Council – November 17. 2025

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

This is a bit of a late issue – it’s been one of those weeks where I just didn’t have time to write up my notes from Council, so the report is late. Remember, you can always follow the link to the agenda, and watch the video the day after Council if you just can’t wait.

We had a relatively brief agenda, which started with an Opportunity to be Heard :

Business Regulations and Licensing (Rental Units) Bylaw No. 6926, 2004, Amendment Bylaw No. 8536, 2025
This Bylaw is essentially a housekeeping item, as we are moving fees from the two different Bylaws over to a new Bylaw that deals with any fee or charge administered by the new Community Services Department, which requires us to amendments to existing Bylaws to reflect this change. The fees themselves are not changing from what was previously approved by Council, so there are no financial implications here, but our procedures require us to provide the Public an opportunity to comment to Council on any change to the Business Licence Bylaw. No-one provided written comment ,and no-one came to Council to speak to this Bylaw, so it was Adopted by Council.

We then had a Presentation on the evaluation of year one of the Crises Response Pilot Project. I don’t usually report out on presentations here (there was no decision for Council to make), but this one led to some interesting discussion, and I will try to follow up with a bit of a breakdown of that evaluation, as it had good and bad news.

We then moved the following item On Consent:

Issuance of Temporary Use Permit TUP00035 for 8 – 30 Capilano Way
The arcade that operates as a front-door business to an amusement machine repair and maintenance business in the Braid Industrial Area has been operating under a Temporary Use Permit, and they are applying to extend that permit to the maximum time permissible under provincial legislation. The property owner has not applied for a rezoning yet, but will have to before the TUP expires in 2027 if they want to continue supporting this business. In the meantime, the City is going to be updating our industrial lands policy that should provide better clarity for these kind of mixed industrial/experiential uses.

And the following items were Removed from Consent for discussion:

Proposed 2026 Council Meeting Schedule & Response to Referral: Appointment of Acting Mayor
This report was referred from last meeting, and is our annual agreement on Council meeting schedule for next year. This one a bit weird because it is an election year, and the time around October/November instead of being a really busy time at Council will be a slow time to allow for election and transition. We are also going to move the start of our workshop meetings on the off-weeks to a little earlier in the day, as they often go long, and we want to save a bit on staff overtime and respect Council’s evenings in week when we don’t have regular Council.

There was a question raised last meeting about the Acting Mayor rotation and how that may be “de-politicized” for the election year. This is an interesting question, as prior to this term the Acting Mayor position had never been queerly politicized as it is now (such as Parties “congratulating” members of Council for being named to the role when their rotation comes up). However, the rotation practice we follow is similar to what is done in most municipalities, and there is no general practice here or elsewhere around adapting that for the election period.

Response to Council Motion: “Conducting a Review of the City’s Community and Neighbourhood Consultation and Notification Processes”
There was a referral from Council to staff about improvement of our consultation/communications during the implementation of capital projects; this is the response from staff. And we need to be clear here about the potential conflation between communications and consultation. Despite staff’s efforts to be distinct in their use of these terms, Council and the Public are not so disciplined, and that has created (sometimes by design, but that’s another story) confusion and disappointment in the community.

This reporting back is actually on work staff were already doing to address some recent “communication gaps”. Short version of the report: our practices are very similar to other cities, neither worse nor specifically better. There are a few more pro-active things some cities are doing, and we can look at these and do better. However, it will take resources to increase staff doing this work or potentially slow down capital project delivery (to redirect staff from building things to talking about building things).

One of the issues identified by Council and the Public is the time lag between public consultation and delivery of projects. With meaningful public consultation providing input into design, the time required after consultation for design, costing, council approval, and procurement can means that once the shovels start working, the public forgets that consultation took place the previous year, or the year before. Stopping to do more consultation as the work begins means further delay, and often at a time where any changes to design are near impossible, or require yet another costing and procurement exercise. This is why we shift to communication, and limited consultation on construction impacts as opposed to design. When we start digging, people often say they “were not engaged”. This shows a need ot be proactive in our communications during that lag time, which inevitably leads to the complaint that the City is always talking about it, never doing it.

You can see the many paths to frustration here.

Council agreed to implementation of some more proactive measures, and it is expected at least in the short term they can be included in current capital budgets (the ones we approved, well… some of Council approved, in principle last meeting).

Senior Government Costs Download Review Work Plan – Response to the Council Motion
Senior government downloading has been a political talking point since at least Confederation. In recent reading of Barry Mather’s “New Westminster, the Royal City”, it appears it was a common political talking point here in New Westminster before the City was even named.

Back in the early part of this term, staff were asked to report back with this clearly-rhetorical request: “an itemized list of expenditures and senior government revenues the City of New Westminster has incorporated into the Operating and Capital Budgets, which are typically considered outside of municipal jurisdiction and are not part of our ‘core services’”. I call it rhetorical, because the weasel words “typically considered” and “core services” lack clear definition, and belies the faux-precision of an “itemized list”. Staff have spent some time researching this, and have come up with a proposed approach, complicated by the unusual financial implications of the COVID response from 2020-2022, and provided us examples of the two cities that have tried to do something similar. And that’s where the obvious problem arises.

The City of Vancouver approach is seriously flawed. Legalizing of cannabis has costs for local government, but including it as a “download” to local government is a stretch; it is certainly a “core service” wholly within our mandate to regulate and permit retail business. If we follow this logic, every legislative or regulatory change at any level of government impacts the lower governments. Next-Gen 911 might be a Federal mandate, but it is also a vital public service that local governments are required to provide. The Federal government requires us to have an integrated stormwater management program before they will fund our sewer separation programs – is that a download? We can certainly pay for our own sewers, and not do the ISWMP, but that would cost us more. In this case, the mandate is the opposite of a download. One place I might agree with Vancouver (though I’m not sure all on council would) is that our need to spend money addressing a disrupted climate and the emergency response costs when , for example, 30 people in New Westminster die in a heat dome because the Federal Government has steadfastly ignored it’s Paris Agreement commitments and are down dooming us to a PetroState future… is that a download, because almost a third of Vancouver assessed download is exactly this.

In the Kamloops example, they included lost revenue from downtown parking due to COVID restrictions during the height of the pandemic, and the slow transition of back-to-office work – they itemized this as a $1.5Million download. This borders on comical. Aside from this, almost 85% of Kamloops’ estimated download coats were the cost of dike maintenance and upgrades – clearly a “core service”.

These are examples of how the determining what is a “download” is a political determination, there is not technical response staff can provide, and I am uncomfortable sending staff down rhetorical rabbit holes when there is no clear purpose. If a politician wants to make a political point about it, they are free to go through our budget (a public document) and make their own determination, we don’t need expensive and busy finance staff doing this homework for them.

There is no City in Canada that Vancouver could find that defines “core service”. That’s the work of every Council – we determine our strategic priorities for a term, and every Council decision, every budget line item, is a discussion of what we are willing to do for our community, and where we don’t want to do the work. Every Council determines its “core service”. Vancouver’s budget task force made an attempt at doing this exercise, and have nothing useful to show for the work. It has not informed their budgeting or decision making, and I can see no evidence it has pushed senior governments of change how they support local government.

When we advocate to government, we do our math first. We don’t go asking for funding unless we know what it costs, and what our funding strategy if (and what proportion we expect a senior government to fund, and even what funding tool we expect them to use). This is important finance work with a purpose, and I want staff doing that instead. In the end, Council agreed and decided it was not a good use of staff time to chase this rhetorical white rabbit.

We then had one Travel Request:

Strong Cities Network Sixth Global Summit: December 9-11, 2025
The City was invited to take part in this event in Toronto in a couple of weeks, and consistent with our new travel policy, Councillor Nakagawa put forward a request to attend. The cost to the City is minimal as there is a grant provided by Public Safety Canada for a Council representative. Council voted to approve this travel, and the local internet this week provided ample examples of why this work is important.

We finished up with Bylaws for Adoption:

Zoning Bylaw No. 6680, 2001, Amendment Bylaw (102-128 East Eighth Avenue and 721 Cumberland Street) No. 8394, 2024
This Bylaw that facilitates the development of 55 new townhouse units across eight buildings in the upper edge of Sapperton not far from təməsew̓txʷ was adopted by Council. Missing middle, here they come!

Development Approval Procedures Bylaw No. 5658, 1987, Amendment Bylaw No. 8512, 2025
This Bylaw that updates how we approve development including new timelines and conditions for applicant submission was adopted by Council.

Council, November 3, 2025

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

We had a relatively short Council meeting, but one full of inspiration as we received two presentations from people doing great things in our community – one about a reconciliation initiative in City Hall and one about the great work a refreshed Tourism New West is doing to promote local businesses. You can watch the video here (though there were some early technical issues), because I am going to keep this report limited to the parts of the Agenda where Council made some decisions:

We started with one piece of Unfinished Business:

Rezoning and Special Development Permit Applications: 801 Columbia Street
This project proposal was discussed in Council last meeting, and after some discussion around Council, it was decided to defer the feedback to staff and the developer until staff had an ability to comment on some of the Council feedback.

There were some good parts of this application: a market rental building adjacent to a SkyTrain station with no residential parking is aligned with provincial and city goals for the next generation of transit oriented development, and preferable to an empty lot in the center of our downtown. However, it is a small lot (8,700 square feet is about the size of two regular single family home properties), and at 42 stories this would be the third tallest building in the city, resulting in by far the highest density lot in the City (FSR of 32.5). That small footprint mean fewer units (about 300) than some other rental buildings the City has approved, but it would still meet our family-friendly housing policy (at the time of application) with 30% two- and three bedroom units.

Feedback from Council centred around the ground expression of the building more than height or density, as is appropriate for a spot in the centre of a dense downtown adjacent to SkyTrain, including how access to the SkyTrain station would be secured, and some discussion of community-service uses the building. But there was some serious concern related to the buildability of the project. So Council sent a list of expectation to the developer, and they can determine if there is a viable project of this scale for the site.

We then moved the following items on Consent:

Amenity Cost Charges and Other Reserve Funds Establishment Bylaws and Development Cost Charges Reserve Funds Amendment Bylaw
Back in August, Council gave three readings to an updated Bylaw that changes how Development Cost Charges (the money we get from new developments to pay for infrastructure required to support that development, like sewers, water, transportation and parks space) and Amenity Cost Charges (the money we collect to pay for expanded amenities like recreation centers and libraries) are collected in the City. The regulations around DCCs and ACCs require us to set up specific Reserve Funds to put the money collected, and to draw from when that infrastructure is built in order to keep the process transparent and accountable. The various Bylaw changes here fold up the old reserve funds related to the previous DCC model, and transfer the value to the new DCC funds, along with establishing an ACC fund.

Application Review Framework for Instream Development Applications
With last year’s “Bill 46”, the province changed the rules about how Cities can collect community amenity benefits from new developments, replacing the Community Amenity Contribution (CAC) and Voluntary Amenity Contribution (VAC) model with a more transparent and accountable (but bureaucratic) ACC model, and Cities are required to update their Bylaws and shift to the new model by June 30, 2026. However, there are no instructions from the Province on how to address any applications that are “in stream” – or part way through the review process on that transition date, when the old model is no longer legally permissible, but there has been a lot of work done by the city and developer –sometimes years of work – based on that old model, and intruding the new model may crash the project completely, because it is not what the project financing we built on.

Staff have developed a transparent, principled, and accountable model for managing instream applications that tried to keep everyone whole as best as possible, while also not resulting in the City getting left holding the (monetary) bag because of provincial regulatory changes. Developments will have the opportunity to “fast track” earlier approvals, even if they are incomplete, to get in on the previous funding model, but will do so with a pretty strict covenant agreeing to meeting City requirements that the “fast tracking” did not provide time to address. Or developments can withdraw and re-apply under the new funding model. To meet what is a legislated timeline by the province, the City have created a process timeline for developments, meaning that both the developer and the city will need to commit to meeting these “stage gates” for a project to move forward.

It is a bit complicated here, but short version is we are trying to find a principled way to get through this uncomfortable transition at a time when the building market is facing serious headwinds, but we also have a fiscal responsibility to the community at large that we need to assure is protected through this process.

Development Approvals Procedures Bylaw No. 5658, 1987 Amendment Bylaw No. 8512, 2025 for Consideration of Three Readings
This Bylaw relates to the one above, and essentially lays out the procedures for receiving and reviewing development applications, what applications must contain, where authority is delegated, and timelines for applications and review. This amendment makes some language changes that are mostly bookkeeping (the name of the delegated authority’s position has changed, for example), but also includes some stricter provisions around application revisions and clarity around expected timelines for application requirements to be met.

Response to Council Motion Regarding the Riverfront Vision Update
The idea of connecting Pier Park to Sapperton landing park with a safe separate Multi-use Path has been in the books for a while, and besides some technical hurdles that will require some creative engineering to address, there have been some jurisdictional challenges between the Pattullo Bridge replacement project, private lands, the Port and Railways, and the recognition of the importance of this site for host first nations.

But with the Pattullo project wrapping soon, and some other advances, it is timely for us to talk to the Port and the Ministry of Transportation around their temporary pier infrastructure for those projects, and potential synergies. This part of the review of the 2016 Riverfront Vision, and in response to the recent motion from Councillor Campbell.

We then addressed these items Removed form Consent for discussion:

Proposed 2026 Council Meeting Schedule & Appointment of Acting Mayors 332
We have to approve a Council schedule for next year, including our standard every-second-Monday (except holidays) Council meetings, and now more common alternate-Monday workshops. It is worth noting that the time we spend meeting has increased remarkably this Council term, in part because we have chosen to include all Council in a lot of discussion that would have been dealt with in subcommittees or task forces in previous terms. This does reflect a notable increase in work load for most of Council, but I think that will be something for the next Council to discuss, as this hyper-engaged Council seems to like the work load/engagement balance we are at right now.

We are also re-upping the Acting Mayor rotation for next year. There were some concerns raised about the politicization of the Acting Mayor role, another very weird activity this year which is, ultimately, slightly comical self-aggrandizing I don’t see happening in any other municipality where the role is rotated to all members like in New West.

In the end, Council agreed to defer the schedule discussion until next meeting in the hopes Councillor Fontaine can attend and raise any concerns with the schedule.

Short-Term Approach for Closing Priority Gaps in the Pedestrian Network in Queensborough
The city has been talking to the Queesnborough community about prioritizing sidewalk and other pedestrian improvements after a workshop late last year where Council committed to some investments here. These are largely the low-lying areas of Q’Boro where there is still a lot of open drainage network to deal with flood risk.

Several identified priority routes are already scheduled for paving in the next year, so pedestrian improvements will come along with that paving, and three more (Dawe, Campbell and Salter) were discussed with the community as extra treatments are proposed for “Quick win” improvements – using light and relatively cheap materials to separate modes and make walking more comfortable. The pop-up events in Q’Boro and a Be Heard survey turned very positive responses for two of the streets, and mixed response on the Dawe Street design (so it will be deferred for now). Further parking restrictions are being considered on Sprice Street, as parking on both sides of the road have impacted fire access.

We then had some new items referred From Committee:

Addition of Massey Victory Heights Streetlights to Heritage Register
The Community Heritage Commission recommends that the existing streetlights in Massey Victory Heights be added to the Heritage Register. It’s been a while since something like this has been added to the register, and as they are engineering assets that have a public safety component, it was prudent that Council referred this back to staff to understand the engineering and financial implications.

Community Heritage Commission Mandate and Scope of Authority
The Community Heritage Commission also recommended some pretty substantial changes to their Terms of Reference. It’s a bit of a strangely-worded recommendations (the “scope of authority” of the CHC is defined by the Local Government Act, not Council) and there is some pretty challenging overreach here if the recommendation was to be read literally (Asking a small group of volunteers to review and approve every proposed change to any streetscape in the City would significantly impair our ability to do the basics of running a city), but the TOR for the CHC is showing its age. With recent provincial legislative changes for housing resulting in OCP updates, the introduction of the Heritage

Input from School District No. 40 on New Development Applications Recommendation
There is a Joint Working Group where members of the Board of Education and City Council discuss issues of common interest, which right now is mostly about new school locations. These conversations often overlap with new development planning in the community, and currently it is the OCP stage where the School District has formal input in to longer-term City panning, there is a desire to formalize some discussion around larger developments in the City as opposed to the somewhat ad hoc process in place now. Staff will work to develop some protocols here.

And we had a couple of Motions from Council:

Public Post Service
Submitted by Councillor McEvoy

WHERAS the Federal Government, in the midst of a labour dispute, has announced drastic cuts to our treasured public post office – eliminating good jobs, ending door-to-door delivery, removing the moratorium protection on post office closures, and changes to delivery standards for the mail; and
WHEREAS the Federal Government has done this without meaningful public consultation and has made this decision unilaterally prior to a planned Canada Post Corporation Review from October 1, 2025 to March 31, 2026, effectively eliminating any opportunity for input from the people who will be most affected; and
WHEREAS New Westminster and all local governments rely on affordable and reliable public post services to connect important information to their community, and our ability to communicate would be significantly harmed and local property taxpayers unfairly burdened if these drastic cuts to the nation’s public postal service are implemented; and
WHEREAS it is crucial for the Government to hear the views from municipalities on key issues, including maintaining Canada Post as a public service, the importance of maintaining the moratorium on post office closures, improving the Canadian Postal Service Charter, keeping daily home mail and parcel delivery to the door, and opportunities and challenges related to modernizing the public postal service such as postal banking, greening Canada Post, adding EV charging stations, adding food delivery, improving delivery to rural, remote and Indigenous communities, and developing services to assist people with disabilities to help older Canadians to remain in their homes for as long as possible and at the same time, helping to ensure that good jobs stay in their communities and that Canada Post can remain financially self-sustaining;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that Council authorize the Mayor to write the Minister of Government Transformation, Public Works and Procurement, Joël Lightbound, and Member of Parliament Jake Sawatsky requesting that the federal government:
a. immediately halt planned service cuts, and to look instead for ways to increase services and revenues in other areas, such as those noted above;
b. suspend any mandate review until Canada Post returns to stabilized operations, and;
c. that any review of Canada Post and the Canadian Postal Service Charter must be done through a full and thorough transparent public review, including public hearings, with all key stakeholders, in every region of Canada.

There is currently a debate about the future of postal services in Canada, while CUPW members continue job action to address wage and job security concerns. The Neo-Liberal government is telling us that Canada Post is “losing money”, which is weird way to talk about a public service, but consistent with the defunding of public service narrative. In the meantime, a City like New Westminster relies on a public postal service to connect to community, and if it fails there will no doubt be significant increases in our cost and your property taxes will go up. In that sense, defunding the postal service is a version of cost downloading to local government. So we are sending our advocacy to the Federal Government.

Progress Reports on Truth and Reconciliation
Submitted by Councillor Nakagawa

WHEREAS the City of New Westminster has previously supported UNDRIP, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action, Claiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and supporting Truth before Reconciliation,
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that staff report to Council on a biannual basis on progress towards achieving the municipal actions outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action, and Claiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls reports.

There is a lot of work happening in the City in the reconciliation file including the more visible work (place name policies, engaging indigenous artists for public art, etc.) and a lot of work less visible to the general public, as it is happening in City Hall and in relationship building. That said, the framework we put forward was framed around Calls to Action and recommendations of the MMIWG reports, and it would be good to have regular reporting of progress on these items.

Finally, we finished up the evening with these Bylaws for Adoption:

Business Licence Bylaw No. 8473, 2024, Amendment Bylaw No. 8537, 2025
Mobile Food Vending Licence Bylaw No. 7850, 2016, Amendment Bylaw No. 8538, 2025
These two Bylaws Amendments that move fee schedules from the respective Bylaws to the new Community Services Fees and Charges Bylaw to reflect them being housed in the new Community Services department were approved by Council.

Council – October 20, 2025

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Monday’s meeting was relatively brief compared to many this term, but it involved some pretty meaty discussions on issues small and large. You can always watch the video here and enjoy the full experience to hear the many points I can’t possible condense here in my regular reporting out. The Agenda started with one item carried over from the previous meeting that ran too long for us to get to it:

Relocation of Loading Zone on Sixth Street
This has been an interesting discussion over the last few weeks. The bus stop on Sixth Street at Sixth Ave is the busiest bus stop in the City that isn’t at a Skytrain Station with more than 1,200 transit users boarding and alighting there every day. The 106 route is also one of the busiest routes in the region, and shares this stop with the 105, while connections are made here to the 101 and 155. The 106 has specifically been a target for Speed and Reliability measures for some time. The preferred approach is to move the bus stop as close as possible to the Sixth and Sixth corner while still maintaining safe movements around what is also one of the busiest pedestrian intersections in the City. There is also a desire to build a modern, accessible, and sheltered bus stop that is “future proofed” for pending bus service improvements at this busiest stop in the City.

Unfortunately, these changes were not transmitted by the City or TransLink to the residents of an adjacent building, and they aren’t happy about that, mostly because a loading zone was near the entrance of their building was proposed to be moved to where the previous taxi queue was.

There was a pretty robust discussion around this, but I cannot help but mention there was quite a bit of misinformation circulated early that added to the resident’s anxiety and concerns, and despite staff and some of Council’s attempts to correct that information, we are deep into Betteridge’s Law by now. One example was access to HandiDart – and the need to clarify that the new longer bus stop will accommodate regular bus movements and HandiDart services, actually improving proximity to the building for HandiDart users (and providing a sheltered place for HandiDart users to wait for their ride). Indeed with the loading zone moved, HandiDart will be able to access the entirety of the curb from Princess Street to Sixth. Similarly, concerns that the changes will hamper ambulance of fire access were clearly refuted by the Fire Chief last meeting.

The biggest concern expressed by residents was that the loading zone at the Princess Street end of their street frontage present since the building was opened (and expanded in 2021 when some pay parking was stripped then modified further when a temporary bust stop was installed) would be lost, relocated to the south end of the blockface to replace the taxi queue area. Through discussion with staff, it was determined that returning this loading zone to the pre-2021 condition was viable, and would not seriously impact bus operations. There is some detail here to work out, as HandiDart access is still a primary concern, and we want to assure that still works with any modification, but it looks like Council has found a compromise between the needs of transit users and the needs of the building residents. If there is disappointment here, it is that we probably could have found this solution if we had taken a bit more time to talk to folks prior to starting the redesign work, but we got here now, and I’m glad Council took the time to listen an understand the problem, and staff were able to find a workaround. Sometimes it works, folks.

We then approved the following items On Consent:

Bylaw Amendments to Reflect Community Services Fees and Charges Bylaw No. 8529, 2025
Council adopted (unanimously) Bylaw 8529 in late September, a Bylaw that collects various user fees together under a new Bylaw to align with our new departmental structure. This means edits to three other Bylaws to finish the move: these are those three Bylaws.

Downtown BIA Renewal 2026 – 2029
Business Improvement Areas are non-profit organizations regulated by the Community Charter. The members (defined as businesses property owners within a geographic area) agree to a taxation level, usually based on the frontage or area of their property, the City collects those taxes and returns them to the BIA to do “business improvement” activities defined in the Charter. This agreement between the city and the BIA must be renewed every four years. Last month, the members of the Downtown BIA unanimously approved a four-year renewal term, and a pretty significant increase in their levy, the City need to pass a Bylaw to make this a reality.

The following two items were Removed from Consent for discussion:

Response to Council Motion – Limiting Business Licences for Vape Stores
There has been community concern raised about vape technology, both as a public health concern for youth and about the prevalence of new shops opening up in New West. Tasha Henderson has been working with colleagues across the province to advocate for the Province to take better control of the industry, recognizing that municipal borders don’t mean much to a supply chain like this, but there is something we can do locally to stem the tide a little. There are “age restricted” vape shops in New West – a category that doesn’t include gas station convenience stores or other retail places where vape products may be available, but they are not displayed, much like cigarettes are managed.

Regulating retail for an undesirable but legal products needs to be approached carefully. Sometimes it points to a moral panic (see video game arcade restrictions that were a hassle to overturn a few years ago), and sometimes it opens the gates to Council having to draw lines in gray areas with imperfect knowledge (are vape stores worse than cigar stores?) and without fully understanding the outcome being sought. This is a good example, if vape shops are age restricted, is this about keeping those products out of the hands of youth? Or do we just not like the aesthetic of vape shops? Politics is about the grey.

The City hosted a Retail Strategy roundtable this summer with many businesses and commercial property owners there, and they overwhelmingly supported some restriction of Vape shops because of a perceived impact on street vitality. We also received correspondence from the medial health officer supporting further restriction. So staff are recommending we update our zoning bylaw to limit expansion of new age-restricted vape shops, recognizing that the existing one are “grandfathered” in – we don’t have strong legal grounds to shut them down. And Council agreed.

Rezoning and Special Development Permit Applications: 801 Columbia Street
The vacant lot at Eighth and Columbia is one of those challenging spots in the City. It was an area of, to be generous, underperforming retail prior to being demolished by the City to support the staging of adjacent construction (including belonging to the city to support staging for Anvil Centre construction). The City (in hindsight, probably not wisely) sold the property off, and in 2016, considered a Development Permit to build a three-story commercial building on the site.

Alas, the developer of that plan never competed their planning, and the property was sold off again, and still sits as an empty lot in the middle of the downtown. The current owner now wants to build a rental high-rise on the spot with two stories of retail at grade and (this is a first for New Westminster, and no surprise considering the adjacent SkyTrain and new Provincial Transit Oriented Development regulations) no residential parking.

This is a preliminary application, but Council did not sound particularly excited about it. There were a number of concerns raised, mostly around buildability (there is nowhere except busy streets to stage construction of a building this scale), and a general lack of amenity value for such a large development.

The purpose of this preliminary review is not to say yes or no (as this is not a complete application or proposal and there are numerous details to work out), but for Council to let staff and the developer know if there are significant concerns that need to be addressed prior to consideration of rezoning, and to set some expectations for community amenities or other conditions that should be included if a rezoning application comes to Council. In the end, that list seemed longer than Council was comfortable drafting in a council meeting, so the decision was to defer this item until next Council meeting so Council can show up with a more considered list.

And that was the end of the very short agenda. Happy Diwali everyone! Go Jays Go!

Zombie Bad Data

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

It’s been a while since I saw this kind of comparison, but it is circulating on local social media again, seeming to point back at some politicking by a certain group who obviously know the truth, but have little interest in honest discussion, preferring to ask leading questions instead of seeking seeking answers when they have just as much access to all of the data as I do. Here is the graphic:

There are two problems with this comparison, which was generated by the City of Port Coquitlam for their own political reasons.

One is that the numbers include electrical utility charges collected by New Westminster because we own our utility, and does not include household or business electrical utility costs for any other municipality (because they buy their power from BC Hydro). I call this zombie data because every time this bad comparison rears its head I knock it back with the facts, but it gets back up and starts grunting again.  Like back in 2018 when the Fraser Institute did the same lazy comparison, somehow claiming we had the second highest taxes while the very same report showed New Westminster having the 12th highest taxes of 17 municipalities in the Lower Mainland.

Then the story resurfaced three years later with another FI news release where they compared revenue and spending between cities. The fun part this time was digging into the data that the FI used and (after removing electrical revenues and spending) seeing that New West’s spending (the services we deliver to community) are higher than the regional average, but our revenue (the money residents and businesses pay for those services) was lower than the regional average. You would think the folks at FI would appreciate New West delivering more for lower costs. The FI also had a chart showing New Westminster spending increases for the decade were among the lowest the region. So thats good news?

Follow those links to see the data, with links to the sources! As we all learned in math class: it is important to show your work!

The second problem with the graphic above is that the chart is the “tax on a representative house”, not tax on the average or median household. That is the average single family detached house, which in New Westminster is estimated (in 2025) to be about $1.6M. But in New Westminster, we have one of the highest proportions of renter households (45%) in the region, and the vast majority of  New Westminster households are in multi-family. This means the average residence is closer to a $700,000 condo that would pay half this amount of tax and much less in utilities. Taxes on a “representative house” does not reflect the typical tax or utility bill here.

The numbers on this chart come from some massaging of Provincial government stats reported out as “Schedule 704” which you can read yourself here. If you don’t want to click through an download the spereadsheet, I have extracted the part of the table that is only Metro Vancouver municipalities (as our tax regime is different here than the rest of the province, due to TransLink and the fact we don’t pay Hospital tax as they do elsewhere). I also used the 2004 table, not the more recent 2025 one, because the graphic above uses this 2024 data:

I highlighted in green the numbers that PoCo used in that chart above, and added a column summing these up to show how PoCo came to their conclusion. Naturally, they chose the comparison most generous for their purposes, not including all the taxes and fees people pay, after all, PoCo is not the lowest taxed city even in this flawed comparison.

In my mind (and you may disagree) the more fair comparison is the taxes per capita, because ultimately people pay taxes not houses, and people receive the services that the City pays for with its taxes. I explained this a bit more here (again, older numbers, but comparison still fits), with an update with 2024 numbers displayed in a different way here.

In short, and I know there is a lot here (remember Brandolini’s Law), most apples-to-apples comparisons show New West is about average of the region for property taxes people pay both per capita and per household, and over the last few years, our annual increases have been slightly below the regional trend. Spread the news.

Council – Oct 6, 2025

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Another exciting evening at New West Council, We got through all of the agenda, if not the few extra items added during the meeting. We also have a new trend of some Councillors wanting to write a bunch of policy on the fly in the meeting, which means that I don’t necessarily have the exact text of every resolution passed or defeated until minutes are approved a couple of weeks from now, so this report comes with the caveat that everything is based on notes I take during the meeting and my not-flawless memory. A good reminder that these reports are my immediate impression, and not the official record: that is what the video and meeting minutes are for.

We started with one piece of Unfinished Business:

Sustainable Housing for Seniors Experiencing Homelessness
Submitted by Councillor Henderson

WHEREAS the number of seniors who are homeless has increased five times over the last 10 years, with the most recent Point-In-Time Homelessness Count suggesting that the percentage of people experiencing homelessness who are seniors could be up to 30%; and
WHEREAS the SHINE program has proven to be an effective and essential solution for seniors experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness by assisting over 6,300 seniors in 2024 in various communities across BC, including New Westminster, to find supports and permanent housing; and
WHEREAS sustainable, long-term funding is necessary for the SHINE program to continue operating in the 12 current municipalities and is necessary to expand the program to additional communities; and
WHEREAS members of City Council who attend the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) convention often meet with members of the Provincial Cabinet;
BE IT RESOLVED that the Mayor, on behalf of Council, send a letter of support for sustainable funding for the SHINE program to the Minister of Health and the Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that where appropriate, Mayor and Council share their support for the SHINE program in meetings with Provincial Ministers at the UBCM Convention in September 2025

The second clause here was removed because UBCM just passed (we had some delays getting this in front of Council for scheduling reason and the moment passed), but the advocacy is important, and something the community has been raising to Council on a few occasions. We know that every dollar spent keeping people out of homelessness saves the government orders of magnitude more money in addressing the impacts of homelessness, and seniors in our community deserve better than to be priced out of their homes with no supports or place to land. This program saves lives, and should be supported.

We then moved the following items On Consent

Fenton Streetscape Project – Sole Sourcing of Eagle Valley Excavating
Fenton Street is one of the lower (elevation wise) residential streets in Queensborough, and has seen periodic flooding during protracted rainfall events or atmospheric rivers. Staff did some work to evaluate the cost and complications of significant upgrades of Fenton to bring it up to an elevation where flooding would no longer be a concern for the road – but the implications for adjacent properties (homes that in some cases would now be lower than the road) were problematic. In the meantime, staff are moving ahead with a significant ditch maintenance program, including lowering the invert of several culverts to improve off-street water storage and improve the general drainage regime. This should help!

Licence of Occupation of a Portion of Brunette Avenue with BC Transportation and Financing Authority for Construction and Use of a Pedestrian Bridge Connection to Sapperton Station
As Wesgroup continue to work on the last building in the Brewery District and are working on delivering the new public plaza with accessible access to the existing SkyTrain overpass, a part of the access will extend over City-owned right of way along Brunette Ave, which requires a licence agreement with TransLink, because it is actually TransLink infrastructure, built by Wesgroup over City land. This is that agreement.

Temporary Licence Agreement with MRSL (New Westminster) Nominee Ltd. for Construction of Dike Shoreline Rehabilitation at 350 Gifford Street
The City is doing on-going dike maintenance and upgrades as part of our regular business in Queensborough, something the province used to do until 2003 when Gordon Campbell decided to get out of the business of flood control on the Fraser River and downloaded the responsibility to cities. One of the areas needing some repair right now is located on private property, requiring us to get a licence to do this work on their property. The work is funded through a UBCM Grant received a couple of years ago, so this report isn’t about cost, just about us needing to get an access licence.

We then covered the following items Removed from Consent for discussion:

2025 Council Remuneration Policy Review
This is a follow-up report on a July 2024 resolution of Council (passed unanimously, I note) that the remuneration of Council be reviewed by an external consultant and recommendation made to Council to revise it based on comparator cities across the region. In short, we try to set our remuneration as equal to the average of the eight most similar cities in the region, and we found that we are slightly (2.3%) below the regional average for Mayor and Council wages, and a few other adjustments are recommended to bring us closer to regional norms.

Transportation allowance numbers were a big difference, with the Mayor’s TA way below the regional average, and Councillors’ at a third of the regional average, but Council all agreed that the New Westminster transportation regime is different than most of our comparators, and agreed that this Allowance should be a limited to a one-zone transit pass. That is about where the agreement ended.

There was an attempt to refer this report beck to staff with a bunch of recommendations, but the idea of referring back after staff provided the report we asked them to produce last year seemed a redundant next step. In the end Council decided to keep the CPI increases and transition fund as is (and as recommended by the report), not increase Acting Mayor stipend, and limit the Transportation support to a transit pass (which is much less compensation than the report recommended).

Active Transportation Network Plan Year 2: London Street and Eighth/Ninth/Tenth Street Routes
I wrote a previous post about this, but in summary we had a spirited pubic engagement on the London Street bikeway improvements, staff have come back with a revised plan that best as they could, reduces impacts on street parking, helps address community concerns about through-traffic, and makes some prioritized safety improvements for active transportation users. Though we received less feedback on the Eighth/Ninth/Tenth Street routes, staff nonetheless made some adjustments based on feedback received.

Metro Vancouver Liquid Waste Management Plan – Follow-Up from March 17, 2025 Open Workshop
Metro Vancouver has a Liquid Waste Management Plan – a master plan outlining how they plan to collect, treat, and dispose of one billion litres of wastewater every day. This plan is required by provincial regulation, and Metro has offered local governments an opportunity to provide feedback on the draft plan. We offered no feedback, it’s a good plan. However, Council decided to once again express concern about cost overruns on the North Shore wastewater plant.

Provincial Electric Kick Scooter Pilot Program
Council had previously asked staff to look into joining the BC government “Pilot Program” on e-scooter regulation. Staff have talked to participant cities and done a bit of analysis, and concluded the program does not demonstrably increase safety, all communities report enforcement is difficult (nigh impossible), no education supports are provided, and significant staff time may be required to manage the pilot and public interactions related to them. So the Pilot seems to offer several costs and challenges and very little benefit. So staff recommend against joining.

Still this is an item of increasing interest in the community, so Council supported Councillor Henderson’s motion to advocate to the Province to stop kicking this issue down the road and bring in province-wide regulations that focus on safety, that we advocate to UBCM, and that we work internally on and education and enforcement campaign to address community safety concerns bereft of provincial movement on this.

Response to Council Motion on Community Grants Program
Back in August, Council agreed (unanimously, I again note) to ask Staff to add 50% to the community grant budget envelope, this is the follow up with staff analysis and timing, based on the recent opening of the community grants application window. Supporting everything from Hyack Festival to Pride to the Royal City Musical Theatre, May Day, Hospice, and many other community groups, New Westminster is on a per capita basis one of the most generous communities in empowering community organizations. This is one reason we still have such a connected and engaged community, and we know that the money invested in these programs is returned to community many times over, as it is empowered by volunteer energy and matching grant and sponsor money. This is a good investment in community.

It also aligns with our Strategic Plan, aligns with the recent recommendation of the Community Advisory Assembly on building community connections, and reflects what the arts community and community festival groups have been asking of the City in delegations and other reports over the last few months. This also reflect recommendations made in the recent review of the grants program that staff have been undertaking as of late.

We had one Motion from Council to consider:

Community Policing Office in Queensborough
Submitted by Councillor Campbell

WHEREAS Queensborough community members have expressed interest in having a community policing office in the Queensborough neighbourhood;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the City of New Westminster provide feedback heard from Queensborough Residents Association to the New Westminster Police Board and requests that the New
Westminster Police Board consider and work with the city to plan a satellite station and/or explore how to address community safety needs in Queensborough.
THAT staff report back regarding the circumstances which led to the closure of the satellite policing office in Queensborough;

The Queensborough community has been raising concerns about the level of policing service in Queensborough, and are curious about the decision years ago for the NWPD to stop staffing the satellite office in the Queensborough Community Centre. This is 100% Police Board jurisdiction, but the motion asks us top advocate to the police board and is not worded in a way that directs them to act, which would be outside of our jurisdiction. The response, I suspect, will be framed by the discussion we had earlier in the day about resource levels at the Police Department and the provisional Police Board budget coming to Council, which will see a request for increased staffing supports.

With that, we reached 10:30 when a 2/3 vote of Council is required to continue the meeting, and that vote failed. Members had put two late items on the agenda earlier in the evening, but the vote to not continue the meeting means those die on the floor. Council member may bring them back as a noticed of motion in future meetings. But this raises again the issue that we are not spending out time at Council wisely, and are not getting through agenda again, which will cause me to reflect on my chairing and what I can do to get us though our business in a better way.

London Street

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

If you follow Council (and if you don’t, what are you doing reading this!?) you have probably seen the saga of the London Street bikeway project. Before I report on all of Monday’s Council meeting (who has time to write?) I want to report out on where Council landed on this project and, as always, explain where my thinking so even people who don’t agree with my vote on the project understand what is behind it.

The City approved the Active Transportation Network Plan in 2022 after a couple of years of work. It is a multi-year project that is one of the pillars of the City’s (now 10 year old?) Master Transportation Plan, and also supports the City’s Official Community Plan and Climate Action strategies. At the core of it is the idea that active transportation users (cyclists, scooters, people with motorized mobility aides, etc) require a network, not just spot improvements or reactive treatments. We would never build a road that connects to no other roads, but for too long that has been the practice with safe AT infrastructure. In cities from Vancouver to Montreal to Paris to Hoboken, building the network is key to making the shift to a safe and functional transportation system that works for everyone.

It is worth mentioning that I ran on this. During my campaign for mayor three years ago, I talked about the ATNP whenever I could, and told the community that committing to a 5-year build out and getting the first couple of years built was a goal for my first term. This is a commitment I made to the community, based on previous work when I was on Council.

The Network Plan lays out optimal routes, connecting existing routes like London Street and Agnes to new infrastructure to complete the network, and making improvements on some of those existing routes to move them closer to (if not immediately) “All Ages and Abilities”, meaning most users, 8 to 80 years old, would feel comfortable and safe using the route. This will happen over about five years, leveraging senior government active transportation funding to pay for much of it.

London Street has been a local bikeway for more than a decade (since Wayne Wright days), and is a key low-gradient Uptown connection between Crosstown routes and destinations to the East and Burnaby. It was included in year two route planning, and staff developed two design ideas to improve comfort and safety on the route. When those plans were presented to the public, we got some strong feedback from residents on London and Dublin streets, who were clear they didn’t really like either of the two plans developed. So staff took a step back and did some extended consultation to get more feedback and worked on iterating the plan to address the major concerns.

It’s worth noting that at the same time, two other routes in the City were consulted on, and though the feedback was not as intense as London Street, staff still made some minor changes to the plan to address the feedback they heard on those routes as well. This is how public consultation results in iteration of designs, and this is a good thing.

Monday at Council, it was decided to adopt a modified plan for London Street. This is neither Plan A (where two-way travel is maintained, but with the loss of 39% of the street parking) nor Plan B (where most parking was preserved, but introduced a series of alternate one-way sections for vehicles). In the extended consultation it was clear that for London Street folks, the scale of lost street parking was concern #1, and though more preferred the one-way system to manage through-traffic “rat runners” and speeds, it also raised concerns about access and confusion, and there wasn’t a clear preference for this model either.

Staff took this feedback and considerably reduced the changes on the street while emphasizing a few intersection treatments to reduce though-traffic while prioritizing access for local residents. This was an issue repeatedly raised by the neighbourhood, and one of the aspects that made London Street feel less safe for active transportation and other users. The key parts of this plan is to modify the intersection at 20th and London to stop rush hour access and “rat running”, and improved safety at 12th Street and London, which has been a long-standing bone of contention for cyclists especially. The preservation of sight lines at intersections and installation of refuge areas (“pullover pockets”) on each block where vehicles can more easily and predictably pass mean a reduction of about 9% of parking spaces (45 spaces over the 545 free street parking spaces along that 2km stretch of road), a significant change from the 39% originally proposed, but with significant safety and convenience benefits for all road users.

Staff and Council are committed to building a safer All Ages and Abilities network so more people can safely and comfortably get around the City, but are also committed to listening to feedback from the community and iterating plans and designs wherever possible to best accommodate community concerns while keeping safety of all road users as the top priority. I appreciate the many people who took part in this consultation, and though no-one got exactly what they wanted, often the best result of community consultation is finding a path that more people can support when competing priorities unenviably arise.

Curbside space is the most contentions space in any urban city, the place where competing priorities are most clear. If we cannot afford to lose a single free street parking space, then we will never be able to build safer transportation infrastructure, this is a simple geometry problem. Finding balance and compromise based on clear priorities is the best we can do, it is the art of governance. I think we found that balance on London Street best we could.

UBCM 2025

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

If you follow my social media, you might note I was at UBCM last week. The Union of BC Municipalities is the annual conference/convention for local government leaders from across the province, and as you can see here, here, and here, I like to report out on events I attend on behalf of the City, and give some updates about the City’s advocacy to the Province.

By its nature, UBCM is political, but I am going to avoid some of the more pointed politics of the event here, and hold those for my Newsletter (subscribe here – its free), and try as best I can to stick to the facts and summarize a week as concisely as possible. Still, you might want to warm up your tea, because this is a longish one.

It is worth, at the start, talking about the tone of the meeting. I was at UBCM events in the waning days of the BC Liberal government where local governments were feeling very ignored by the province, and anger was stewing. I was also there when a new BC NDP government came in and Selena Robinson (one of us!) was the Minister responsible for local government and it was a love-in. There is no doubt the shine is off the apple a bit for the BC NDP, and it would be fair to expect a chilly tone at UBCM, but that was not the feeling in the rooms in Victoria even if there were protesters and an ongoing BCGEU strike at the front door off the meeting. Workshops and roundtables with Ministers from the government were generally friendly and David Eby got a decent reception (with a standing ovation) of his speech.

A big part of UBCM are the Learning Sessions, the opportunity for learning through panel discussions, workshops, townhalls, and information sessions. Here are the ones I attended:

Climate Hazards and Housing: we learned about the impacts of climate disruption, with emphasis on the retreat and recover response in Merritt to their atmospheric river flood (with lots of support from the province while the federal government have been shamefully absent), and the ongoing challenges an uncertainties still impacting largely rural Fraser Valley communities as a result of the same flood event. The big take-away from this was the presentation from the Insurance Bureau of Canada explaining how climate-related insurance losses in 2024 exceeded $9 Billion: three times the average over the last decade, and ten times the average form a decade before. You may or not believe that Climate Disruption is a thing, but the Insurance Bureau has the receipts, and your insurance rates tripling in the next few years is a possible outcome of our keeping our national head in the sand about this. But I guess one more pipeline will help pay for this?

Disordered Downtown: Rethinking Care for Those in Need: This was a session that got a lot of media attention, but was also an example of how media narrative shapes community impressions, because the lengthy discussion about needing massive health care investments because people are being harmed every day did not make the headlines, a Mayors comment about “compassion fatigue” and “law and order” did.

FIFA World Cup 2026 (FWC26) – Community Opportunities: The province is working with local governments to provide opportunities to activate our communities through next year’s World Cup games in Vancouver. This is the most watched sporting event in the worl, bigger than the Olympics by far, and clearly the larger community loves the event, but it is also a FIFA property that comes with a bunch of challenges, such as top-down control over marketing (we cannot, in New Westminster use the words World Cup or FIFA in any way promoting our events, we also can’t use outside sponsors for our events unless approved by FIFA) to strict control over the actual media (We cannot hold large public watch parties without TSN/CTV approval – and that approval comes at a cost). There is a lot to work out here before next summer.

Cowichan Tribes Aboriginal Title Court Decision: Implications for Local Governments
This was the most interesting panel discussion of the event for me. The implications of the Cowichan decision are not yet fully known (and there will be several appeals), but it is clear that this is a very important ruling, but not the panic time that the conservative pundits are claiming. The case was very specific to the lands it covered (clearly illegally sold out from under the Cowichan by Colonel Moody, acquired by the City of Richmond under tax sale) that is not broadly applicable to privately owned fee simple lands, but the negotiations ahead for the Province will represent a new phase of reconciliation in BC.

Modest Growth & Big Challenges: The Road Ahead for BC’s Economy
This panel conversation started with an update on the Provincial economy from the Minister of Finance and some economist guy to unpack the information for a more general audience. Our deficit is notably high and our debt is creeping up, but compared to GDP we have fairly low debt compared to every other province and the cost of borrowing is not yet a big concern – but it might be if we keep on this trend. The conversation was wide-reaching about our strengths (relatively buffered against US trad weirdness) and challenges (the sudden stop in immigration growth means we are technically in a per-capita recession). The big takeaway was that the economist on the panel (and the CCPA economist who as not invited to this) both disagreed with the Business Council guy on the panel – we are not in a spending crisis, we are in a revenue crisis. Nonetheless, the “we have no money” theme was repeated all weekend.

Cabinet Town Hall: Strong Communities: This Town Hall was just that, local government folks asking questions of three key ministers: Housing and Municipal affairs, Health, and Transportation. It was a broad conversation, including Tasha Henderson pushing Minister Boyle and bout school funding in New West – and how schools need to be art of the housing policy now. It is also interesting to hear similarities and difference across the province about the biggest issues ot put in front of Ministers while you have them cornered, and a healthy reminder that we in the Coast have good access to Ministers, but for much of the province this is their one time a year to get face time with important provincial decision makers.

On that topic, we had Council-to-Minister meetings with Minister Kang (on funding challenges for local festival and community organizations, and FIFA World Cup opportunities), Ministers Kahlon and Bailey (on support for local small business, including giving local governments more tools to address some local challenges), Minister Boyle (updating her on our Housing targets, on our financing growth model and infrastructure costs, our OCP update approach, and our need for more investment in affordable housing), and Minister Parmar (on some reconciliation and land use issues in the community). I also had a good meeting with BC Hydro folks in my role on the Electrical Commission to talk about partnership opportunities for infrastructure and climate action.

The message almost across the board – to the point where it was the theme of the week – was “we don’t have money right now”. Working with the City’s Intergovernmental Relations team, we knew that was coming, so pivoted much of our our advocy to include the many non-monetary supports that we would like to work towards, such as regulatory and legislative changes to meet common goals, which I think landed really well in several of these meetings.

Finally, there was a lengthy Resolutions Session where the assembled membership of the UBCM decide on common advocacy goals. There were ~275 resolutions on the agenda, and managed to get through (by my count) 168 of them. New Westminster Council was well represented in the discussions of the resolution, with Councillors Campbell, Henderson, McEvoy and Nakagawa all actively involved in the debates. New Westminster had two resolutions up for debate, both passed, though in slightly different ways.

NR60 Regulating Vape Shops
Whereas Health Canada has stated that they share the concerns of parents, educators, youth and public stakeholders regarding the increase of youth vaping in Canada;
And whereas the Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch oversees provincial liquor and cannabis regulations, including licensing and monitoring of private cannabis retailers:
Therefore be it resolved that UBCM ask that the Province of BC include retail stores used primarily for sale of electronic nicotine or e-cigarettes under the Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch and thereby include restrictions that regulate where and how many of these retail stores are able to receive business licences in a community.

The author of the resolution, Tasha Henderson, spoke to the resolution from the floor, and got a solid majority (though not unanimous!) vote of the members.

RR36 Lobbyist Registration Vancouver
Whereas the Government of BC has recognized the potential impact of lobby activities for its public office holders and introduced the Lobbyist Transparency Act to provide the Government of BC legal tools to oversee, monitor and enforce lobbyist activities in pursuit of open, accessible, and accountable government;
And whereas unregulated lobbying activities at the municipal and regional district level can lead to undue influence from special interest individuals, groups, or organizations and BC municipal governments and regional districts are not afforded the same statutory authority to moderate local lobbyist activities:
Therefore be it resolved that UBCM ask that the Government of BC introduce legislative reform that either: (i) enables municipalities and regional districts to use the Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists for BC, or (ii) enables municipal councils and regional district boards to establish, monitor, and enforce lobbyist activities within their jurisdictions parallel to mechanisms available under the Lobbyist Transparency Act.

This resolution along with a similar one from Vancouver was deemed redundant because a nearly identical resolution from the City of Saanich was passed though the Endorsed Block (without any debate), so in the end result, the advocacy is approved by the membership, and we were happy to cede the space to our colleagues in Saanich as long as we got this over the finish line.

As for the rest of the meeting (other than the many networking opportunities), we had speeches from the leaders of all four parties represented in the House, David Eby concentrating on the economy and generally well received (excepting a couple of vocal protesters on Gaza), Rustad turning heads by suggesting he would dissolve a Regional Government because it was getting bad press (bizarrely suggesting it is just a utility company), a new Emily Lowan bringing a message of hope from youth, and Dallas Brodie pining about the good old days when she was a child and there was no crime (and residential schools were still in operation). So yeah, that.

Finally, New Westminster won a Climate & Energy Action Award for building the first zero carbo certified aquatic and recreation centre in BC. Which was a nice way to put a cap on the meeting.

Council – Sept 29, 2025

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Back for the UBCM (report soon) and back to your regular Council schedule. Our Monday meeting had a fairly light Agenda, though we first had a presentation from TICorp on progress on the Pattullo Bridge Replacement project. Details here.

Council moved the following items On Consent:

Licence Agreement with BC Transportation Financing Authority for Construction of a Multi-Use Path in Grimston Park
We are building a bike lane in the West End. Don’t panic – this is a short connection between the foot of the Stewardson multi-use overpass and Nanaimo Street beside Grimston park. It’s a small project, but it is on Ministry of Transportation land, so we need a licence agreement to put a path on their land.

Local Government Climate Action Program 2024 Reporting Year and Corporate Emissions Inventory Update
The City is part of the Province’s Local Government Climate Action Program (LGCAP), meaning we get annual funding from the Province (~$300K/year) for our climate action work. We are required to report back on how we spend the money, but also provide reporting on our Greenhouse Gas Emissions and actions towards our Corporate Energy and Emissions Reduction Strategy. This is that annual reporting – all 24 pages of the work we are doing.

Our emissions have been reduced 32% compared to the 2010 baseline, and we are on track to meet our CEERS goal of 45% reduction by 2023. We are not on track to meet our “stretch goal” of Net Zero by 2030 in our Seven Bold Steps, and the path to get there is a body of ongoing work.

Report Back on School Streets and NASSI Opportunity
This NASSI program creates “pop-up” School streets for a week around schools in some communities as a bit of a demonstration of a different way to traffic calm and reclaim road space around schools. We had previously looked at participating in the 2025-26 school year, but Council decided it was not cost-effective, and was not the highest priority for limited resources. At that time, staff received some new info about the program just as the report was coming to Council, and promised a report back. This is that report. In short, the program needs a 9-month lead time, significant City staff time, and the $12,500 available for funding the program would not cover a substantial amount of the cost, and Council have decided that this effort an investment is better spent on existing road safety work.

Temporary Use Permit: 30 Capilano Way (Amusement Arcade)
There is a funky little business in the Braid Industrial Area that fixes and maintains pinball machines and video game consoles, and at the same time operates as an arcade where people can play the games. This doesn’t align with Industrial Zoning, so Council (in a fit of COVID enthusiasm, and in a split vote if I remember) issued a Temporary Use Permit to allow the business to add “amusement” to their industrial designation. We are now considering extending the TUP to mid-2027, which is the longest period we are allowed to grant a TUP without doing a full rezoning.

In 2027, the applicant will need to apply for a rezoning if they want to stay. Before that date, we hope to have a new Industrial Lands Strategy which should help inform the Council of the time on where this kind of niche use fits in our limited job-creation lands.

The following items were Removed from Consent for discussion:

Housing and Land Use Planning 2025-2026 Work Program.
This report is an annual staff checking in with Council on the work plan, no doubt as they plan for upcoming budget discussions and Council’s need to know what is included in our existing (budgeted) work plan. Of course, housing and land use planning have been busy files this term, with our Housing accelerator Fund programming, the Provincial housing regulations, and work around the Crises Response Pilot Project that included this department.

There is a lot here for our relatively small but nimble Housing and Land Use Planning staff compliment, including work to address homelessness, to fast-track affordable housing, to build more homes near Public Transit (TOD areas, including the 22nd Street vision), starting the process on a new Downtown Community Plan, Infill and Townhouse programs, Rental replacement and secured market rental policies. There is also liaison work being done to support School planning, and whole lot of tracking and reporting out on progress ot both provide Council transparency, but also to demonstrate to our funding partners that their investments are well made in New West.

Implications of Housing Legislation on Curbside Management
I’ve written about “Curbside Management” before – this is a more comprehensive way to view street parking strategy. The City has 400+km of curbside space, and curbside in some of our neighbourhoods are the most valuable real estate in the City: needed for transit prioritization, for active transportation, for commercial loading zones, for accessible parking, for deliveries and for trash removal, and (if any space is left over), good old fashioned parking. Right now 67% of our curbspace in the City is unregulated (you can park a car there with no cost or restriction).

The new provincial housing regulations have thrown a bit of a wrench on how we manage street parking demand. When we can no longer require off-street parking with new development, and off-street parking being so expansive to build (a single underground parking spot can cost $50,000 or more to build), it is likely there will be more demand for street parking. Of course the changes in new housing form will take years – decades even – to become common, so we have some time to address the anticipated challenges. People who really care might want to spend a bit of that time reading the bible of parking policy, because the plan here is to start talking to the community about curb space priorities, look at changes in waste collection, parking enforcement, and permitting systems to assure we are meeting the community’s expectations regarding curbside use. This is surprisingly complicated policy work, with perverse incentives and unintended consequences on every curb, which is why staff asked Council for the resources to do the background policy development work before bringing recommendations. Council agreed to this.

Alas, a motion came from Council that seemed to undermine a lot of this, proposing a suite of new policies bereft of the background work to understand the implications for the community. Fortunately, Council voted against immediate implementation, and asked staff to report back on the resources required for some of the policy changes, while dismissing others that were clearly more populist than policy.

We then had the following Bylaws for Adoption:

Construction Noise Bylaw No. 6063, 1992, Amendment Bylaw No. 8491, 2025
This Bylaw that changes how we manage Construction Noise Bylaw exemptions was adopted by Council.

Community Services Fees and Charges Bylaw No. 8529, 2025
Engineering User Fees and Rates Bylaw No. 7553, 2013, Amendment Bylaw No. 8534, 2025
Fire Protection Bylaw No. 6940, 2004, Amendment Bylaw No. 8535, 2025
Planning & Development Fees and Rates Bylaw No. 7683, 2014, Amendment Bylaw No. 8541, 2025
Electrical Utility Bylaw No. 6502, 1998, Amendment Bylaw No. 8546, 2025
These Bylaws that set various fees and rates for 2026 were adopted by Council.

2026 Permissive Property Tax Exemption Bylaw No. 8542, 2025
This Bylaw that designates what properties in the City get an permissive property Tax exemption was adopted by Council.

Council – Sept 15, 2025

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

We had our now-twice-annual Council Meeting in Queensborough, at the always-active Queensborough Community Centre. Items related to the start of our 2026 Budget process dominated our full agenda. However, we started with a bit of Unfinished Business from previous meetings interruptus:

Riverfront Vison Update – Westminster Pier Park to Sapperton Landing Park
Submitted by Councillor Campbell

WHEREAS the Riverfront is the City’s most significant cultural, economic and natural asset, home to vibrant and diverse public spaces, high quality recreation, business and housing, and significant natural features and is an integral component of the local economy, providing employment, services and tourism opportunities while providing a living link to the city’s past; and
WHEREAS the City of New Westminster’s Riverfront vision, as adopted by City Council in February 2016, includes goals to create a continuous network of attractive Greenways and parks, provide connections from all neighborhoods to the river and to programing and animating the riverfront with an active, engaging and dynamic series of experiences compatible with existing industrial uses that entice visitors to explore its many destinations and adjacent amenities; and
WHEREAS the envisioned riverfront pedestrian connection between Westminster Pier Park and Sapperton Landing Park is a vital component of the overall Riverfront vision; and
WHEREAS the imminent completion of Pier Park West and expanded esplanade and the replacement of the Pattullo Bridge is nearing completion;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT staff provide Council with an update on the implementation status and overview of the logistical considerations, and challenges that need to be addressed in order to complete the riverfront pedestrian connection between Westminster Pier Park and Sapperton Landing Park.

This is a topic that comes up frequently when I am talking to the community – is it possible to connect Pier Park to Sapperton Landing with multi-purpose path? The City did some work a few years ago to look at the feasibility, and the answer was, “probably, but it won’t be easy”. Then we had the Pier Park fire (which made the distance farther), the Pattullo Bridge Replacement Project (which was in the way of doing any significant planning), and the expansion of Pier Park West (which was a higher priority for limited parks planning staff). Council back in October of 2023 agreed unanimously on a more careful path forward on the Pier Park replacement related to some of these challenges.

It’s worth mentioning the many challenges in the way to make this connection work, starting with the City not owning large parts of the land (or water) where the trail would need to go. There are jurisdictional challenges with the Port, the railways, Metro Vancouver, the Province, and First Nations rightsholders. There are engineering challenges with constrained space, a tidal river with significant industrial use, rail proximity and the significant challenge of there being a train bridge that you cannot easily get under or over. See above where I said “it’s not easy”. But with the Experience the Fraser project picking up regional steam, Metro Vancouver looking at parks expansion, and other adjacent projects beginning to wind down, it is time to start the conversations again about this missing link.

We then moved the following items On Consent:

2026 Permissive Property Tax: Exempt Properties – Review of Application Results
We annually approve a Bylaw that exempts some properties from all or some of their property taxes. This is a provincial regulated process, and most exemptions are regulatory (we are required to provide exemption – like churches) and some are permissive, or at the pleasure of Council (like Honour House and the Sapperton Pensioners Hall). This is the Bylaw that codifies and costs that list.

Construction Noise Bylaw No. 6063, 1992, Amendment Bylaw No. 8491, 2025
Regular readers will recognize we do a lot of Construction Noise Bylaw Exemptions at Council, often multiple for a single project (such as SkyTrain station construction work that must happen when the tracks are closed). Our Current Bylaw says only Council can grant these, and in part that is because Council are often the ones who receive complaints, so they should know what’s happening. That said, it is a lot of work to put a council report together, and construction can be delayed while builders wait for the Council process to unfold. This is one of those “red tape” things people talk about often with Local Government.

Staff are recommending that we delegate the authority to permit these exemptions for “Public regional service Providers”, which essentially means various levels of government building hospitals, transit, and the such. The Bylaw still applies to them, they still need to get an exemption approved, but staff will be able to grant those approvals.

Council Strategic Priorities Plan – Second Semi-Annual Report for 2025
This is our semi-annual report on progress toward Council’s Strategic Priorities Plan, adopted by Council back toward the beginning of the term. I might write a follow-up on this as there is a lot in this report. In short, the work we planned to get done this year (aside from some of the emergent issues that have arisen during the term – like the need to adopt a new OCP because of Provincial Housing Regulations) is coming along for the most part. Of 51 work areas, the dashboard shows we are in the green (completed, or in progress as expected) for 30, are in the orange (progress has been made, but more to do) on 18, and three are in the red (We will be challenged to see them completed). When I look back at the chaos of the last couple of years – Federal and Provincial elections, fundamental regulatory changes, economic uncertainty from inflation, tariffs and likely recession) – I am actually a little surprised and pleased we have met so many goals. There is a theme here –among the chaos, we are just getting the shit done.

The following items were Removed from Consent for discussion:

2025 Capital and Operating Quarterly Performance Report
Our quarterly reporting out on finances is generally positive. As one might expect with the global economy now, capital costs are up a bit (1.3%) due to inflation and delay, but staff have found some internal efficiencies and re-allocations to get that down to less than 0.4% impact on our budget. Meanwhile, we are projecting an operational surplus (taking in more money that we budgeted) of about 2.4%, almost all of this utility charges (because more people are hooking up to utility than budgeted) and increased interest earned on our reserves. At the same time our spending is 1.2% below projected, largely because if ongoing vacancies and time it is taking to fill some funded positions. Together, this adds up to about a $11.8M surplus, again mostly in Utility funds.

In short, the finances of the City are being well managed.

Budget 2026: Fees and Rates Review, Amendment Bylaws
One of the early steps of our annual budgeting process is to set next year’s “fees and charges” for everything from parking to building permits to cemetery services. We do this early because it helps finance staff with the modelling that goes into creating next year’s budget. It’s good to have those numbers in our pocket before we start talking tax rates.

These fees are overall meant to approximate the cost of providing the service, though some (like discounts for seniors or parking fees to manage a limited resource) are also set to fit a policy goal. Staff generally recommend that we increase fees every year to keep up with inflation (as measured by CPI), as that is a good proxy for the increased cost to deliver the various services. They also regularly do a regional scan to assure our fees re not out of scale with what other cities are charging. If we are way above or below others, that is probably a sign we are doing something wrong in how we cost the work.

Parking is something that often comes up in these conversations, and without getting into the weeds now (read Don Shoup!), staff are suggesting we do a more comprehensive parking strategy – actually a more comprehensive curbside management strategy – after the new OCP is adopted and we have adoption of the new provincial housing regulations as they relate to off-street parking.

As is typical for a Council with a $300 Million budget to discuss, we spent most of our time talking about a $10,000 item, the fares for the QtoQ. Staff proposed raising the fares by a quarter ($1.25 to $1.50 for concession fares, $2.25 to $2.50 for Adult). This is more than a CPI increase, but is still a pretty modest increase for a service that City taxpayers already subsidize to the tune of $800,000 a year (not including capital costs). In the end the majority of Council agreed to a smaller increase of the Concession fares to $1.30, and the recommended Adult fare increase.

Budget 2026 Process, Schedule, and Baseline Property Tax and Utility Rate Projections
This report does not “project a 5.3% property tax increase”, nor has “staff recommended a 5.3% baseline property tax increase”, despite the misinformation already being circulated by austerity mongers. This report is not setting even a preliminary tax rate; we are way too early in the process for that, and have not even seen the Police Board budget yet. This report is simply setting some groundwork and getting Council to agree to a process of workshops and meetings to work out the 2026 budget.

When staff present a 5.3% tax increase as the “business as usual” baseline, they are simply telling us that if we want a lower increase than that, something will need to be cut from the work we are already committed to doing, and if we want to deliver more to the community, the increase will need to be higher than that. Anyone who has watched this process over the last few years (once again, the most transparent budget decision making of any Council in the Lower Mainland), the reality is that we have yet to know what new commitments Council will agree to, or what savings will be found within the current budget, but almost certainly both will happen over the next three months before we know what the 2026 tax rate will be.

We had one Bylaw for Adoption:

Title to Highway (Portion of Keary Street) Bylaw No. 8533, 2025
This Bylaw that allows the creation of an air space parcel for the construction of an overhead walkway between Royal Columbian Hospital and the new office building at 230 Keary Street was adopted by Council.

And after appointing a number of people to City Advisory Committees and panels, that was the work for the evening!

Council – August 25, 2025 (part 2)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Following last post, here is Part 2 of my long report from the Council meeting this week,. the “work we got done” part, starting with the items we approves On Consent:

22nd Street Station Area: Planning and Development Department Work Plan for Implementation of the reGENERATE Vision
The 22nd street Station area continues to be a work in progress. The City recognizes that single family homes adjacent to SkyTrain Stations are not a great way to support the Regional Growth Strategy, or any sustainable development principles of transit-oriented urban growth – not to mention the Provincial TOD legislation under Bill 47. However, the City also recognizes (and have heard clearly from the community) that we have one chance to get this area right, and community needs around infrastructure and amenities need to be addressed with any redevelopment of this area. This “study area” work involves Planning, Parks, Engineering, and other City departments, and is not done yet, though we have done quite a bit of public consultation around it.

The vision that resulted from more than a year of proactive community consultation was endorsed by Council in December of last year (unanimously) and the next steps are to develop design guidelines for new buildings to inform the Development Permit application process and design the eventual public space and streetscape design, This will coincide with high-level planning of a Transit Village around the 22nd Street Station, planning the shorter-term and longer-term vision for the BC Hydro lands that run as a green corridor (albeit, one with power lines over it) through the neighbourhood; and continued advocacy and collaboration with titleholders and stakeholders.

230 Keary Street and Royal Columbian Hospital Bridge Connection
As part of the last building in the Brewery District, the developer agreed to provide an accessible connection between RCH and the SkyTrain station through their property. For a variety of reasons, the best connection is an elevated walkway over Keary Street and the commercial fourth floor of the 203 Keary Street building. They would build this over City land, meaning we need to sell them an airspace parcel – 1350 cubic metres of air over public land. We are legally required to seek fair market value and balance that against the value of the public amenity. The value of a fully accessible connection between Sapperton Skytrain and the Hospital is clearly a valuable public amenity that would cost the City millions to build, so staff recommend we sell the airspace parcel for $1, with the agreement that we get it back if the bridge is removed when it meets end of life many decades in the future.

Construction Noise Bylaw Variance Request: 252 Brunette Avenue
TransLink needs to do some work on the Sapperton Skytrain Station to permit longer trains and improved service that can’t happen when the trains are running, and hoped to do it by now (we previously gave them a construction noise variance) but it has been delayed for a variety of reasons, including scheduling issues with the underlying railways. So we are letting then do construction work outside of construction hours to allow the work to get done.

Development Cost Charges Bylaw No. 8327, 2022, Amendment Bylaw No. 8539, 2025, and Amenity Cost Charges Bylaw No. 8540, 2025
The City is updating its Development Cost Charges Bylaw and creating a new Amenity Cost Charges bylaw to align with Bill 46, the new provincial legislation that changes how Cities can extract money from new development to pay for infrastructure and amenities to support that growth.

Both DCCs and ACCs are strictly regulated by the province, as we are required to identify and cost the projects that the monies collected from these charges are spent on, not just “we are going to buy more pipes” but “we are going to upgrade Pipe X to Y capacity and Z% of that is due to growth”, meaning it is a technical exercise involving Engineering, Finance, and Planning departments. As such, these updates represent work done so far, and we expect there will be another more comprehensive update in early 2027, informed by our imminent OCP updates and the upcoming Parks and Recreation, Solid
Waste, and Utilities Master Plans.

Staff took these proposed Bylaws to both the development community and the general public for feedback. Now we approve!

Provincial Housing Target Order – Year One Progress Report
A year ago, New Westminster received Housing Target Orders. At the time, I told the Minister we would have no problem meeting them, but we would need more support from the Province for infrastructure and amenities – and where the hell are the schools? As we look at our one-year report, I note that 10 more cities were issued orders last week, and Richard Stewart’s response was to steal my bit (I joke! This is a bit we have all been sharing as regional mayors! More voices the better! Though I wish he also had this level of concern about affordable and supportive housing need in his community).

The good news is that we (as predicted) are meeting our ordered Housing Targets. Indeed, in the first year we exceeded our order, which is a good thing because not only are the order targets based on only 75% of the current actual need in the community, the recent downtown in the development industry suggests that completions towards the end of our 5-year Target Order window will not be as easy to come by, so good to get out ahead a bit. In short, we are 170% of our 2025 target, but have just completed about 26% of our 5-year target.

The not-as-good news, we are slightly below our proportional rental target (42% of new units where the target was 52%), but projections are we will get closer to the target with buildings currently under construction. The worse news part is (as I said to the Minister a year ago) we cannot meet our affordable housing targets without significant increases in senior government funding for affordable housing. Though we currently have two non-market rental buildings under construction, and a third about to break ground, none of these show up in the annual report this year.

Rezoning Application: 140 Sixth Street (Royal Towers) – Application Review Process
The owners of the Royal Towers have been working on a redevelopment plan for the site, and are working through a process of staged approval and development in an uncertain housing market. Their current proposal is consistent with the OCP, but would be a substantial rezoning well exceeding the density envisioned for the Tier 2 TOD area (within 400m of SkyTrain). The proposal is to build two 6-storey buildings, one secured non-market (affordable) rental, the other secured market rental, then demolish the existing Royal Towers moving the residents into the new building. This would be followed by a larger phase of building two large strata towers to pay for it all. The project would also include a commercial area, courtyard public gathering area, etc. The report right now is to update Council on their phasing proposal, and to give the basic details before the developer goes to public consultation to get some public feedback.

Section 219 Covenant for Statutory Rights of Way for Metro Vancouver at TACC
Metro Vancouver has a major sewer line that runs in the old Glenbrook Channel in front of təməsew̓txʷ, one of the constraints on how the building was designed to fit 110,000 square feet and two large pool tanks between the old Canada Games Pool and this right of way. We are updating the rights-of-way to address two utility access areas Metro wants to assure they can maintain their sewer line if and when needed.

Temporary Use Permit Extension for Royal Columbian Hospital Phase Two Construction Parking: 97 Braid Street
During the construction of the new RCH tower, the City has granted a Temporary Use Permit to allow construction teams to park next to Braid Skytrain station in recognition of a lack of parking near the hospital, and the project team has been running shuttles from the Braid station to the construction site. They are asking for a one-year extension of the TUP to see this phase of the project through to completion.

We had one item Removed from Consent for discussion:

Updated Terms of Reference for Community Advisory Assembly
The City is recruiting for the second cohort of Community Advisory Committee members, and based on learnings from the pilot project and feedback from the Assembly Steering Committee, have drafted updated and slightly modified Terms of Reference for the Assembly.

And we had one single Bylaw for Adoption:

Housing Agreement Bylaw (1923 & 1927 Marine Way) No. 8507, 2025
This Bylaw that secures 89 affordable rental housing units in a six-storey residential development by 22nd Street station was adopted by Council. Yes, we continue to approve affordable housing.

Go enjoy your Labour Day weekend, and Go Bellies Go.