MC Podcast!

Posted on May 15, 2018. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

A couple of years ago, a few new City Councillors from “the suburbs” of Metro Vancouver were invited to take part in a City Conversation at SFU, a program that brings people together over a brown-bag lunch at SFU Downtown to talk Urbanism. It was fun, and got us all speculating over a beer about how we can find an excuse to do this again. Then someone (I think it was Mathew Bond) said “Podcast”.

Two years later, almost to the date, we have a Podcast! It’s called Metro Conversations, and you can listen to the first 6 episodes at iTunes and GooglePlay. But first a little context.

Our initial idea was to repeat the City Conversations model: 1-hour conversations with a small panel of subject matter experts with an intimate audience, facilitated by the Council of Four (myself, Mathew Bond, Kiersten Duncan, and Nathan Pachal). We record these conversations, and put them out as Podcasts.

We also thought we could fill the space by also sitting down occasionally for a “Metro Chat”, where just the four of us discuss an Urbanism topic. The idea here is that we are elected people who are not subject matter experts, but can provide a bit of a bridge between experts and people interested in what goes into making a more livable city. We also bring context from our local parts of the region, as Urbanism too often emphasizes the urban centre and that is where it is more easily embraced. As we will explore, it is around the edges that the benefits and impacts of modern city-making are really felt.

As will be readily apparent to listeners, we are not professional broadcasters, but we are passionate about our communities, and love to talk about Urbanist topics and how they impact our communities.

We have a half-dozen episodes up and running, and a couple in the can that we are working on as far as making them audible. This is our first try (we could even call it “Season 1”?) and are hoping to hear form people about what they like, what we need to do better, or what topics you want us to tackle if and when a Season 2 is organized. So please tune in, and let us know what you think by going to our Facebook Page and providing us feedback.

There are People to Thank:

SFU Public Square for the grant and their (paid!) interns for doing a bunch of the busy work and coordination that we simply would never have completed if you left it to four City Councilors who live all over the place and have full time jobs and long lists of commitments that make our working together on anything difficult. This was only possible through the Public Square.

Michael Alexander from the City Program at SFU for pulling us together and giving us the inspiration to try something different.

Random #NewWest peeps Wes Kinna (for masterfully helping with sound at live events), Stephen O’Shea (for creating a cool distinctive sound for intro/outro), and Christa MacArthur (for lending us her distinctively non-distinctive accent).

The Network Hub in New West, the District of North Vancouver, City of Langley, City of Port Coquitlam, and City of New Westminster for hosting spaces for us to hold conversations.

And all of our guests and audience members who made the live conversations work.

Ask Pat: Arenas

Posted on May 13, 2018. by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Jeremy asks—

What is the current usage rates of our arenas? I see calls for a third area, but I don’t know how often our current arenas are empty, or how many groups trying to book ice time would be unable to do so.

Simple answer is I don’t know, but my reflex answer is that our arenas are well used, rarely empty, but not bursting at the seams. As usual, that answer needs to be put into context of how the City plans and builds new and replacement facilities.

A new facility, be it a swimming pool, a skating rink, or a skate board park, has a capital cost (what it costs to build the thing on the day we build it and over the long term in upkeep and maintenance), and an operating cost (what it costs every year to keep the lights on, staff to maintain the ice and run programs in the facility). Those second costs can be small, like a skate park, which costs very little to maintain once built; or very high, like the old Canada Games Pool, which is a real energy and resources hog.

Conversely, many facilities earn revenue from pool or ice rentals and program fees, but it is almost a fundamental principle of public recreation facilities that the revenue never covers the capital and operational costs. For every person who walks into the Canada Games Pool to swim, take a fitness class, or drop heavy weights on the heads of change room occupants, the City subsidizes their visit by about $2. There is no financial model where a pool with services like the Canada Games Pool even breaks even on earned revenue (otherwise private business would be competing us out of the business, no?), and models where private companies run ice rinks rarely provide a high level of programming without significant support from clubs and local governments. Many facilities, such as the library, the skate park, or a playground, earn little or no revenue, but are nonetheless important amenities to improve the quality of life of people in a community.

I mix all of these together because building a new facility is never a stand-alone decision. It is *always* about placing things in a priority, which means both understanding the (perceived and actual) demand, and recognizing how existing and new facilities impact your capital and operating budgets.

The demand part can sometimes be recognized by the public and user groups before it comes to the attention of Council, who ultimately hold the purse strings and have to make the priority call. However, lacking a very motivated special interest group, it is much more common that staff who operate these facilities recognize capacity issues or unmet need and bring these challenges to Council through strategic and budget planning. This is the situation with library upgrades, with the Canada Games Pool and Centennial Community Centre replacements, with the expansion of the Queensborough Community Centre, and with the decisions we have made to invest in more flexible (but much more expensive) turf field replacements.

Sometimes, those priorities get shuffled by events. A neighbouring community building a new pool or an event like the Arenex collapse can shuffle the deck, causing us to move priorities in order to assure our program needs are met, and to assure we have the capital flexibility to deal with unexpected needs when they occur. The Arenex is an example of something that we now have to add to our capital budget, and to our planning. The capital cost of its replacement is covered for the most part by insurance, but it still needs to be included in a budget, and we still need to take staff off of existing projects to go through the replacement planning, project management, procurement and design work to make sure we replace it with the right thing. Again, staff time is one more thing that has to sit in a priority list – what work do we delay to rush the replacement of the Arenex?

So back to answering your question. We have not heard from staff that there is a huge unmet demand for ice in the community or the region, at least not in comparison to other unmet needs that have been placed higher in the capital planning priority list. And they would know better than I would, as they are the ones managing the day-to-day resource needs of the community.

That said, with recent requests from some members of the public, Council has asked staff to do a bit of work and better define for us where a third sheet of ice (or other ice allocation improvements) fits on the capital plan priority list, and whether there is a compelling demand case for moving it up. This has to also include some analysis of where ice demand is regionally so we can better understand how the two new ice sheets on our border in Burnaby and two more sheets in Port Coquitlam will impact regional needs. So staff are going to add this work to their work plans, and prioritize it alongside ongoing work to support the Arenex programs and plan the replacement, getting the Canada Games Pool project ready for senior government grants, and all of the other capital works already in our plans. This is a responsible way to approach new capital funding requests, whether they come to us from staff’s understanding of need, or from a data-gathering petition at the beginning of an election campaign.

Council – May 7, 2018

Posted on May 12, 2018. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Our Council meeting on May 7 was long and a little chaotic. It included several announcements and proclamations, and large numbers of people coming to Public Delegations. Because we were aware some people were delegating on agenda items, the schedule was mixed up a bit so Council could hear from them before we made any decisions (I will blog about these delegations in a future blog; they are topics we will be talking about more in the upcoming weeks and months). This means the order of things that happened over the 5+ hours is not really reflected in the agenda you might read online, and I honestly don’t want to sit through a 5-hour video recording to make sure my blog is in order of occurrence, especially as I am editing this up almost a week after the event because I was helping run a conference in Whistler all week… all this to say the following may not be in the order of occurrence, but I think it covers all of the decisions we made.

This Council Meeting included an Opportunity to be Heard:

Amendment to Construction Noise Bylaw No. 6063, 1992 (Amendment Bylaw 8013, 2018)
We talked about this a bit during First and second reading at the last meeting, but the City is updating its construction noise Bylaw to reduce some allowable weekend work hours and bring our construction schedule more in line with what other Cities do. It is a crazy construction time right now, with the regional economy booming and many housing projects of every shape coming on line. Residents are definitely feeling (hearing) this, and hopefully this will provide a little relief. That said, the change is modest, and it is really hard for us to create too many limits of construction noise within business hours.

We had one letter from a concerned developer, but no-one came to delegate during the Opportunity to be Heard, and the Bylaw Amendment was given third reading by Council.

Fire Escape Stairs at 642 Columbia Street Public Art Integration
A few months ago, we tasked our staff and the Public Art Advisory Committee with exploring ideas to make the fire escape on the Front Street a more appealing part of the Front Street Mews, and approved some budget from our Public Art Reserve Fund to pay for it.

There where 42 (!) proposals received from the Public Art community across Canada and the world. A panel made up of arts professionals and the local community shortlisted this to 4, who provided more detailed proposals, from which the PAAC recommended a piece from a team in Victoria called “Floralume”.

The goal here is to take something that was necessary as part of the Parkade removal and re-imagining of Front Street into a public space, and turn it into a place-making opportunity. I think this interactive multimedia sculpture has the potential to do this – and actually become a regional showpiece that will draw more people to Front Street. It also came in a little under budget, which is a bonus.

The following items were Moved on Consent:

Uptown New Westminster BIA Renewal Bylaw No. 8019, 2018
This is an update on the Bylaw that empowers the Uptown BIA to operate. This also updates the tax rates and overall plan to better support the BIA’s new Strategic Plan. The Uptown BIA does a lot of great stuff, from supporting the Winter Farmers Market to installing branded bikes racks to the Uptown Live music festival. It is great to have such a positive partner in the business community in the City.

Recruitment 2018: Amateur Sports Grant Program Appointment
Recruitment 2018: Parks & Recreation Committee Appointment and
Recruitment 2018: Restorative Justice Committee Appointment
We needed to replace a few members of these volunteer community committees, and did so!

813 – 823 Carnarvon Street: Housing Agreement Bylaw for three readings
This is the housing agreement that will secure 66 below-market rental units in the smaller of the two towers at the PALS development on Carnarvon. There are a couple of levels of non-market housing that will be operated in this building to support seniors with limited incomes (with an emphasis on those from the performing arts community). 39% of the units will be “housing income limit” where rent is based on the occupant’s income so not to exceed what is considered affordable, and the other 61% of the units will be below market, but based on markets cost, at what is called “CMHC Level 1 Affordability”. Council moved to approve the Housing Agreement.

514 Carnarvon Street (Holy Trinity): Official Community Plan Amendment Section 475 and 476 – Consultation Report
This is a report on the ongoing consultation with the community on this unusual development project, which would see a largish but narrow tower built adjacent to the Anglican Cathedral on Carnarvon. This project has seen quite a bit of adjustment and re-imagining as it has gone along. The proponent (the Anglican congregation) wants to see some combination of market, secured rental and non-market (affordable) rental, but mostly want to rasie some money for the restoration of their historic cathedral.

The consultation is ongoing here, and this report is more of an update than anything else.

New Westminster Transit Priorities
As a regional centre in the center of the region, New Westminster has a role to play in regional governance, and making the use of transit as reliable, accessible, comfortable and convenient as possible in our city is fundamental to the success of our Master Transportation Plan, our Official Community Plan, and regional plans for growth and transportation sustainability.

New Westminster is already a region-leader in transit use: our residents use transit more than any other community excepting maybe the City of Vancouver itself. But we can do more, and this document outlines what the City recognizes as priorities to make transit work better for more people in New Westminster. The idea here is to provide clear policy guidance when we are working with our transit partners (TransLink, the Ministry of Transportation, and our neighbouring communities). We have identified areas where we need improvement – such as the overall dismal service to rapidly-growing family-friendly neighbourhoods in Queensborough, and bus speed and reliability issues that impact our most important routes.

This is a planning document, but also an advocacy document, and part of the great foundational work being done by our Transportation department that may not be flashy or avail us of a ribbon cutting, but will provide tangible benefits to the community in the long run.

2018 Q to Q Pilot Ferry Service
The big news of the meeting is confirmation that the Q to Q ferry is back in 2018, with an improved service based on feedback from last year. The pilot service being offered this summer will have longer hours and be more accessible, and will have the same fare structure, but more option for how to pay (including a monthly pass). I will write more about this in a future blog, but I am really proud of the hard work our staff put into this, and am excited about the service. I expect May 19th will be crazy!

Recruitment 2018: Electric Utility Commissioner Reappointment
The City’s Electrical Utility is not actually run by City Council, but by a Utility Commission. We have a representative on that Commission, we set their budget, we approve their Strategic Plan, and we appoint Commissioners, but the day-to-day running of the utility is up to this commission. We just re-appointed one of the excellent Commissioners.

323 E. Sixth Avenue: Development Variance Permit to Vary the Off-Street Parking Requirement – Consideration of Opportunity to be Heard
This residential property in Upper Sapperton is located on a steep slope on a cul-de-sac wants to vary zoning by continuing to have front access to parking after renovation. There will be an Opportunity to be Heard on this on May 28th. C’mon out and tell us what you think.

330 Johnston Street: Development Variance Permit to Vary the Minimum Frontage – Consideration of Opportunity to be Heard
This is one of those long properties in Queensborough where subdividing to a typical width for the neighbourhood means it will be more than 4x as long as it is wide, which requires a variance. There will be an Opportunity to be Heard on this on May 28th. C’mon out and tell us what you think.

The following items were Removed from Consent for discussion:

New Westminster Public Art Plan
The PAAC and staff have been working on a Public Art Plan to provide clearer policy guidance when considering and approving new Public Art. I raised a few inconsistencies in the plan as presented, and hoped that more clarity could be provided within the Themes presented. After a bit of discussion, Council agreed to send the plan back to the PAAC and staff for a little more work prior to approval. More to come here.

Naming of a New Street in Queensborough
This report proposes that we name a new road in Queensborough “Roma” (-Street or -Road) in honour of the important role the Roma Hall played in the history of the Q’Boro community.

I have recently had occasion to learn more about the history of the Roma Hall, thanks to Emma Canil, as she spoke about the important role it played in her extended family’s immigrant experience in New Westminster. This is a landmark built by a community who came to Canada from across the sea to escape economic depression and geopolitical strife, in order to support their community and honour their heritage while contributing to Canada’s mosaic. So I approve of the name, in honour of the organization and community it represents.

This, however, raised a question for me that I asked staff to follow up on. I am not sure where we are in the progress towards updating our street naming policy. That we have not adopted a policy that puts our history of colonization in context or addresses the underrepresentation of women in place names in our City. I think the process that got us towards this name included many proposed names which would not represent that spirit. I hope we can move forward on those fronts before too many more of these applications come to us.

Queen’s Park Heritage Conservation Area: Special Limited Category Study Progress Update
There are 80 properties in the Queens Park HRA that have “Special Limited” protection, somewhere between fully protected and not protected at all. The plan has always been to eventually migrate all of these properties to either protected or not based on assessment of the heritage merit and zoning entitlements. Of those, we are providing an opportunity for some of them to do a bulk sign-up for extra protection so they can avail themselves of the incentive programs being introduced by the City to encourage heritage restoration and protection. This report gives an update on that evaluation process and efforts by staff to reach out to homeowners to let them know this is happening.

Interim Fees and Securities Provisions for Small Market Strata renovations
One of the principles of how Cities collect revenue is that “fees” are not “taxes”. The latter we can use for any purpose, the former are meant to only exist as a cost-recovery for services the city offers. In that sense, building inspection fees should be on a cost-recovery basis, not subsidized by taxes or other revenues. This proposal balances the desire to maintain that standard, but find a way to reduce the cost for renovations of small market strata renovations, and many of these smaller multi-unit buildings are seeing increased need for extensive envelope or structural repairs, but are challenged by the cost of these repairs as there are fewer homeowners to share the load.

Again, I love that our staff are identifying initiatives to support more affordable housing all across the spectrum, this (relatively affordable market strata in older buildings) is just one piece of the puzzle, but an important piece, as they all are.

I have an ongoing issue with how we manage security deposits for these small-unit buildings and homeowners. Often these works require the City collect security to assure legally required works are done, and those security requirements can sum up to tens of thousands of dollars that the City holds, and returns at the end of the project after final inspection. I think that having to provide tens of thousands of dollars of security to the City – essentially tying up a bunch of money at a time when a homeowner is feeling significantly stressed about costs – seems a real deterrent to people doing renovations and building improvements, and I’ll include the deposits in the Tree Bylaw with this.

I have asked Staff to review if there is a better way to provide security to the City. Perhaps (and I am spit-balling here ,as there are probably regulatory issues I am not aware of) through a legal agreement where the owner is required to pay the City if the security conditions are not met, and if they, after the fact refuse to pay, we can collect through our taxation process? Council approved the motion here ,ans asked for Staff to report back on security options.

We also addressed some specific correspondence:

District of Houston letter dated March 29, 2018 regarding a Human Trafficking Task Force and
Cathy Peters email to District of Houston dated February 26, 2018 regarding Child sex trafficking in BC Municipalities and how to stop it:
We moved to receive this correspondence, but I asked that we no move to take the recommended actions in the correspondence, that is to make specific policy requests to senior governments.

Cathy Peters is a strong and vocal advocate for the protection of children, and I support the protection of youth from exploitation and some measures Mrs. Peters is suggesting to better protect youth in our community, but do not agree that all the measures she is calling for will achieve these goals.

The “Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act” is one of those Harper-era Orwelian-named pieces of legislation that instead of acting to protect people who may be exploited, further stigmatizes and criminalizes them, and does little to increase the protection of vulnerable people in our community. Organizations such as the Pivot Legal Society have argued this legislation is unconstitutional. So I cannot agree to us advocating for its implementation.

We then, late at night, got into a slightly modified Bylaws shuffle:

REGARDING Zoning Amendment Bylaw (1050 Boyd Street and 1005 Ewen Avenue) No. 7700, 2014;
REGARDING Zoning Amendment Bylaw No. 7917, 2017;
REGARDING Zoning Amendment Bylaw No. 7920, 2017; and
REGARDING Zoning Amendment Bylaw No. 7944, 2017
Our staff were doing some diligence as part of the updates of our zoning bylaws, and discovered a discrepancy in how we consulted with MOTI (which we are required to do when a rezoning happens within some prescribed distance with a freeway entrance). So we are rescinding these adoptions, and will re-adopt once MOTI checks the box they need to check. There is no shift in land use happening here, but this type of detail may matter to someone at some point down the road, so we are stepping back to make sure we do it right.

Housing Agreement (813 – 823 Carnarvon Street) Bylaw No. 8001, 2018
As discussed above, this Bylaw that secures housing in a proposed development on Carnarvon Street as below-market rental was given three readings by Council.

Heritage Revitalization Agreement (318 Fifth Street) Bylaw No. 7977, 2018 and
Heritage Designation (318 Fifth Street) Bylaw No. 7978, 2018
As discussed at the Public Hearing on April 30, these Bylaws that permit a laneway house in Queens Park in exchange for restoration and protection of a heritage house was adopted by Council.

Heritage Revitalization Agreement (312 Fifth Street) Bylaw No. 7979, 2018 and
Heritage Designation (312 Fifth Street) Bylaw No. 7980, 2018
As discussed at the Public Hearing on April 30, these Bylaws that permit another laneway house in Queens Park in exchange for restoration and protection of a heritage house was adopted by Council.

Heritage Revitalization Agreement (224 Sixth Avenue) Bylaw No. 7989, 2018 and
Heritage Designation (224 Sixth Avenue) Bylaw No. 7990, 2018
As discussed at the Public Hearing on April 30, these Bylaws that permit the subdivision of a lot in Queens Park and the building of a second house in exchange for restoration and protection of a heritage house was adopted by Council.

Heritage Revitalization Agreement (520 Carnarvon Street) Bylaw No. 8004, 2018 and
Heritage Designation (520 Carnarvon Street) Bylaw No. 8005, 2018
As discussed at the Public Hearing on April 30, these Bylaws that permit an extensive renovation and land use changes for the permanent protection of a heritage house in the Downtown was adopted by Council.

2018 Tax Rates Bylaw No. 8014, 2018
As discussed last meeting, this Bylaw that sets our property tax rates for 2018 was adopted by Council.

Downtown BIA (Primary Area) 2018 Tax Rates Bylaw No. 8015, 2018;
Downtown BIA (Secondary Area) 2018 Tax Rates Bylaw No. 8016, 2018; and
Uptown BIA 2018 Tax Rates Bylaw No. 8017, 2018
As discussed last meeting, this Bylaw that sets the rates of the parcel taxes we collect on behalf of our three BIAs was adopted by Council.

And that, at something like 11:30 at night on a day where I was at City hall at 9:00am for a Task Force meeting, was tiredly that.

Public Hearing – April 30, 2018

Posted on May 3, 2018. by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

It was a lengthy Council Meeting on Monday, with 16 Public Hearings covering 10 projects (because many projects include more than one Bylaw, there needs to be a separate hearing for each one). If you are interested in the rest of what happened on Council this week, follow this link. If you want to see what happened in the Public Hearings, watch the video here (and don;t miss the deliberations Council had on the Public Hearing topics in the following Regular Meeting video). As an aside, this public hearing and some of the conversations around it have me thinking I need to write a “Public Hearing 101” blog post to explain some of the process to people for whom this is their first interaction with Council. But for now, this post is just my summary of the 10 projects that came to Council on April 30.

Back-of-the envelope stats of what we approved:
9 Projects;
225 Strata units;
72 Secured rental units;
4 Laneway/Carriage homes;
5 Protected heritage homes;
597 Off-street parking spots.

318 Fifth StreetHeritage Revitalization Agreement Bylaw No. 7977, 2018 and
Heritage Designation Bylaw No. 7978, 2018
This project would see a large heritage home Queens Park designated as a Heritage Property with a Heritage Restoration Plan in exchange for allowing a largish family-size laneway house on the property. As the house is already in pretty good shape and well preserved, there was some debate about the heritage benefit and timeline for completing some of the works considered as part of the long-term restoration.

To me, the project is great example of preserving heritage in our City, while still allowing our housing stock to evolve and create more flexible types of homes in Queens Park, increasing the viability and vitality of the neighbourhood. It is also an appropriate place for a larger laneway house, as it backs a commercial parking to and will intrude over adjacent houses (and really the laneway house is not much larger than the existing 3-car garage it replaces).

We got hung up a bit on timing for the window replacement of the main house. They are vinyl windows in good condition, and are not reflective of the heritage of the house, so heritage advocates wanted to see them replaced sooner rather than later. The counter argument is that they are mimicking an appropriate window style, and replacing them now is both wasteful, and an undesirable intrusion into the now-functional envelope of the house. The compromise found through the public consultation and work between stakeholders was to have the work done within 10 years.

I agreed that we should ask the Homeowner to commit to replacement of the windows on a timeframe appropriate for the long term viability of the house – be that end of life or sooner – with appropriate wood-frame windows, and secure that commitment in the Heritage plan

There was one written submission on this project, and we had 5 people delegate to council, including the proponent. 3 spoke in favour, 2 expressed concerns related to the windows issue above. Council voted unanimously to give this project Third Reading.

312 Fifth StreetHeritage Revitalization Agreement Bylaw No. 7979, 2018 and
Heritage Designation Bylaw No. 7980, 2018
Very similar to the previous project, this property right next door will see a similar laneway house built in exchange for a somewhat more extensive heritage conservation of the main house, including moving the home forward on the site. We had no correspondence on this project, and the only delegate on the topic was the Queens Park RA speaking in favour. Council voted unanimously to give the project third reading.

224 Sixth Avenue Heritage Revitalization Agreement Bylaw No. 7989, 2018 and
Heritage Designation Bylaw No. 7990, 2018
This project will see the preservation of a relatively modest heritage home in Queens Park that is on a larger lot in exchange for subdivision of the lot and the building of a second house that meets the Queens Park guidelines for heritage conservation. Again, and example of infill in a Heritage Conservation Area that increases housing choice and respects the heritage character of the neighbourhood.

There was a delegate who raised an issue with part of this application that is kind of secondary to the actual application, which is the dedication of a Statutory Right of Way at the back of the property as part of the City’s long-term transportation and development goals. This issue was actually discussed at a previous meeting, and Council received a report from staff on it a couple of weeks ago.

We received some correspondence on this project (including the petition entered by the delegate), and had two delegates at the Public Hearing – the Queens Park RA spoke in favour, and the delegate who raised the SRW concern. Council voted 6-1 in favour of giving these Bylaws Third Reading.

520 Carnarvon StreetHeritage Revitalization Agreement Bylaw No. 8004, 2018 and
Heritage Designation Bylaw No. 8005, 2018
This is an application for extensive renovation and addition of a suite to the last single family house on 500 block of Carnarvon Street, in exchange for designation of the house and permanent protection. We received no correspondence on this application, but did receive a few delegations at the Public Hearing, all in favour. Council voted unanimously in favour of giving this project Third Reading.

306 Gilley StreetHeritage Revitalization Agreement Bylaw No. 8007, 2018 and
Heritage Designation Bylaw No. 8008, 2018
This is a slightly more aggressive Heritage Conservation and infill density project in Brow of the Hill. Again, a relatively small heritage house on a larger lot will be restored and protected, and a new “infill duplex” will be built on the same lot. This will provide two new smallish, but family-friendly three-bedroom units, that when all added together still fits under the 35% site coverage requirements of the zoning. This is an interesting approach on a lot that only has a small-street (call it a lane if you want, but it has a name) frontage, in a neighbourhood with a huge variety of housing already. The APC, Design Panel, and Community Heritage Commission approve of the project, and the RA had no opposition.

We received two pieces of correspondence on this project, and had a few delegations at the hearing. The proponents spoke in favour, but a couple of neighbours raised issues around the parking on the site, the loss of trees, and fire separation. The project will allow three parking spots and a fourth “flex-parking” spot, though the neighbour doubted the sites are large enough. There is a loss of trees, but they will be replaced on a 2-for-1 basis as per our Tree Bylaw. The fire separations meet the code, and are similar to those of some nearby houses that fill a larger portion of their lot.

Council voted unanimously to give the project Third Reading.

1084 and 1130 Tanaka Court and a portion of the existing road right of way Zoning Amendment Bylaw No. 8011, 2018This project would see a banquet hall built on a vacant lot near the Casino in Queensborough. We received no correspondence on this project, and no-one came to speak to it. Nothing controversial here, and it will be good to see a piece of commercial property developed. Council voted unanimously to support the Third Reading.

118 Royal Avenue Zoning Amendment Bylaw No. 7954, 2018
This project would see a 4 fee-simple row homes built on a single family lot in the Downtown immediately next door to Qayqayt Middle School. This is a valuable housing form that fills a gap in the city, but I had several concerns with the design of this project as it developed. We spent a lot of time at the Public Hearing talking about the bike route issue, but there was also, on my mind, a design issue with the building that made me reluctant to support it.

There were a few compromises in the development of this site, including a lost potential to assemble the adjacent single-family houses in a areas where the land use plan indicates low-rise apartment as a preferred land form. The choice to build rowhomes (as opposed to strata townhouses) is supportable, but in the case of this project, that required that each property face Royal Ave, and the project could not be designed to face west, where each house would have a view of the park, and the park/playground area would be provided “eyes on the street” and be addressed by the front of a building, not by the side of a development. Overall, I think the design fails for the spot provided it.

The bike route issue was the second point of opposition, and this goes a bit to how the City receives dedications for transportation or other uses during development (discussed at length as part of the 224 Sixth Ave project, above). In this case, a narrow dedication was taken to improve the quality of the sidewalk along Royal Avenue, with the intention that eventually (through further development of adjacent properties), the separate pedestrian/cyclist route adjacent to the Royal Avenue will be extended to meet Windsor Street a few hundred feet to the east, and connect to the greenway network south of Royal (Agnes Street and Pattullo Bridge replacement). As was explained by the HUB member delegating at the Public Hearing, this routing is not great for vulnerable road users, and they have been advocating for many years that a lower-grade connection between Agnes and Royal is best located around the periphery of the playing field. This would be easiest to achieve through dedication of a strip along the west portion of the property (in addition to or instead of the north portion). At the least, they were hoping that we could assure that the development is built in such a way that we don’t preclude the eventual routing of a pedestrian/cycling route around the periphery of the park.

In the end, Council voted 4-2 (Mayor Cote recused himself for conflict) to reject this proposal, sending the developer back to the drawing board.

41 – 175 Duncan StreetOfficial Community Plan Amendment Bylaw No. 7982, 2018 and
Zoning Amendment Bylaw No. 7983, 2018
This project would see a largish piece of formerly-industrial but now vacant waterfront land in Queensborough converted to a 170-unit townhouse development, and will include enhancement and expansion of the waterfront trail network in Queensborough and the building of a much-needed child care facility on site.

This project was originally zoned for 48 Townhomes and 425 apartment units, so this rezoning represents a significant shift towards more family-friendly and ground oriented development, congruent with the pattern of development in Queensborough. There was quite a bit of engineering and design work to make the project work better adjacent to industrial property to the west and the infrequently-used but not-going-anywhere rail line to the south. Most importantly on that second item, the development design is consistent with the most recent FCM Railway Proximity guidelines to reduce conflict between rail use and adjacent land use.

We did receive some correspondence on this development, for and against (mostly citing the rail conflict concerns). The Residents’ Association support the project, as did th eDesign Panel and Advisory Planning Commission. We had no-one come to speak at the Public Hearing.

Council voted 6-1 in favour of supporting this project.

228 – 232 Sixth Street Zoning Amendment Bylaw No. 7996, 2018
This project in the Brow of the Hill will replace the now-decrepit converted single family houses that were home to an iconic Italian restaurant on Sixth Street with a 6-story multi-family development. This project has taken quite a bit of time to get through, and included at least one pretty significant re-design to address some proximity and privacy issues with the relatively new highrise to the north of it and the older three-story walkup to the west of it.

We receive quite a bit of correspondence on this project, some in favour (especially from nearby business owners) who would like to see the street revitalized), but the majority from the two adjacent buildings that were opposed for several reasons outlined in the Public Hearing.

One significant aspect of the opposition was parking. This building will have 53 residential units and is located on the Frequent Transit Network less than a kilometre from two SkyTrain stations, in an extremely walkable part of the community. As the zoning is currently written, and before any incentives are added, this would require 74 parking spaces (1.4 per unit). The proponent wants to provide 66 parking spaces (1.2 per unit). I only repeat these numbers because I got them slightly wrong during deliberations, and want to correct the record – my rapidly misreading of the 653-page council report in front of me at the time. A delegate was very concerned about where the 8 (or was it 16?) extra cars would go. I respectfully suggest we are actually building too much parking for this development, and there will not be 8 cars circling the block looking for parking.

Car ownership in New Westminster is going down. The stats we used to put together the 2014 Master Transportation Plan (and they were older stats by then) has 1.2 registered automobiles per household in the City. The downtown area near SkyTrain was closer to 0.7 cars per household. It doesn’t take too much interpretation of the trends to assume people buying apartments in the most walkable parts of the City will have car ownership levels equal to or lower than the city-wide average.

A second concern raised was the fate of the trees on the property line to the west. The property owners to the west have not yet agreed to a plan for these shared property assets. This is an issue the developer will need to address before the Bylaws that support this project are adopted, and in full compliance with the City’s Tree Protection Bylaw.

Finally, there was quite a bit of concern about proximity to adjacent buildings, and how the setbacks from the property line will impact current residents of those buildings. The proposal by far exceeds the setback required by the Zoning on the west side, and has been designed to step back with height to further allow light. The ground floor/garage entrance/patios are built to the lot line, but the adjacent property here has a semi-underground garage at that elevation, so that proximity should not impact the quality of life of the current residents.

The building to the north is built to the lot line with a flat wall, built in anticipation of development of this property with a pedestal and set-back, so proximity is not an issue here, however the design above 30 feet (i.e. on top of the pedestal) has the suites closer to the lot line that permitted in the zoning, and that is where the variance is required here to make the building fit. Clearly, the building to the north was designed and built anticipating this, and the tower on that building was set further north on the pedestal to provide more space for this. As a result, the distance between the tower and suites in the new buildings will be 13.5m (44 feet) and the closest approach (existing balcony to new soffits) 10.7m (35 feet). See this diagram:

Overall, this is a positive development that fills a gap in the Brow neighbourhood and provides a good variety of housing types. Council voted 6-1 in favour of supporting the project.

406 – 412 East Columbia Street Zoning Amendment Bylaw No. 7995, 2018
Finally, this project in Sapperton brought the most correspondence and many delegates to speak to its merits. It will see a six-story building built on a vacant lot in the commercial strip of East Columbia. The ground floor will have retail, the second floor professional offices (one might anticipate health-care-related given the location) and then 4 floors of secured market rental residential units.

I think the developer (working with staff) got the mix right here for the neighbourhood. The 72 rental units come in a variety of sizes, and the commercial-office spaces meet the long-term goals of the RCH area. If I have one criticism of the project, it is that 144 parking spaces seems a ridiculous amount for a building that is 400m from a Skytrain station in one of the most walkable parts of the City. However, the future office needs are difficult to anticipate, and with fully half of that parking intended to serve the commercial/office part of the building, I expect it may relive some of the street parking pressure felt in adjacent residential neighbourhoods.

As I said, the vast majority of written correspondence and public delegation on this project was in favour, and Council voted unanimously to support it (Councillor Williams recused herself due to potential conflict).

Council – April 30, 2018

Posted on May 1, 2018. by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Most last-Council-meetings-of-the-month are Public Hearings, where Bylaws that require a Public Hearing as per the Local Government Act are opened for Public Comment. We had 16 Public Hearings on 10 projects, and that part of the meeting went on for almost 4 hours (you can see the videos here) . However, I am going to blog here first about the rest of the business we did at Council (as most of the Crowd had left by then), and blog about the Public Hearings in a follow-up post.

After we finished the Third Readings of the Bylaws discussed at Public Hearing, we got onto the rest of the Agenda, which started with moving the following items On Consent:

2018 Tax Rates Bylaw No. 8014, 2018
As we are reaching the end of our annual budget program, the next step is to pass a Bylaw that supports the tax levels we approved in our earlier discussions about operational and capital budgets. The amount of revenue we will collect from property tax will go up 2.95%, and we are adding on a 1% Capital Levy to better support our Capital Plan, most notably the Canada Games Pool project. Though the average tax increase is a total of 3.95% over last year, your result may vary.

Downtown BIA Parcel Tax Bylaws and
Uptown New Westminster Business Improvement Area Parcel Tax Bylaw No. 8017, 2018
These are the Bylaws that allow the City to collect a parcel tax from the members of our City’s three BIAs (one Uptown, two Downtown). Remember, all of this money is collected by the City from the businesses in the BIA areas, and then returned directly to the BIAs so they can run their business area improvement programs, as their own elected boards figure is the wisest way.

Recruitment 2018: Economic Development Advisory Committee Appointment
Staff changes in a company that has participated in our Economic Development Advisory Committee has resulted in them asking us to shift their representative to the Committee, which we did.

Recruitment 2018: Environment Advisory Committee (EnAC) Appointment
A representative of the local business community has been appointed to the Environment Advisory Committee.

Recruitment 2018: Emergency Advisory Committee (EAC) Appointment
A representative of St Johns Ambulance has been appointed to the Emergency Advisory Committee.

Appointment of the City Clerk
The City is replacing our City Clerk – the person who sits at the Mayor’s right hand during Council Meetings, and whose job it is (among other things) to make sure everything we do is legal by the language of the Law and close enough to Roberts Rules. This is one of the few staff positions that has a regulatory role, defined in the Community Charter, so a Council Resolution is required to put the new Clerk in office.

Appointment of the Chief Election Officer and Deputy Chief Election Officer for the 2018 General Local Election
The City is also required to appoint a Chief Election Officer for the upcoming Municipal Election. Under the Local Government Act, these are staff positions that are required to be defined by Council Resolution. This resolution does that. Election on!

Front Street Metro Vancouver Sewer Upgrade: Request for Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption
The disruptive sewer work on Front street is the gift that never stops giving. Some underground sewer works on operating sewers need to be done in the middle of the night when sewer loads are lowest, because when you dealing with liquid shit, you want to deal with as little as possible. So the city is providing a Noise Bylaw exemption the works that have to happen at night can happen at night.

The following items were Removed from Consent for discussion:

Innovation Week 2018 Review and 2019 Request
Innovation week has been a very successful business development initiative in the City, and an important part of our Intelligent City strategy. It has put the City on the regional map when it comes to bringing new industries together and in touch with public and private support networks. It also is a forum for sharing ideas that will push our community forward. But it isn’t free, and there were some identified areas for improvement for next year.

This report outlines a plan for 2019 Innovation Week, and provides a preliminary budget. Council had a bit of a discussion about the budget, but in the end agreed (in a split vote) to approve a modest increase in the budget, but we did request some more info about what parts of the budget can be covered by existing staff in similar staff roles (ie. where we can find efficiencies with internal staff).

I do want to call attention to Councillor Puchmayr’s point during our deliberations. At the CivX conference in Vancouver this year, there were elected officials and staff from several Cities around BC who were jealous of the cooperative model we have in New West – where Council supports staff and community leaders to work together to develop innovative approaches in our own operations, and to reach out to innovative businesses to grow in the City. This is a great program, recognized outside of New West, and an important part of our Economic Development Plan and our ongoing pursuit of a better-run City.

2018 Spring Freshet and Snow Pack Level
This is an update report on how the snowpack and weather forecast impacts our flood and water restriction planning.

There is a lot of snowpack in the interior this year, and a lot arrived late. It is well above average in the Columbia/Okanagan watershed (where there is a pretty high risk of flooding right now), but we also have higher than average snowpack in much of the Fraser River drainage basin. Higher snowpack doesn’t necessarily mean flood, but it does increase the risk of flood, and the risk of larger floods. A lot now depends on how the weather shifts and how quickly that snowpack melts. A cycle like we had last week (Really hot for several days followed by protracted rain) is the kind of thing that causes flooding, as it heats the snow up to melting point then provides a quick boost of water to flush it out. We are not panicking yet in the lower Fraser, but are paying close attention, ready to react if the risk goes up.

The snowpack in our watersheds is also above average, and we should hope for some cool spring weather to slow the melt, so we won’t have to deal with Stage 2 or Stage 3 restrictions this year.

After these Agenda Items were managed, we wrapped a long night with our regular reading of Bylaws:

2018 Tax Rates Bylaw No. 8014, 2018
As discussed above, the Bylaw that codifies our tax rates for 2018 was given three readings.

Downtown New Westminster Business Improvement Area (Primary Area) Parcel Tax Bylaw No. 8015, 2018 and
Downtown New Westminster Business Improvement Area (Secondary Area) Parcel Tax Bylaw No. 8016, 2018 and
Uptown New Westminster Business Improvement Area Parcel Tax Bylaw No.8017, 2018
As discussed above, these Bylaws that empower us to collect taxes from BIA area businesses in order to fund the operations of the three City BIAs were all given three readings.

Development Services Fees and Rates Amendment Bylaw No. 8009, 2018
As given third reading on April 9th, this Bylaw that sets the rates for Queens Park homeowners to take part in the “special Limited Category” group property assessment program was adopted. It is now the Law of the Land.

Bylaw Notice Enforcement Housekeeping Amendment Bylaw No. 8012, 2018
As given third reading on April 9th, this Bylaw that adjusts our Bylaw Notice Enforcement Bylaw to comply with changes in the local and regional Water Restrictions was adopted. Just in time, too, as 2018 Watering Restrictions started today!

And that was all the business of the day. Again, I’ll get into the Public Hearing discussions in a follow-up Bog Post, when I get time to write it!

Council – April 16, 2018

Posted on April 21, 2018April 26, 2018. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

We didn’t have full Council meeting on this week, but instead dealt with a few things in an Afternoon Workshop format. We didn’t make any big decisions, but it is worth reporting out on what took place, as there were a few interesting topics discussed.

Stewardson Way Pedestrian/Bike Overpass
We received a presentation from the Ministry of Transportation on their plans to build a pedestrian overpass over Stewardson Way, as reported here. Several years back, the Ministry re-aligned the north entrance to the Queensborough Bridge to improve flow and once and for all solve traffic problems on 20th Street. At the time, this resulted in a shifting of the BC Parkway routing from the south side of Grimston Park to new pedestrian infrastructure at the bridgehead, the best part of the kilometer to the west. Seemingly ever since, people in the West End have wished for a return of the pedestrian connection at this location. The Ministry and TransLink are partnering to build it.

I raised a couple of concerns here, more in the category of things-we-need-to-do-now. The overpass will not actually connect to anything on the north side of the road. The all-but-abandoned section of the BC Parkway below Grimston Park merges into Mead Street, which dead-ends when it gets to 20th Street, and there is no other connection to any road or pathway in the West end, unless one wants to walk or ride their bike across a sloped grass field. So we need to figure out how to improve those connections. Also, there is still a user-friendliness “gap” on the Parkway down the hill on Stewardson between 5th Ave and 14th Street, like I talked about here. We will expect a report back from Staff on status of these gaps.

The bigger issue I have raised in the past about speeding on Stewardson and reclaiming the safety of our road space for active road users? Meh, no-one other than me seems interested in talking about that now. Goods Movement is still a bigger priority than livability of our neighbourhoods for pretty much everyone involved in transportation in BC. It is frustrating. But hey, free overpass.

Metro Vancouver Sewer Connection Project – Front St. between Columbia St. and Begbie St
Speaking of frustrating. We also received a presentation from Metro Vancouver engineering folks on a sewer line replacement project that is going to disrupt downtown traffic yet again, with a protracted closure of Front Street just west of Kelly O’Bryans. This is going to mean more truck traffic pushed to Royal Ave (the official alternate truck route), and more likely than not, a bunch of trucks illegally using Columbia, claiming no alternative.

The works are absolutely necessary to address sewer capacity needs for the entire northeast (Coquitlam, PoCo and Pt. Moody), and are the cost of living in a growing City with aging infrastructure. It sucks, but Metro is going to do its best to reduce the local impacts.

Queen’s Park Heritage Conservation Area Incentive Program: Economic Analysis Findings
As part of our ongoing implementation of the Queens Park Heritage Conservation Area, the City asked an external consultant to provide some economic analysis on some proposed incentive programs.

The City has already talked quite a bit about potential incentives to make the HCA more attractive, encourage conservation of heritage assets, and offset some actual or perceived costs related to the HCA. There has been quite a bit of stakeholder and public consultation around these incentives, but we also want better data about the actual financial value of different incentive programs. This report provided some of that background data, and creates some estimates of what, for example the value of allowing stratification of a laneway house or providing an extra 0.1FSR to a housing’s zoning entitlement may mean.

Because the value of any of these incentives is related to the assessed value of the land, there is also some analysis here of potential impacts on assessments that may result from different restrictions included in the HCA. If one thing is clear, it is that we simply cannot predict what those impacts will be in the medium timeframe, and it is too early to determine what the impacts on land values are in the short term.

There is, however, some interesting analysis of trends over the last few years in residential land values in Queens Park and comparison neighbourhoods in New West, which make for some interesting graphs:

And they throw in some Vancouver neighbourhoods for comparison (probably because First Shaughnessy is the highest-profile Heritage Conservation Area in BC when it was introduced in 2015. Until Queens Park, of course)

Request for Supplementary Information – 224 Sixth Avenue Heritage Revitalization Agreement (Statutory Right-of-Way for Potential Future Laneway)
This was a report we received for information, and it is a follow-up on questions raised by a resident last week as part of a Heritage Revitalization Agreement / Subdivision that will be going to Public Hearing on April 30.

Among the many long-term planning policies the City has is the principle that all residential properties should be serviced by a lane. This is because lanes make it easier to provide utility services, improve the streetscape, reduce the need for front driveways that impact traffic and the pedestrian realm in neighbourhoods, etc. Clearly, not all houses have lanes now, and there is no active program to build more lanes, but as a planning principle, the City want to move towards securing land for lane rights-of-way as development happens.

This property in Queens Park is one where there is no lane, and where the front of the house faces a collector road where we would prefer to not have driveways in the long term. As the City wants a Statutory Right of Way for a laneway here, the request for a Subdivision is the optimum time for the City to secure that SRW. Who knows, in a hundred years, we my put a lane there, but in the meantime, we have the SRW. One less thing to worry about for a future Council and future neighbourhood plans.

Ask Pat: DCC, MFA, WTF?

Posted on April 19, 2018. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

This is not a real “Ask Pat”, but I was recently shown this Facebook Post, and I asked the author if I could answer it at length on my blog. I think it provides a good opportunity to open up a bit of how municipal financing works, from my decidedly non-expert-but-required-to-learn-enough-to-make-decisions viewpoint, and (in a roundabout way) asks what I think is a fundamental question about financing municipal infrastructure.

So here’s a question I’ve been pondering for a while about the housing crisis. I’m not sure exactly when the Local Government Act was amended to change the way municipalities generate revenues to cover the cost of infrastructure to support growth. The current method is called Development Cost Charges (DCC’s).

In conversations with a retired city controller I learned that up to the implementation of DCC’s cities would issue Municipal Bonds to generate the funds needed to cover these costs, build the infrastructure and then taxpayers would collectively pay for the costs through tax payments. In the early 70’s the Province created the Municipal Finance Authority to streamline this process so that hundreds of small communities didn’t have to be floating bonds to generate their infrastructure capital they now have expertise and experience at the MFA.

All this changed with the enactment of provisions in the Local Government Act for DCC’s which are essentially prepaid taxes paid to municipalities to cover the costs of roads, sewer and water installations and parks associated with the new development whether that’s an addition to your house or a 50 storey condo development.

OK so what? Well now the purchase price of that newly developed housing unit comes preloaded with tens of thousands of dollars of prepaid taxes. For arguments sake let’s use $50K as a nice round number, please bear with me for this illustration. So your purchase price includes this $50K, which by the way the developer probably has to finance plus any profit margin the developer might add and so additional costs, but lets work with $50K for now. At 5% mortgage interest that increases monthly payments by about $290 and adds over $37,000 in additional interest to the mortgage. With me so far? Now let’s add property transfer taxes and these days for a lot of people government mandated mortgage insurance as well.
So we’ve transitioned away from publically financed infrastructure growth to growth financed by individual families. What used to be money borrowed at preferential interest rates through government Bonds is now financed by homeowners through their local BANKS, the same ones that continue to report record quarterly profits year after year after year.

So what about the cities. Well since 2008 Canadian Municipalities collectively have managed to sock away over $100BILLION IN CASH while continuing to press Federal and Provincial Governments for cash to help them cover the costs of their suppossed infrastructure deficits. It seems to me that while its easy to blame ‘foreign investors and speculators’, at least some of this crisis needs to be laid at the feet of our governments at every level.

My first impression is that this discussion conflates a couple of things, and that is leading to a bit of confusion. Here is my understanding of the relationship between DCCs, Municipal Bonds, and the MFA.

The idea behind DCCs is to charge the capital cost of infrastructure expansion to the persons who benefit from that expansion. DCCs are charged when there is growth in residential density (a 3-story building becomes a tower, a house becomes a set of townhouses), and are meant to assure that a fair share of the cost of building bigger sewer pipes, bigger water pipes, buying new parks space, etc. is covered by the new population that fills that density. The City charges a DCC based on the square footage of the new density, and presumably the developer passes that cost onto the purchaser of the property, who is the ultimate beneficiary of the new infrastructure. In New West, we have DCC Bylaws for Transportation, Water Supply, Sanitary Sewer, Drainage, and Parks.

At current rates, a new 1,000 sq ft apartment in Downtown New Westminster would include about $5,140 in DCCs. That would be $1,120 for Transportation, $60 for drainage, $250 for water, $430 for sanitary sewers, and $3,290 for Parks. Note than a brand new 1,000 square foot apartment in New Westminster sells for something over $700,000. If you believe that the cost of new housing is directly correlated to the cost of building it, then DCCs can be said to raise the cost of any single unit by much less than 1%. Although they cumulatively do a lot to reduce the cost of infrastructure upgrades for current residents, I don’t think DCCs are a significant cause of the current housing affordability crisis.

It is important to note DCC money is not thrown into general revenue, but is put into specific reserve funds and earmarked for defined projects under the category for which they are collected. This is fundamental to the DCC regulation – they must be spent on improving infrastructure above and beyond what would have been spent if the density was not permitted.

For obvious reasons, DCC money is not spent the day it is collected. A City is a complicated thing, and we cannot upgrade a section of sewer on a whim. Instead, we need to plan out years, sometimes decades, in advance so that all parts of the system work together. When collected, DCC money mostly goes into a reserve fund and is drawn out when the works happen. Sometimes we can borrow against a reserve fund (if the sewer needs to be upgraded today, but a DCC has not been collected yet and we are confident it will be collected in the near future), but even that is a bit deeper than we need to go here.

DCCs also don’t pay for all infrastructure upgrades. Even if there was no density increase in a City, we would have to replace your water lines every 50 years or so, pave your road every 10 years or so, etc. That money comes from property taxes (in the case of roads and parks) or part of your water/sewer bill (in the case of the pipes). We collect a little more in your water bill than it costs us to run the water system, and set that aside into those same reserves to pay for maintenance and upgrades of the system when they are needed. Alternately, we can pay for the upgrades when they come up by borrowing money, and charge future users that cost (plus interest). As you will see, we do a little of both based on what makes the most financial sense at the time.

That is how we can have both $120 Million in our reserves and $65 Million in debt. I hate using household finances as a model for explaining municipal finance (they are two very different things), but this is similar to having money in an RESP account at the same time as holding mortgage debt: we do it for rational reasons related to how the financial and taxation systems are designed. We didn’t invent global capitalism, but we operate within it. If you have an alternative system that more fairly distributes capital, send me your e-mail and I’ll subscribe to your newsletter!

This does raise what I think is the fundamental question about how we finance public infrastructure. If we want to build, say, a new $100 Million recreation complex, do we save up enough money to pay for it before we build it, or do we build it on debt and pay it off over time? There are compromises to both.

In the first case, everyone pays today into a reserve fund until we hit the number that we need to build the complex. It will take several years, and for all that time, the taxpayers of the City will be paying into the fund but not receiving the benefit of those payments until some point in the future when the complex is completed (if they still live in the City at that time). Is that fair to them?

In the second case, the complex gets built first, and the people who have an opportunity to benefit from that complex pay taxes for it while it is being used. Of course, they have to pay a little more this way because the debt needs to be serviced over the period of time it takes to pay it off. Is that fiscally prudent?

(It sounds to me like you would prefer more of the latter in the case of financing infrastructure related to new growth, as it would result in the City borrowing more from the MFA or Municipal Bonds and spreading the cost evenly among all taxpayers, whereas the former puts more burden on the new home purchaser which they would, presumably, borrow from a bank to finance. Please correct me if I got your argument wrong.)

There are other factors that need to be considered, and this is why most local governments do some combination of both. It matters what interest rate a local gov’t can earn on its reserves vs. what interest they pay servicing the debt. In this low-interest era, we may choose differently than back in the high-interest 70s. These rates are also related to your financial status: a City with $100 Million in the bank can get a lower rate than a City with $100 Million in debt. There are also significant complications local governments have to go through to borrow beyond their 5-year financial plan. Add to this uncertainties like inflation of construction cost and other capital needs that may pop up in the same time period. The practicality is that we sometimes need debt, and we benefit from strong reserves.

I don’t want to get into the discussion here about us going to senior governments with hats in hand asking for their help in funding public infrastructure (this blog post is already much too long). However, I can summarize by saying local governments are responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of about 60% of public infrastructure in Canada, and we directly receive about 8% of all tax revenues. Without help from senior governments, little of your public infrastructure would be sustainable. The Infrastructure Gap commonly measured across Canada to be more than a hundred billion dollars is measured above our existing reserves; but I digress.

The Municipal Finance Authority is, essentially, a Credit Union. Local Governments can borrow money from the MFA at rates better than we can get from commercial banks, and we can save our reserves with the MFA and receive a pretty good return. Most years, New West makes a little more in interest on our reserves than we spend in interest on our debt (though market fluctuations obviously impact this equation). As you note, the MFA structure has largely replaced Municipal Bonds issued by individual Local Governments. In essence, the MFA issues Bonds on behalf of all its member Local Governments. I am really not an expert on this part of finance, but I would assume that the reason we use the MFA instead of issuing our own Bonds is that the interest rates the MFA can offer (because they are a large, diverse organization) is much lower than we would have to pay to make the Bonds attractive in this razor-thin investment market.

But perhaps more to the point, the Bonds vs. MFA issue is something completely separate from the DCC discussion. DCCs are taxation – they generate revenue for a Local Government. Bonds are simply debt instruments; they are loans which we would have to generate revenue (taxes) to pay back. This takes us right back to the fundamental question that we have already asked – when should a government collect the money to pay for new infrastructure? Before it is built, or after? In reality, we do a little of both, and use the financial instruments available to us under the Local Government Act to hopefully strike a fair and responsible balance between the needs of today and the needs of tomorrow.

Pipelined

Posted on April 18, 2018April 18, 2018. by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

I wanted to comment a bit on this story. Kinder Morgan is apparently using an industrial lot in the Braid Industrial Area of New Westminster for staging and equipment storage as part of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Extension Project. That has caused some people to send me correspondence around why the City is allowing this, people asking me why I am not opposing the pipeline. I replied to a Facebook Post, but I think this issue is important enough for me to expand a bit on it here on my blog.

The site within New West being used by Kinder Morgan is on Port of Vancouver land, not land where the City has any jurisdiction. Council members were very recently made aware this was happening, but we do not have any regulatory authority around land use on Port lands, as only the Federal Government can issue or withhold those permits. We were not involved in the planning for this, and we have not had any formal correspondence on the issue from the proponent or the Port.

This City and this Council have been involved in the NEB review of the Kinder Morgan pipeline from the onset. The City acted as an intervenor in the NEB review, raised a number of significant concerns during the process, and continues to emphasize these concerns since. Not the least of these concerns is the potential for impacts on the Brunette River and its riparian areas.

We have supported court cases challenging this project and the process towards its approval. The NEB and the Federal Governments (past and present) have demonstrated no interest in our position, nor do I feel they have adequately addressed our concerns. It is actually worse than that, as there were recent hearings in Burnaby to review some of the still-unresolved questions about the routing of the new pipeline along New Westminster’s border (and within the Brunette River riparian zone) and the NEB didn’t even invite New Westminster to attend. I was refused entry to the hearings when I showed up. They were held behind closed doors, and as the routing was some 30m outside of our City, my being able to even listen to the conversation was not seen as relevant. At least the Harper Government invited us into the room to be ignored.

I cannot speak for all of Council, nor is this the “official position” of the City, but I have been involved in this process for several years now. I bring a significant amount of professional and technical experience to this, having provided expert evidence as an Environmental Scientist to several Environmental Assessments in my career. I am concerned about the pipeline, but I am much, much more angry about the unaccountable and unacceptable process that has taken us to this point. In the last Federal election we were promised that the industry-focused reviews brought in by the Harper Government would be replaced; that didn’t happen. We were told that community consultations would be opened up, and that consent from communities would be sought; that didn’t happen. We were told that a new era of reconciliation would be ushered in before we impose unsustainable and damaging infrastructure projects to unceded lands; that didn’t happen. We were told that subsidies to sunset oil industrial development would end and a new energy vision would be offered; that didn’t happen.

We were lied to, and now we are ignored.

Fandom

Posted on April 17, 2018April 17, 2018. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

As a Canucks Fan, often I am unsure who to support when Playoffs come around. That last sentence is really funny to fans of 28 other teams, even though for some (I’m looking at you, Buffalo) it cuts close.

The question is not an easy one, as being a Canucks fan for several decades, I have built up a long series of grudges against the entire NHL. With the possible exception of the Blues, I have at least some reason to hate every team. Even the Canucks were coached by Keenan for a while, which is pretty unforgivable, and you still sometimes see somebody wearing Maki’s #11 Canucks jersey with Messier on the back, and shake your head. But we soldier on. We are all Canucks, as they say.

With the first Round of the Playoffs under way, I do have to make a call here to maintain my attention until the Giro starts, so here is the first Patrickjohnstone.ca listicle:

In inverse order, the teams I most hope win the Stanley Cup, 2018:

16: Boston The dirty, rotten, oughta be kicked out of the NHL Bruins are everything wrong with Hockey. They cheated and cheap-shotted their way into the playoffs again. Bruins Fandom is, based on my own anecdotal experience, correlated well with sociopathy. I hate the Bruins so much I don’t even order from Boston Pizza, I don’t even watch re-runs of Cheers.

15: Toronto At this fragile time for Canada’s Confederation, I’m not sure we could handle the indignity of watching Premier-elect Doug Ford hoisting the Cup at Dundas Square in June. For the good of the Nation, and all that is holy, Toronto must lose.

14: Los Angeles Almost as bad as Boston, but not even as good at being as bad. Drew Doughty? Dustin Brown? Dion Phaneuf? I guess their moms love them. I went to a Canucks Game in Los Angeles once, and really, not even their fans like the Kings, and they have won a couple of Cups recently. Gross.

13: Winnipeg It would be intolerable in the rest of Canada if the Jets won. It seems half of the population of every other City in Canada is “from Winnipeg”, and drags their Jets and Bombers jerseys out for important games, embarrassing all in their vicinity. It makes me wonder if there is anyone left in Winnipeg, and if people are so damn proud of Winnipeg, why does no one live there? I’m with The Weakerthans here.

12: Columbus
12: San Jose
12: Nashville I have no specific love or hate for any of these teams, I just have this weird notion that if another team wins their first Cup before the Canucks win their first cup, it somehow diminishes the Canucks. So: No, no, and no.

9: Tampa Bay
9: Anaheim
9: Philadelphia The second half of my 6-way tie of ambivalence. Same as above, except these teams have won Cups in the past and the further-shaming-the Canucks factor isn’t in there. No love here, no specific hate, I would find any of these wins supremely uninteresting. So: Yawn, yawn, and yawn.

6: New Jersey A little bit like above, but I want to think a Jersey win would at least make David Puddy happy. And guy deserves it after all Elaine put him through.

5: Colorado They really snuck into the playoffs, and have no hope. But everyone loves a good underdog story, and I am not made of stone. Is Partick Roy still involved?

4: Minnesota Wait, they still have a team? How is that even a thing? I guess if they win, it would piss off Winnipeg, so that’s a bonus.

3: Washington They have Ovi and he isn’t getting any younger, so it would be good to see him get a reward for being one of the most skilled goal scorers in the history of the game. If Ovi is winning, the game is more fun to watch. Bonus: watching CNN tie themselves in knots when they find out that Washington D.C. has a hockey team, whose Captain is a big Putin supporter, should make the obligatory visit to the White House interesting.

2: Vegas There are lots of things that make me want to support Vegas: the brilliance/ stupidity of the drafting process that made this possible, the ugliness of their entire marketing package, their pretty killer social media presence. I can;t get past the sense they are punking us all, daring us to take them seriously, sort of like the Beck Hansen of Hockey. They also have the most Canadian roster of any team, so I want to cheer for them. What’s wrong? The smug look on Bettman’s face if it were to occur. It is possible that the T-Mobile Arena is the only one he could stride into carrying the Con Smyth, and not get booed. And I can’t tolerate that.

1: Pittsburgh I have nothing against Pittsburgh. Sidney Crosby is the best player of his generation, deserving of all the accolades he gets, and probably a lot more. The franchise has done so much right over the last decade that the word “dynasty” may come back to the NHL. Besides, what else does the City of Pittsburgh have going for it? Give them this. Go flightless waterfowl!

Compromise

Posted on April 13, 2018. by Patrick Johnstone. 5 Comments.

The existing Skate Park at Mercer Stadium is now closed, as the school district is busy building a high school on that spot. Recognizing this was coming, the City put some money in to the capital budget to build a replacement. The replacement will be bigger and more modern than the old skool bowl at Mercer, and it took more than year to work with the skate community and other stakeholders to figure out the best compromise between various potential locations. The best solution found was the old Arenex location at Queens Park, in an area of the park designated for “active recreation” in the Queens Park Master Plan.

As there was some community concern related to this location during the community and stakeholder consultation, staff did extra outreach, design and engineering work to specifically address the concerns raised by some existing park users. With this work done, they came to Council in Monday last to ask for the go-ahead to procure the works, in the hopes we can get the new facility in the ground this summer.

I received a lot of correspondence on this proposal. At least 60 e-mails, some in favour; most opposed. An online petition was circulated and apparently collected hundreds of signatures in opposition to the proposal though I have to note that I haven’t seen or been provided any such list. Frankly, I was dismayed by much of what I read in that correspondence. I’m not going to call anyone out by name here, but the quotes speak for themselves:

“I am concerned about cadet safety and potential conflict that could arise between the cadets and skateboard park users”

“It will just lead to conflict between young people and theatre goers.”

“The theatre building will be a prime target for graffiti.”

“With the legalization of marijuana, the theatre faces the possible smell of skunk to the west”

“I believe having a skate park within Queens Park anywhere would be a detriment to the Park. It is a beautiful quiet family park and not suited to a skate park at all.”

“There are many (most) residents in new Westminster who would have it (the skateboard park) done away with if they could, so please do not create more ill will between your mature, working, VOTING citizens and youth.”

To quote the staff report on the last round of Public Consultation “In summary the stakeholder’s concerns include personal safety for other park users, risk of vandalism, potential for bullying of youth aged members of some organizations, perceptions of noise generated at the site, potential for vandalism/ graffiti”

I’ll talk about the noise concern further down, but before I get there, I have to admit that just reading this correspondence completely took me aback, and made it hard for me to remain objective. The narrative presented offers an archaic and uninformed attitude about roller sports. Skating (along with bmx/trials, scooting, blading) is a healthy, creative athletic activity enjoyed by youth and adults. Characterizing an entire group of recreation users as troublemakers not deserving of sharing in our parks use because they are vaguely threatening is, in short, offensive to my definition of community. So, to be really honest here, I probably went into Monday’s meeting with a frame of mind shaped by this, and that no doubt influenced my decision making. But let’s step back a bit.

When planning for a facility like this, or any facility in a City Park, there is a lot of work done before we get to a meeting like last Monday. Staff, user groups, stakeholders, consultants, and Council have been working on this for more than a year. I appreciate people wanting to get engaged in a decision like this, but people joining at the 11th hour need to recognize that your new idea has most likely already been evaluated. The City evaluated every piece of available City-owned land between Grimston and Hume Parks, between (to borrow a phrase) 10th and the Fraser, for this facility, and none were perfect. However, I can confidently say, having been involved in this discussion for more than year, that all other options had more net negatives than the final proposed location. The proposed place was not the perfect place, it was the least non-perfect place. That is the reality of how a consultative City works – every decision is a compromise of least-perfect solutions.

That said, the proposed location was a good one, worthy of support.

In speaking to the Skate community, it was clear that by putting a roller sport facility (like any other facility primarily directed at youth) at front and centre in a public place, you not only show you are inviting that activity into your community, but you generate interest, curiosity, and engagement, and build the sport. We hear too much these days that youth have limited opportunity or interest in unstructured outdoor activity (or “getting off their screens”, in the parlance of the day). Roller sport are exactly the kind of creative, athletic, unstructured, knee-scabbing and dexterity-building activity we lament youth not doing enough of, yet we have adults here trying to marginalize the activity by wanting it put “somewhere else” where they don’t have to see, walk or even park near it. Sorry, that argument doesn’t work for me.

Knowing this issue was emerging, I have spent some time in the last little while dropping by the old Mercer skate bowl and the All-Wheel Park at the Queensborough Community Centre. Every time I went by there, there were users of a variety of ages, from 4 year olds on scooters to adults teaching their kids how to board. There were parents watching their kids be active and creative in the outdoors. None of them felt this was an unsafe place. I think all of them would be offended to hear they (and their kids) were being dismissed as threatening to other parks users. The New West Police and the staff at the Queensborough Community Centre were both consulted on conflict issues that we may need to mitigate if we move the facility to Queens Park, and both said, plain and simple, there are none. The City’s skate parks are not havens of hooliganism and trouble.

There is a reason for that. Rolling sports are not a fringe activity like it may have been 25 years ago. This is a mainstream sport. Its culture has evolved to one of creativity, community support, and partnership. When I found out that roller sports are going to be in the Olympics in 2020, and tried to square this with the non-competitive/cooperative nature of the community, it reminded me of something I noticed at the Winter Olympics this year. In the new Snowboard/Slopestyle/Cross type sports, there was a noticeably strong comradery in these sports. The person finishing fourth in the Skicross ran up to hug the gold medalist from another country; every slick run was rewarded by high-fives from competitors, every sick crash with a pat on the back or a hug. The kids today are different than us; dare I say better.

This was manifest in the correspondence I received in favour of putting the park in Queens Park. Again, no names:

“Placing the new skate park in the centre of Queens Park would profoundly and positively impact the New West community and increase acceptance and diversity for youth in New West. I believe it is the responsibility of our Mayor and Council to practice inclusivity towards more unique recreational activities that are popular among our youth.”

“I believe that placing the skate park in Queens Park would demonstrate the city’s celebration of diversity as well as honouring positive activities. It would set an example for all of our youth to see adults value the well-being, health, and enjoyment of young people. Skate Parks are a beautiful place that may invite people across many different socioeconomic backgrounds in New West to enjoy being outside, and foster belonging within our community”

“Given the wide range of existing facilities and user groups within Queens’ Park, our community has demonstrated it’s belief in the importance of public spaces being fully inclusive of different expressions of arts, culture, leisure and recreation. This is an opportunity to welcome a new user group and demographic to Queen’s Park and enrich its uniqueness, while contributing to its cultural legacy”

Now that I have disclosed by biases (and how they were developed as we went through this process), we can talk about the decision made on Monday.

There were some legitimate concerns raised about this site: most notably the potential for noise impacts on the Bernie Legge Theatre. Recognizing these concerns when raised by stakeholders, the City paused the process and hired an acoustical engineer to evaluate the impacts. The report acknowledged that the skate park would create noise, measured it, and evaluated two ways to mitigate it. If the skate bowl was oriented towards the north, and a berm were built on the south side, the noise of the park (and other significant ambient sounds such as whistles on the soccer pitch and traffic on McBride) would be abated, making the theatre actually quieter than it is now. Alternately, the City could invest a little money in providing some improvements to the theatre including weather stripping and solid-core doors, which would effectively reduce ambient noises and the skate park form impacting theatre operations. The report from staff recommended the City do both of these, to double the sound baffling effect to give the theatre patrons an extra measure of confidence. This proposal would have resulted in a quieter Bernie Legge Theatre experience than there is now.

There were also some concerns about parking and pedestrian circulation around the Theatre. Again, the report proposed designating parking spots adjacent to the skate park, and improving pedestrian flow and surfaces between the parking lot, the theatre and the Cadets building. The proposal would have actually improved the very things the stakeholders were concerned about.

So the location was good for the user group, the legitimate concerns raised by the stakeholders could be and would be mitigated at the cost of the City, actually resulting in a quieter theatre with better parking access and pedestrian amenities. I don’t know why I would vote against this proposal.

After hearing a dozen delegations at Council, however, a “compromise” location was proposed. I could not support it. Here is why.

After more than a year of work, and a concerted effort to evaluate all positive and negative impacts of different locations, finding a design that fits the space and takes advantage of a current unused and unprogrammed part of the park, and after delaying to hire professional engineers to develop scientifically-defensible mitigation measures to address legitimate concerns, Council came up with a knee-jerk “compromise location” 30-40m to the west where there is a grove of trees and old tennis courts (the actual location is a little vague), which we have asked Staff to move ahead with “if technically feasible”. To be clear – no-one in that meeting knew exactly what footprint we are talking about, and no-one has any idea what “technically feasible” means, or what compromises will need to be made to accommodate this plan.

This “compromise location” is clearly an ill-informed compromise. It is not (as it was touted at the meeting) a “win-win”. It was, in my opinion, a result of treating the wants and needs of one user group with lesser regard than the wants and needs of another group, even after significant efforts to address the concerns of that second group resulted in a well-developed strategy to address their valid concerns and then some. Make no mistake, there is a lot potential loss in this “win-win”.

We don’t know what the skate community lost yet. Best case scenario, only a couple more months of being without a facility to practice their recreation. Potentially, this may be a much longer time if engineering or other concerns pop up. The “if technically feasible” caveat is a vague and compromising one in the world of engineering, and a terrible piece of guidance for professional staff (technically feasible at any cost? Regardless of other impacts?). After more than a year of work, the vision developed will be unnecessarily delayed and potentially compromised because of a last-minute knee jerk reaction that received far, far less technical scrutiny or input from stakeholders and user groups. That is a terrible way to make decisions.

Even worse: The potential impact on non-skaters has now not been fairly assessed. What of the users of the tennis courts and picnic area that will now be removed? Honestly, we don’t even know if moving the Skate Park to this “compromise location” will make the noise impacts on the theatre better or worse. It is entirely possible (and quite likely) that an earthen berm would have deadened sound much better than an extra 30m in distance. We do not have any evaluation of the opportunity cost of the “compromise location”. Basically, we cannot demonstrate any actual benefit of this location to anyone, other than salving a vague feeling that “they” need to be kept further away from “us”.

Best case scenario, staff will not run into any problems shoehorning a well-developed plan into a “compromise location”, and after only a couple of months delay, we will get a fully functional park up and running. Best case scenario, the new location will not create unanticipated impacts on other users of the park that require further mitigation. I am an optimist, and I sincerely hope this best case is realized. But in the decision we made on Monday, and the way we made it, Council did nothing to assure this happens.