within a few blocks of our house but there is no women’s hockey in New Westminster).

To be fair, we don’t know half the deal – the amount of money the Whitecaps were willing to provide, and the potential for other revenues arising from the project. Because of the nature of in camera negotiations, and because I’m sure the Whitecaps don’t want to make their offer public knowledge, as they are likely to be shopping around to other Cities, we can only speculate on whether their contribution would be enough to cover the capital investment costs, or if the less-tangible benefits to the community would have been worth the investment. Clearly, Council did not feel the offer was good enough.

Aside from the money, there were other reasons to support or oppose this project. Some argued the cachet of hosting a USL Pro Team, while other argued it was inappropriate to have what is essentially a for-profit private business operate on publicly-owned park land. If there is one thing I lament through this process, it’s that we didn’t really have a chance to hash out those debates in a meaningful way as a community. I think it would have been instructive going forward as we plan for the next phase of our city’s growth.

Alas, the timing was too short. If the Whitecaps had come around 12 or 18 months ago with a vision, there may (or may not) have had a different result, but we definitely would have had a different process and discussion.

On that timeline, we could have done the due diligence on the plan and the cost. We could have seen a mock-up of what the proposal was and make the inevitable and sometimes subtle changes that would be required to address unforeseen issues. New Westminster baseball could have been better engaged in the planning process, and could have been empowered to build the facility of their dreams without the risk of a lost season that may have hurt their organizations’ momentum. We could have done a comprehensive evaluation of the financial impact on the community and residents (good and bad). We, the residents, could have had a discussion about costs/benefits based on an actual plan, not on conjecture and suspicion. The Whitecaps could have worked with the Queens Park Neighbourhood to reduce impacts, and with TransLink and the Justice Institute or the Uptown malls to develop parking alternatives.

We could have also had time to not mix all of this business planning with the other big debate – is this something the City wants? The (I’m sorry, but it is ideological) debate around the entire idea of having a professional sports franchise operate in our limited parks facilitates. Some oppose this as too financially risky, others on pure ideological reasons, but that important discussion in the City could not happen in a meaningful way as part of this rushed business plan

This may turn out to be a bullet we dodged, or it may turn out to be an opportunity lost, and I guess we won’t really know. However, what was lost was an opportunity for a better community discussion, again forced by an unreasonably tight deadline.

One interesting thing that did come out of this was this post-mortem article in the NewsLeader which shows the balance between boosterism for the City and prudent municipal management. This is a theme that I will be talking about more as the election goes on. If I ever find the time to write!

More on the Whitecaps

It’s been a while since I commented on the Whitecaps proposal for New Westminster – not that everyone isn’t asking. For reasons that should be painfully obvious by now, I have been knocking on doors over the last several weeks, asking people about their issues, concerns, gripes and kudos about the City.

Actually, outside of two neighbourhoods, the topic has rarely come up. However, in Queens Park and Glenbrook North, pretty much every second person raises the topic. If I was to summarize the reaction (acknowledging there is nothing at all scientific about my survey techniques), I would say there is a slight majority of people in favour of the project, but that wider support also seems shallower (in that people say “It looks like a good idea, and it would be pretty cool, if they can work out the issue of…”). Where the opposition may not be quite as wide, but it definitely makes up for it in depth (those who are opposed are really opposed, and have a variety of reasons).

When asked my opinion, I have to give the honest, but completely unsatisfying, answer: I just don’t know! There is still so little information available on the project, that I hate to approve or oppose it out of hand. To quote a friend of mine quoting a friend of his in a ranting Facebook post last week (copyright attribution avoided to protect the possibly innocent):

“I am getting so MAD at the stupidity surrounding the Whitecaps USL team proposal. There are so many lies going around about how Queen’s Park will be paved over for parking, Youth teams will suffer BLAH BLAH BLAH. Where are these people getting their info from? Stop the freakin’ fear mongering people WTF. It’s 14 freaking games on an afternoon, there is a turf field already in the City’s capital plans, the City will make money off of sponsorship, concession stands, they will move to baseball team to another site (right beside it!) and guess what our local restaurants and businesses will make more money. AND they are asking the Whitecaps to pony up for a freakin’ shuttle buses to and from the sky train. STOP spreading and engaging in stupid lies about how this will ruin new west. Gah. End Rant.”

The way I see it, more than half the problem here is a lack of clarity on what is being proposed. I have been to the early Open House, I have followed the battling petitions online, the Twitter accounts for and against, read the Facebook pages for and against, read the Whitecaps half-page ad, attended two City council meetings, one where 21 people spoke unanimously against the proposal, one where 21 People spoke in favour of the project and 12 more people spoke in opposition, yet I still feel like I have no idea if this is a good or bad deal for the City.

Most of the actual data I have been seen (100 trees cut down, field available all but 14 days a year for public use, $20 Million cost with a 5-year lease agreement) are speculative, and have not come from the only two parties who would actually know- the City and the Whitecaps.

As a member of the public was challenged on the veracity of her financial information at Council on August 25th, she said: “when there is no good information provided, that void is filled with speculation. When speculation is the only information we have, what else are we to believe?”

Lack of information is the problem, information is the answer. Until I have that information, I can’t provide a position. That said, I can say some definitive things about how I would make this decision:

  • I would not support building a stadium with public money on public land for the exclusive use of the Whitecaps, or any private enterprise. Any new facility in Queens Park will be a community facility, with clearly defined limits to how the Whitecaps use it. As a growing City, we cannot afford to lose public spaces, so any facility that may be built must be available for other community use when the lessee is not utilizing it. The conditions of that use will be part of the financial arrangement;
  • I would not allow New Westminster Baseball to go homeless. The club is important to our community, and clearly has a strong support base and traditions. We must assure they have a home appropriate for their needs, regardless of whether this proposal moves forward;
  • I will not support adding more paved parking areas to Queens Park. The City has limited green and public space, and parking cars is not an appropriate use for it;
  • I would not agree to an arrangement where the financial costs to the City will outweigh the demonstrated benefits to the community. Those costs must include the ancillary costs we will need to budget for managing the various disruptions this project may bring to the Queens Park neighbourhood, and the benefits must include the opportunity for savings in acquiring a new public amenity, and the benefits to our broader business and social communities across the City.
Now, it is easy for me, an unelected person with no knowledge of how this deal is being cooked up, to draw these clear boundaries, but as a voter in the city, these are the boundaries I would put around my acceptance of this proposal. Of course this is a not a comprehensive list of issues, but a starting point for the discussions. The first three are things I, personally, believe are important and need to be part of the deal, but it is the fourth that I suspect will be the linchpin here: do the numbers make sense for New Westminster?

Actually, at yesterday’s meeting, Council members said various versions of the above, and that did not satisfy some of the more outspoken members of the audience (especially those in opposition). If you care about this issue, it is really worth your time to skip ahead to the part on the archived video of yesterday’s meeting and see what the Council Members actually said, for the first time on the record, about this project:

The link is here, select the Regular Council Meeting for September 8, 2014, and scroll to 2:45:30.

What I heard was a healthy skepticism on the part of Council. I noted during the earlier delegations that the most firmly-directed questions Council members had were reserved for those people in favour of the project. (paraphrased example: “When you say you would support this project as long as it is a financially responsible one for the City, what criteria would you use to define the financial responsibility of it?”). I don’t get a sense that Council is sold on this idea yet. Which should make next week’s meeting interesting.

There will be vocal criticism of the decision no matter which way it is made: just look at the archived video of the last two council meetings. Politically, this may be lose-lose. However, building trust in the process through communication is one way a divisive issue like this can bring us together as a community, even while we fill in our opposing petitions.