Council – July 13, 2020 (pt2)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The last New Westminster Council meeting before the summer break had a long Agenda. I reported out on the first half a couple of days ago, here is the rest, starting with the items Removed from Consent for discussion:

Update on the City’s Recovery Plan
This is a report on the things we are planning for the fourth quarter of 2020 as part of the anticipated recovery from the pandemic response, set out by the City’s 7 main operating departments. There is a lot of detail in here, and every department is being guided by Provincial Health Orders and the priorities set out by Council in previous meetings.

The biggest news here for many is that the Library will be re-opening in early August, with some adjustments to service and new safety protocols (including an early opening hour exclusively for seniors). Most parks and rec facilities will be gradually re-opening and programming resuming through Q4, but the pace of this will rely on how the public health response shifts. We are still very much still in the middle of the Pandemic, and we cannot anticipate what the case rate or risk will be in October, so this will be a plan in motion.

As each Municipality is interpreting orders a little differently, and each community has different priorities and financial situations, I predict we will spend much of the rest of 2020 with members of every municipality saying some version of “Community X is doing Y, why don’t we do Y?” This will be a challenge to manage form a communications point of view, but seems inevitable at this point.

Anvil Theatre Fees & Charges Bylaw
We are adjusting the fee structure for theater and rental spaces in the Anvil Centre to support re-opening and modified use relating to Phase 3 recovery. As this is a City Fee for service, we need to set the fees in a Bylaw. This biggest part of this change is not that the fees are changing, but that we are giving the Manager of the Theatre more flexibility to introduce scaled fees in response to reduced capacity related to COVID-19 without having to come to Council to get variances.

Interim COVID-19 Food Truck Policy
Some may remember the conversations we had back in 2015 and 2016 about a Food Truck policy in the City. There was a really extensive program to review the community interest in food trucks, to identify potential conflicts, and develop a program that balanced the interests of this emergent business with those of the existing business community. We created a program that took limited uptake, at least in part because it was seen as onerous for operators. We also took some flak for being “no fun” because we didn’t have the food trucks that other communities seemed to enjoy.

Now that people are spending more time enjoying outdoor spaces, possibly because of the pandemic, we have a few more applicants going through the onerous program. Some business owners have expressed concern, as they themselves are suffering and don’t want to see competition showing up in a way that impacts their type of business.

We had a pretty lengthy Council discussion on this. My thinking was very much that we spent 2 years putting together a program that was transparent to all stakeholders and the public. Changing that program now based on a few complaints seems arbitrary and reactionary, and is not in line with the work that people did in 2015 and 2016 in good faith to put together a comprehensive program. It also feels unfair to the operator who went through all of the necessary City hoops and challenges in good faith to get approval to operate as clearly laid out in our Bylaws if we now move the goalposts. If we are going to favour one business type over another, we better have clear policy and make it transparent why we are acting.

Staff made a series of recommendations, trying to thread this needle a bit, and Council agreed to some but not all of them. In the end, we are going to suspend for the summer granting new licenses for operations on City lands, but let existing licenses continue and allow licenses on private property to continue. We are also asking staff to see if they can encourage operators to not locate on a few conflict-causing spots.

909 – 915 Twelfth Street: Official Community Plan Amendment, Rezoning and Development Permit Application
This is a preliminary report on an application to build a 5-story residential building at the corner of Twelfth Street and London in the Moody Park Neighbourhood. It would replace a used car lot and two smaller commercial buildings with 40 homes, including “ground oriented” two-story units. The proposal is to build a highly energy-efficient building (Step Code Level 4). This would also require the purchase of a piece of City land that provides laneway access to one of the existing businesses.

There was some discussion about the role of commercial at grade along this part of 12th Street. This has been an ongoing discussion as far back as the OCP update, and staff are working on a 12th Street Retail Strategy. Everyone agrees that the unique character of 12th Street retail is something we want to help support, but there is some difference in opinion about what the best way to support it is. Storefronts are good, empty storefronts that can’t be leased are bad. Homes along the corridor are good to bring more local customers, but this also needs to be balanced with the need for commercial space. The answers here are neither easy nor obvious.

This is a preliminary application, and Council agree (in a split vote) to allow the application to move forward to public consultation and committee review. If all goes well for the proponent, this would eventually come to a Public Hearing, so no decision has been made yet on the project itself, and I am sure there will be a bunch of conversation about this. If you have opinions, let us know!

100 Braid Street: Zoning Bylaw Text Amendment, Development Permit and Housing Agreement Principles – Preliminary Report
A couple of years ago, the developer Wesgroup and Urban Academy partnered to buy a piece of land near Braid Station and build a new school, with the plan outlined at the time that the other half of the property (the current 100 Braid Studios) would be developed into high-rise residential development in the nearish future. This is a preliminary report indicating that future is approaching. The original rezoning supporting this was completed in 2016, and as market forces and incentives have changed, Wesgroup wants to revisit the zoning. This is a preliminary report, so it is yet to go to public consultation or external review.

They are currently approved to build a 213-foot (21 storey) tower with ~250 strata units, they now would like to build a 390-foot (35 storey) tower with 424 secured market rental suites. There is some provision for below-market rentals, but that is contingent on CMHC support, and is not a commitment being made that is aligned with our Affordable Housing program – it is more a commercial decision made by the applicant. They also want to reduce the number of off-street parking stalls.

Council asked some questions about the Affordable Housing aspect, and about how the Art Space would be managed. The proponent wants to remove some mature trees on City lands to improve “buildability”, and I want to assure that the City is appropriately compensated for this in recognition of our overall strategy to improve the City’s tree canopy. However, it was the uncertainty about the Affordable Housing commitments and how it would or wouldn’t work that ended up compelling Council to ask Staff to fill a few information gaps with the proponent prior to this application moving on to the next steps in public and stakeholder consultation. If you have an opinion, let us know, but there is more work coming on this one.

Emergency Response Centre Update and Relocation Options
The City has been helping administer an Emergency Response Centre to help people without secure housing during the Pandemic. BC Housing has done the real work, the School District really stepped up to permit the use of the unused gym at Massey, and a housing provider bent over backward to get a dry roof over a few dozen people who would have otherwise gone without. There were some neighbourhood concerns raised, and the housing provider took measures to help address those. The good news story here is that people got help when they needed it as an emergency response.

Due to site constraints, the centre cannot be expanded beyond its original permit expiration on July 11th, and the people more recently housed there have been provided alternative housing, some in New West, some not. Meanwhile BC Housing is looking for alternative locations for this type of emergency transitional housing in New West to meet local needs. The un-used Corporate Inn building on 12th Street is being considered, but would need to go through some City reviews under a Temporary Use Permit, and the owner would have to agree to a lease. Let’s see where this goes.

Small Sites Affordable Housing Initiative: Next Steps
The City has had some success with a few small affordable housing projects on our ever-diminishing City-owned lands. We have been looking at a few other sites that belong to the City and don’t currently serve any longer-term strategic purpose. Two appropriate sites have been identified, and we asked affordable housing providers to submit ideas about how they could turn these fallow sites into much-needed affordable housing. The City recently took these initial proposals to neighborhood consultation.

It is important to note – there are no developed projects for either of these sites. The goal is to include what the City calls “below market” (for households earning between $30,000 and $75,000 – think two people working minimum wage jobs) and “non-market” (income below $30,000 a year, akin to one minimum-wage worker or person living on social assistance). Details around size/shape/form of buildings, number of residents at each level of affordability are all still up in the air and subject to the development model the housing providers are giving to the City. If a preferred applicant is found for one or both sites, that would mark the start of the development application process. There are lots of details to work out here, and we will need to balance the community benefit, neighbourhood concerns, and financial viability for housing providers, so there is no certainty these will get built. Work to do!

Pattullo Bridge Replacement Project – Application to Deposit Plan – Charge Holder
I had to google what this is. Seriously – “Application to Deposit Plan”? What does that even mean? What happens if I don’t approve? Do we have any negotiation ability here? If we don’t sign this thing, does the bridge not get built? Should we be asking them for money for this? If we have no decision to make, no options, I cannot imagine any value to this coming to Council. This job is silly, sometimes.

So I took the excuse to ask staff if we are planning to have an open meeting with the Pattullo Bridge project team to discuss some concerns raised in the community around the active transportation links for the bridge. That meeting looks to be coming at the end of the summer.

Uptown Streetscape Vision – Big Ideas and Public Realm Elements
This is a report for information on the long-awaited Uptown Streetscape update. This will define some design principles and larger goals for the transportation realm in the commercial area of Uptown, to support the “Great Streets” vision outlined in the Master Transportation Plan. That’s lots of planning talk for how we want the area to look and work. As we do street improvements and landowners redevelop lots, this will guide what we build, or let them build. The vision can be summarized as more active transportation space, more active sidewalks, better allocated curb space, improves accessibility (universal accessibility as a goal) and more green.

This was somewhat developed before the current COVID temporary measures for road space re-allocation Uptown, but the temporary measures can definitely help inform traffic management implications of these changes. One of the bigger elements is the introduction of a Pedestrian Scramble at 6th and 6th – an intersection where part of the traffic cycle is a period where all crossing traffic is stopped, and pedestrians are free to cross in any and all directions. Most people asked liked the idea, the Uptown BIA has concerns. Improvements of the Belmont Parklet and connecting NWSS to the Crosstown Greenway are also part of the math here.

There is much more here, and it will take time to realize the full vision, but some improvements will be seen in the not-to-distant future.

Cool Streets 2020 – Pilot Project
This is a cool program, along the line of some “slow street” program being implemented around the world right now. Staff have done some work to identify areas and locations where light, quick, cheap interventions can make the transportation realm work better. During the summer, people can lack access to the cooling effects of green space, especially those who live in higher density neighborhoods with limited parks space. Doing a bit of GIS data-analysis, staff identified areas in the City with higher population density, higher seniors population density, lower incomes, and lack of parks space overlap, then identified the “greenest” routes through those spaces. These are identified as “cool streets” – in the temperature sense, not the Fonzie sense. Staff will put in some cheap interventions to those routes signage, “local traffic only” barriers, etc. to encourage people to walk, roll, even sit along these routes. Giving streets to people in 2020. Also cool in the Fonzie sense.

Request for Proposal Re: Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Anti –Racism Framework
The City is continuing to work on our internal inclusion work, ensuring we are working towards having a workplace that reflects the community it serves, and addresses systemic barriers within our employment and business practices. This is a body of work that is probably best done by an external consultant working for out HR department, both because of capacity issues and because something like this would probably benefit from the review being arms-length. This is just a report to Council that an RFP for this work is going out and a chance to review the request.

We then had a Temporary Use Permit to issue:

TUP00023 for #8 – 30 Capilano Way
As mentioned in a previous meeting, The owner of a pinball-refurbishing and renting business wants to operate part of their business as an arcade so people can play the games they usually rent out to pubs and stores. This would be a non-conforming use in an industrial-zoned area. As the owner indicates they only want to do it to get over the COVID hump for his business, he is applying for a TUP. He initially applied for a 3-year TUP, and Council last meeting suggested a 2-year TUP would be more appropriate.

We received two pieces of correspondence from neighbouring businesses, both expressing support. Council moved to approve the TUP.

We then adopted a few Bylaws:

Five-Year Financial Plan (2019-2023) Amendment Bylaw 8207, 2020
As talked about earlier in the agenda, the updated 5-Year Financial Plan was adopted by Council.

Anvil Theatre Fees and Rates Bylaw No. 8209, 2020
As talked about earlier in the agenda, the shift to Anvil theatre charges in light of pandemic recovery needs to be in a Bylaw, and here we adopted that Bylaw.

Deferral of Tax Sale Bylaw No. 8210, 2020
As discussed earlier in the agenda, not having a tax sale in 2020 needs to be codified in a Bylaw, and here we adopted that Bylaw.

Inter-Municipal TNS Business Licence Agreement Bylaw No. 8187, 2020
As discussed at some length in earlier meetings, the Bylaw that empowers the coordinated multi-City business licensing scheme for ride-hailing businesses is now law here in New West.

Zoning Amendment Bylaw (230 Keary Street, 268 Nelson’s Court, and 228 Nelson’s Crescent) No. 8164, 2019
As discussed last year, and given Public Hearing back in January, the zoning amendment changes to bring more secured market rental to the Brewery District was adopted by Council now that the agreements have been worked out.

And that was a meeting complete, except for a couple of extraneous Motions, which I will talk about in yet another post, when I get to it.

Council – July 13 2020 (pt1)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The last Council meeting before the summer break (pending emergency meetings, because, hey, it’s 2020, and we may need to address a local response to the meteor impact) had a lot on the Agenda and a lengthy Zoom meeting ensued. I think what I will do is split this report into two, because it is simply too much to write up in one sitting. I will also talk more in a follow up post about the special resolutions, but our business started with moving the following items On Consent:

Amendments to the 2020 Schedule of Regular Council Meetings
Staff are suggesting some adjustments of the Council schedule after the summer breaks, and as we anticipate we will still be meeting virtually in September, so the regular September meeting in Q’boro will be delayed until we can meet again. All this subject to change based on meteor forecast.

Terms of Reference – Grants Committees
We have been working on making our Grant process more streamlined and community-centered. This step will disband the 5 existing community volunteer committees that review the applications, and replace them with three committees that are aligned with the goals of the grants: have more directed focus: Community Livability and Social Equity; Social and Cultural Vibrancy; and Community Economic Activators. We are also re-assigning members of the “old” committees to the “new” ones, and dong a call out to the public to fill the vacant roles in the new ones. If you want to help the City decide how to spend $1M next year in making your community a more inclusive, livable, and vibrant place, watch this site for an opportunity to sign up.

Non-Profit Pandemic Recovery Response
New West has a lot of non-profit (or, I prefer “social profit”) organizations doing a bunch of important work that keeps our community livable. Arts, culture, social support, education, health, housing, so much of the important village-building work relies on these organizations, and they are stressed by COVID at the same time that the need for their work is made more pronounced by the pandemic.

The City has followed up on some province-wide work to connect with our social profit sector and find out what supports they most need, and what role the City has in facilitating that support. Through this, a number of tactics are discussed, and ones that don’t involve a lot of new direct expense for the City (as we are also in uncertain financial times) are moving forward, including facilitating a peer-network approach, and reviewing how we charge for City services like room rentals. There is more to do here, but this is a start. And the appendix of this report gives us a good “lay of the land” look at the City’s non-profit sector.

COVID-19 Pandemic Response – Update and Progress from the Five Task Forces
Here are the every-meeting updates on the action of the 5 internal city task forces. There is some interesting discussion here about how prepared we are for the “second wave”, but mostly these updates show a measured reduction in response activities.

Artist Selection – Queen’s Park Sportsplex Public Art Project
All new City buildings have a Public Art provision to make the space around them better. Generally, a budget is created (proportional to the cost of the building), a Call for Artists is done, and applications (in this case – 10 of them) are reviewed for a short list. Three short-listed artists/teams provide more design ideas and vision, and the Public Art Advisory Committee (a volunteer committee made up of subject matter experts from the community) makes a recommendation to Council. We then have the option to approve or reject the application, after which a contract is drawn up and the artist gets to work. We are now at the “Council approves” stage, which Council did.

631 Second Street: Heritage Revitalization Agreement – For Preliminary Review
This is a preliminary report on an application to subdivide a single family lot in Glenbrook North and build two single family homes on “compact lots”. This one is a bit complicated, because the house is older, but has been modified such that it doesn’t really qualify for Heritage Protection, so it would have to be restored by replacing with replica materials. (Enter the “form and character” debate). There is a lot going on here, with the lot somewhat restricted by access and grade. The eventual proposal would see one house replaced with two houses, each potentially with a basement suite, for up to 4 units where there is currently one (or two?). As a preliminary application, this will now go to public consultation and other reviews. If you have opinions, let us know what you think.

404 Second Street: Heritage Revitalization Agreement – Preliminary Report
This is a preliminary application to put an addition on the unusual butcher/deli business in Queens Park, formalize it current use, and allow some change of signage and awning to reflect its original character. Again, going to community consultation and review. Let us know if you have opinions.

Interdepartmental Working Group on the Overdose Epidemic: Update
There has been an ongoing Public Health Emergency since 2016, related to a poisoned illicit drug supply. It has killed many more people in British Columbia than COVID, and New Westminster is no less impacted than any other community in the province. This is another one of those areas that is, by strict definition, the responsibility of the Provincial Government, but costs related to managing emergency response still fall on Local Governments (Our Fire Service has administered Naloxone to more than 250 people since starting with the program a few years ago, more than 100 times in 2019 alone). The City cannot turn away from our residents being impacted by the emergency, and instead have been a participant in an action team coordinating efforts between Fraser Health and non-profit organizations. This report provides an update on the actions we are supporting, and next steps.

I am not going to bury the lede here: we can save lives with safe consumption sites and with a safe supply. These are both challenging ideas for some members of the community, but the data supporting both of these measures as public health interventions is unequivocal. This public emergency is killing people here in New Westminster, it is time for us to move on the things we know will help, we know will save lives. The direction Council is endorsing here is to work with Fraser Health and community partners to make these happen.

New Westminster Rent Bank Program Funding Renewal Request
The City has participated in the Rent Bank program for a couple of years now. This is a program where people facing temporary financial crisis can borrow money at low cost to cover rent or utility costs to prevent them becoming homeless. Credit Unions provide backing for the loans, and the City provides funding to support the administration of the program, after an initial seed funding contribution. The Province is also providing annual administrative support. The request here is for the City to continue to support administrative support for $35,000/year, which is already in our capital budget, so not new spending. Done.

618 Carnarvon (Urban One Project): Request for Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption
This project under construction on Downtown New West needs to remove and replace a street lamp which is so close to the SkyTrain line that they are not permitted to do it while the SkyTrian is running, meaning they need a permit to do the work between midnight and 5am. They will do this work on the night of July 17.

2019 Statement of Financial Information
Every year we do the SOFI, which reports all of our audited financial information in a standard form. It also reports those juicy details like how much we pay everyone (over $75,000/year – here comes that news story again), how much we paid every contractor in the City (over $25,000) and the expenses of City Councilors. In 2019 I attended the Lower Mainland LGA Conference in Harrison (part of my costs were covered by the LMLGA because I am on the executive), the one-day CivX conference in Vancouver, the UBCM Conference in Vancouver, and the FCM conference in Quebec City. It was a busy year for me conference-wise, which will be a very different story in 2020. I generally report out on my Blog about these events, so you know what I was up to. That was virtually all of my expenses for 2019. Happy to answer any questions you have.

2020 Deferral of Tax Sale Bylaw No. 8210, 2020
Taxes get paid. If a property owner defaults on property taxes, the City is able to required by law to sell the property for recovery of the delinquent taxes. There is a timeliness point to this, no doubt developed to keep the process fair and transparent. However, recognizing that we are giving some room to delay tax payment in 2020 because of the Pandemic, we are also delaying the Tax Sale aspect of the process, to give people more time to address any financial burden the property tax may cause.

Proposed Queensborough Community Learning Garden in Ryall Park
The Changes at Ryall Park around the Temporary Modular Housing project are coming along as the housing itself is ready to open. The opportunity here to bring urban agriculture public lands in Ryall Park is really exciting. The City is partnering with GROWcery Food Network to provide the community garden aspects, and the design will also include an urban orchard to bring food trees. There are a bunch of overlapping community benefits here, from locally sourced food to community-based gardening training and education, and will hopefully be a centre for cooperation between the community and the housing operators and residents. There are lots of partners here, but City staff have really done a great job creating and fostering a vision for this space. This is good work.

Correspondence: New Westminster Police Board letter dated July 7, 2020 regarding a motion regarding reforms to the New Westminster Police Department
I have written a couple of posts about the role of City Council and the role of the Police Board in how the Police are run and funded in the City. Obviously, both bodies have heard the calls from Black Lives Matter and people concerned about the culture of Policing in Canada, especially as it relates to the impacts on Indigenous and Black persons in our community. The Police Board have put together a plan of action and are asking the City Council to take part in the conversation, and Council has responded positively to the invite with the following motion:

THAT City Council work with the Police Board;
THAT the CAO be directed to work with the Police Chief and the Director of Human Resources to develop a comprehensive workplan and budget to implement the motion;
and THAT a Special joint meeting of City Council and the Police Board be held in September to discuss and deliberate on the comprehensive workplan and budget.

More to come.

We then had a Financial Plan Amendment report:

Five Year Financial Plan (2019-2023) Amendment Bylaw No. 8207, 2020
By now, diligent readers will know the City operates under a 5-year financial plan that is approved by Council as a Bylaw, and updated every year. As any plan that projects financial information forward into the next year is likely to need adjustment as estimates are improved or unanticipated financial changes occur, the 5-year plan is also updated within the year as needed to track as close as possible to reality. There is also a big adjustment at the end of the year to rectify our estimates with what actually came to pass. So here is the last adjustment of the 2019 budget, to reflect what actually happened vs. what we estimated. How much changed? That sounds like a fun follow-up blog post…

We reported this out in an earlier meeting and posted it on the website asking for comment. We received none. Council moved to give the Five-Year Financial Plan (2019-2023) Amendment Bylaw three readings and adoption.

…and I think that is all I will report now, more to come tomorrow (or the next day? As I find some time to write it up. In the meantime, go out, get some sun.

Taxes 2020 part 2

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The conversation about property taxes is always loudest not at tax time, but when the annual tax rates are announced. Early in the new year, every City Council in BC gets to the part of the annual budgeting process where tax increases enter the conversation.

Most of the rest of the year, Council talks about things they want to do. People come to Council and ask the City to do things. Any reduction in the base level of service is treated as an affront to all that is good. Reluctance to take on new tasks is seen as not supporting the incredible community benefits those tasks will support. Ten months of the year Council is asked to do more; two months of the year, we are told to spend less. That is not a complaint, it is an observation of how democratic government works. It’s the job I applied for.

As a result, discussion of taxes is rarely separated from discussion of ever increasing taxes. It does little to tell people that federal and provincial taxes have been steadily going down in Canada and BC for several decades as more tasks are downloaded to local governments. Property taxes are going up faster than inflation, and some people don’t like it.

Following on my last post, and in my continued quest to compare us to our cohort, I got to digging into the data again. We can again compare the New Westminster experience to the rest of Greater Vancouver through the BC Government stats on property taxes that are available as far back as 2005 here in “Schedule 707”. I will continue to argue (until someone gives me a good reason to think otherwise) that taxes collected per capita is the best comparator of taxes paid across the region. So how does New West compare to the other 20 Greater Vancouver Municipalities in tax per capita of the last 15 years? It’s a bit messy, but here we are:

There are two outliers: West Van has always been highest, Surrey has been lowest. New West is somewhere in the middle, increasing slightly less (by my eye) than average over the decade and a half. The big tends if I try to parse them: Delta and Port Moody rising faster than most (likely related to higher industrial land use and resultant industrial tax “windfalls”); the small communities (Anmore, Bowen, Lions Bay, Belcarra) all seeing recent significant rises since ~2013 (I would suggest they are coming to grips with infrastructure renewal costs they cannot offset with growth); Vancouver bucking the trend a bit, and the rest of us pretty tightly clustered together. If there are reasons for municipal tax increases, they don’t seem to track with politically left or right councils, rich or poor cities, or any imagined east-west or north-south divide.

Using the same BC Government Schedule 707 tables, you can look at how each city has changed in the 15 years between 2005 and 2019. There are three related growth numbers I think are fun to compare: population, value of residential land per capita, and the residential taxes collected per capita:

For the fun of it, I sorted this data by the rate of population growth. Despite what I said just two paragraphs ago, you can see Anmore was the surprisingly-fastest growing municipality over that 15 years increasing by 57%, even faster than Surrey. New West population rose 29% over that time (from just under 60,000 to just under 77,000), which makes us one of the faster growing communities. Lions Bay and Belcarra both lost population over this time. This chart, however, doesn’t show any clear trend relating the rate of growth to the rate of property value increases or tax increases.

This second view is the same data, but sorted by the increase in residential property taxes per capita. New Westminster is slightly below average in increase, as the per capita tax rate has gone up 76% over 15 years, compared to 78% for the average municipality (a tie between Langley Township and Port Coquitlam). New West residential land values have gone up quite a bit more than the average, though. In 2005, there was $84,000 worth of residential property per person, in 2019 that number is $276,000 – more than a tripling in value.

Just for the fun of it, I did the math to create a totally meaningless idea. If there was a (statistically-unlikely) person in New Westminster who owned a proportionate value of land for those 15 years, they would have paid about $7,700 in property taxes over that time, and earned about $192,000 in increased land value. Of course this is only property taxes to the municipality, not to the province (School taxes) to regional government (GVRD taxes), and doesn’t include the fee-for service money the City collects for utilities. Still, I think it argues against the sometimes-proffered idea that municipal taxes have been a significant driver of housing affordability challenges in the region over the last decade and a half.

Taxes 2020

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 4 Comments.

I am returning to a common theme here in the blog, because I like to look at data, and have recently had a resurgence of folks suggesting to me that New Westminster is the highest taxed city in Christendom. Well, maybe only in British Columbia. Recently, I noticed a Councilor in another municipality puffing his own tires about how prudent the tax regime in his City was by calling out New Westminster as specifically worse tax- & spend-thrifts. Which allotted me the excuse for the following subtweet:

That the City that Councillor represented was well to the left of New West in the graph above was left unsaid, as were his name and that of his community, because I really don’t think it is a competition. Moreover, the problem with graphs like above is that they are one simplified analysis, and as I have tried to demonstrate in many blog posts like this over the years (Here with 2019 numbers, Here from 2015, Here where I compared taxes and utility rates, etc, etc. ) there are various ways to compare property taxes between Cities, and any comparison is useless without context. Some more useless than others.

Cities primarily provide services to people. This is why we generally rank the “size” of a City by population, not by square kilometers. The cost of providing services also most closely tracks with population. So when we talk about tax burden, certainly in the sense that our nameless Councillor was talking about it, we are talking about how much you pay for taxes as a resident of the City, which is easily measured by the taxes collected per capita:

The BC Government collects these stats every year, and report out on “tax burden” on a spreadsheet they call Schedule 707. You can read it here. The table above was generated by dividing the 2019 “Total Municipal Taxes” from each City by the population (2018 estimate, because that is what is on the Schedule). New West collected just under $84M in taxes a population of just over 76,000 people, for a per capita tax of $1093. This puts us right in the middle of Lower Mainland municipalities. The average of these per capita numbers is $1123 (New West is a little lower), but the average tax burden is actually $1042 (New West is a little higher).  This makes sense based on the different ways you can calculate the average, but fair to say New West is pretty firmly in the middle of the region.

This first chart compares all municipal taxes, though, and residential property tax – that collected from homeowners and landlords of rental properties – is only a portion of this. We also collect taxes from businesses and industries and utilities and such. Fortunately, Schedule 707 also break taxes down by property class. New Westminster collected just under $52M in residential taxes from those 76,000 residents, which works out to $675 per capita:

As you can see, that puts New Westminster just below average across the region. You will also note the municipalities that leap to the left side of the graph tend to be residential communities with limited commercial and industrial properties. Without those businesses to prop up the expense of the running the City, residential property owners have to pay more. Here is the commercial and industrial taxes collected per capita in 2019:

In this red is “Major Industry” like the Kruger paper plant or big industrial areas like Annacis and Mitchell Islands. Purple is “light industry” like the type of warehouses you drive by on the Mary Hill Bypass or in Port Kells. Green is “commercial”, which means retail, restaurants, malls and office buildings.

As you can see the distribution of this type of development is unequal across the region. Vancouver is the commercial centre of the region, and has oodles of office and retail space downtown and along the Broadway corridor. Delta has Annacis Island and the River Road corridor, that huge industrial reservoir allows them to keep their residential taxes low. As a proportion of property tax collected, New Westminster gets about 38% of its tax revenue from commercial and industrial properties and 62% from residential, which again puts it somewhere in the middle:

Unfortunately, commercial and industrial taxes are much harder to compare across the region. “Per Capita”, as I have used here, feels wrong. Raw numbers or rates are hard to compare because the value of commercial real estate in Downtown Vancouver is very different then the same office space in Langley, with New West somewhere in the middle. The pressures, costs, and relative utility of industrial land varies even more widely across the region. I will try to dig more into that in a follow-up post, because there are a few ways to look at business taxes in New West that make it look like we may be a little out of the ordinary.

But when ti comes to residential taxes, it is clear that New West is neither high or low taxed relative to the rest of the region. And there is a good case to be made that the Lower Mainland of BC has among the lowest residential property taxes in North America. But I’ll let someone else make that case.

June 22 Public Hearing

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

This week we had our first adventure with an on-line Public Hearing and Opportunity to be Heard. It was not without its challenges. Though it appeared that staff had made the systems necessary work, and our “trial run” last week fairly uneventful, we are relying on members of the general public to manage their own interface and web technology during what is probably an unusual situation for many, so there were a few glitches. People were afforded the ability to write or e-mail Council with input prior to the meeting, or to use web videoconferencing through a web browser, or phone in during the meeting. Some did more than one of these.

First off, the Public Hearing:

Zoning Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bylaw No. 8172, 2020
This first Public Hearing is to review multiple relatively minor changes to the language of our Zoning Bylaws. It updated some language and made numerous textural changes to make things more consistent internally and with City policies. Not surprisingly, we had no written submissions and no speakers to this item.

Council moved to give this Bylaw Third Reading and Adoption.

Zoning Amendment Bylaw (909 First Street) No. 8188, 2020
This project will have four townhouse style homes replace a single family home on a largish lot in Glenbrooke North. This represents the type of moderate infill density that was envisioned in our OCP. Though it is not the transit-densest neighbourhood in town, there are a lot of walkable services nearby and will provide more housing options in a very family-friendly neighbourhood.

This went through a public open house and Residents Association meeting, and generally received favourable comments. There were a few concerns raised about traffic and parking. However, it was noted that this will be a 4-unit development replacing a duplex with basement suites, so the actual increase in density (and car space needed) is marginal.

We received 8 written submissions (mostly in favour) and a few people took part in the public hearing, raising concerns about parking and traffic for the most part.

Council moved to support giving the Rezoning Bylaw Third Reading.

Zoning Amendment Bylaw (45 East Eighth Avenue) No. 8189, 2020
This is another project that will replace a single family home with townhouses to provide more “missing middle” housing with relatively gentle infill, this time in the Massey Victory Heights neigbourhood. It went to a public open house and residents’ association meeting and appeared to generate favourable comments. We had a few speakers, mostly related ot the development (the owner and Architect) and one neighbor concerned about parking and traffic.

Council moved to approve Third reading of the rezoning.

We then went into an Opportunity to be Heard:

Inter-Municipal TNS (Ride Hailing) Business Licence Scheme Bylaw No.
8186, 2020
This Bylaw would sign New Westminster onto the larger inter-municipal business licensing scheme for ride hailing in the Lower Mainland. This doesn’t really equal “approving” ride hailing, as the provincial government hasn’t really given us that option, but instead it allows us to take part in a regional regulatory regime that will give us some control over how it operates, and provide us some access to the valuable data collected by the industry to help us manage the transportation regime in our community more effectively.

We had two people contact us, one a small operator in the industry, and one raising some concerns about what ride hailing means for equity in our community.

I have already expressed my concerns about the model of ride hailing as being offered by large venture-capital supported multinational corporations that exploit their employees, increase GHG emissions in our communities, make our neighbourhood streets less safe and undermine sustainable transportation modes that are the foundation of our regional planning principles. I also have concerns about climate impacts and accessibility impacts, but recognize that we as local governments have limited regulatory authority to address those concerns.

My support for this Inter-Municipal business license is in recognition that if we are to have any regulatory control over this potentially damaging technology, it will be through business licensing. It is important that we collect and interpret this data, and having business licensing is a way to get that data. This is not the end of the story, but the beginning, and it is upon us to work with our neighboring communities to stay aware of the impacts or ride hailing – positive and negative – and work to the limit of our licensing authority to address the negative impacts, as the provincial government seems to be taking a hands-off approach.

Council voted to approve this Bylaw.

We had a few more Bylaws to adopt this meeting:

Zoning Amendment (Stage 1 – Sustainable Transportation) Bylaw No. 8184, 2020
Bylaw Notice Enforcement Amendment Bylaw No. 8168, 2020 and
Municipal Ticket Information Amendment Bylaw No. 8169, 2020
As discussed in the June 1 meeting, we updated some of our zoning requirements that support sustainable transportation. These bylaw changes are now adopted by Council.

Zoning Amendment (Sidewalk/Street Patios and Parklets) Bylaw No. 8206, 2020
As discussed last meeting, we are doing more to support patios in the City, and we have now adopted the bylaw.

Zoning Amendment Bylaw (2223 Ninth Avenue) No. 8180, 2020
This single family house with a laneway house development was given a Public Hearing back in February, and now that all the details have been hammered out, we can adopt the Bylaw.

Council – June 22, 2020

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

We had a busy Council meeting on Monday, including our first attempt at a “remote” Public Hearing and Opportunity to the Heard, which was a bit of an adventure. I will talk about those in a follow-up post, and will here just get through the regular Agenda:

First off, we had to start by making it all legal:

Ministerial Order No. M192: Continuation of Electronic Council Meetings during the COVID-19 Pandemic
We have been meeting electronically during the pandemic, almost weekly since mid-March. There are procedural and legislative stuff we need to do to permit this, and the provincial government has facilitated that though Ministerial Orders. As the older MO 139 has been repealed and replaced with MO 192, we need to have a resolution to adopt this.

We recognize public participation in Council Meetings has been hampered, and local government in BC has always operated on a principle of transparency and giving space for public participation. This meeting has our first “Public Hearing” under new protocols, but we are still strictly operating through electronic and remote means. Staff are working on how to safely implement Open Delegations and a re-opening of the Council Chambers to public attendance and participation during the “reopening” phases of the pandemic response. In the meantime, we are doing what we can to assure the process of City Council and the decisions made are as transparent as possible, and the public have opportunities to provide feedback to Mayor and Council. As always, send e-mails, call us up. Drop us a line. We can’t be in the room together, but we need to keep the communication happening.

Then we had a Presentation:

Downtown Transportation Plan – Key Directions and Implementation Plan
The City’s Master Transportation Plan was adopted in 2015, but it had a pretty significant “grey area” around downtown. The overarching goals of the MTP (pedestrian priority, reducing car trips, etc.) still apply to downtown planning decisions, but the details of downtown are complicated. It was recognized in 2015 that more detailed work and more consultation with stakeholders had to happen to make Downtown fit into the bigger plan. For two years, we have been working on a Downtown Transportation Plan, and it would have been unveiled already if COVID hadn’t rudely intruded in March. This is the draft plan being passed by Council prior to it going out to stakeholders one more time. With a little tweaking, we can adopt in July.

There is a lot in here, so I’ll keep my points of interest short. The proposed plan outlines two types of bike routes: primary “All Ages and Abilities” routes and a network of secondary ones. I am more interested in completing this primary network than the sharrows & signage of the secondaries, and question whether 10th Street should even be on the secondary list, but the priority routes are good, and overdue. Especially Agnes Street Greenway, which has the potential to redefine Downtown New West to the same scale that Pier Park did.

There are some pretty exciting changes proposed for the bottom of 8th Street. This is the new great crossroads of our City, and it is a pedestrian crossroads. Unfortunately, cars still rule the space, making for crowded sidewalks and inconvenient traffic signals. The current design does not reflect current use. I lament some of the design choices we made in the last decade around putting parking garage entrances and loading bays on this street. I loudly lamented them at the time, and still lament them, as they make our job today recreating a safe, comfortable, and functional pedestrian space much harder. My only hope is that we can move faster on the proposed changes, and see them in our current 5-year financial plan.

I love this diagram:

This is a great acknowledgement that in a busy, dense, mixed-use urban area like Downtown, curb space is a valuable commodity. Arguably, it is even more valuable than road lanes, and often too valuable to waste on car storage. This prioritization of how that valuable space will be allocated is important, because the curb is where many transportation battles are fought, and we need to have policy guidance to inform how we address those conflicts.

Overall, this is a good document, with maybe a few tweaks. The big grey oval in the Master Transportation Plan still has a few smaller grey ovals within, but we are moving along.

The following items were Moved on Consent:

Submission to the Department of Canadian Heritage Museum Assistance Program for COVID-19 Emergency Support Funding
We are applying for federal support to help with financial shortfalls at the Museum and Archives related to COVID though a targeted support program.

709 Cumberland Street: Heritage Revitalization Agreement – for Preliminary Review
There was a heritage house near the Canada Games Pool that was knocked down by the owner in violation of its protection covenant a few years ago. A new owner now wants to repurpose the site, including bringing a heritage house from Royal Avenue and re-building the original heritage house. This will require a new Heritage Revitalization Agreement. There would need to be a few zoning relaxations (minimum lot size, FSR, and setbacks). This is an early check in to see if Council is OK for it going to public consultation, heritage review, etc., so more to come here.

Submission to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) Green Municipal Fund (GMF) for Feasibility Study of Agnes Greenway
As mentioned above, we are working on the plans for the Agnes Greenway, and there is a federal infrastructure planning fund we can apply to for a grant to help pay for the design work. We are applying for this.

2019 Consolidated Financial Statements
This is the official submission we send off to the Province to comply with regulations around financial reporting; the audited financial report from last fiscal year. What details do you want? The City ended the fiscal year with $203M in fiscal assets and $153M in liabilities, which puts us $50M in the black (financially). We also have $705M in capital assets (buildings, roads, pipes, vehicles, lawnmowers, etc.). We took in $226M in revenue last year ($85M in the form of Property Taxes), and spent $195M, which means we added $31M to our accumulated surplus. We ended the year with $116M in financial investments, and $66M in long-term debt. We are in good shape financially, and are ready to invest in a significant capital program. Of course, COVID is throwing a wrench into this, but that is the task ahead of us.

The following items were Removed from Consent for discussion:

Draft Recovery Action Plan for Council’s Consideration
We are working out the details of the recovery plan here for the City, now that it looks like the provincial government is leading that way. Of course, we will continue to follow provincial health and safety guidance, and need to be prepared for setbacks and second waves, but we also need to start supporting concrete moves to the post-COVID world.

The work is everything from re-designing how the City facilities work to permit physical distancing to determining which staff re-assignments need to occur when, and how and when to bring some auxiliary staff back, based on which services we can restart. This is a monumental amount of work, more so when you realize none of the staff have done anything like this before. We will make mistakes, but hopefully if we have strong principles and recognize everyone’s limitations, this can hopefully reduce, not increase, the anxiety and stress of re-opening the City.

For Council, the difficulty here is that we are still in uncertain financial times. Despite the good financial shape the City was in at the end of 2019 (see above), things have clearly changed for the general economy and for the cash flow of the City. At the same time, response to the emergency is going to require some investments – the community needs support in new ways, and we need to be ready to provide that support. If we approach recover with a mindset that we simply cannot afford to do these important things, the recovery will be more difficult. Finding the balance between cost savings and meeting the goals and expectations of the community is always the tension at the heart of this work. I will continue to challenge an austerity approach at any level of government when the community is in need.

COVID-19 Pandemic Response – Update and Progress from the Five Task Forces
As we have done since late March, every meeting we get a reporting out from our COVID response working groups in the City. This is a good summary of the City’s work during the crisis. This includes work City staff has been doing to support vulnerable residents during this crisis, seniors, local businesses, and the general community through education.

Artist Selection – New Westminster Aquatic & Community Centre Public Art Project
The City’s Public Art program includes funding for art installations in all new major infrastructure projects. The Replacement for the Canada Games Pool and Centennial Community Centre New Westminster Aquatic and Community Centre project is a big piece of infrastructure, and the Public Art Advisory Committee has identified a successful applicant in the call for public art to enhance the building. A piece by James Harry will grace the public plaza on the west side of the building.

8 – 30 Capilano Way: Temporary Use Permit – Notice of Issuance
A company that rents out pinball machines to bars has been having a hard time of it during the Pandemic, as their customers are all closed. They want to open up their warehouse in the Braid Street Industrial Area to allow people to come there and play. This is not a business type permitted within the existing zoning for his property, so they are asking for a Temporary Use Permit, similar to what the other recently-opened arcade in town received. We had some discussion about whether this is appropriate use for the city’s limited industrial space, but a shorter Temporary Use permit seemed to meet consensus at Council.

There are some concerns about how an arcade would operate during the Pandemic, but apparently there are Phase 3 protocols for amusements. There will be both limited capacity, and no food or alcohol service. Council will receive public feedback on this application until July 13th, then consider the application at the Council meeting. If you have an opinion, let us know.

Front Street Temporary 2020 Summer Weekend Opening to Pedestrians and Cyclists
We need more outdoor space this summer, which will be, unfortunately, the summer without festivals. Previous closures of Front Street have permitted gathering, and great connections between Pier Park and Sapperton Landing Park. There have been suggestions this year that closing Front over the weekend may give people more reason to go outside and more space to enjoy outside. Unfortunately, the Railways will not permit access from the east end of Pier Park, but connecting Downtown to Sapperton Landing and creating a large flexible open space along the water all summer was supported by council.

We had three Development Variance Permits that received public comment and were ready for Council approval:

DVP00678 to Vary Off-Street Parking Requirements at 1065 Quayside Drive
As I talked about last meeting, there is a high-rise in the Quay that houses an antenna for the 911 system, and its back-up generator needs replacing with a larger unit, which means the building will lose a parking spot for which they need a development variance permit, since their original development permit required a minimum number of parking spots. We asked if people had opinions about this, and we got 7 letters, mostly seeking clarification (which makes sense as this is a bit strange) but none strenuously opposed. Council moved to issue the DVP.

DVP00679 to Vary Off-Street Parking at 327 East Columbia Street
Also mentioned last meeting, a daycare in Sapperton wants to expand but doesn’t have sufficient parking for the zoning requirement for that expansion, so they want a variance to open with less than the minimum parking stalls. We asked for your input and didn’t get any correspondence. Council voted to approve issuance of the DVP.

DVP00681 to Vary Rear Yard Setback at 427 Fourth Street
Finally, we talked last meeting about this homeowner who wishes to put an addition on his house, but at least in part of a strange subdivision of his property dating back to 1912, this will result in his addition being too close to the back lot line (though it will be in line with the existing house), so this needs a variance. We asked for public consultation, and received two letters, both form neighbours, and both opposed due to proximity issues. I general agree with the staff assessment that the variance is minor, and is consistent with the existing landscape of the house. Council voted to approve issuance of the DVP.

Finally, we had one motion in New Business:

COVID-19 Data Collection Councillor Nakagawa

BE IT RESOLVED THAT the City of New Westminster write to the provincial and federal Ministers of Health requesting that they collect disaggregated data including race, socioeconomic class, and disability that will allow for evidence-based health care and social program interventions; and
THAT the data are analyzed and interpreted with community leadership and input; and
THAT the data are collected with the intention of being understood as indicators of systemic and structural oppression to identify root causes of disparity; and
THAT this letter be forwarded to all BC municipalities asking to write their support as well.

I think the motion speaks for itself.

And that was it for our main business, but we had a Public Hearing and Opportunities to be Heard, which I will outline in a follow-up blog post.

ASK PAT: Sidewalks

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Still getting caught up on queued ASK PATs. If you have a question, click that ASK PAT spot up in the right corner there. I’ll try to answer them succinctly, but I am likely to go on a digression, which takes a while to write so I get behind and here we go again…

Jim asks—

I thought that the City had a policy for barrier free sidewalks. If you look on the south sidewalk on Seventh Avenue – a greenway – you will see that the new utility box covers resulting from the recent work were placed right in the middle of the sidewalk. I don’t think that they need to be there as I think that there is room between the sidewalk and the private property for the utility boxes. They are plastic, not metal, but they still make the sidewalk uneven and in a few weeks when the snow comes they will ice up and be a barrier.

There is a worse example in the Moody Park entry plaza at 6th Ave and 8th Street. The recent work there was capped off by a metal utility box cover that is in the main travel path for pedestrians and was installed with a slope. This one is slippery in the rain. I believe that none of these utility box covers needed to be placed in the sidewalk. So, what happened?

I’m not sure I agree with you. I suspect if a utility box cover is placed on a sidewalk, it is because it needs to be within the corridor of a significant piece of linear infrastructure, be it a pipe or an electrical conduit. More likely, they need to be at the intersection of two major pieces of linear infrastructure, which severely limits their location. I can name several unfortunately-located box covers, from the sidewalk on Eighth Street near the entrance to the Lawn Bowling Club to the half-in the bike lane force ewer main cover on Columbia Street just east of 4th. I would suggest all of them need to be pretty much where they are.

That stretch of Eighth Street has a lot going on under your feet. There is a fiber optic conduit right-of-way, a buried 3-phase electrical distribution line, a concrete Storm Sewer gravity main, two separate combined-sewer gravity mains, and two separate potable water supply mains. For all I know, there may be private utility lines as well (BC Gas, Telus, Shaw, etc.). All of them have specific offsets from each other that must be maintained, can’t be too close to property lines or under power poles or interfere with each other. Their location now is a result of almost a century of decisions about rights-of-way and avoidance of conflict and need to upgrade as the City grew. All this to say, they are really hard to move now.

Your point is taken, though, that the surface treatment of these necessary pieces of infrastructure need to consider walkers, rollers, and people with mobility challenges. They should not be trip hazards. At times they are installed to be flush and as integrated as possible to the driving lane or sidewalk, but settle differently or swell up from frost or are damaged by heavy machinery. I would suggest efforts to make them visually “blend in” are probably a bad idea, as a changes in surface texture or material should probably stand out as warnings for those with cognitive or visual impairments. They certainly should not be slipperier than the adjacent sidewalk, even when wet.

I can ask staff about what type of standards exist for these installations, and ask what we do as far as inspections after contractors install them. If you have a specific one that you think needs repair or constitutes a hazard, the best response is to report it through SeeClickFix or drop a line to Engineering Ops and see what transportation staff say.

That said, I do want to take this opportunity to address this letter to the local paper, because it is related. As the writer suggests, more people are walking because of COVID, and more people are noting places where sidewalks are in disrepair. Confirmation bias is a powerful thing, but the City has recognized the need to increase its sidewalk repair and upkeep budget for a few years now, and are putting money into the problem at an unprecedented rate.

As we implemented the Master Transportation Plan adopted in 2015, we have prioritized pedestrian spaces. A major part of this is spending the money to assure every sidewalk at every corner in the City has an accessibility ramp. This is not a minor thing, and it was not inexpensive to do, but as the first “quick win” to improve pedestrian spaces, we prioritized that spending. New Westminster is the only City in the Lower Mainland that has achieved 100% corner ramp cuts. Some are admittedly older design, and resources as now being put to updating some of these older ones to bring them to modern standards.

We are also spending more than ever on updating and improving sidewalks and crosswalks. Our current Capital Budget has more than $7 million dedicated specifically to pedestrian improvement projects. This is above and beyond the investments we are making in Greenways and Great Streets (where improved pedestrian spaces are part of the bigger project) and the improvements that we implement to coincide with lot development. This is a huge increase over what we spent on pedestrian improvements only a decade ago. We have some catching up to do, and this work is expensive, but we are getting it done.

That said there are often local spots that degrade quickly because of frost, vehicle, or root damage. If they create a trip hazard or accessibility barrier, the best way to assure fixing this ends up in someone’s work plan is to do a SeeClickFix report or contact Engineering Ops as I linked to a few paragraphs above.

Feedback

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I like to complain as much as the next guy. However, I do try to keep it constructive and useful. I recently send a complaint to TransLink via a short Twitter thread, photos and all. The very pleasant person on the other side of the anonymous @TransLink twitter account replied that they noted the concern, and asked that I follow up with the on-line TransLink feedback form. I was admittedly slow to do this, in part because the feedback form is limited to 2,000 characters (I can’t sing Happy Birthday in less than 2,000 characters) and I thought the issue really needed the photos I took to highlight my concern. So, I sent them a TL;dnr complaint to the suggestion box and added a link to this post, where I expand on my Twitter thread and add the photos that I think tell the story.

Hello.

I had a pleasant conversation through Twitter (yes, that is possible) with your social media staff last month, and they recommended I send this concern directly to this e-mail, so here we are, I finally got my rant together.

There is a bus stop on Westminster Highway right across the street from the Hamilton Transit Centre. Stop #59555 I think. The bus stop is on a (painted) bike lane. Not a perfect design, but sometimes you need to make due as there are lot of challenges for road space and curb space in the City. A bus stopping for a few seconds to pick up or drop off customers is a minor hassle for someone using the bike lane, and I think supporting transit users is really important for all cyclists – we active transportation users are all in this together!

Though it is not optimal in design, this is kind of an important bike lane. That area of Queensborough/Hamilton is a bit of a pinch point with the freeway jammed through it, and the route along Westminster Highway is really the only accessible, low-gradient and family-friendly route between the residential areas of Hamilton and the residential areas of Queensborough. It serves as an important connection for parks, shopping, the child care centre, and other travel. There really isn’t another way around here (except a ridiculous, really high, steep, and narrow pedestrian overpass a little way to the South, which no cycle should ever be on, and which doesn’t connect to anything, and is a prime example of why MOTI should not be trusted to build anything in an urban area, but I digress).

Now, the problem with Stop #59555 is that it has increasingly been used as place to store buses. It seems there is always one or two buses staged there, sometimes shut off with no drivers. I realize the 410 route often has delay/deadheading issues, but I also assume this is a spot for shift changes or other reasons bus are stored here. I have cycle commuted on this route for years, and I do not recall buses staging here prior to the opening of the Transit Centre. So now, instead of people on bikes waiting a few seconds for the bus to pick up or drop off, we need to travel around the bus.

A >2m-wide bus parked in a <2m painted bike lane means cyclists wishing to pass by must enter the driving lane of a road with the name “Highway”, and one with a significant portion of truck traffic. For experienced cyclists like myself, that is merely a bothersome decrease in my safety as I signal and take the lane and hope drivers respect my space (no doubt irritating a small number of them, pushing them towards writing their own long impotent screeds on the Vancouver Sun Facebook page about scofflaw cyclists not staying in their lane). But for other users it creates a serious barrier. Here is what I happened upon while riding along that route a few weeks ago, which launched this specific impotent screed:

As someone who cares about active transportation, as someone who proudly extols the virtues of TransLink as one of the greatest urban transit systems in North America, as someone elected to advocate for the safety and comfort of active transportation users in my community, all I want is for this mother to feel comfortable taking her daughter for a bike ride. I want the daughter to grow up confident and free and empowered by her bicycle. I want mom and daughter to be safe. The bikeway here is not optimal, but Translink’s operational choice here is making it markedly less safe every day. I mean, what is she supposed to do here? What message are we sending?

So please, see if you can change this operational practice, hopefully this summer, until a proper engineered work-around (a pull-out for the bus, or a bike lane routed behind the bus stop) can be implemented. If you need help from the City to make that happen, or if there is someone else I need to call, please let me know. Don’t do it for me, the “experienced rider” who doesn’t mind irritating the occasional driver if road engineering forces me into that choice. Do it for this family, for this mom trying to teach her daughter how to navigate her community safely, for this youth discovering one of the greatest tools for empowerment and freedom ever invented – riding a bicycle.

Thanks.

ASK PAT: Brews & Patios

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Wes asks—

Why can’t a brewery get a non-temporary patio in New West?

Has anyone in city hall ever been to Portland (or even Port Moody)? Every brewery literally gets rid of their parking lots and replace them with picnic tables and umbrellas.

They can. It is a bit hard for me to answer this question directly, because there are only two breweries operating in New West, and that makes it challenging to talk  about general City policy without uncomfortable references to specific cases. This is probably not the appropriate medium to talk about specific sites when those are private small businesses in the City. So I’m going to try to make this as general as possible to be fair to those owners.

Yes, I have been to Portland. I know most other members of Council have been to Portland. Some even attended the Livable Cities Conference there last year and have brought back ideas to make New West weirder. There are aspects of the Portland streetscape that the Mayor can’t stop extolling. I’ve also sipped beers on sunny patios around the world, from Montreal to Hue to Lesotho to Cologne. I’ve never heard of Port Moody, though.

New Westminster has allowed patios for the three main categories of food and beverage businesses (Food Primary restaurants, Liquor Primary pubs, and Manufacturer breweries) for some time , and many of them across the City have patios. However, the City is not the only regulatory body involved in licensing these spaces, and often there are complicating details between City zoning bylaws, provincial liquor licencing, and a variety of other rules that apply to businesses, especially the strange amalgam of light industrial activity and hospitality that is represented by breweries with tasting rooms.

I can’t talk about how it works in Portland, because I have no idea how their regulatory regime works, but I’ll try to outline my understanding of the local regulatory environment while avoiding any direct reference to any specific businesses.

In pre-COVID times (when this question was asked, and yep, I’m slow with answers these days), the City had a Sidewalk Cafe policy, guidelines, and a process in place to approve said patios, and on-site patios (those that are on private property of the pub/restaurant) were permitted in all commercial zones in the City. Sometimes a zoning variance would be required to change parking use to patio use (as amount of parking is regulated by zoning), but there was a process to do this, and I don’t recall Council ever saying no. There would also have to be an expansion of the liquor licence, which is provincially regulated and comes with requirements around access and fencing and such, because non-drinking people in BC must be strictly separated from drinking people or else… uh… chaos, I guess.  There are some other details that may be City Zoning or may be Building Code that can get in the way: for example, the patio has to be accessible (ramps less than 5% grade, 2m wide access points, etc) or number of washrooms and accessible washroom consistent with the occupancy of the room, but again those details can usually be worked out.

If the above require zoning variances, then that may trigger a need for some sort of public process – a public consultation or Opportunity to be Heard, and this makes sense. If you live next door to a restaurant, and they decide to put 50 guests outside making noise until 10:00pm every night, you may have concerns with that above and beyond and concerns you may have had, and it is only fair that you have an opportunity to bring those concerns to Council. Of course, Breweries are generally in industrial areas where this is not as much of a concern.

Finally, if a business wanted to put a patio on City land (the sidewalk, a public parking spot, etc.) then there is another step around the need to licence public space for private use. They need to pay a licence fee, there are insurance and liability issues to clear up, and the City has to decide if there is a public benefit served by this use of public land. Again, this all sounds like a hassle, but it is important when allocating public resources that it is guided by some kind of policy or at least a transparent set of principles and to assure transparency, fairness, and (frankly) accountability.

We are now in COVID times, and things have changed. Most notably, the Provincial Government has made some changes to how patio spaces for business with liquor licences are regulated, in an effort to support recovery for these businesses. The changes will allow near-immediate licencing for “temporary” patios to the end of October as long as it doesn’t increase the overall occupancy capacity of the business (which makes sense, as physical distancing requirements are making it hard or businesses to fit their occupancy limits inside). By doing this in a temporary way to the end of October, it gives business a chance to get going right now, and time for them to get more permanent plans in place if that is the way they want to go.

At our last Council Meeting, New Westminster Council made some changes to our zoning bylaw to further support these “temporary” applications, and further established some strong policy guidance to give staff the clear direction that we want to support the opening of patios asap. This sounds a little self-congratulatory, but in reality, City Staff did a great job putting together the documentation, providing clarity about the rapid changes in the regulatory environment, and bringing local business associations onboard with a regime that works for them. This guidance document shows the straightforward pathway to opening a patio in time for this summer’s patio season.

This effectively kicks the ball down the road to the end of the 2020 patio season, but it also gets patios up and running ASAP, and gives us time to get things in place for more permanent changes. As a bonus, and also gives us a chance to “try out” a process and see what works or where the process needs adjustment, which is really the most effective form of public consultation.

ASK PAT: NWSS safe biking routes

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

I have a bunch of queued up ASK PATS. Sorry, folks, some have been here for quite a while. Things have been busy, and priorities at Council have been shifting so fast and furiously that I have let these linger. I am going to try to clear the queue here in the next little bit. So the answers may be shorter than usual. But probably not, because I like to go on about things…

Don asks—

NWSS safe biking routes need some help. One of those problems is the car traffic cutting through the gas station at 6th and 8th. Perhaps if barriers were installed on the double yellow lines on both those streets would improve safety and traffic flow. Is this possible?

Maybe. That is a pretty “operational” question, and I frankly don’t know the technical requirements when it comes to installing mid-road barriers. I suspect come of those flexi-posts would reduce the number of illegal turns here, but I have also seen drivers do some pretty bizarre things to get around them. Jerks gotta jerk. As this is a more technical operational question than a Council Policy one, you may want to enter it to SeeClickFix or drop a line to Engineering Ops and see what transportation staff say.

As for bike routes to NWSS, we are working on it. The building of the new High School has given us an opportunity to review how cycling and pedestrian connections to the High School work. With the “main entrance” for the School shifting form 8th Street to 6th Street, there will definitely be a shift in how students get to the school:

An older drawing o the proposed new school site I cribbed from this source. Some stuff may have changed since then, but I wanted to show the lay of the land, and this works.

The City has worked with the School Board and project delivery team on this. The first priority is assuring safe and accessible pedestrian access a the two main “entry points”which will be mid-block on Eighth Ave (“C”) and mid-block on Sixth Street (“D”). The pathway across Eighth Street through the existing school site (“A”) is also identified as important, but will be addressed in the future as the demolition of the existing school and design of the memorialization area will delay works on that side. Light-controlled intersections, crosswalks, and sidewalk upgrades are planned at “C” and “D”.

The City is also committed to assuring there is a safe separated cycling route from Seventh Ave (part of the Crosstown Greenway) to the school. By the time the School opens, that will be a separated path along Eighth Street to Eighth Ave, a new intersection treatment at Eighth and Eighth, and improvements of the pathway past the Massey Theatre.

The Connection of the Crosstown Greenway to the Sixth Street entrance to the school property is going to be designed and implemented as part of the Uptown Streetscape Vision, which will redesign all of Sixth Street from Fourth Ave to Tenth Ave. This is currently going through some stakeholder engagement, but is a bigger road redesign project that will not be implemented by the time the School opens.