Category: Uncategorized

Zombie Bad Data

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

London Street

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UBCM 2025

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our City Our Homes (Non-market, etc.)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

As I mentioned when I started this series on our OCP updates, the provincial legislation we are trying to catch up to is almost exclusively about market housing. This means it is working to accelerate the approval and development of primarily strata ownership and purpose-built market rental – the houses over on the right side of the housing spectrum:

In New Westminster in 2025, that means houses that will sell for $1.5 Million, townhouses that will likely be $1 Million, apartments that will be over $700,000 if they are large enough for a bedroom and rents in new market units are not affordable to the average working person.

To be clear: as a City and as a region, we need this market housing despite its apparent unaffordability. much of our current housing affordability crisis is a supply issue – there are simply more people moving to this region than we are building housing for – and cutting off new supply of housing won’t make that better. The last Housing Needs Report we did in New West showed the need for almost 5,000 market ownership and market rental units in the next 5 years. However, the same report showed that we need 2,700 non-market (shelter, supportive, and non-market rental) affordable homes over the same period:

And in reporting out to the Province on our Housing Target Orders, we see that New Westminster is meeting its targets, except in the mon-market part of the spectrum:

The province has introduced more Inclusionary Zoning support, which provides incentives to the market housing sector to build a few affordable housing units with new market buildings. This is a useful tool, but the scale of need is disconnected from what inclusionary zoning can actually supply. The City’s own analysis suggests that asking the development community to build 10% affordable rental units along with market strata may make most market projects unviable. If we ask for more than 10%, we end up with neither the market or non-market need addressed, if we ask for less than 50%, then we need to find another way to get non-market built.

That way, of course, is for the Federal (and to a lesser extent Provincial) Government to invest directly in building affordable housing, at the scale of tens of thousands of units a year like they did from the early 1960s until Paul Martin’s disastrous 1993 austerity budget that got the feds out of the business of affordable housing. Smaller Local Governments don’t have the finances (or the mandate for that matter) to build affordable housing at the scale needed. What we can do is make it easier for the governments with deeper pockets to get the housing built. Pre-approving projects, saying “yes” without creating unnecessary hurdles when projects come to us, providing grant support to reduce the cost of City permits or utility connections, investing our own city-owned land where possible to support affordable housing projects, and actively lobbying the Province and BC Housing for more investment.

The City of New Westminster is already doing all of these things.

We have an Affordable Housing Capital Reserve Fund to provide strategic support and reduce development cost for non-profit builders, we have said “yes” to all of the non-market affordable housing projects brought to Council in my time at the table, and we have amended our Zoning Bylaw to pre-zone areas in the City for secured non-market affordable housing up to six storeys. Now we are taking this the next step to open up more areas of the City for 6-storey secured non-market housing.

In the amendments before Council now  we would allow non-profit affordable rental housing of up to six storeys to be built on sites designated in the OCP for Residential Townhouses, and anywhere in Tiers 2 and 3 of the designated Transit Oriented Development area (that is, anywhere within 800m of a SkyTrain Station). Overall, this would mean the majority of lots in New West would be effectively pre-zoned for affordable housing projects like Móytel Lalém, taking a significant planning risk out of the way of non-profit housing providers, and making it easier for them to apply to senior governments for the funding, as that funding is often tied to meeting zoning requirements.

There are also several other smaller changes Staff is proposing to make during the OCP update, some needed to clean up all the small changes and make it a more cohesive plan and map, some to meet other City polices that make sense to formalize at this time. This includes designating “public schools” as a permitted use in the majority of residential and mixed use areas to speed up approval process for new schools when the Province and School District identify new school locations. It is also proposed to update our Frequent Transit Development Areas map to better reflect Provincial legislation and recent updates in the Regional Growth Strategy.

Other changes seem a little more technocratic, but are appropriate at this time. We are integrating the results of our most recent Housing Needs Report into the OCP, to make clear that the OCP provides sufficient planned capacity to accommodate the housing need identified in that report. We are also integrating Climate Action strategies and targets into our OCP (as the Local Government Act now requires). Finally, staff have drafted a new Regional Context Statement to integrate our OCP with the Regional Growth Strategy, which if approved by Council will then go to the Metro Vancouver board for approval.

All told, this is a big piece of planning work that includes not just the City’s planning staff, but engineering and other departments have provided technical background and support, all resulting in the policy and bylaws that back up this map. There has been quite a bit of public engagement that gave some clear feedback on some items and some mixed opinions on others, and all of this will end up in front of Council, then to a Public Hearing, which will no doubt be a big topic of discussion in the fall. If you have opinions, be sure to let us know!

Our City Our Homes (Missing Middle)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

I started last post talking about specific changes the City is looking at to comply with Provincial housing regulation and our Housing Accelerator Fund commitments to the federal government. This post covers housing changes outside of the Transit Oriented Development areas.

*note, there are some terms I’m going to use here that may not align with how everyone else uses them, so the clarify: “townhouse” is a multi-family ground-oriented, usually multi-story development form where the homes are part of a strata; “rowhome” is a similar model, but with each unit a fee simple property without strata, only sharing a firewall with neighbours; “infill” means increasing density while maintaining the integrity of the single family lot through accessory buildings (laneway/carriage homes) or converting houses to multiplexes).

New West has always struggled to bring in enough townhouse & rowhome development, except for the Queensborough where this form has been very successful and popular in relatively greenfield development. Even during the 2017 OCP work, it was this so-called “missing middle” that got a lot of emphasis, especially from young families who saw it as an affordable transition from too-small apartments to higher-cost-and-hassle detached home. Alas, it was about the same time as that OCP was being approved in 2017 that the increase in local land values reached a point where the economics of land assembly for townhouse forms became marginal, resulting in only a few notable developments this side of the North Arm.

One surely-unintended consequence of the Provincial TOD area regulations is that the broad 800-m circles drawn around transit stations encompass many areas the City’s current OCP designated for Townhouse/Rowhouse development. The province effectively “upzoned” past what the City was intending (which, to be clear, was the goal all along) but as a result, we need to re-imagine where in our housing mix we can include this “missing middle” if we want to see it built in the City at all.

The “neighbourhood character” gambit gets the bulk of attention here, but this distracts from the real technical and engineering aspects of these seemingly small density increases. We have to assure the City’s ability to service this higher density form through sewer, water, electrical and transportation upgrades prior to approving its being built, but these small projects are not large enough to pay for those offsite upgrades. Another challenge is road access: if we want walkable safe neighbourhoods, Townhouses work better with access form lanes than from main roads and not 20 individual driveways crossing sidewalks.

To these ends and to plan infrastructure upgrades, staff are suggesting we expand townhouse areas in our OCP, pre-zone some areas for townhouse to streamline planning and implementation, and we update our design guidelines to make townhouse form more viable for development in the current market in those areas where we pre-zone for it. The locations where Townhouses might work best went through public consultation, and generally the public reaction was to open up more Townhouse area rather than less, resulting in the following DRAFT map for Council consideration:

Two big questions in the Townhouse program that Council will need to grapple with are whether to permit secondary suites in townhouses, and how much parking to require; and these questions are related because both take up space and impact the cost and therefore viability of townhouse projects.

Secondary suites were generally supported in the public consultation, because they provide more housing options (including better opportunities for intergenerational living), make mortgages more affordable for some, add to the (unsecured) rental market, while reducing the likelihood that illegal rental suites will be created that don’t meet building code standards.

A challenge is if we permit secondary suites is the pressure they may put on street parking unless we include more parking requirements with new townhouses, which in itself makes secondary suites harder to integrate into townhouses and pushes up cost. So staff are asking Council to consider if secondary suites are desired, and if so, how much parking should we require for them? Housing vs. Parking rears its ugly head again, and I’m sure this will be the source of continued debate even after the OCP updates are completed.

The province introduced Bill 44 to require cities to permit multiplexes where single family homes are only permitted now: six-plexes near frequent transit and four-plexes everywhere else. The planning term used here was “SSMUH” (pronounced SMOO) for Small Scale Multi-Unit Housing. This is a place where the City struggled early on to read how the legislation applied in our complex zoning code, and with managing some local engineering challenges related to this form of infill development. As a result, we received permission from the Province to delay SSMUH implementation in Queensborough for a couple of years because most existing development is already higher density, and in the remaining areas rapid SSMUH implementation presented some water and sewer supply issues that simply needed more engineering work. So everything below applies only to the mainland.

Back in May and June of 2024, Council unanimously supported a Bylaw amendment that rezoned about 160 properties to permit four units per lot, but for the bulk of properties in the City, agreed to delay until Staff had an opportunity to do more work on making the provincial guidelines fit into our engineering and planning context, including doing some architectural and proforma (economic viability) analysis here in New West. There has also been quite a bit of industry and public consultation over the last year to help frame the technical work done.

The step now is to amend the Official Community Plan to introduce a new land use designation called “RGO – Residential Ground Oriented Infill” that will align the mainland single detached properties  outside of the TOD or Townhouse areas with provincial SSMUH requirements. If Council approves this, the next step would be the creation of development permit guidelines and zoning regulations to inform the shape and character of multiplexes within those neighbourhoods. We hope to have that work completed by June 2026, but until then, if applicant wishes to bring a SSMUH project forward in a property within the RGO designated area, they would still be required to complete a rezoning but would not require the OCP update step of the planning process.

There are a few more details we are working on to meet our housing needs and HAF commitments that are not specifically in response to TOD and SSMUH, and I’ll cover those next post.

Our City Our Homes (TOD)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The first part of our OCP update work right now is to update our approach to Transit Oriented Development areas – the residential areas within 800m of a SkyTrain Station that, through Bill 47, the province is prescribing higher density. There are details in how density is distributed with prescribed minimum Floor Space Ratios, but for most folks it is easier to envision building heights. Within 200m of a Sky Train Station (red circles below), heights up to 20 storeys will be prescribed. Within 400m (yellow circles), the minimum is 12 storeys, and within 800m (the green circles), buildings up to 8 storeys will be pre-approved.

In effect, the province is saying the local government cannot refuse this level of residential density for density reasons alone, and cannot require off-street parking to be built for new residential density in these zones. This does not restrict the City from permitting more density than these minimums (we already permit more than 20 stories in our downtown core), nor does it limit our ability to approve projects that have less density than these prescribed amounts.

This is your regular reminder that Land Use Designation is different than Zoning. The former is a higher-level description of types of land use (residential commercial, industrial, etc.) and height and density in general terms (single detached, townhouse, high rise, etc). Zoning is more detailed in not only being more specific in types of use, but also addresses “form and character” like lot sizes, setbacks and specific dimensions and density of buildings. Any change to zoning must be must be consistent with the land use designation in the Official Community Plan (OCP), or the OCP must be amended prior to changing zoning. Our task right now is to amend our OCP Land Use Designations to align with Bill 47 so that new buildings can be zoned to the new density levels designated by the province. Clear as mud?

Back on May and June of 2024, Council workshopped then unanimously approved changes to our Zoning Bylaw that integrated the TOD area maps, and at the same time required that buildings meeting the Provincial mandated density must be 100% secured market or non-market rental (as opposed to market strata), removed the parking requirements, and removed caretaker suites as a zoning-permitted use in some commercial and industrial areas to prevent Bill 47 from becoming a tool to re-purpose commercial and industrial land for housing.

Now to continue to meet provincial regulatory requirements we need to update our OCP so buildings that meet Bill 47 density don’t require OCP amendments for approval, and we need to do this by the end of the year (there are procedural steps between third reading and adoption of OCP update bylaws that take a couple of months, so September third reading = January adoption). The intent of staff is to bring in OCP amendments that not only meet the letter of the law, but also meet the spirit of the legislation while assuring (as best we can) integration of the existing OCP adjacent to the TOD areas.

So staff have drafted a bylaw that enables buildings of up to eight, twelve and twenty storeys in the appropriate TOD areas, and still maintains a higher land use designation and mixed use entitlements if those are already included in the existing OCP. There are also some changes to two specific areas – the existing “Commercial and Health Care” area around RCH and the “Commercial Waterfront” area around the Quay – to clarify that residential is a permitted use in these area as ancillary to commercial use. We are also suggesting that the caretaker unit designation for industrial and commercial zones lands be removed (meaning the owner, if they want to put in a new caretaker suite, would need to come and ask for an OCP amendment).

There is a specific issue related to the TOD area around 22nd Street Station. The Provincial legislation came in at a time when we are deep into the visioning process for 22nd Street area. We have done a tonne of public consultation and planning around this area, and it is clear that we have more work to do towards planning the infrastructure needed to support a much denser neighbourhood, from water and sewer to understanding transportation changes and assuring we are preserving adequate green and public space. So staff are recommending we creating three study areas (22A is below the SkyTrain Station, 22B comprises most of the single family areas of Connaught Heights, and 22 C is the strip along 20th Street) to support the technical and financing growth strategy work we need to envision a complete neighbourhood:

The circles created by the 800m buffers around Skytrain don’t align well with the square nature of our existing street grid, resulting in a few anomalies where smaller density will be adjacent to much larger density within the same block, or such. Staff have made some recommendations around how to address these “edge properties”, mostly by slightly expanding the TOD areas across a few strategic lots to make it blend better. This was a subject of some of the Public Consultation that occurred over the last year, and adjustments have been made based on that feedback:

However, perhaps the biggest question before Council when it comes to TOD implementation is whether we allow ground-oriented infill density (e.g. fourplex or sixplex) within the TOD areas. There are large areas of primarily single family detached homes (Lower Sapperton and the West End are the best examples) where the TOD areas mean we must permit 8 storey apartment buildings where there are single family homes now. If we also permit fourplexes to be built in those areas, it would potentially increase housing variety, but may reduce the incentive for multiple properties to be consolidated for the higher density the TOD areas envision. Not allowing infill housing in the TOD area would effectively protect land for higher density development, and townhouses would be the lowest density land use permitted, which might slow development while it brings higher density.

The community consultation favoured including infill density in these areas, but it will be up to Council to determine if we want to see slower development of higher density, or more housing mix with (likely) a higher chance that infill happens sooner.

In my next post, we’ll talk about what all of this means for Townhouses and Rowhomes in the City.

Our City Our Homes (Intro)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The City of New West is facing the same housing pressures as every other City in the region, and as most large urban areas in Canada: not enough housing to meet increasing demand, housing priced out of reach of most working people, inadequate rental housing supply, and a paucity of supportive and transitional housing to lift people out of homelessness. Looking back at my own words from seven years ago, I can confidently say we have made some progress here in New West, but the scale of the regional problem has expanded faster than our response.

Over the last year or two, we have seen more action from senior governments, mostly directed at the market housing end of the Housing Spectrum, and directed at getting housing approved faster, presuming that local governments not approving housing is the main challenge we need to address.

Of course, New Westminster has met its Housing Orders targets and exceeded its Regional Growth Strategy estimates for new market and rental housing need. We have approved every unit of supportive and affordable housing that has come across the Council table. At the same time we are falling far short of our Housing Needs for affordable and supportive housing, and our unsheltered homeless numbers are going up. I’m no more an economist than Patrick Condon, but this suggests to me that serious investment in transitional and supportive housing from senior governments is what is needed to bring housing security to all residents, not what they are currently offering:

So while we work on getting more investment in non-market housing, we are also doing the work that senior governments demand of us to assure our housing policies, Official Community Plan, and permitting processes are updated to support housing growth concomitant with regional population growth.

Back in June, staff brought to Council a set of proposed Official Community Plan changes that, when taken together, assure the City is meeting both the letter and the spirit of the Provincial housing legislation changes (remember bills 44, 46, and 47?) in a way that fits our local context and addresses our local housing need, and at the same time addresses the various initiatives around infill density, family-friendly housing, and affordable housing under our Housing Accelerator Fund commitment to the federal government. This is bringing to culmination a big body of work that included Public consultation framed under “Our City Our Homes” that has been going on for about a year now.

The implementation of this work (and adoption of the OCP changes) has been delayed a bit by some weirdly technical procedural issues (some of which I talked about in my last Newsletter but wont unpack again, subscribe here). This means the timeline Council unanimously agreed to last November will be a bit delayed, and the OCP updates won’t be considered until early in the fall. This gives a bit more time to unpack some of the work that was presented back in June. The final reports when they come back to us in September might be structured differently to address those procedural issues, but the intent is to ask Council to consider the questions raised in the June report.

Over the next week or two, I will write some more posts here that go through the sections of that report, hoping folks can better understand the City’s approach to the new legislation when consideration of the OCP update happens. There are some details in here Council will need to consider, and I cannot predict where those discussions will land, nor am I taking a position on where they should land. On some issues the public consultation has provided a pretty clear idea which way the community thinks the City should go, on others the feedback is less clear, but staff have strong technical recommendations. Ultimately, these details are a discussion for Council and going into them with an open mind, it will be fascinating to see where we land.

Go logo

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

By now, most of you have probably seen something about a new logo at the City, or have seen it pop up in Social Media. If you want to get a sense of the thinking behind the logo, there is a great video produced by the City to put it in context:

There is also a bunch more background info here that includes discussions of new wordmarks and colour palates that will be used as design guides in new City digital and printed communications.

I have of course received some feedback on the new logo, and so far it’s about 50/50, which is about as positive as one can expect with something as subjective as this, especially when you recognize people are much more likely to write if angry than they are if happy. Examples from the two more recent emails I received on this:

“My husband and I are appalled at the change in the Logo. We were born and raised in this city, our children and grandchildren were all born and raised in this city. All very proud of the history of our city. Why do you have the right to try and change history by changing the Logo? It distinguishes us from all the other surrounding municipalities and cities.”

”Both my wife and I like the new logo. I represents both the history of New Westminster and today’s reality”.

(I am going to go ahead and assume these two emails were not from the same husband-wife couple).

I wrote a blog post about the process to create a new logo last year as we were launching the public engagement process, and it has a few answers to questions that came up at the time, and are coming up again.

The discussion about updating the logo began almost three years ago. The current yellow-crown-on blue-serif-wordmark logo, adopted in 2008, is pretty dated, and through extensive public consultation (more than 650 people) and guided by a committee of volunteer citizens of the City, the new logo was selected a few months ago (with some presentation development and refinements between then and now). I think it honours the past of the City – subtle but obvious-when-you-see-it nods to the Indigenous history of this place on the Fraser River, and a more obvious link to the industrial “working river” history and the present relationship to the river. Far from erasing history, the new logo it meant to honour the diverse and unique history of the City and this land. I think the process the City chose to let the community lead the rebranding process also honours the people who live, work, learn, and play in this community, and the builders of this community in the past and present.

I also like the modern symbolism of the logo, and this was the part that the brand creators talked about that really pulled me into seeing it. We often talk about New West as a small city with big ambitions, we make big moves and are bold in taking on large challenges. We think of ourselves as hardworking, powerful beyond our size. These characteristics of the humble tugboat – a small but incredibly powerful vehicle moving big loads against the current – evoke that same spirit. This sprit, and the clear centering of the Fraser River as the symbol of our City are the foundations of the new logo. And I can’t disagree with that.

As was the case last time, the new logo will be phased in as we work through old materials. You will be seeing both the old and new logos next to each other for some time. We will use the existing letterhead (for example) until the supply is exhausted, and the new supply when ordered will have the new logo. Things like vehicles that take a while to age out of use will have the old logo on them until the vehicle is replaced or refurbished (indeed, we still have older vehicles in the City with the old “Crest” logo on them because they are older than 2008!). That means the cost to shift to the new logo is minimized, and is part of regular operational budgets in the City.

Peter

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The things I wrote on this website used to be more political than they are now, and a lot more partisan. No shame, those things are still there in the archives, but since I am in this new role, I am trying to keep this page about what’s happening, about policy and outcomes, as there is lots of room elsewhere for the bickering part of the job (I engage in bit more of that at times over in my Newsletter, subscribe here). This post however, will be partisan and political, and maybe a bit personal. You are warned.

Peter Julian is an inspiring leader, was an incredible Member of Parliament, and I thank him for his service to the community and for his friendship.

I have said many times before, I expect a lot of a Member of Parliament. They need to be a bold voice for their community in caucus and Parliament, they need to push progressive policy in Ottawa that reflects the needs of our community but also builds our strength as a Country, and they need to be present here in community helping people connect with a distant and vague federal bureaucracy. Peter excelled at all three, which is amazing when you consider he never served in government caucus in his two decades of work.

Peter has been incredibly helpful in taking the concerns of our community to Ottawa, and in assuring our community was supported by the federal government. There are many examples, but even in the last year: his role in helping get my face in front of the Federal Minister of Housing so I could repeatedly make the case for New Westminster as an excellent Housing Accelerator Fund opportunity means more than $11 Million came here to better support housing affordability, housing diversity, and accelerated permitting and approval processes at the City. Peter’s support was instrumental in us getting $1.4 Million from the Emergency Treatment Fund to help pay for the Three Crises Response Pilot: the second largest ETF grant for any municipality in Canada, and the only grant given in BC. This is helping us move more firmly and faster addressing the combined crises of homelessness and untreated mental health and addictions. These are real, tangible wins for our community on the key issues affecting our community.

Peter was also instrumental in the federal NDP’s forcing of the minority Liberal government to bring in the biggest new social programs since before the lost decade of Mulroney: dental care, Pharmacare, and childcare programs are on the Federal agenda in part because of Peter’s work as House Leader. His work to make workplaces safer, to end corporal punishment of children, to assure COVID relief went to working people and those in need not just banks; to bring in new Anti-Scab legislation, there is a long list of substantive work Peter accomplished from the opposition and third party benches in Ottawa. He made a difference at the national level.

All along, Peter ran one of the more proactive constituency offices in the country, helping people manage immigration hiccups, get access to support programs to which they are entitled, and helping folks navigate the sometimes-challenging income tax and federal support programs designed to help those most in need on our community. When you attend a Peter Julian Christmas or Lunar New Year event, it is always remarkable to see the number of people who come up to thank Peter for the help he and his constituency staff  had provided them personally. It would be hard to imagine a more effective liaison between Ottawa and his constituents than Peter. He’s also a renowned hard worker in the House, a brilliant spokesperson for working and vulnerable people, and a hell of a nice guy.

I have been lucky to call Peter a friend for most of my time in New West. I remember the first time I really met him, I bought one of those “Dinner with the Member of Parliament” silent auction prizes, and my partner and I met Peter in a local pub. We had a few beers. Immediately it was clear he was an engaged listener, though I’m not sure he exactly knew how to take this loud opinionated guy who kept going on about bike lanes. He took it all in stride and with his characteristic class, and it ended up being the first of many, many conversations about community, about public policy, about working for change, and about leadership – conversations that continue to this day. In my elected life, Peter always answered the phone, always had time to hear about a problem or an idea, and was always quick to think about how he, the Federal Government, or someone else in his broad local network, could help. In that sense, he is a mentor and a support system as well as a friend.

Thank you Peter for everything you have done for the community that you love. I know you aren’t going away, the fight in you is too strong, and that love too strong.

Nothing here should be read as a slight to Jake Sawatzky. He won fair and square, and he seems like a really dedicated and engaged guy. I have heard him speak and think his heart is in the right place. I don’t envy the learning curve he is facing, but wish him nothing but the best in getting up to speed on this really important task, because his success in his role is our success as a community.

However, looking at this from the political side, I honestly don’t know what his win means. The election was for most of the night a statistical three-way tie between people who, by conventional campaign wisdom, should not have been in a tie. One is a long-established and highly respected candidate who might have the most famous name in the city and who ran a well designed and executed voter identification and GOTV campaign. The second was a young and inexperienced person whose name was completely unknown in the community two weeks after the writs dropped who had little visible campaign machinery. The third was a familiar if not well known local business man who was dropped in at the last minute to replace a turfed candidate that still ran against him. No disrespect at all to Indy Panchi or Jake Sawatzky, but on pure old-fashioned local campaign paper, it should not have been close. But it was.

At the surface level, it’s clear what happened: people voted nationally for the Prime Minister they wanted. They paid more attention to the Poll Aggregators and Vote Strategically campaigns than before. (IMHO) Poilievre ran on not-being-Trudeau and people’s fears of their neighbours while Carney ran on not-being-Poilievre and people’s fears of our neighbour to the south. Singh tried (unsuccessfully) to earn the credit he deserved for major new social programs while trying to take up space vacated by the Liberals by running messages about middle-class affordability until the campaign saw the writing on the wall and fell back on also-not-being-Poilievre. But re-imagining last month’s messaging isn’t what I want to talk about, I’m sure they all made sense in their respective campaign bubbles at the time.

Instead, I wonder what it means when community no longer sends a representative to Ottawa, but instead Ottawa sends  representatives for us to choose between. I know there has always been an aspect of the latter in our system, but I wonder what it means to the kind of politics I’m interested in – local organizing, talking directly to people, building community and taking local action and being present. I add this to the ongoing questions about how we even tell our local stories when there is no local journalism, our local conversation is increasingly moderated by social media algorithms, and bad actors seem interested in driving wedges between us for shit and giggles. Can we support our community and scale it outward? Will anyone care? I don’t want to go down the “Western Alienation” route, but how will Ottawa know about New West, and how will our values keep us together as democracy re-structures itself around the rest of the world going to hell?

So last Friday I got together with a couple of dozen people doing good things in this community, or interested in doing those good things, and I hope they will help me in a conversation about what’s next. Because community has to come first.

Anecdotes and Data

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I don’t usually dip into media criticism here – there is an old saying about politicians not pissing off people who buy ink by the barrel – but every once in a while an article comes out that needs a response.

In this case, a predictable Douglas Todd article mentions New West. For those who don’t know him, Todd is Post Media’s go-to guy for anti-immigration and anti-urbanism opinion. As in this article, he often taps Patrick Condon, a UBC Landscape Architect who feigns “housing expert” status by pining for Vancouver’s pastoral past.

The reason I highlight this story is that I wanted to test the central premise – that increased growth and increased density means increased taxes. Todd is an opinion writer, not a journalist, because a journalist would do a bit of research to test their idea against data, while an opinion writer is comfortable relying on anecdotes that fit the narrative he is trying to craft.

I’m not a journalist, but I do love data. So I dug through news articles and budget documents from 20 Lower Mainland municipalities (all but Anmore – because their data was hard to find, and after a bit of digging, I decided meh Anmore) to determine what their tax rate increases have been over the last three years, since the beginning of this council term. I do this all the time anyway because I see it as part of my job. I really should know where we stand in comparison to other cities, even if I am the first to acknowledge, it isn’t a competition. I also took the short term rate of growth data from the Metro Vancouver Population Projections report for 2024. Plot the two against each other, and this is what you get:

I don’t want to get all Stats 101 on you (the R-squared here is 0.07), but that distribution is pretty close to a circle, meaning there is no correlation between rate of growth and tax increases. The highest tax rate increases over on the right in red (Bowen Island, Langley City and Surrey) are cities pretty close to the middle in growth-wise and the three fastest growing cities up top in green (New West, North Van City, and Langley Township) are mid-to-low in tax rate increase.

Another common Todd/Condon argument is that density of population leads to tax increases. Data on population density is easy to find, so here goes plot number 2:

Again, the cluster of four highest-density cities up top (Vancouver, New West, White Rock, and North Van City) are about the middle of the tax increase range, and the tree highest and three lowest tax increase cities are across the spectrum of density, with none of them in the top 4 growth wise. With an R-squared of 0.003, the data here just doesn’t correlate.

The data does not tell the whole story, as it never does in these comparisons, because these are 20 different municipalities with different pressures and priorities. Some cities are intentionally running their reserves down to avoid tax increases, while others are building reserves. Some are making up for previous council underfunding of services, others are paring back on services. Langley City increasing taxes at a high rate doesn’t tell you that they have gone from the lowest-taxed jurisdiction in the region to the third-from lowest, or that West Vancouver at one tenth the density of New Westminster and with the lowest rate of growth in the entire region is still the highest-taxed municipality in Greater Vancouver, despite its relatively modest tax increases in the last few years. There are stories to be told in this data beyond the simple scatter graph; the anecdotes that Todd relies on belie those details.

His narrative is that density and growth are bad, and he will find any ill the public has concerns about, and blame it on density and growth, facts be damned.

The last time Douglas Todd wrote about New West, he lamented there are no cafes on Carnarvon Street, when there are at least 4 places to get coffee in the 500m stretch of Carnarvon he was describing. I just don’t know where Mr. Todd gets his bad information about our City. He sure never calls me.

If you want to read more into the data above, here’s my table. If you find a wrong number, or have Anmore tax data and really want me to include it, let me know!