Ask Pat: Grey Water

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Lindsay asks—

Hi Pat,

Do the New Westminster city bylaws allow me to install a grey water system in my bathroom where I can redirect, filter and retain shower water? I live on a steep hill (like many other residents!) and I would like, with the aid of gravity and waste water, to grow my garden responsibly. Currently, we are using buckets. A filtration system would allow us to store the water when we produce more than we need, and a three way valve from the washroom would maximize our efficiency.

Thank you!

Some people probably read the above and cannot imagine why someone would want to keep the water coming out of their shower drain. However, re-use of “grey water” (waste water that has not come in contact with sewage) is pretty common around the world outside of North America.

I have a family member that lives on a Gulf Island where groundwater resources are scarce, and she lived for years off of rainwater collected from her roof. It doesn’t rain much on the Gulf Islands, so she relied on a large storage tank, and careful conservation of water. She also had a spectacular vegetable garden, maintained almost completely from grey water that she recycled the old-fashioned way: collecting it in buckets instead of letting it run down the drain.

This simple method relies on a few things: using the water pretty much when you produce it so no storage is necessary (giving no time for water to fester and pathogens to grow) and careful selection of soaps and detergents to assure you aren’t spreading too much sodium, sulphates, boron, or other things bad for soil structure onto your garden. As kitchen water is sometimes used, there is an extremely small but non-zero risk of food borne illness transmitting to your root vegetables, but good kitchen hygiene can make this risk vanishingly small.

The storage thing is probably your biggest issue. Just filtering the hair, lint, and other cooties out of the water will not stop collected greywater from getting septic very fast. Once you have warmed it, volatilized the chlorine out of it, and added a little organic matter, that water is going to get gross. If you wish to store it, you will need to filter then treat the water, with something like UV or ozone or you will quickly have a smelly putrid mess.

But your question was whether our Bylaws allow it, and I would say it depends on the Bylaw you read. The Plumbing Bylaw says:

No person shall cause, suffer or permit the disposal of sewage, human excrement, or liquid wastes, in any place or manner except through and by means of an approved plumbing system, conforming to the British  Columbia Plumbing Code and this bylaw…

Grey water would follow under the category of Liquid Waste, so if the BC Building Code allows your pipe system, the City would. There have been some recent changes to the BC Building Code that do allow for two-pipe systems and some recycling of non-potable water, but you are going to need to get a Building Code expert to answer any questions around that.

However, the City also has a Sewerage and Drainage Bylaw that says, amongst other things:

13. Every owner shall ensure that:
(a) all Sewerage originating from any building located on such property owner’s  property is connected to and discharged into the Municipal Sewerage System, when such a system is available to the property;

“Sewerage” is defined in the same Bylaw to include:

waterborne Waste from the preparation and consumption of food and drink, dishwashing, bathing, showering, and general household cleaning and laundry;

which leads me to conclude that the way you are currently collecting buckets of grey water and dumping them on your garden is illegal.

Worse, the same Bylaw also states:

14. Holding tanks are not allowed on any property within the area of the City that has been designated as the Metro Vancouver’s Regional Growth Strategy – Urban Containment Area, and the City will not permit a Service Connection to a property that contains a holding tank and owners must remove all such holding tanks.

This would probably be a more useful restriction if the bylaw defined “Holding Tank”, which it doesn’t, but I would assume that a tank to hold grey water or liquid waste would qualify (and I am suddenly concerned about the rain water collection tanks I purchased from the City).

This brings me to my easiest conclusion. I would suggest if you were getting into a storage-of-water-program for your garden to reduce water wastage, build a larger-capacity rainwater collection system instead, avoid all the trouble with putrefaction of organics in the grey water, and let your grey water go efficiently to the treatment plant.

Ask Pat: 404 Ash St.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

noni asks—

hi Patrick, how many stories will 404 ash st have? projected completion date?

That’s an easy one! Four and I don’t know.

The Development Permit came to Council on August 31, 2015, and the details of the building are available starting on page 94 (!) of this 457 page (!) document, although there were slight modifications after to the landscaping because some Councillor whinged about the loss of trees. The building will have 4 stories above ground with a single level of underground parking.

I don’t know how long it will take to build the building, as there are many factors that control that, almost all out of the control of the City. There is heavy equipment on the site right now demolishing the old parking structure (and removing the trees I whinged about), so I suspect that are going to start building soon, but would assume it takes a year or so to build and fit out a building this size?

This does give me an opportunity to point out one of the reasons I wanted to do this Blog, and am so interested in the work we are doing to improve public engagement in the City. So much of how we traditionally share information about important decisions like this is by the way I just pointed out: Council reports buried in weekly .pdf packages counting in the hundreds of pages. Who wants to dig through those to answer a simple question?

In reality, we do many different types of engagement, from kinda-weekly Shaw TV and online-streamed Council meetings (and you all watch those, right? Hi Mom!) to the weekly City Page in the newspaper, and a slightly-dated but still functional website. The City’s “Projects on the Go” page is a little buried, but a great source of info about high-profile projects. We also engage in all kinds of interesting and meaningful consultation (the current OCP update process being a great example of this). But we still have a situation where people can’t easily put their eyes on detailed info they might want.

I don’t propose this Blog will fix that, and I frankly don’t know how to fix it, but the Mayor’s Public Engagement Taskforce is working through various ideas in this direction, and the City is exploring a new Open Data model to make things easier for you to access. So good news ahead, unless no news is good news to you.

That damn elevator

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

To answer 50% of the questions I have received for the last month: No. The elevator to Pier Park is not open, and I do not have an ETA for its opening.

I once responded on this topic to an Ask Pat, all those months ago, and looking back at that response with the benefit of hindsight, I wonder where that bright-eyed optimist Councillor went with his rosy predictions. I wish I knew now what I knew then.

The elevator is now almost a year overdue from what the plan was when the contract for construction was awarded. I can’t provide many details, but suffice to say the “relatively minor” third delay I mentioned in that earlier post has turned out to be not so easily fixed, and any potential fix needs to meet the extremely strict (and ostensibly arbitrary to us lay folks) requirements of the Safety Authority. There was just enough innovative design in the structure that the design of a fix has proved… problematic.

I know I’m being a little vague about the details of the issue, but it has nothing to do with covering my own ass or that of Council. This project is not being built by the City, but by private contractors who were paid to design and build a project. I am not a structural engineer, so my knowledge of the details is necessarily limited. As parts of the delay may result in a discussions between contractors and the Safety Authority, which may involve evaluating contract language between parties that are not the City, no-one would be served by my semi-informed finger pointing or laying of blame. My job is to keep asking our staff for progress updates, make sure they are pushing the contractors to get the job done ASAP, and to take the political flak for them all when we don’t meet public expectations.

What I can tell you: we will get an elevator working; the delays are not the result of City staff failing to administer the contract effectively; the elevator seems to work fine; a design work-around required to meet a single Safety Authority requirement is proving difficult to engineer to the satisfaction of the City and the contract; these delays are NOT costing the City money (but I can presume at this point that not getting paid is starting to hurt the contractor); and every single person on Council is just as frustrated as you are that we continue to miss hoped-for opening dates.

As an aside, after the last time I went on social media talking about the elevator a friend of mine who has built a number of buildings in New Westminster and neighbouring cities (but was not in any way involved in this overpass project), warned me about making the bold prediction that the problems would be solved soon. He said (and I paraphrase), elevators are to construction what children and animals are to acting – never work with them if you can avoid it. The rules and standards are often arcane (for example, the elevator requires a smoke detector outside the door to prevent it opening in a smoke-filled room. This is an outdoor elevator surrounded by glass, yet the requirement for a smoke detector – which I remind you will be outside – still exists) and there are simply not enough trained elevator technicians in greater Vancouver by a long shot. If you are young, have some mechanical aptitude, and want a sure career path, contact your local elevator contractor and get them to apprentice you. You will always have work. Just try to not spend you entire career on this one project…

A Liberal Majority

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

The sky was brighter yesterday morning, the coffee richer, the Tom Waits I listened to on the way in to work a little coarser. In other words, everything was just a little bit better. With hope and optimism, I am going to spend the honeymoon period of a post-Harper Canada anticipating that Prime Minister Trudeau will live up to the promises he made, and Canada will once again dream of the possibilities instead of fearing the uncertainties.

Regular readers (Hi Mom!) might have noticed I did not like Stephen Harper. Not a deranged hate (as some may allege), but a serious and considered dislike of his policies, approach, and moral philosophy. However, I was also not excited about the idea of a Trudeau government, as I fear that the Liberal tradition of campaigning left then governing right will arise again. I think Mulcair was honest when talking about issues, and though we will all look back at faults or failings of his messaging, I respect him for boldly standing up for a fundamental rights issue or admitting that an entire new social systems like universal affordable day care or universal single-payer Pharmacare would take time and cooperation from the Provinces to implement (instead of just saying “we’ll do it!” and blithely ignoring the details).

Campaigns are interesting things, and the NDP will, to quote Peter Julian quoting Tommy Douglas quoting Andrew Barton, have to “lay down and bleed a while, then rise to fight again.” There will be assessment and reckoning, but suffice to say the tide turned in mid-September, and we may never really know how much of that shift was due to the actions of each of the three leaders. Many Political Scientists will write Ph.Ds on the topic, and most will contradict the others. I have my own opinions about the NDP campaign (using “Stop Harper” as backdrop wallpaper in the last week is a failure of campaign 101, and the silly “we only need 35 seats, Liberals need 100” message meant something when the writ dropped with the NDP leading the polls, but in October it sounded out of touch and somehow disrespectful), as I’m sure you do, but the NDP, Conservatives, and Greens have 4 years to decide what to do better next time; the Liberals can use the same time to show us they deserve the mandate we gave them.

The Liberal sweep really landed in Greater Vancouver. Except for the devoted Mark Warawa, the deserted Dianne Watts, and the detestable Alice Wong, every seat in Greater Vancouver is federally NDP or Liberal. That leaves 5 NDP and 14 Liberals to work together on the two most pressing needs for this region: affordable housing and transportation infrastructure. Fortunately, both parties included these high in their  campaign promises, and local governments across this region have been clamouring for this help for years now. The Provincial government has shown some interest in helping with the former and complete disdain for the latter, but the ability to secure funding from Ottawa for projects that will feature ribbon-cutting moments over the next two years may even thaw Christy’s carbonite heart and get our region moving again.

Aside from actually holding a press conference yesterday (with reporters and questions and everything!), the first true signal Prime Minister Trudeau will be sending us in regards to his campaign promises will be COP21, which starts in only 40 days. How he approaches this conference, and concomitantly how he manages the relationship with Rachel Notley through the build-up to a new new global greenhouse gas framework, should tell us much about whether we have really received the change for which we voted.

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Locally, I am very happy that my previous MP, Fin Donnelly, and my new MP, Peter Julian were both re-elected (I live in the portion of New West that shifted with the new districts this election). They have both been excellent representatives of our community in Ottawa, work their asses off, and are truly decent human beings who understand their role as elected officials. We would be hard-pressed to do better. With his experience and passionate defense of science during the systematic erosion of it under the previous government, I am glad the Kennedy Stewart also got re-elected in neighbouring Burnaby South, even if it was a nail-biter.

With strife almost certain in the Conservative Party as the remaining PCs and majority Harperites battle for the vision of the “Right”, I am glad we will have local talent at the level of Peter, Fin, and Kennedy to hold the Liberals to their promises.

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New Westminster did the election proud. We had excellent candidates who handled themselves respectfully and professionally. I had the opportunity to meet Sasha Ramnarine a few times, and always found him earnest, serious, and passionate about the Liberal cause, even if he isn’t really as tall as that selfie makes him out to be. Kyle Routledge really stood out to me, as he spoke to my environmental scientist heart. He made a true effort to reach out into my community and talk about his ideas, without ever coming across as preachy or a know-it-all (a specific risk for Greens and scientists in general). I think Kyle has real leadership skills that the environmental advocacy community in New West could lean on – if he decides to take up the charge.

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Although purveyors of the #NewWest hashtag (me included) were hard on Chloe Ellis for running a campaign of mostly absence, she took that ribbing with grace and humour in the one occasion where I was able to meet her, so if she contacts me, I’m good for that beer I owe her. I would love to hear her debrief of the campaign experience once everything cools down.

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Finally, the result was not exactly what I wanted, but I am content in the knowledge that we will not have an election at any level for more than a year, so everyone can stop beating each other up and start governing for a change. Beleaguered campaign staff and volunteers (like me!) can take a deep breath and enjoy the US electoral histrionics with our feet up, our smugness hats, and a cold beer… after planning the Canucks’ parade route, of course. Bring on 2016.

And Mr. Trudeau, please don’t let us down.

Council report – Oct 5, 2015

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The City Council Road Trip continued, as we set up Council in the Auditorium at the Library in Uptown. With the Mayor out of town, Acting Mayor for October, Councillor Trentadue, did a bang-up job keeping us on Agenda and the meeting running smooth.

The meeting started with a staff update on the Official Community Plan process “Our City 2014”. The report we were provided concentrated on how infill density and “middle housing” could be made more available in the City, and these ideas will be bounced around on November 7th at a public workshop at the Anvil Centre.

The report (part of the agenda I linked to above) is worth reading, as it provides a great review of the different types of housing we could accommodate in the future – between the Single Family Detached home (which is becoming less and less affordable for young families) and the high-rise apartment (which often is not accommodating to the needs of a young family). The report also shows some of the challenges of making these types of housing choices available: how do we protect greenspace and trees? Are these types of developments affordable with today’s land prices? Where does Freehold vs. Strata work?

I found it interesting that so many examples, from rowhomes to clusterhouses are already built and occupied in Queensborough, and if you wonder how these types of developments work, it might be worth your time to take a walk around the Port Royal neighbourhood (it really is beautiful) and see how these different forms actually look on the ground.

I also find it perplexing how much time we spend talking about cars – more than we actually spend talking about people and homes. That is something we need to fix.

I look forward to seeing what happens on November 7th with the workshop. This is an interesting discussion, and the information in this report will help guide a better discussion about what our vision is for the City for the next 30 years. If you care enough about the City to read this blog, you should probably show up and get your two cents in.

After a few proclamations, we moved on to the Consent Agenda, the following of which were moved on consent (so we moved them without discussion):

City Grant Information Session and Festival Planning Workshop
The City held a first-ever workshop for organizations applying for Festival grants. We have a variety of organizations that apply to put on events, which sometimes means they ask for a grant, and almost always means they need to ask to occupy a street or park and deal with everything from liquor licenses to portable bathrooms to emergency plans. Dealing with all of the things the City requires can be daunting for a new organizer, and even some of the more experienced organizations may benefit from understand how to better interact with various City departments to make things run more smoothly. Staff put on an evening workshop that was well attended and generally well received. So we will make it an annual event.

Council Meetings in November
To little surprise, City Hall renovations are running behind schedule. The good news is that they are on budget, but we won’t have access to the Chamber for the best part of November. So the tour continues.

The meetings in November will be held at the Anvil Centre. Adjust your schedules appropriately.

Major Purchasing Transactions (January 1 to April 30, 2015)
Three times a year, the Finance department reports its major purchases to Council. This is partly to inform us, but also to assure that there is a public disclosure of how we spend our money.

This is another on the long list of ways Government is different that Business, and why we cannot run a City “more like a business”. Having worked in small business for much of my life, I recognize no business would disclose to all of their suppliers and competitors what they budgeted to pay for a project, and what they paid to a supplier’s competitors. That would be protected info to provide a competitive advantage in negotiations. However a City has a regulatory responsibility for public disclosure, even if that costs us money in the long run.

Anyway, look the table over, see where you think we paid too much, and be sure to watch BC Bid and underbid these guys next time so the City can save you money.

Temporary Borrowing Bylaws No. 7788, 2015
Now this is a bit more business-like. The Front Street Remediation / Demolition project included $3.3Million in debt financing, and we need to pass a Bylaw to authorize that borrowing. This does not mean it is $3.3Million over budget, this was always the plan for how to pay for a portion of the work that could not be paid out of money in the bank.

We did this type of borrowing for the Pier Park and NW Substation upgrades. However, we still have almost $9,000,000 in unissued debt authorization on those projects (Money we received authorization to borrow, but never had to borrow to make the projects work), so this resolution also rescinds the authorization to borrow that $9 Million.

Hope that makes sense.

We then moved on to discussing the Items removed from Consent:

OCP Amendment for 97 Braid Street (Sapperton
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This is ready for official public hearing, after 5 years of work, 4 open houses, the striking and meeting of a stakeholder group from the neighbourhood. The first Council Resolution on this was March 14, 2011. Two councils ago. This is not a rushed process.

There will soon be a Public Hearing on this step of the process which is an OCP update. This will be a Master Planned Community, which means after the initial “aspirational” vision of the neighbourhood is passed, a Master Planning Process with flesh out the details around building distribution, size, transportation corridors, etc. Most regional stakeholders have supported the OCP change, with a few notable exceptions that the media took note of.

I am still concerned about transportation around this project, and how we are going to deal with the Braid – Brunette intersection, and with the Brunette overpass of Highway 1. As I wrote earlier, I hope we can have a meaningful and non-confrontational dialogue with Coquitlam council, because I think we both have the same interest here – in making that overpass a functional gateway to our respective Cities.

The comments from the Trucking Association concerned me in a way that the comments from Coquitlam did not. The language in their comments made it clear that they saw the streets of our City only as “goods movement corridors”. I see them more as transportation corridors serving local residents, the residents and businesses of our adjacent communities, and the entire region, be they driving cars, riding busses, cycling, walking or hoverboarding (this is, I note, a plan looking forward 20+ years).

Worse, the letter from the trucking association first notes that the expansion of Highway 1, the Port Mann Bridge, and the SFPR (all of which they supported),
have completely failed to reduce the trucking load on our surface streets because their members are not using these expensive maga-projects that we all paid more than $5 Billion (and counting) to build, but are instead diverting to local roads through our residential and commercial neighbourhoods. They then somehow use this to argue that they “suffer” congestion in our neighbourhoods. Its almost like they cant hear themselves.

This is why we need to work with Coquitlam, because Maillardville needs relief just as Sapperton does, and if we forget that Brunette Highway connects these communities and the people in them, we may lose the livability of both to the insatiable hunger of “goods movement”.

800 Twelfth Street –Amendment to Zoning Bylaw
A business is interested in moving to New Westminster from nearby Burnaby, and needed to adjust the Zoning Bylaw to accommodate one use of the land that is not currently covered in the Zoning (boarding cats). Council referred this for First and Second Reading.

Exempt Properties
I excluded myself from this discussion because I am an active member and former Director of the Royal City Curling Club which receives this benefit, and @MsNWimby is a current director of the Arts Council of New West, which also receives a benefit.

After all of that excitement, we moved on to Bylaws:

Zoning Amendment Bylaw No. 7785, 2015 (800 Twelfth Street)
This is the Cat Hotel mentioned above. Council moved two readings, with a Public Hearing Scheduled for November 30, 2015. C’mon out and tell us what you think.

OCP Amendment Bylaw No. 7783, 2015 (97 Braid Street)
This is the OCP Amendment for Sapperton green mentioned above. It received two readings, and a Public Hearing is scheduled for October 26, 2015. C’mon out and tell us what you think.

Taxation Exemption and Exempt Properties Bylaw No. 7784, 2015
This is the Bylaw to support the tax exemption, the earlier discussion of which I removed myself from. This is what you get when you lose attention for just a moment at Council, as I probably should have removed myself from this vote to remove the perception of conflict. I did not move or second the Bylaw, there was no subsequent discussion, and my non-opposition vote was counted as part of the consensus. Add this to the point that the conflict is one of perception (I don’t actually receive any fiduciary or other benefits from either of these organizations), and it is pretty easy to argue nothing untoward happened here. Rookie mistake.

Temporary Borrowing Bylaw No. 7788, 2015
This Bylaw was discussed above, and was given three readings.

Electric Utility Commission Amendment Bylaw No. 7782, 2015
This Bylaw was discussed and given three readings at the September 28 meeting, and was adopted today. It’s now the Law of the Land – adjust your behavior appropriately.

Zoning Amendment Bylaw No. 7779, 2015
This Bylaw was discussed and given third readings at the September 28 meeting, and was adopted today. It’s now the Law of the Land – adjust your behavior appropriately

Borrowing Bylaw No. 7780, 2015
This Bylaw was discussed and given third readings at the September 28 meeting, and was adopted today. It’s now the Law of the Land – adjust your behavior appropriately

Finally, we (for a change of pace) had a bit of New Business added to the Agenda.

Quayside Community Emergency Drill
There was an emergency preparedness, communications and evacuation drill down on the Quayside last weekend. The neighbourhood down there has for several years asked about

While the exercise went well from a functional standpoint and the response agencies were able to test systems, there was problem in the organization of the exercise in that the community simply didn’t turn up. Apparently there was a gap in communications between the City and the residents of the buildings. There will be a debrief at the next Emergency Advisory Committee, and the Mayor’s Public Engagement Taskforce will add this to their agenda.

And after that, it was all over but for the Delegations.

Community, Oct 5, 2015

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Last week I spent a lot of time doing terribly partisan volunteer political work for the upcoming election, which cut a bit into my out-in-the-community time. But I still got a few things in, including a relatively non-partisan All Candidate’s Meeting.

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They must have been nervous at the start, because it was a lot more fun a meeting than it looks here.

The Queens Park Residents Association always runs a great all-candidates event, and this year was no exception, The crowd is respectful, the questions thoughtful, and the setting delightful. You can follow the mood of the room (surprisingly lovey) from this storified collection curated by Julie MacLellan at the Record, including a lot of my (trying not to be totally partisan) tweets.

Other events last week were refreshingly less political.

Saturday morning, The City and the Alzheimer Society of BC held a community conversation entitled: “Dementia-Friendly New West”. There were presentations and opportunities for community feedback on various aspects of making a City more livable for people with dementia and those who support them. I learned a lot about the different types of dementia, and how it impacts the daily lives of people, be they the diagnosed person, a family member, or another caregiver. The City’s Social Planner provided results of a survey recently performed to determine the needs and challenges of people impacted by dementia. It was a great event, and an opportunity for me to learn a little more about city-building that they don’t teach you in City Council candidate school.

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Saturday was also the 75th Anniversary of the Wait for me Daddy photograph, which made it a great time to unveil the Official Dedication Plaque installed at Hyack Square to recognize the people who put the Statue program together.

There were also special performances at the Anvil Centre. The University of Calgary Wind Ensemble performed an original piece by New Westminster native Brian Garbet which was inspired by the Wait for Me Daddy photograph. There was a performance by the Lord Tweedsmuir Theatre Troop inspired by the meanings of “Freedom” and “Discipline”, and performance pieces by three small troupes of multi-disciplinary artists that all combined music, dance, spoken word, video and performance to animate the personal stories of three New Westminster residents who have in some way been impacted by war and separation. It was an inspiring and sometimes chilling show.

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Finally, New Westminster Fire Rescue had their annual Open House on Saturday at the Glenbrook Fire Hall. This is a great chance for families to learn about emergency preparedness and what our Fire, Rescue, and Ambulance teams do for a living, all in the guise of getting neighbourhood kids closer to firetruck. Hundreds of people showed up this year (it was a beautiful day!) and got to learn about fire extinguishers, the Jaws of Life, and did I mention firetrucks?

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What ever you do, don’t park in front of a fire Hydrant in New West.

Council report – Sept 28, 2015

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Council on Tour (which is looking like it is going to last longer than the Who’s retirement tours) continued with us meeting in Sapperton for the first time, at the Sapperton Pensioner’s Hall.

There was an extended Public Hearing on the 4th tower at Plaza 88. Short version is that Council supported the revised plan with some conditions on managing how the building integrates with the rest of Plaza 88. I think this will deserve its own blog post, so I will not expand on the comments I made at the meeting Council (see the video here) in this post, but will hold off so I can flesh it out a little better.

At the regular meeting, we started with passing the two recommendations that came from the Public Hearing, then had Opportunity to be Heard on two variance requests:

302 5th Street
This request to build a garage taller than permitted in the zoning made sense to me. They have a unique house (Dutch Colonial style), and to make the garage fit with the roofline of the house and make sense architecturally, it need to be taller than specifically permitted. The neighbours are not opposed, and the upper space will be designed to not be living space, but with a truss system that will prevent it from being converted to an illegal living space. I had no reason to oppose this reasonable request.

1258 Ewen Ave
This relatively minor variance (10 inches), would allow the building to match the scale and mass of the building right next door. The Residents’ Association reviewed and approved the request, and with no-one speaking against it, I have no reason to oppose this request.

Following that business, we moved on to the Consent Agenda, where the following was passed without comment:

Amendment to the 2015 Schedule of Regular Council Meetings
Yes, Council on the Road continues. It appears that City Hall Renovations are (surprise!) delayed a bit, and the October 5th meeting will be at the Library. We have also cancelled the meeting on Election Day, so you should be out voting, or helping people vote, instead of sitting around watching Council.

SOP for October 10, 2015: Cyclo Cross in Queens Park!
This was a motion to approve a beer garden license for Queens Park for a bike race. You may not think beer and bike races are a logical connection, but then you don’t know about the sport of Cyclocross. This decidedly Belgian style of cycling involved riding bicycles designed for riding on the road in places where there are not roads. In Belgium, it is usually winter farmer’s fields, in North America it tends to be grassy fields and other such “off road” places. Here is a good intro to what ‘Cross is:

I’m really excited that Caps the Original is bringing a ‘Cross Race to New West. It is as much fun to watch as it is to race, with even the most serious competitors happy to engage in beer (or increasingly bacon) hand-ups, costumes, and general comradery. You should go on October 10 and watch. Rain or shine, but it will be more fun in the rain!

Investment Report
The City has $132 Million in the bank. This is a combination of money we have set aside for special projects (like the eventual Canada Games Pool replacement), money we have collected through DCCs or utility capital funds that are specifically earmarked for capital projects, and strategic reserves there to assure long-term solvency. We earned about $1.8Million in interest on these funds, which is (not surprisingly considering the global trend right now) less than predicted.

Most of our money is saved with the Municipal Finance Authority, which gives us good rates and excellent security, and assures that our money is invested in building communities in British Columbia. Earlier this year, Council recommended asking the MFA to divest from fossil fuels, and we have since been joined by Victoria and other municipalities in this direction. This is an ongoing conversation that will be taken to the MFA general meeting in the spring.

Temporary Borrowing for 2016
The City needs to borrow money sometimes for operations in the short term, and much like a business or household, we run a line of credit to allow that flexibility. We don’t often use it very much, but it is there in the event we need it. The Community Charter says we need to have a bylaw to authorize short-term borrowing, so annually Council has to approve a bylaw like this.

520 Twenty-First Street, Rezoning Bylaw for First and Second Readings
This is a vacant piece of property recently liquidated by the Provincial government next to the Queensborough Bridge. A company wants to build an industrial building on the site to employ people, and because of the type of business they want to run and the somewhat remote location, they want a caretaker suite in the building. We need to change the zoning to allow this. There will be a Public Hearing on October 26, 2015. C’mon out and tell us what you think!

335 Buchanan Avenue – Preliminary Report, Heritage Revitalization Agreement
This is a somewhat unique Heritage Revitalization Agreement project, as the house is not the typical Victorian/Edwardian/Craftsman type most people would think of when they imagine a heritage home. This is a 1937 modern-style home. There will be a Public Hearing about the project, assuming it gets through the few steps before, so I’ll hold my comments until after that.

205 Clinton Place – Preliminary Report, Heritage Revitalization Agreement
A more typical HRA process, in that it is a more typical 1912 house. Again, this will go to Public Hearing, so I will hold my comments until then.

602 Ewen Avenue – Preliminary Report, Rezoning Application
This plan for a townhouse development in Queensborough is at the initial stages. Council approved it moving forward to the next stages.

These things all passed, we then addressed Items Removed from Consent:

Fraser River Discovery Centre
The Fraser River Discovery Centre is, in my mind, a really positive development on the City’s waterfront. As we look at the longer-term goals of the City to develop a waterfront that connects people to the water, it has a role to improve knowledge and appreciation about how that silty band of water defines our City and our province, and helped build our nation.

However, the Centre has had some ongoing sustainability issues, as they have grown and developed over the years. It should be no surprise to any educational not-for-profit that you need to build it for them to come, but the revenue to build it will not arrive until they arrive. The scale and quality of the displays has been steadily improving, and the visits have therefore been increasing. I hope that trend can continue, and the funding model becomes sustainable so the FRDC can stand on its own.

The request was for an increase in the grants the City provides FRDC over the next three years (from $30,800 this year to $60,000 for each of the next three next years). Because of some funding windows with other sponsors that the Centre had to get by, we needed to address this issue outside of the regular grant process. This will include the money they currently receive from various other community grants (Festival, Community, Heritage, and Environment), and comes with the commitment to still make all of the contributions that those grants supported.

I was supportive of this increased support, but from a process standpoint, I don’t like doing a three-year approval outside of the regular granting process. I respect the time-sensitive nature of this year’s request, but the following two years can be addressed this fall with the rest of the grant reviews.

Sapperton Park Refurbishment Public Consultation Overview
I wondered about the timing here. We need to put any changes to Sapperton Park into context of changes at Royal Columbian Hospital and the Economic Health Care Cluster. It is not out of the realm of possibility that Sapperton Park could be re-aligned to better address what will be a very different East Columbia Street – this could include removing the fence, re-orienting the playing fields, etc. I don’t want to do work on the back half of the park without doing a master plan for the entire park.

After the short conversation, I’m satisfied with moving ahead with the consultation, and that Parks has the entire park and potential changes at the Columbia Street end in mind.

Funny. I had no idea this was going on when I answered this Ask Pat, so it probably gives you an idea of how useful that red button up to the right is. It is possible I have no idea whatsoever.

User Fees and Rates Review
These various fees in the City are reviewed on a regular basis, mostly to keep up with inflation. The general practice/policy is that these fees should be adjusted to reflect the true cost of providing the service. As a policy, that makes sense to me.

I think residents in every City feel theirs is the most expensive, and New West is no exception. So I want to know where our fees are relative to other Cities when they are adjusted. If our fees are much higher or lower than other Cities, I want to know if it is because of the efficiency of our processes, or if there are other factors.

We then moved onto Bylaws for Reading and Adoption:

Bylaw No. 7782, 2015
This Bylaw to adjust the Electrical Utility as discussed September 14 was given Three Readings.

Bylaw No. 7780, 2015
This is the temporary borrowing Bylaw discussed above, which received three readings.

Bylaw No. 7778, 2015
This is the Zoning Bylaw for the caretaker unit discussed above, which received two readings.

Bylaw No. 7760, 2015
This was the zoning amendment for 328 Holmes, discussed June 22, and now Adopted by Council. It’s the Law of the Land, folks, adjust your behaviour appropriately.

And that was a Meeting! Sorry it took me a week to provide this report.

Election stuff!

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Again, I am mostly avoiding talking about the ongoing election on this site, partly because my time is limited due to (totally partisan) election work I have been doing, and partly because I want to keep this page less about fighting (depressingly partisan) fights and more about building local community. I am reserving most of my regular political (unabashedly partisan) rants for my Facebook Page, so if you care about my (hilariously partisan) opinions on “the horserace”, you can go over there. I do, however, opine here occasionally on the election as a process, and what it means for the state of our democracy.

Two quick points on that:

The politics of fear and division are rising in Canada in a way I have never seen in my (admittedly-short 40-year) awareness of politics. I draw a distinction between “Vote for us because our opposition’s policies/ideas are scary” and “Vote for us, because we are the only ones who will protect you from some dark-skinned boogeyman who is hiding in the shadow but wants to murder your family”. These are two very different uses of the term “fear”. The former is drawing a distinction between people running for office, and is the root of the reason we have elections. The second is fear-mongering, and a dangerous erosion of civil society.

When we draw these types of distinctions between groups of people, it seeds a garden of hate towards all identifiable groups, and supports a volatile coalition of ignorance, xenophobia, religious intolerance and outright racism. Done well, it allows the target voter to pick their own boogeyman to fill the gap (remember how Sikh and Hindu people were attacked in the United States in the immediate aftermath of 9/11?) and can target specific voter groups. This stuff is the specialty of Harper’s new adviser, Lynton Crosby, and I am chagrined that it is working.

My second point is that you, before you vote, should take a bit of time meet those vying to be your representative. You should ask them questions, and you should hear answers. You should make the connection so that after the election you can contact them with your concerns or ideas and start with “we met at…”. A few of you have reached the level of local fame that they can just put a few silly questions on a blog and expect answers. Others can attend one of several All-Candidates events, where you might be lucky enough to get a question in, and may or may not get the answer you were looking for.

This is why for the last few years, through Local, Provincial, and Federal Elections (excepting the last one, where I was an actual candidate!), I have worked with the NWEP, NEXT New West and Tenth to the Fraser to put on a different type of All Candidates Event. We have had a comedy night, a Jane’s Walk, a Cocktail Party, all with the desire to break the partisan and confrontational mould of the typical debate, and bring the candidates together in a social setting so that voters could get to know them better. We are doing it again this year, and we are doing it on a boat, so the candidates cannot escape your questions!

Next Tuesday, we will set sail at 6:30pm and do a 90-minute cruise of the Fraser on the MV Native. Cocktails and canapé will be available. We will be strictly limiting the speechmaking to only a few minutes, and will instead rely on the candidates and participants to mix and mingle for the rest of the cruise and schmooze the fickle voter (you!). We emphasize that this is not a confrontational environment, and heckling or badgering will not be tolerated. The Captain has the authority to throw jerks in the brig for the duration of the tour, so no candidate should fear appearing here. Unless they are jerks, I guess.

We need to pay for the boat and snacks, so the tickets are $15*, and tickets are limited by lifeboat capacity, so you need to go on-line to buy them. This will be a unique (and very #NewWest) event, you should join us, so you can also say “I knew them back when…” Tickets here.

*Hey, we want to be as inclusive as possible, because money should not be a barrier to participation in democracy-building events. So an anonymous donor has agreed to contribute a few dollars to buy tickets for some people who feel $15 is a barrier to their participation. Please drop me an e-mail at info@patrickjohnstone.ca if you know someone who might want to take advantage of this offer.

Community – Sept 28, 2015

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

This was a non-Council week, as the annual Union of BC Municipalities meeting was being held in Vancouver. I was not able to attend the annual summit of good, honest, hard-working rural BC and latté-sipping condo dwellers of Greater Vancouver due to work commitments, but several of my activities were otherwise dictated by its happening.

On Wednesday, I attended my first meeting of the Contaminated Sites Approved Professionals Society board. I was recently appointed by the Province to be the local government representative on that board. The CSAP provides professional oversight to the approval and certification processes under the Contaminated Sites Regulation. There were some seriously keen minds around that board table (many I have worked with before), and it is interesting to have another insight into how policy is implements and carried out in the interface between government and science.

Also on Wednesday, the City’s Advisory Committee for Transit, Bicycles, and Pedestrians (ACTBiPed) did our slightly belated “summer walkabout”. This was a tradition started by the previous ACTBiPed chair (and current Mayor) where the committee gets out of the committee room and, by bike or foot, looks at transportation “trouble spots” to have a conversation about how to make things work better. Sustainable transportation advocates, interested citizens, a Council Member, and staff working together to better understand the problems on the ground, and to chat about specific solutions.

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This year, we went to the top of the West End to look at connections between the New Westminster and Burnaby greenway networks across 10th Avenue, especially in light of potential larger-scale developments on the Burnaby side. Cyclist will recognize the offset streets where they cross 10th, and the challenges that this create when trying to cross the street safely. We also had great discussions about improving the London bikeway, and about encroachment on City boulevards by some homeowners which often impact the accessibility of the public space.

Thursday was the New Westminster stop on the Fraser Fest tour, organized by the Rivershed Society of BC, which just happened to coincide with the launch of River Fest, our biggest annul waterfront event in New Westminster. It was a rainy day, but a small brave crowd came out to hear great music, and to hear from a couple of local heroes in the “protecting the river” game: Marc Angelo (the founder of World Rivers Day) and Fin Donnelly (of swam-the-river-twice fame).

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Me and New West super-volunteer Karla Olsen showing off our Watershed Pledges at Fraser Fest.

Thursday was also the Annual General Meeting of the New West Pride Society. Outgoing President Jeremy Perry ran a great AGM as his last official presidential duty, for what have been a spectacular year of successes for Pride. Their street fair was bigger and bolder than ever, their finances are secure, they have made some serious impacts on improving inclusivity in the city, and are ready to ramp up to make 2016 even better. New President Mike Tiney was so cool and coordinated during this year’s huge Pride Street Fair, you can see his confidence and experience is going to serve New West Pride well.

Friday, the Safe Energy Leadership Alliance met in New Westminster. This multi-agency group brings local and regional government leaders from Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia together to talk about trans-border solutions to common concerns around the transportation of fossil fuels through our communities in trains and pipelines. We discussed upcoming projects all along the Pacific Coast, heard from subject experts on regulatory challenges and spill response capabilities (short version – little of it was good news if you like oil-free beaches) and discussed pathways forward. It was a fruitful and interesting discussion, and I am glad representatives of New Westminster, Burnaby, Vancouver, PoCo and Richmond were there to forge cross-border collaborations.

sela

Friday was also the start of the Feast on the Fraser event with a Boathouse Restaurant and Steel & Oak Brewing collaboration starting things off. This event is continuing for 10 days, you should follow that link and buy some tickets to one of the great foodie events happening across New West.

After filling up at the Boathouse, I joined the Mayor and other Councillors at the Hyacks Football Homecoming game. The entire homecoming extravaganza is pretty exciting, and a great community-wide event, from the game ball parachute drop to the rousing defeat of GW Graham. But the pre-game tug-o-war competition between City Hall, the School District, Fraser Health and the New Westminster District Labour Council was a new tradition. After easily defeating the medical types, your Mayor and Council (with a few hired guns) we defeated in a hard-fought battle with the Labour Council Machine. The jokes write themselves.

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We probably would have done better if I hadn’t gone for this rope-cam picture.

The weekend was full of River Fest activity down on the Quay, and the sun gloriously came out to shine upon the event expertly organized by the good folks at the Fraser River Discovery Centre. There were big crowds for the annual Work Boat Parade, lots of art, interpretation and love for the river that sustains us.

boats

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And then I attended a rare outside-of-NewWest event (but we like to the think Urban Digs Farm is just a temporarily inconvenienced New West institution), and there were a lot of New West folks there on Saturday night. Their annual Baconfest was a month delayed this year due to a variety of factors, but it made for a great evening on the Farm. They had bacon-themed food and drink, lots of food for sale, hay bales under the patio lanterns, incredible music of the washboard-and-moonshine flavour by The Still Spirits, and fun all around. If you choose to eat meat, you should check out Urban Digs and see how meat can be made more ethically and sustainably, and how much better the meat tastes when it is done that way. They are good people, working hard, almost making money, building a community and connecting us latte-sipping condo dwellers to the food we eat in a unique way.

I wasn't kidding about the hay bales or washboard.
I wasn’t kidding about the hay bales or washboard.

Oh, and I did a bunch of election stuff this week, including exercising my right to Vote Early at 620 Royal Avenue. I was in the neighbourhood and it took less than 5 minutes. So one thing checked off my list for October.

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