Ask Pat: Encapsulation

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

TJ Sport asks—

Hi Pat, great blog.

From researching the OCP and Downtown Community Plan it looks like Front Street generates a lot of noise pollution and significantly reduces the air quality for residents due to the freight trains and trucks that use it. There have been talks of eventually encapsulating the train tracks and Front Street and even the zoning bylaws or OCP states the buildings should be compatible with encapsulation. Toronto looks to be doing something similar and placing a park on top.

I realize that encapsulating tracks and Front Street will be very expensive and is likely decades away (Frankly I’m skeptical that it’ll happen in the next 25 years) Any idea what the City has in terms of timeline, vision and potential land use on top of the structure? If the idea is dead in the water/a pipe dream/no longer part of the City’s vision what are the City’s plans to address the safety, noise, and pollution in the downtown area?

Short answer is the idea is no longer part of the City’s vision for the waterfront.

Over many decades, there were various vague plans to build over the rail lines on the waterfront and/or Front Street. I’m not sure when this idea was first floated, but with the de-industrialization of the port and re-imagining of the entire downtown waterfront and Quayside starting in the 1980s, a lot of visions came and were either realized or went away when a new vision came along. Looking through old City planning documents from the last half of the Twentieth Century, you can see some of the encapsulation schemes that were sketched up. Some frankly fanciful.

It was never (to my knowledge) costed, and it was not clear who would pay the monumental cost. Its also not clear if the railways would agree to encapsulation or if the Ministry of Transportation would agree to a regional truck route that did not permit hazardous materials (because they are not allowed in tunnels). I don’t think anyone was concerned about what happened to the businesses and historic buildings that face Front Street. The vision seemed to rely on the entire waterfront, from the River Market to the Pattullo Bridge, being converted to residential towers, at least a dozen of them. These were pencil-sketch concepts, and I’m not sure there was ever a real understanding how to get there.

As recently as 2010, the conceptual idea was still bouncing around, as it worked its way into the Downtown Neighbourhood Plan – the planning document that serves as the Official Community Plan for the area below Royal Ave. When the new OCP was adopted in 2017, the Downtown Community Plan was included as an Appendix – as placeholder until a new Downtown Plan was developed. And it included this:

Since then, events have unfolded, and these became the proverbial best laid plans. I would suggest the one event that was more significant than any other was the demise of the North Fraser Perimeter Road (NFPR).

To understand the encapsulation idea, we need to understand the NFPR. There was a vision around the Turn of the Century (can you believe that phrase applies to 20 years ago!?) to shift more of the riverfront landscape of the Lower Mainland to “goods movement”. The so-called Gateway Program  required the building of two limited-access high speed freeways, presumably to service trucks, but open to all traffic on either shore of the river. The South Fraser Perimeter Road was built, the NFPR was not. Primarily because of the horrifying impact on New Westminster.

The vision for the NFPR was 4 lanes, limited access, from a new expanded Brunette Interchange to the Queensborough Bridge connecting east and west to (not really clear). This may not sound so bad if the road is encapsulated from Elliot Street to Third Ave as suggested in the clip above (requiring, I note, the longest road tunnel in Canada), but what about east and west of there? There also existed the not-insignificant problem of pinch points like the historic Station building (Kelly O’Bryan’s) and interface with the SkyTrain guideway. Between the (federally regulated and not going anywhere) rail lines and other not-easy-to-move infrastructure, there simply wasn’t room for four lanes of traffic, buried or otherwise.

And there was the wider context of what it means to our community. If encapsulation addresses noise and fumes downtown, the NFPR only increases noise and fumes in Sapperton, in Fraserview, in the West End. And as more lanes always induce traffic, the knock-off traffic impacts on our surface roads would, if every other example in the history of building roads in cities has demonstrated anything, destroy the livability of many parts of the community within the noise-and-exhaust shed of the NFPR itself. Don’t get me talking about the Braess Paradox and Induced Demand.

The NFPR was a bad idea, and needed to be killed. It was killed in 2011 when TransLink proposed spending a couple of hundred million dollars on a key eastern connection to United Boulevard, and the community recognized it for the community-destroying freeway plan it was. I am really proud of the community who stood up to stop it, and the Council of the time (long before I was elected) that made it clear to senior governments that this was not on. We literally saved the City back in 2011, and TransLink went on to fund better things, like MOAR SKYTRAIN.

So without the NFPR, a different set of decisions had to be made. When it came time to invest in maintenance and upgrades to the Front Street Parkade, the lack of an NFPR meant we were able to right-size the structure by removing the older half of it, daylight some business fronts, and create a new public space. When the design for the Larco Parking Lot (now Pier West by Bosa) was being re-evaluated, we no longer wanted or needed an elevated podium cutting people off from the River, and were able to leverage another couple of acres of public park space for the Downtown. As we adopted whistle cessation downtown, as we design a new accessible pedestrian overpass to Pier Park, as we look at upgrades to the McInnis Overpass, as we plan greenway improvements along Stewardson, etc. etc., it is about planning for something that fits our community needs and connects our community better, not accommodating 4 lanes of high-speed truck traffic to slice our community in half, using an unbudgeted, difficult-to-realize, and half baked encapsulation idea to soften the blow.

The language in the Downtown Neighbourhood Plan has not been updated to reflect this change, but the planning we are doing around downtown certainly has. For the better.

Ask Pat: flood plans

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

BillB asks—

If my reading of the City of New West website is correct, the Floodplain Management Strategy – Feasibility Plan is 10 years old. It also says that the City prepares for the possibility of flooding on “an annual basis”. In the light of recent floods in the area, and climate change at large, should New Westminster be doing more to prepare and prevent the likelihood of flooding?

The short answer is probably yes, in that recent events from the Heat Dome to the Fraser Valley flooding has demonstrated that there are gaps in local and regional emergency response schemes, and it might be worth a pretty comprehensive review. But I’m going to put that larger “emergency management” part aside here, because you asked specifically about flooding. I think we are in pretty good shape for the *likely* flood scenarios in the near future, but it gets murkier the further out we look.

As a caveat, I’m a geologist and physical geographer by academic training, but I am not an engineer. That means I know a little too much about the physical causes and mechanics of flooding (I can wax eloquently about Reynolds Number or identifying back-basin deposits in the rock record) but not quite enough about the engineering practice of managing floods. So nothing below here should be thought of as engineering advice or advanced engineering knowledge. You gotta pay somebody with a P.Eng. for that.

The Floodplain Management Strategy really addresses one type of flood risk we have in the City, that of freshet flooding of the Fraser River. We have another couple of risks not directly addressed by that strategy: seasonal or flash flooding on the Brunette River, and localized intense storm events like recently occurred causing minor localized flooding on Quayside Drive, which I would call “upland” floods, because they are not caused by the river rising so much as water not getting to the river fast enough. They all need different approaches, and the risk factor of each will be impacted differently by Climate Change.

As far as the Fraser River flood, this is the area I think we are most prepared for in the medium-term. The oft-mentioned survey of dike conditions report from a few years ago, circulated more widely during the current Fraser River flooding episode, makes New West look pretty good, comparatively. The Crest Elevation and Dike Assessment ratings are generally fair to good, comparable to Richmond and very far ahead of most other municipalities along the river. There has been a lot of work done since that 2005 report to improve both the dike (mostly along with new adjacent developments) and the ability to pump water out and over the dike during intense rain or if there is some local wave wash overtopping during a Freshet flood event. Just in the last couple of years, we have spent millions on upgrading the Wood Street and Boundary Road pump stations to bring them up to modern capacity need and seismic standards.

That said, from a geography sense, Fraser River freshet floods are not likely our biggest concern on this lower part of the river. Here, the water height varies more by tide and storm surge cycle than by freshet cycle. The concern to plan around is not a single spring freshet that is larger than others (like the 1894 or 1948 floods), but a significant low-pressure storm coming though during a king tide around the time of higher-than-average freshet. It is perhaps macabre to think about it, but am 1894-style freshet will likely cause dyke breaches from Hope to Langley, and this extra water storage capacity on farm land and in those more vulnerable communities may serve to reduce the danger further downriver like Queensborough and Richmond. Dike planning needs to be holistic and address the entire estuary, and that is the most common call for every community along the Fraser. There is even a model in place, we just need to fund it.

The Brunette River is a bit more complicated. It has a different freshet than the Fraser River and it is more prone to intense local storms, but the lower reaches are also impacted by flood stage in the Fraser. There are very few homes impacted by a Brunette River flood, but the Braid Industrial Area may definitely be affected, and there are areas of it not protected by any meaningful dike. This is an area where the City puts a lot of emphasis on tiger dams and sandbags if floods are predicted, but the complexity of the jurisdictions here (rail lines are federally regulated, cannot really be “raised” and rail beds are pretty permeable to water; a large part of the waterfront belongs to the Port of Vancouver, so we couldn’t dike it if we wanted to) meaning proactive measures are much harder to coordinate.

Upland floods from intense storms are much harder to predict, and the engineering solutions are daunting. There is only so much underground storm sewer pipe capacity, and though we are currently investing a lot of money in new storm sewer infrastructure, there is always a cost/benefit math around adequate capacity for very low-recurrence events. We are also investing more on “green infrastructure” such as groundwater infiltration, permeable surface treatments and trees, in hopes we can locally capture more of the storm water and reduce the “peak” of the most intense storm flows. But none of this fits in the Floodplain Strategy.

Where the report you read talks about “annual basis” planning, that means every year (starting in the late winter) we get regular updates on snowpack and predicted melt rate across the Fraser River basin. That is modelled into predicted flows in the month ahead, and we prepare flood response based on those numbers. If the freshet forecasts start to look floody, we start procuring and organizing response materials (tiger dams, sandbags, sand, pumps, etc.) well ahead of time. In my perhaps hazy recollection of 7 years on Council, we have gone so far as to deploy sandbags in the Brunette River area once, and had no river-sourced flooding. So the “annual basis” is around temporarily protecting low-lying areas and prepping for a flood if it is likely to occur, and in no way replaces the medium-and longer term dike upgrades, pump capacity, and storm sewer investments we need to do.

Now, about Climate Change. In general, engineering practice now accounts for it, in as good as they can. Though that means different things for each of the different risks. Add to this a major challenge of estimating or modelling the various impacts Climate Change will have on everything from local storm intensity to snowpacks in Cariboo.

The current models suggest intense rainfall events and rain-on-snow events will become more frequent in our part of the world with climate disruption, both likely to increase the frequency and possible intensity of upland floods and Brunette floods. I guess the upside is that these are likely to be more localized with limited damage (which doesn’t make you feel any better if it is your home or business that is local damaged).

Research from a few years ago (and I honestly have been not keeping up, so this may have changed) suggests that peak freshet flows in the Fraser may actually be lower on average, even as annual average flow goes up a bit over the next 75 years. So floods that meet our design levels may actually become less frequent.

The problem is, we are in the tidal range of the river, and sea level rise will most certainly impact New Westminster. The current Provincial Guidelines are to design dikes for a 50cm increase in sea level, putting dike standards where we previously expected sea level change to get by 2050. More recent research (for example, by the Research Council) suggests we will be past there by 2050. The detail of raising dikes an extra 50 cm is actually not a small one, but at least New West is not alone in this. Which is why many communities (including New West) are calling for a return to basin-wide flood and landuse planning along the shores of the Fraser River Estuary in a FREMP-like model as I linked to above.

The elephant in the room is the worst case scenario, and this is a global concern, not a New Westminster one. If we have 50cm of sea level rise by 2050, we can and are planning for that. Some of that adaptation will be expensive, but we can see how to get there. By 2050, we should have an idea of how to address 1m sea level rise anticipated for 2100, though that will bring new engineering challenges, and perhaps some uncomfortable discussion about triage: what lands we protect, what lands we abandon. However, worst case scenarios for sea level rise past 2100 are dire, and frankly very difficult to plan around. The planet with 3m of sea level rise is a very, very different planet. Most major cities are at least partially inundated, most currently ports are no longer functional. The global economy is not the one we have today. From an engineering perspective, this is not something we can plan for, and the people planning today will not be the ones planning for that eventuality.

This is why we still, while facing inevitable climate change, need to work to reduce the scale and impact of climate disruption. The battle against Climate Change is not over because it is now inevitable, the race is now afoot. Every tonne of carbon we keep out of the atmosphere today is a reduction in inundation we will see post 2100. So in that sense, our long-term flood management plan is probably best seen here.

Ask Pat: The River’s Edge

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I said I was going to spend some of the holidays clearing the Ask Pat Queue. Here we go with the first one from a drummer of some note:

Heflip asks—

The development on front street along the river’s edge…the underground portion being well below water level…is this a smart idea? Some engineer somewhere thinks so I suppose. I guess we’ll find out if it sinks or not.

I assume you are talking about the Pier West project currently under construction at the foot of Begbie Street. Indeed, the history of the site, going from 5 towers to three to two, from over 1,000 units to under 700, from an elevated parking pedestal to below-grade parking, and the attendant public benefits is outlined in this previous blog post from around the time the current iteration was approved.

But you asked about engineering and water.

Yes, engineers think it is a fine idea, if a bit complicated and expensive. I am not an engineer, or even an engineering geologist, but I know just enough to recognize the engineering of this site probably looks more challenging than it is. The building is not built on soft riverside sediments, but is within them, and rests on a series of piles driven into well compacted glacial sediments and pre-glacial rocks (probably Huntington Formation?) that are not as far down here as people might think. Around the Lower Mainland and the world, there are many buildings on piles in much similar or more challenging conditions. Just in the photo above, there is the Alex Fraser Bridge, every tower on the New Westminster Quayside, and the dynamic loads of those container cranes at silos at the port.  The engineering of doing this work is really, really well understood by people who do that work, and seismic standards for this type of construction are remarkable. The buildings will almost certainly not “sink” any more than any other building built in the 21st century in the Lower Mainland.

Secant piles that will keep the underground garage and the river from interacting. Those numbers are “feet to the bottom”. They go a long way down.

The portion that is below grade is the parking structure, both for the building occupants and public parking for the adjacent park and commercial areas. By pushing the parking below grade, we were able to negotiate more than 2 acres of public park and waterfront boardwalk space, which will be a huge shift in how the Pier Park operates. The City will finally have a realized riverfront plan.

Parking “below the river” is an interesting visual, but again, not as challenging as non-engineers may presume, and not that unusual. Many of the buildings in the Quayside on New West have parking garages that are below the top of the river, especially during flood stage. The Secant Pile wall you can see on the site is a well-established construction technique that is very well understood by generations of engineers by now. The location of this structure is perhaps dramatic, but most large buildings with significant underground garage structures are in a similar situation, in that the lower levels of the garage are below the groundwater table, and are surrounded by water-saturated soils that would love to flow into the garage. Some manage this by actively pumping away the groundwater. But more commonly now, they just build the garage as a “bathtub” that is effectively waterproof, with a few sumps and pumps to address any minor leakage or seepage.

The building is also built to the currently required flood level, including anticipated sea level rise effects related to climate change during the life cycle of the building. But that gets us talking about floods and sea level rise, and I have another Ask Pat in the queue about that, so stay tuned.

Council, December 13, 2021

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

This Council report is late. Because there is too much going on, and too much ugly news dragging me down. I’ve had a hard time finding the emotional energy to sit down and write this up. But it’s the last meeting for 2021, and we can put this doomscroll of a year into the books and move on to building good things in 2022.

We also had an afternoon workshop where we talked about the City’s response to the Opening Doors report, but that’s going to have to go I go in a different blog post, because boy I have opinions. The evening Council meeting started with a presentation of the Draft Budget 2022, which I will also have to delay to a longer stand-alone blog, because boy do I have opinions. So this blog will be reserved for the other things on the stuffed Agenda, starting with this presentation:

People, Parks & Pups – A 10-Year Strategy for Sharing Public Space
We have our first comprehensive city-wide strategy for dog parks and amenities for the something like 40% of the people in New West who have a dog. There is some good reading here, and it was a big body of work for Parks and Rec staff, with a multi-tier consultation to get us to this point which is a landmark for the City. The result is a framework for the next 10 years of work the City can do to make people and dogs better companions in our public space, including some short-term actions you will see in the year ahead.

We then passed the following items On Consent:

22nd Street Station Area: Bold Vision Work Plan
The City is going to re-launch the planning project for the 22nd Street station area. This is one of the things that got delayed by COVID, as planning staff were shifted to helping with pandemic response work supporting vulnerable populations and businesses. This is one of the few stations in the legacy Skytrain line that is still surrounded by single-family homes, and that is not consistent with the City’s or the region’s long-term growth vision. A rough outline of the densities imagines here was included in the OCP update a few years ago, but we are now thinking a little bolder.

The plan is to put this design and visioning exercise to a design competition, with hopes that we can see a landmark plan that will teach and inform the future of planning in the region. Initial ideas around this comprise a compact, transit-oriented, climate-focused, “eco-neigbourhood”. All of this tells me that we cannot achieve our goals with a traffic calmed or car-light community, but that there is an opportunity here to build a truly car free community. If we want to set a new standard, that is the path I could envision, and indeed the only one that achieves our stated goals of being net zero or positive impact on climate. This could be exciting, if we are brave enough to make it so.

Acting Mayor Appointments for January to October 2022
We trade off Acting Mayor duties, to cover for the Worship in case he cannot do the mayor-like things. I get February and March, so in case he slips out of town for Spring Break, I better update my Class 4 License.

Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption Extension Request: New Westminster Interceptor – Columbia Sewer Rehabilitation
This Project is delayed because of persistent heavy rain events, which cause surcharges in the sewer line (water pressure so high that it fill and overflows the pipe if given an opening) that prevent the work from happening. This is pretty disappointing, as the impacts of them being there are being felt even as they are standing around not doing the work that can get them out of there.

Covid-19 Task Forces: Update
Our regular task forces update: the exceptional work staff is doing to address the impacts of COVID and health restrictions on the various parts of the community.

DCC Expenditure Bylaw No. 8307, 2021
Development Cost Charges are money we collect from developers to pay for infrastructure needs related to population growth. Because they are strictly regulated, and must be spent on identified projects, a Bylaw is required to authorize spending the DC funds on the projects they are defined for.

About $500K of the $2M cost of the boundary Road Pump Station upgrade came from DCCs. About $250K in water main upgrades in Q’boro came from DCCs, as did $500K in transportation upgrades in Q’boro. On the Mainland, a little more than $200K in transportation improvements were funded through portions of 6 projects. $185K was applied to the debt from waterfront park land acquisition in Q’boro, and $360K for the same for the Pier Park purchase.

Downtown New Westminster BIA Extension: 2022 – 2025 – Revised
The BIA is a self-funded organization of the members. All downtown business owners pay a tax to the City that is transferred in whole back to the members for them to spend on business improvement initiatives of their choosing. Again, this is a provincially regulated process. Up to now, the BIA tax has been based on business frontage – paid based on in the linear feet of frontage for the lots. This makes sense if the primary expenditure of the BIA is streetfront improvements, but the BIA is a much more complex and dynamic organization now, and the way property development happens now values street front differently (with things like “air parcel rights” becoming more common).

On conversation between the BIA and City staff, it was decided to shift to a tax rate based on assessed value. This will not change the amount of money the BIA gets, only how the tax that funds it is distributed between their members.

Heritage Designation (125 Third Street) Bylaw No. 8306, 2021
The owner of this house in Queens Park wants to have it Designated, which is a higher level of protection than currently offered by the Queens Park HCA. This requires Bylaws that require a Public Hearing, so we are setting that up.

Heritage Revitalization Agreement: 802-806 Eighth Street and 809 Eighth Avenue – Preliminary Report
This project would see a heritage house in the Moody Park neighbourhood preserved, and a pretty unique stacked townhouse style development placed on some amalgamated lots. This represents a slightly unusual “missing middle” approach with stacked three-bedroom townhouses and single-level accessible studios integrated together, for a unique housing mix totaling 18 new units where there are currently thee houses. This is a preliminary report, and will go to Public Hearing, so I’ll hold my comments until then.

Metro 2040: Land Use Designation Amendment Requests
Surrey wants to make a few changes to the regional growth strategy. Two are minor and non-controversial. In the third, they wish to convert some farm lands outside the Urban Containment Boundary into warehouses in an expansion of the Campbell Heights light industrial area. This would represent a pretty significant shift in one of the region’s most powerful planning tools, putting pressure on farmland and green areas outside the UCB, for seemingly questionable regional benefits. They need some consent from the Regional Government to edit the Regional Growth Strategy in this way. As a City and a signatory to the RGS, we are sending them a note of concern about the inconsistency with regional plans around farm protection, green space protection, containment of the Urban footprint, and climate and environmental strategies for the region. Let’s see where this goes.

Metro Vancouver Integrated Liquid Waste and Resource Management Plan: Sewage Rate Allocation
We pay Metro Vancouver ($10.2 Million in 2021) to take our wastewater and treat it at the treatment plants. That cost is going up because the complexity, cost, and regulations around those plants is going up. The region wants to shift how they set that rate, and it will mean cities like New Westminster (Burnaby, Vancouver, a bit of North Van – essentially the “oldest” parts of the Metro region) that still have legacy Combined Flow sewers (where storm water is mixed with sewage and it all goes to the plant in one pipe) will pay more.

All cities with Combined Flow sewer systems are furiously working to separate the systems at some substantial cost. In New West in 2021 alone we are spending about $4M on sewer separation. Over the entire system, we are investing $27 per linear metre of sewer on rehabilitation and upgrades of sewers, and sewer separation represents the bulk of this spending. This is about 8x the regional average investment per linear metre. If we have to spend more to dispose of the water we collect, that will erode our ability to keep up this level of investment, meaning we will no longer be able to meet our goal of complete separation by Metro Vancouver’s timeline. So their “incentivizing” us to do sewer separation, they are eroding our ability to pay for it.

So we are asking them to reconsider.

Queen’s Park Farm Transition – Community Engagement Summary
The Queens Park petting zoo was closed by COVID, though discussion about the future of the site began before that, as standards for keeping and caring for livestock have changed and the operation of the Petting Zoo was going to have to change to keep up. So the City launched a public engagement process to help guide the decisions we are going to have to make about the space. We heard from hundreds of people through on-site engagement, Be Heard New West, workshops and on-line forums, surveys and other correspondence. Several themes emerged, from nostalgia about the petting zoo to concerns about animal welfare. There did seem to be a consistent desire to keep the area oriented towards agriculture and food systems education, and that animals should be a component of that. Parks staff will use this to guide some ideas for the upcoming season.

Recruitment 2022: Appointment of Committee Chairs and Liaisons
We are updating our Committee roles for the last year of the term. Read ‘em and weep.

Rezoning for Passive House Triplex: 817 St. Andrews Street – Preliminary Report
This is an interesting project in The Brow of the Hill that doesn’t fit neatly in any of our Zoning bylaws. It would turn a single house on a largish lot in to a triplex of three family-friendly units build to Passive House standard, which is about as efficient a building as you can build. This is a preliminary application, it will be interesting to see how it goes and how the community reacts to this type of modest density increase in a real mixed-density part of town. If you have opinions, let us know.

Update on the Implementation of the COVID-19 Booster Vaccination Program in New Westminster
Vaccination rates in New West are really high, and we have been lending City facilities to Fraser Health to make sure residents have as much access as possible. Now that we are into the booster cycle of the provincial vaccination program, we are looking at what role the City will play, aside from the ongoing drop-in clinics at Century House.

The following items were Removed from Consent for discussion:

Climate Action Key Performance Indicators: 2020 Baseline Data
Another Part of Climate Action and accountability. We committed to act, we set some aggressive goals, we burned Climate Action into our workplans for every department, and we integrated Climate Action into our budgeting process. But if we cannot measure our progress or be held accountable unless we have metrics. Adopting these metrics took a lot of work, because they need to be meaningful, they need to be measureable, and we need to know where our data is going to come from. For example, it would be great to ask that carbon from car exhaust is halved by 2030 compared to 2010 baseline, but we have no way directly to measure car exhaust generated in the City (can we fund a correlation spectrometer? Maybe put it in a geostationary satellite?), and we certainly don’t have accurate date going back to 2010. So we can find a way to measure that, or we need to find reliable proxies, or we need to set a different metric.

This report outlines the “Key Performance Indicators” we will be using to track, monitor, and report on our progress towards our climate goals. We will establish and update a Climate Action Report Card, and will update and adapt it as new metrics become available.

Multiculturalism Advisory Committee: International Holocaust Remembrance Day
The City will light up the Anvil Centre in Yellow to mark this memorial date. Still waiting for staff to bring us that policy on when and how we light up buildings, but until then, we’ll do it this ad hoc way.

Queensborough Historic Area Drainage Update
This is a update on engineering works ongoing to address the chronic minor flooding in a low-lying residential part of Queensborough, as came up in the last Council meeting. As drainage requires an integrated network, the preliminary works have included increasing drainage and pumping capacity around the periphery to the tune of $8 Million (some funded by DCCs, see above), and a measurable improvement in the system has been noticed. Now engineering has to get more into the middle of the area and address the many small ad-hoc “improvements” performed along property frontages, all on City lands (not private lands) but not done by the City. Many of them hinder the ability of the drainage system to convey storm waters efficiently. This means unregulated driveway widening, retaining walls build to “square” the open channel, and culverts of sub-standard design. The report was really just an update for our information.

Recruitment 2022: Library Board Appointments
We have also moved to appoint 5 new Library Board members for two-year terms. I am really grateful to community members who take on these volunteer roles and help guide policy for such an important facility two facilities in the community.

Signalized Intersection Policy
This has been an interesting bit of work Staff has done, working with the Sustainable Transportation Committee. The City has not had a signalized intersection policy to guide how we prioritize the many conflicting desires when a signalized intersection is installed or improved. Without policy guidance, these intersections tend to be designed based on local needs at the time, and don’t necessarily reflect the City-wide transportation goals or the priorities set out in our Master Transportation Plan. As such, unless the improvements are part of a bigger plan, Level of Service for drivers is probably over emphasized over pedestrian wait times (as one example).

The new policy now prioritizes the safety and comfort of pedestrians, the removing of accessibility barriers, considerations for bus efficiency and reliability, and will prioritize improvements in areas where we are trying to encourage active modes (greenways, around schools and SkyTrain station, etc.). This is good progress, and is part of what I think we need to see more of – integrating the Master Transportation Plan priorities into all City operations just as we do Climate Action priorities.

Social Inclusion, Engagement and Reconciliation Advisory Committee Terms of Reference
As we continue to right-size the advisory committee structures at City Hall, this is a new working committee designed to keep our reconciliation and social inclusion actions on track. Term of reference means we can have a committee now!

And we read some Bylaws, including adoption of the following:

Arts Commission Repeal Bylaw No. 8297, 2021
The Bylaw that shifts our Arts Commission and the Public Art Advisory Committee into a single entity, the Arts Advisory Committee, as discussed in our Nov 15 meeting, was adopted by Council.

Electrical Utility Amendment Bylaw No. 8303, 2021
Engineering User Fees and Rates Amendment Bylaw No. 8301.2021,
These Bylaws that set utility rates for 2022 was adopted by Council

Revenue Anticipation Borrowing Amendment Bylaw No. 8300, 2021
Our annual cash-flow-protection temporary borrowing Bylaw, as discussed in our Nov 15th meeting, was adopted by Council.

Heritage Revitalization Agreement (515 St. George St) Bylaw No. 8262, 2021
Heritage Designation (515 St. George St) Bylaw No. 8263, 2021
These Bylaws to allow heritage designation and a laneway house in Queens Park, as discussed at the Nov 22nd Public Hearing, were adopted by Council.

Heritage Revitalization Agreement (208 Fifth Avenue) Bylaw No. 8271, 2021
Heritage Designation (208 Fifth Avenue) Bylaw No. 8272, 2021
These Bylaws to allow heritage designation and an infill house in Queens Park, as discussed at the Nov 22nd Public Hearing, were adopted by Council.

Finally, we had Motion from Members of Council

Endorsement of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty

WHEREAS the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in 2021, Code Red for Humanity, confirmed that without radical reductions in carbon emissions this decade, temperature rises above 1.5 degrees Celsius would be inevitable and irreversible and the credible threat of unstoppable, self-accelerating global heating; and
WHEREAS changes in the City of New Westminster’s climate are already being felt, including the summer heat dome, a pattern of hotter/drier summers, increased exposure to wildfire smoke, and increased frequency and intensity of heavy rain which impacts food security, infrastructure and the well-being of the entire community; and
WHEREAS all members of our community will be impacted by the health and safety risks of fossil fuel expansion, but those impacts will be most particularly experienced by those who live with socioeconomic and health inequities—including low-income individuals and families as well as those experiencing homelessness—Black, Indigenous, and people of colour, youth, seniors, people with disabilities, and especially people who live at the intersection of these identities; and
WHEREAS the City of New Westminster declared a climate emergency with an accompanying plan of 7 Bold Steps, and is committed to a just energy transition to green infrastructure and industries that will create jobs and rapidly decarbonize our economy; and
WHEREAS a new global initiative is calling for a Fossil Fuel Non- Proliferation Treaty that would end new fossil fuel exploration and expansion, phase out existing production in line with the global commitment to limit warming to 1.5°C, and accelerate equitable transition plans,

THEREFORE IT BE RESOLVED THAT the City of New Westminster formally endorse the call for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty; and THAT the City of New Westminster write to the BC Minister for the Environmental and Climate Change Strategy, the MLAs for New Westminster and New Westminster-Queensborough, the Federal Minister for Environment and Climate Change, the MP for New Westminster-Burnaby, and
THAT that the following motion be sent to the Lower Mainland Local Government Association:

WHEREAS the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in 2021, Code Red for Humanity, confirmed that without radical reductions in carbon emissions this decade, temperature rises above 1.5 degrees Celsius would be inevitable and irreversible and the credible threat of unstoppable, self-accelerating global heating; and
WHEREAS climate crisis impacts are already being felt in our communities, including the summer heat dome, a pattern of hotter/drier summers, increased exposure to wildfire smoke, and increased frequency and intensity of heavy rain which impacts food security, infrastructure and the well-being of the entire community;

THEREFORE IT BE RESOLVED THAT LMLGA formally endorse the call for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty; and
THAT this motion be sent to UBCM for endorsement.

That’s a lot of words, but in essence, we are signing on to the call for the end of fossil fuel expansion with many cohort communities in the Lower Mainland and across Canada, and are using our lobbying power to senior government to amplify that call.

And that was the last meeting of 2021. I will try to get to writing up a bit about those two topics I skipped a bit above, and clearing the queue of unanswered ASK PATS that is getting a little embarrassing, over the holidays. Be careful out there, find joy in spending time with the people closest to you, and lets all think of the good things we can do in 2022.

Council – December 6, 2021

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The Council meeting of December 6 was limited to addressing three Public Hearings (run concurrently) to hear about 6 Bylaws. This collection of important and time-sensitive Bylaw changes are all in direct response to the ongoing Homelessness and Housing Affordability crises. They represent us acting quickly when senior government supports come available, and will further provide us the ability to act swiftly in reaction to new funding opportunities coming from senior governments.

There are two specific sites in the City, one City-owned and one owned by the province, where there is an immediate opportunity to provide truly affordable housing totaling up to 110 units – not enough (as we have at least 120 unhoused people living in New West, and many more precariously housed) but a big move in the right direction. This Public Hearing addressed the necessary OCP and Zoning amendments needed to make these two sites a reality. Staff have also put forward proposed Bylaw changes that would permit Council to more rapidly approve certain types of supportive housing and supportive land use projects.

Official Community Plan Amendment Bylaw (City-wide Crisis Response) No. 8285, 2021 and
Zoning Amendment Bylaw (City-wide Crisis Response) No. 8286, 2021
These Bylaws give Council and staff the ability to fast-track certain land use changes if those changes are in direct response a BC Public Health Emergency, a State of Emergency Declaration, or a regional crisis recognized by multiple member municipalities in Metro Vancouver.

This is, on one side, a broad city-wide application, but on the other side pretty restricted. Besides the need for there to be a declared provincial or regional emergency, the project getting fast-tracked would also have to be on City-owned or government-owned land, be funded by a senior government, and operated either by government or a non-profit. This directly addresses the issue of local government approval processes sometimes creating critical time challenges or risks that make otherwise viable projects harder to implement, even if the funding and senior governments are on board. We don’t want to be standing in the way of getting people housed or otherwise supported during a crisis, and these Bylaws will facilitate that.

We did not get a lot of feedback on these proposed bylaw changes in correspondence or the Public Hearing, but we did have one person ask what the rush is, considering homelessness and affordable housing has been a crisis for 15 years. My response to that is that I wish we had the luxury of time. I wish that when the seeds of today’s overlapping homelessness and housing affordability crises were sown by neo-Liberal austerity 20 years ago that we instead had Federal and Provincial governments that cared. But we didn’t, and for two decades the problem got progressively worse, until COVID snapped the strings holding so many support systems afloat. We are acting now, aggressively and rapidly, because we finally (see the two items below) have senior governments putting money into this problem to fund the types of housing and housing supports our community desperately needs, and we don’t know how long before the austerity cancer recurs.

Council moved to give the Bylaws third reading.

Official Community Plan Amendment Bylaw (60-68 Sixth Street) No.8283, 2021 and
Zoning Amendment Bylaw (60-68 Sixth Street) No. 8284, 2021
These bylaws would facilitate the building of a supportive housing project on a long-vacant piece of land in the Downtown that was purchased relatively recently by the province. BC Housing is ready to deliver a 4-storey modular building with 52 supportive housing units that was rejected by another community. The housing, once up and running, would be supported by BC Housing and a not-for-profit operator, and will be similar in size and operation to the current Mazarine Lodge in Queensborough, which has been operating successfully and with no problems for more than a year now.

This is truly affordable housing, with units renting for the Income Assistance Rate of $375/month. The units are self-contained studio suites (with full bathroom and small kitchens) with some common amenities like social space and laundry facilities. There will be 24/7 support staff on the site, life skills and employment training, referrals to other community services, and on-site medical and other health support. But this is not “shelter” – this is housing, where people have the dignity and comfort of their own safe space. Their own home.

This item had the most feedback in the Public Hearing, with a few people speaking in support, but more neighbors calling in to oppose this intrusion into their community. The main opposition seemed to hinge on the notion that people living in supportive housing are a danger to their neighbours, which is demonstrably false. The arguments were familiar to those presented at the Public Hearing for the Mazarine Lodge, and the dangers alleged have of course not appeared. From a land-use perspective, this is an excellent place for modular supportive housing, and with BC Housing covering the bill, it is a real boon for our community during these difficult times.

Council moved to give the Bylaws third reading.

Official Community Plan Amendment Bylaw (350-366 Fenton Street) No.8281, 2021 and
Zoning Amendment Bylaw (350-366 Fenton Street) No. 8282, 2021
This proposed project would see four City-owned lots in Queensborough amalgamated into a single lot, with 58 units (totaling 88 bedrooms) in a low-rise apartment style, to be funded primarily by the federal government through the Rapid Housing Initiative, and operated by the Vancouver Native Housing Society.

This is a continuation of the City’s Small Lot Affordable Housing strategy. Unlike some of our neighbouring communities, the last generation of City leaders didn’t leave us with a big land bank, but over the last 7 years, Council has been asking staff to find opportunities to put affordable housing on City-owned lots that do not have another specific purpose (Park, Road, Library, etc.). This is the fourth project to come along that seems to math out on an available site (the other three are up and running).

The one challenge raised by a neighbor at this site is the proximity to some long-standing drainage issues in a part of Queensborough that is a bit of a low spot. Drainage improvements have not come with the low-density redevelopment in this area, and the open watercourses do sometimes fill up and even overflow, resulting in flooding of the road. This flooding does not, generally, impact the houses because of the floodplain building standards that are meant to prevent this, and indeed this proposed building will be designed with the flood construction level to manage that risk. The drainage issue is partly about ongoing maintenance, and there is some medium-term engineering plans to improve the network in the area. Unfortunately, loosely-regulated driveway crossings and drainage impacts make Fenton Street not particularly pedestrian-friendly, with a gravelly shoulder on a highly crowned but beat-up road and very loosely regulated parking. The accessibility of the site is somewhat compromised by this situation, so I added another motion asking that staff report back on how we can assure safe and accessible pedestrian connections to the development.

Council moved to give the Bylaws third reading. Then supported my motion on Pedestrian accessibility.

It was a bit of a long (almost 4 hours), and at times challenging, Public Hearing, but I am glad the City is moving the needle on truly affordable housing, and acting as swiftly as the law allows in getting it done. This is the shit I got elected to do, so in the end it was a good day.

CGP Meeting

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 3 Comments.

We had an extraordinary Council meeting on Wednesday, because we had some tough decisions to make. Well, really one big decision, and some accessory decisions will fall out of that.

The headline is that we have decided to not pursue emergency repairs on the existing Canada Games Pool, and will instead begin work towards its demolition. This was not a decision made lightly, as it has significant impacts on residents, staff, and budgets. It also breaking a commitment we made to the community about maintaining continuity of programming between the CGP and the TACC (təməsew̓ txʷ Aquatic and Community Centre), and we need to see accountability for not being able to follow through.

There are reports provided as part of the Council meeting that you can read here. If you want the details to address some of the speculation in the community, the facts are in there. I will try to summarize here, and let you know where my head is in making this decision – reminding you as always that I only speak for myself and not for all of Council or for the City.

The problem began a few weeks ago when we had torrential rains that overwhelmed the drainage system bypass designed to take all of the storm and sewer flow from the existing pool. The water back-up flooded a mechanical vault and messed up the mechanical and electrical systems that heat, filter, and circulate water to the pool. It also made it impossible to heat water for showers or run sewage, meaning the gym and fitness areas needed closing as well. While repairs were being undertaken, it became apparent that the pool was leaking. This is a bigger problem.

To find the source of the leak was a bit of a complicated process. It’s not just the concrete tank, it is the fittings for the drains and water supply system, and the 50-year-old pipe network that is underneath a big concrete water filled tank, so not really available for visual inspection. It involved pressure tests, scuba divers in the tank, isolating different circulation systems, dye tests, and systemically eliminating potential causes. There turns out to be more than one cause, but the biggest issue is a crack along the width of the tank where it goes from the shallow end to the deep one.

Once it was conformed the crack was actually losing water, there was a rapid but extensive evaluation of repair options, including bringing in outside experts for second opinions. Everything from epoxy in the cracks to re-lining the pool was evaluated, but the work required means draining the pool, which for complicated hydrostatic pressure reasons, can’t be done without groundwater management, which means drilling wells, then excavating the pool floor. A similar exercise was undertaken about 30 years ago, and it was not quick or inexpensive, as you can tell from the photos appended to the report:

So the decision staff and Council had to make was whether to go down this road. To make that decision we need to know the cost, the timing, and the risk. It is a bit complicated (its set out pretty well in the report, if you want to read it) but based on initial estimates of repair cost, and assuming that the repair could be affected in 6-8 months, the difference to taxpayers of us doing or not doing the repair is about $3 Million. The 8 month timeline is also based on some assumptions that may prove incorrect once we start the work. There was also a risk not just that the timeline would be extended, but that structural damage was such that the repair strategy simply didn’t work.

I appreciate that staff and our consultants were straight-up about this. Everyone want the pool up and running – the staff who work there, Council, the community. So there is a temptation to be engineering-optimistic to the point of Pollyanna about the proposed repair. But the reality is that any repair approach was going to be expensive, and uncertain. I think if we had a $100K repair bill and could guarantee it would be done by March, we would have pulled the trigger and gone that path, but that’s not the reality.

With the TACC scheduled to open in later 2023, and a potential for extensive repair to take 8 months, it came down to justifying the significant cost for what looked to be a decreasing number of months of service. It’s disappointing, but it was increasingly looking like we were throwing good money after bad, and the sunk cost fallacy, as tempting as it is, is bad governance.

So with CGP out of commission, we are looking at ways to provide alternative services, from re-arranging some gym equipment space and programming in to other spaces in the City to expanding the season and hours of both Hume and Moody outdoor pools. We are also looking to re-scheduling demolition work at the CGP to coordinate better with TACC construction. No doubt, this increases the urgency and importance of getting the TACC completed on time.

It is natural for the community to want to know why this happened, and even to speculate on some causes. Up to this point, the priority of City staff and contractors has been to investigate what was happening and gathering information about potential repair strategies so Council could make an informed decision as soon as possible. Determining the cause is part of that work, but not the focus. Now that the decision has been made, we can turn more focus to cause and accountability.

This is something that is sometimes hard to talk about in local government. We have contract relationships with consultants that spell out who is responsible for what; we have legitimate insurance and liability concerns that have an effect on the business of the City. Some of this info is protected by Section 90 of the Community Charter. However, in my comments in Council, I tried to make clear that the public needs accountability here. Fiscal impacts aside, the community has lost something – access to an important amenity, as end-of-life as it may have been. And the community deserves to know why. If this was a predictable and avoidable, I think we need to be transparent about why it was not predicted or avoided. If it was a fluke of geotechnical bad luck, I’d like to know what measures were taken to anticipate and avoid this turn. The community is going to speculate (New West is pretty good at that – we are an engaged and chatty community!), but the only response to that speculation is to get the right information out there, The City has an FAQ up here, and we will update info when we have info to update.

So in summary, this sucks. We really hoped that there would be continuity between CGP closing and TACC opening, but I think Council made the prudent fiscal and responsible decision. Following up on that, we have more decisions about alternate programming and staffing that will unfold in the next little while.

Council – Nov 22, 2021

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Our meeting this week included two relatively high-profile Public Hearings. Not because the change to the land use was large, but because the word Heritage was involved, and the properties were in Queens Park. Add those two together, and you get passionate community input. So we had four hours of discussion with the community about two projects:

Heritage Revitalization Agreement (Bylaw No. 8262, 2021)
Heritage Designation (Bylaw No. 8263, 2021) for 515 St. George Street
This homeowner on the western edge of Queens Park wants to build a laneway house on the back of their property, which is one of the “lanes” that is actually a named street with other properties facing it. The laneway house would be a single-storey fully accessible 830 square foot home and meet the design guidelines for new construction in the Queens Park Heritage Conservation area.

The Community Heritage Commission supports the HRA, and the project meets the OCP. It is actually within the laneway house accommodation that would be permitted by right in Queens Park, except for the zoning designation of this lot. The total density proposed (FSR 0.515 for the existing house and 0.185 for the LWH) is the same as any heritage house in Queens Park is entitled to (0.7), so instead of building an addition to the house and a accessory/garage, they are taking this path to build a LWH.

We had 5 written submission and about a dozen people come to Council to speak to this project, the majority opposed. Opposition included that this was not a “real” HRA (yes it is, this is exactly what the HRA program is designed for), and that here is no “heritage win” (like every HRA in Queens Park, we need to remind folks that designation through HRA is a much higher level of protection than the HCA provides).

Council voted to give the HRA and Designation Bylaws Third Reading.

Heritage Revitalization Agreement Bylaw No. 8271, 2021
Heritage Designation Bylaw No. 8272, 2021 for 208 Fifth Avenue
This homeowner wants to subdivide their property into two lots (4,000 and 4,710 sqft), move the existing 1910 house forward on the northerly lot, and build a new house on the larger southerly lot facing Elgin Street. This project has been back and forth a few times, and the owner has made some pretty significant changes to the project over the last year. This project aligns with OCP goals and was approved by the Community Heritage Commission.

The resultant lots will be smaller than the zoning requires, but not out of scale with the 8 lots around them (two 4,356 sqft lots to the east, a 3,300 sqft lot to the south, several 4,356 sqft lots to the north). There was a lot of concern expressed about this being “extreme density”, but the two lots would have FSRs (0.7 and 0.64) within what is currently allowable for heritage properties, and lot coverages (31% and 29%) lower than what is allowed (35%). To put that in perspective the land owner is currently entitled to build 1,154 sqft more on the existing lot than the total that is proposed for the two lots. This is not only not “extreme density”, it isn’t even building to already approved density. If that isn’t gentle, I don’t know what would be.

We received 14 pieces of correspondence on this project, and had about 20 people come to speak to us about it; again more against than for. Opposition included that this was not a “real” HRA (yes it is, this is exactly what the HRA program is designed for), and that here is no “heritage win” (like every HRA in Queens Park, we need to remind folks that designation through HRA is a much higher level of protection than the HCA provides). There was also concern that this was “over density”, when by any measure it is under density already permitted for the site.

Council voted to give the HRA and Designation Bylaws Third Reading.

Resilience

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 3 Comments.

I never remember feeling like this before. The bad stuff is piling up. People and governments are being tested in ways I don’t think anyone anticipated, though it was easily predicted. What’s on my mind is not the bad news happening (there has always been bad news), but in the shift in mindset about the bad news. Maybe it was Trump, maybe it was COVID, maybe it is the algorithms in our news feed or there was truth to the theory that David Bowie was holding the good in the Universe together. I don’t know the cause, but I have been thinking about how a shift in language I noticed might give insight into a change in out collective mindset, and what it means to be in a leadership role at this time.

I am involved in a few organizations that bring Local Governments together. I’m on the Executive of the Lower Mainland Local Government Association. We bring local government leaders together to network, share resources and knowledge, and advocate for the things we need (money and/or regulatory change) to make our communities work better. I am also the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Community Energy Association. We are a not-for profit with a growing professional staff that empower local and regional governments to achieve energy and emissions reductions targets, through planning support, coaching, and actual implementation of programs that move the dial on Climate Action.

In both of those organizations, we spend a lot of time strategizing the best way to serve our communities. We are both receivers and dealers in Buzz Words. In that part of the work, there has been a shift that was so subtle, I didn’t even notice at the time, and was swept up in the change such that I even changed my own language and thinking without noticing. Only with hindsight, and only recently, have I started to think about what we may have lost.

The shift is how we stopped talking about (and building towards) sustainable communities, and are now talking about (and hoping for) resilient communities. Perhaps this is not a revelation. Google “resilience is the new sustainability” and you get an awful lot of hits, most of them of the eco-marketing genre. Resilience is the new buzz, sustainability is passé.

This has been in my mind of late because [gestures to everything happening around us] and how wordshift / mindshift is not limited to those organizations above, but in communications being used by the government in face of overlapping catastrophe. The increased reliance on “resilience” as a planning idea, a community goal, a vision, means something different when you recognize just don’t talk about sustainability any more, it turns to dark thoughts.

Sustainability, use as a buzzword aside, has a clear definition that can be traced back to the Brundtland Report and can be simplified to “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. There is a hope in sustainability. A vision that we can do better right now in ways that will make things better in the future. It’s planning for a prosperous future, like planting a tree under whose shade you may never personally sit. It tells the next generation that we care, that we are cognizant we are passing to them a legacy of our decisions, and we are taking responsibility for that legacy.

Resilience is something different. So shockingly different that it is amazing we have so easily slotted it in to replace sustainability. Though definitions may vary based on context, the one we are talking about in community planning and governance is something akin to “an ability to recover from, or adjust easily to, misfortune or disruption”. This is a different vision, one that sees a lot of bad shit coming down the pike, and we can do nothing to stop it, so hold on tight, and we’ll try to get you some pillows to soften the blow. It is different than hope, and if it isn’t exactly despair, it is at least stripped of optimism.

These days, our emergencies feel like Matryoshka dolls. Last week’s emergencies are sitting within last month’s emergencies, sitting within the emergency that has been going on for two years, surrounded by a decades-long building emergency that is, ultimately, the cause of last week’s emergency. And will be the cause of next week’s.

How did we get here? After decades of talking about, instead of applying, a sustainability lens to addressing that big emergency, we are left with trying to build resiliency to the inevitable emergencies that we know are coming. It is an admission of failure at providing the basic stability of yesterday to those living tomorrow.  If we weren’t successful at the sustainability, why would we believe we are going to be successful at resilience? How did we let this shift happen without us noticing it? Without even comment?

These questions are rhetorical, but the answers are there for us. There is the generational failure where hoarding was seen as the best path to assuring the next generation’s prosperity. There is the neo-liberal outsourcing of solutions for pressing problems to a market that was wholly unequipped to think long-term because we had to be creating something to hoard. There is an intentional erosion of trust in institutions from science to education to governance to journalism that has disarmed the warning systems that should have shown us this future. There is a paucity of leadership, replaced with caffeine hits of populism.

Worse than a lack of vision, there is a fear of vision. A suspicion of vision. We are at the same time clamoring for change and terrified of change. Ideas like “maybe we can fix homelessness by building homes” are seen as radical, fanciful, and ultimately unaffordable. So the change we are getting is the one we could not avoid. At the heart of it all is the feeling that we, one of the most prosperous societies in the history of the globe, can’t afford change. We need to keep digging the hole, because hole-digging is what’s going to pay our way out of this hole. Yes, I’m looking at you, TMX.

If there is hope in this, it is that there are people who see past this. There are leaders in our community, in our province, in our country who are talking about what we can do, not what we can’t. Because shit has to change, and this dread you are feeling doesn’t need to be there. We can’t settle for resilience. Sustainability is not a pipe dream we should let die, it is the survival of all we value, and it is the promise we should be making to the next generation, and to ourselves. It’s the path away from this dread.

It’s the work we have to do, now more than ever.

Council – Nov 15, 2021

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Our Council meeting this week seemed like everything else this last month –  little glitchy. Staff at the City have done a phenomenal job rolling with the various changes in how we delivered Council meetings, with shifting Public Health Orders and legislative requirements around electronic meetings, which included a complete review of our digital environment. This week’s glitches were not their fault, but a failure in the phone system that was felt nationwide that just happened to occur during our meeting, and our meeting while the province was beginning to flood. I’m not sure the two were related, but if you were following in Zoom and didn’t hear everything, the streamed video of our meeting does have clear audio, so you don’t have to miss any of the exciting action on our agenda. We started with reviewing a Temporary Use Permit:

TUP00027: 502 Columbia Street (former Army and Navy Store) for Emergency Homeless Shelter
This permit would allow the Purpose Society to operate an emergency shelter in the lower floor (fronting Front Street, not Columbia) of the Army and Navy Building, in which Purpose has been providing other programming for several months. The TUP will be active for 3 years, though we hope it will not be required for this long a time. The last time we issued a TUP for an emergency shelter, it was active for about 6 months.

At this point, it is a little unclear which will be funded here. Purpose has adequate funding to open an “Emergency Weather Response” shelter, which would be made available for up to 50 persons with no other shelter overnight only during extreme weather events between November and March. The only other such service in New West was downsized to 30 beds due to COVID restrictions, and is now in the process of being repurposed to provide health services on a more permanent basis. If BC Housing comes through with additional funding, this could become an “Emergency Response Shelter”, which would provide a similar number of beds on a 24/7 basis with full supports for the residents that would fill the gap until more permanent Emergency Housing is available (which we hope to see opened within 18 months).

We has a significant amount of public feedback on this through various media. Written correspondence included 44 pieces, with concerns raised related to crime and the impact on businesses, but also a significant amount of support and recognition of the pressing need for shelter, and preferably housing.

Council moved to approve the TUP, and reinforced the message to BC Housing that true 27/7 shelter with supports is the preferred model here. We have more than 100 people living without shelter in New Westminster. We have a service provider willing to step up, BC funding willing to fund, and a building owner with vacant space willing to provide appropriate space for those residents that want to come indoors, get warm, get clean, get help, it would be unconscionable for us to say no.

Business Regulations and Licensing (Rental Units) Amendment Bylaw No. 8302, 2021
We are making changes to the business Bylaws we adapted to provide extended protection to renters from demo-viction and reno-viction in light of changes by the Provincial Government to the Residential Tenancy Act. We asked for public input, it got a little media attention, but we received no feedback, so Council moved to go ahead with the changes.

We then moved the following items on Consent:

Budget 2022: Engineering and Electrical Utility Amendment Bylaw Report
As previously discussed, the Bylaws for Utility Fee changes was presented and moved by Council. Yep, utility rates are going up. Both Water and Sewer primarily because of Metro Vancouver costs going up, Electrical going up basically at the inflation rate as recommended by the Electrical Utility Commission, and Solid Waste going up because we have a couple of pressing capital costs.

Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption Extension Request: 618 Carnarvon Street
The new building that will partly encapsulate the SkyTrain downtown (reducing its noise) has been planning to do that encapsulation work for a few months, but was delayed. So the noise variance they need to do some of this work at night (when SkyTrain is not operating, for obvious reason) needs to be extended, which we are doing except for the period through the Christmas Holidays.

Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption Request: New Westminster Interceptor – Columbia Sewer Rehabilitation
That shitty sewer project on Columbia needs to work up to 4 nights in late November or early December in order to get done this year. The timing is critical because they cannot do this work when there is significant surcharge in the sewer –so they need drier weather for a short stretch. Like a root canal, it sucks, but we gotta get past this and get that sewer rehabbed.

Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption Request: New Westminster Interceptor – Sapperton Connection along East Columbia Street
This is a different phase of the same work, in a different location. Two nights some time before Christmas, they are going to do sonar inspection of the sewer line. This should not make much noise other than the idling of a couple of vehicles, but night construction work requires an exemption.

Covid-19 Task Forces: Update
This is our regular (now about once a month) update on the Tasks Forces the City setup to address specific challenges related to the pandemic and related Public Health measures. If you are curious about what the City has been doing in support of vulnerable and at risk populations, seniors and persons living with disabilities, and business and the local economy, these are the updates you want to see. Putting hope into action, as we have been doing for 18 months now.

Crisis Response Bylaw Amendments: Consultation Summary and Second Reading of Bylaws
More of the Hope and Vision stuff, the City has bundled three projects together to accelerate the development of supportive and affordable housing in the City in response to the ongoing homelessness crisis. One is giving Council some power to fast-track response City-wide in the event of a BC State of Emergency declaration, one to accelerate approval for a supportive housing project in Queensborough, and another to fast track a supportive modular housing project downtown. We sent this out for Public Consultation, and this is the report back.

We had four virtual information sessions (totaling >50 people), A Be Heard New West page (>450 visits. >150 active participants). General support for the City-wide plan, and general support for doing “something” about providing shelter for unhoused people, but local concerns about the specific locations and problem behaviours. There are also a significant number of responses fully in favour of each project.

As this involves an OCP amendment, it will go to a Public Hearing, so I’ll hold my comments until them.

District Energy Bylaw No. 8269, 2021 for First Reading
The City and the Electrical Utility are continuing to work on a District Energy Utility (DEU) for Lower Sapperton to take advantage of a Metro Vancouver sanitary sewer main (as a carbon-free energy source), in a location that can provide base load carbon-free energy to the expanded RCH and upcoming developments in the area – predominantly Sapperton Green. This single project, if fully realized, would offset community GHG emissions equivalent to the entirety of New Westminster’s Corporate Emissions. To undertake the next stage business case development, a Bylaw is required to assure new development in the area hooks up to the DEU such that space heating, cooling and/or water heating in new developments will be provided by the DEU, and sets out conditions for the relationship between a developer and the Electrical utility to let this happen.

Anyway, this is first reading, so if you have input, let us know!

Heritage Revitalization Agreement Refresh: Principles and Community Consultation
This is a very preliminary report, asking that staff go out to do public consultation on this topic that eats up a completely disproportionate amount of our Council time and staff energy, considering the minuscule impact it has on the community at large. Ultimately, the process for approving HRAs (where the City gives rezoning-like benefits to property owners in exchange for them preserving a heritage asset) is cumbersome and has been the cause of much community conflict, so clarifying the process will benefit us in reducing the effort of staff needed to manage these, and potentially the conflict in the community related to their application. So off to Public Consultation it goes, and we will try to hammer out some principles to make the process work better, because the current process is clearly making no-one happy.

Revenue Anticipation Borrowing Amendment Bylaw No. 8300, 2021
Every year, we need to set up a borrowing Bylaw to give staff the ability to dip into a line of credit in case we run out of cash waiting for the annual tax and utility bills to get paid. We spend money year round, but mostly get paid in one month in the summer, this gives us the $3 Million buffer we need to make sure we don’t run into a shot-term cash crunch.

Schedule of Council Meetings for 2022
Mark your Calendars. Here is the schedule for 2022. 20 Council meetings, 10 Workshops, and 7 Public Hearings. One meeting in Queensborough (haven’t done that in a while!) and 3 of those meetings are actually after the 2022 election, so will be a new Council.

The following items were Removed from consent for discussion:

Climate Action: 2020 Corporate Greenhouse Gas Emissions Update
We annually report out our Corporate GHG emissions, and compare to the reduction goals set out in our Community Energy and Emissions Reduction Strategy (CEERS). 2020 was the first year in included the emissions produced by contractors working for the City as part of our own emissions, but we are still almost on track to our CEERS targets. There have also been some changes to how the Province counts electricity emission factor (how much GHG emissions are related to BC Hydro supplied electricity) so our reporting numbers look a little different than previous numbers.

In short, our emissions are about 20% lower now than they were in our 2010 baseline year, where a “straight-line” reduction to our 2030 would have us at 22.5% below 2010 now. Not quite on track, but not far off. This is, however, good news. We know that the construction of the təməsew̓txʷ Aquatic and Community Centre will reduce our emissions by something like 15% when it replaces the Canada Games Pool, so that 15% is not yet counted, but is already in our budget and being built. We are certainly on track to get below our 2030 target by investing now, not by waiting or talking about targets, but by doing the work.

New Westminster School District’s 2021-2022 Eligible School Sites Proposal Report: City Response
The City is growing at the pace outlined in the City’s Official Community Plan and we are hitting the targets we committed to in the Regional Growth Strategy. More importantly, we are seeing that there is a demographic shift happening in the community, and (perhaps a reflection of the City’s Family Friendly Housing policies coming into effect) we are having an increased number of young families moving to the community, which means we need more schools.

Fortunately, the Provincial government has abandoned the absurd BC Liberal policy of only building schools for *current* need, and are giving School Districts more flexibility to apply for capital projects to meet projected capacity needs based on community OCPs and demographics, but we are already about 5 years behind (as schools under construction were mostly approved under that previous policy). So the City needs new school locations. Of course, it has been more than 100 years since New Westminster had any empty “greenfield” spaces for new schools. So we need to repurpose existing land use and build schools more appropriate for dense urban spaces.

The School District has been working on this, and we have had extensive discussions over the last little while at both a staff-to-staff level, and a Council-to-School-Board level, to see how we can help the School District achieve their goals. The Board has developed a needs assessment and an Eligible School Sites Proposal to take to the Provincial government, and have asked the City to provide support. Staff say their projections look spot on, so we are sending a note to that effect. More to come here!

Preliminary Application Review: OCP Amendment and Rezoning – 1084 Tanaka Court
A property owner in Queensborough previous approached the City about building a banquet hall on a piece of industrial-zoned property in Queensborough. They now want to build a residential (Purpose built Rental) on this property as part of a mixed-use development. This is an area (North of the freeway, near the Casino and Lowe’s) not previously envisioned for residential use, and is a pretty significant departure from our OCP. Not just an increase in density or built form, but a substantial shift in land use areas. Staff is recommending against this change, but the applicant has an opportunity to apply to Council.

This was an interesting discussion at Council, and I honestly think most of us are on the fence on this one – but I can only really speak for myself here. At first pass, this does not look like an appropriate change of land use. The property is in a light industrial area, though most of the surrounding use is more commercial. We have long supported a policy of protecting job-creation and industrial space in the City, as it is under threat form a variety of directions. Then you consider that adjacent properties and those across the street are zoned M-1 or M-2, and as such are currently permitted to be lumberyards, machine shops, or factories manufacturing anything from rubber tires to textiles. The pedestrian realm nearby is not designed for a family neighbourhood, and most services are not easily accessible. But the idea of saying no to daycare and housing when both are in such critical need in the community and the region right now puts us in a real conundrum.

Council, in a split vote, agree to allow staff to continue to work with the property owner to see if they can develop the project some more, but also expressed some concerns about it. If this proceeds, it will eventually end up in a Public Hearing, and it will no doubt be an interesting one that asks some difficult question of Council and the community.

We also had a Presentation:

Cohousing
We got a presentation from a person who lives in the Driftwood Village Cohousing Project in North Vancouver, and from a member of a burgeoning co-housing group in New West, to outline how co-housing might work in the City. A lot of this was very educational about what co-housing is and (more importantly) about what is isn’t. This is a different model than Co-op housing, and though it may include some affordability elements, it would generally not be considered an Affordable Housing model. It does however, fill as a bit of a “missing middle” niche for people who want to live in a more community-focused setting ,somewhere between a regular strata and a co-op (though they are usually structured as a Strata in the legal and financial sense. Our new OCP provides an opening to supporting Co-housing, and this presentation gave us an opportunity to learn what models might work in the Greater Vancouver context, and how we might support that model better. It also ended in Council asking staff to look deeper into how we might support such a model in the City if the opportunity arises.

Finally, we had a boatload of Bylaws, including the following for Adoption:

Bylaw Notice Enforcement Amendment Bylaw No. 8298, 2021
Municipal Ticket Information Amendment Bylaw No. 8299, 2021
These bylaw amendments support the change in the Business Licensing Bylaws around Tenant Protection, as discussed above, and were Adopted by Council.

Climate Action, Planning and Development User Fees and Rates Amendment Bylaw No. 8293, 2021
Cultural Services User Fees and Rates Amendment Bylaw No. 8294, 2021
Electric Utility Fees and Rates Amendment Bylaw No. 8295, 2021
Engineering Services User Fees and Rates Amendment Bylaw No. 8292, 2021 and
Financial Services Fees and Rates Amendment Bylaw No. 8296, 2021
These Bylaws amend the fees for 2022 for the various services provided by the City, mostly going up to match inflation. And they were all adopted by Council.

Ask Pat: Zoning shops

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Ject asks—

How do zoning and bylaws work in New West? It seems to me that allowing for small retail spaces in neighbourhoods like the ones surrounding Agnes and Carnarvon @ Elliot, for example, would be of great benefit to the community: More walking distance shops and such (I’m thinking coffeeshops, produce stands, maybe a convenience store) would make this area more walkable, livable and agreeable to its inhabitants. I have seen some small stores close to brow of the hill, and I know that there are stores on sixth, but why not more centric?

To answer your first question: it works like zoning everywhere else in BC (except Vancouver), because although the powers local government have under zoning are very broad, they are set out in Provincial legislation. And as in many other things, when it comes to zoning power, the Local Government Act giveth, but the Community Charter taketh away.

There is a lot of talk in urbanist and activist circles about zoning, some even suggesting that it is more trouble than it is worth. There is no doubt the history of zoning is problematic (racist and classist zoning was more the norm than the anomaly for North America for much of the twentieth century), and it is currently a cause of (or at least a functional part of) a lot of inequity in communities. However most don’t really understand what it is as a tool in modern local government.

Many armchair planners have a perhaps SimCity-derived thought that zoning is designed to keep noisy, polluting, industries and busy, crowded commercial areas separate from comparatively pastoral and quiet residential areas, so people are healthy and can sleep at night. But in BC, that type of high level distribution of land use is more achieved by an Official Community Plan (OCP). Zoning is a finer-grained distribution of land uses within those bigger categories. It also speaks more to the size, shape, and form of development within neighborhoods, and it also manages more specific land uses and how different land uses are mixed together within the same area. A neighbourhood might be designated Residential in the OCP, but zoning may allow “four floors and a corner store” types of buildings, or even stand-alone buildings that don’t necessarily “fit” the strict OCP designation for the entire neighbourhood, like a stand-alone cafe in an otherwise residential neighbourhood.Map of the OCP designations for the eastern part of Downtown from the City’s on-line map.

It’s important to note that zoning doesn’t necessarily drive changes in use, it is usually the other way around. If a specific use is allowed in a zone, it doesn’t necessarily mean anyone will actually come along and do that use, or build a new building for that use. Council rarely re-zones or changes the allowable uses on a zoned piece of land unless a landowner requests it by making a rezoning application – they want to change the use and ask the City for permission.

Map of zoning designations in the eastern part of Downtown from the City’s on-line map.

The thing about zoning is that zoning changes for any lot need to be approved by Council, and (this is the big part) Council can say “no” to a change for pretty much any reason they want. Most powers of Councils are limited by legislation or common law, and we are expected to act reasonably. In administering building permits (as a random example), we cannot capriciously withhold a permit if you want to build something – as long as what you are building meets the zoning and the building code, no bylaws are violated, and you pay your fees. We can’t just say “no” without providing a reasoning for why, and can get dragged into court if we act arbitrarily in refusing you a permit for, say, a bathroom renovation. But if you ask us to change your zoning, we have almost unlimited power to say “no” and you are unlikely to have any recourse.

As a result, a City can ask for pretty much anything in exchange for zoning – Development Cost Charges to pay for sewer, water, and transportation upgrades, so-called “Voluntary” Amenity Charges to pay for other things in the City, we sometimes ask for a strip of land to be dedicated to the City for a boulevard, or sidewalk replacement or other upgrades to adjacent City lands. We can ask the developer looking to re-zone that they build space in their proposed building for Daycare use or Affordable Housing or that they build more (or less) parking, or that they paint their building a different shade of blue. Every rezoning is a negotiation.

Now, this of course is a power a wise Council will not want to abuse. Besides making ourselves unpopular and getting voted out, making rezoning too onerous will cause landowners to scoff at the demands, and no-one will invest in developing your City, which might mean you will not achieve the goals of your OCP. On top of this, the community may lose out on those amenity benefits that could be negotiated. Of course, a Council could cynically use this piling on of demands as a great way to prevent new housing from being built while not appearing like you are opposed to new housing. “This development just didn’t quite do enough to address (pick a concern)” is a great stall tactic that effectively shuts down development as easily as saying no, with predictable results. But as a practicality, most Councils want to make sure the community gets “its share” of the value that the developer receives when a property is rezoned. It’s a balance, and no-one does it perfect.

The point is, if we abolished zoning, we would need to replace it with another tool that provided the community an ability to leverage a fair share of the land lift (the increase in property value that comes with zoning changes in a land-constrained region such as ours) in order to pay for the externalized cost if development and community growth. Right now, it is the best tool we have for that because it is the only tool that gives Local Government negotiating power.

But you were asking about zoning for small retail. This has been a topic of *much* discussion over my 7 years on Council, going back to the last big OCP update. Part of livable, walkable, dense urban communities like Downtown New West is being able to walk to some basic services. I feel fortunate that I live in a part of the Brow of the Hill where I am a <10 minute walk from most services, and as such can do most of my shopping by waking or riding my bike. But there are areas of New West with a paucity of services within such a short distance, like the west part of the West End, parts of Upper Sapperton, or Port Royal in Queensborough. There are also some areas like the east aside of Downtown (as you note) are surprisingly far from some services, and probably don’t achieve the walkscore we would like to see for such a dense community.

Expanding on your example of the east part of Downtown, most of that area (other than Columbia Street, which is commercial) is zoned for low-rise multi-family residential, with a note in the zoning that higher density may be permitted if enough amenity is provided. Any retail coming to this area would need a rezoning. Would Council approve such a rezoning? I don’t know, but I doubt we are going to be asked to any time soon.

There is an ongoing discussion locally and regionally about retail space. I have heard owners of commercial property argue there is too much, and if Cities require retail space as part of new mixed-use developments, they will remain empty, especially as the traditional retail environment has been Amazoned into a state of… shall we call it uncertainty? Others suggest high lease rates and somewhat onerous triple-net lease terms are a result of there being too few spaces available and commercial owners holding all the cards. There is also a universe where both of these are true at the same time, and location and neighbourhood characteristics determine where your street or block fall on that spectrum.

Developers definitely would rather build residential, given the option, because they know the demand is there. Build residential, and it will sell for a pretty easily predicted price per square foot. Commercial space is not as certain. Building a residential property is also more predictable in how you fit it out. Every home needs a toilet and sink in every bathroom, countertops and appliances, wired and plumbed for in suite laundry and known kitchen appliances. But a commercial space is largely unknown. To use your examples, a coffee shop, a produce stand, a convenience store all need very different layouts, plumbing, electrical loads, even locations of doors. So commercial space built on speculation is built as an empty shell, creating uncertain costs for anyone who hopes to lease them and fit them out. I can point you to several places in the city where retail-at grade is still an empty shell years after the residential building it sits on is occupied.

So when the City talked about updating the OCP for the middle part of Sixth Street (between Royal and 4th), the question was raised about whether requiring retail at grade was worthwhile. Perhaps having more residential spaces built will provide better support to the existing retail spaces on Sixth, and zoning for retail grade is making it uneconomic to develop. The same conversation ensued along the Twelfth Street retail strip. Is more retail space needed? If we force developers to build retail at grade, will it be occupied? More importantly, will it make it so hard for a developer to make any money developing the area that nothing gets built, and then the existing retailers don’t have nearby customers. The answer is not simple, and opinions vary.

Where we do see new community-serving retail is in major development projects. Plaza 88 is an obvious example. I think if we were planning Victoria Hill now (instead of 15-20 years ago when the vision for the community was being hammered out), we would include more commercial spaces, and perhaps a few larger retail spaces, though no-one is going to open a major grocery there (with a Safeway and a Save-on each just a little over a km away). That said, the few spaces that are there have taken a significant amount of time finding their purpose. Was that because there are more spaces than needed, or because there are two few to create a real “hub”? The long-proposed “Eastern Node” development area in Queensborough would finally bring some community-serving retail to Port Royal, which is now an established medium-density residential neighbourhood with nary a place to buy an apple. In hindsight, the long wait for this commercial node is really disappointing for the City, and for the residents of that neighbourhood. Hopefully these lessons are being learned and Sapperton Green looks to not only bring more commercial square footage, but is phased to bring it earlier in the neighbourhood development.

So, back again to eastern downtown. To my knowledge, there is only one development in the works in that neighbourhood, and it came to Council as a preliminary application as a mixed use residential, affordable housing and childcare – but no commercial space. For a new commercial space to be built in that neighbourhood, someone would have to come to the City with a plan, and go through a rezoning to make it happen. I cannot predict if Council would support this plan or not, but for the reasons I outlined above, that is just not where the market is for development now, or really where the market is for retail. Neighbourhood convenience stores you do see around mostly have one thing in common – they have been there for a long time and are very low-cost operations. Starting a new one would probably be a financial risk with little chance of recovery. I suspect if you could make money doing it, people would be doing it. So, alas, I wouldn’t hold my breath for any new commercial or retail being built in that area (other than along Columbia) any time soon.