Category: Uncategorized

Taxes – 2024

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

We are getting into the 2025 budget cycle in New West Council. We have already done some preliminary fee and charges setting work, but the workshops to discuss utility and tax rates for 2024 start in earnest in late November. It has been a while since I wrote a piece on this page directly about property taxes. There are a lot of myths and misunderstandings about how property taxes work, and I have written a tonne over the years (since even before I was and elected person) to address some of these. As mot of you are new, It is worth repeating some, as zombie ideas pervade the talk of taxes in New Westminster.

Maybe the easiest thing to do is link to those various pieces, but with a caveat: There may be some errors in how I understood the system before I was elected, so don’t pull up an 11-year-old blog post and say “the mayor is lying”. We all learn over time, and I’m happy to see examples of where I had something wrong, this stuff is actually more complicated than people think. Also, the numbers have changed since 2012 (check the dates on some of these posts), but the essential mechanism and comparisons haven’t really (more on that later).

Here’s a long bit about how Mill Rates work and why they are a bad way to compare between municipalities: https://www.patrickjohnstone.ca/2013/01/on-assessments-and-mil-rates.html

A couple of years later, I compared tax charges on a “typical house” here: https://www.patrickjohnstone.ca/2013/01/what-is-mil-worth.html

And then added utility charges: https://www.patrickjohnstone.ca/2013/01/what-about-utilities.html

Shortly after I was elected, I wrote this comparison: https://www.patrickjohnstone.ca/2015/04/talking-taxes-pt-1.html

I also compared how regional property taxes have changed over time here: https://www.patrickjohnstone.ca/2016/02/more-taxes-with-colour.html

And there was also a fun conversation about how tax increases relate to property value increases, with a surprising coda at the end: https://www.patrickjohnstone.ca/2020/07/taxes-2020-part-2.html

I do think it is worthwhile doing an update on our regional comparators. I have repeatedly emphasized this isn’t a competition, because a race to the bottom is rarely a good way to get positive governance results for a community. However, if we are anomalous and doing something so different than our cohort, that’s a good sign we need to check on ourselves, because communities have different scales and priorities, but similar challenges. The general feeling in New Westminster that we are a high-tax municipality is a myth that deserves analysis.

Cities report their numbers in different ways in their public reports, and some make it very difficult to find their actual budget spreadsheets. Fortunately, we are all required to report our finances to the Provincial Government in a consistent way, and the province puts those stats out for public review here: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/local-governments/facts-framework/statistics/tax-rates-tax-burden and all of the data below is pulled form Schedule 707 spreadsheets. Feel free to check my math!

Here is how the property tax burden per resident compares across the 21 municipalities on Metro Vancouver:

You will note that Schedule 707 separates property taxes paid by residents (charged to households) and those paid by other property classes (industrial and commercial, for the most part). The overall tax revenue (from all property types – shown in orange) collected in New Westminster per capita is $1,264 which puts us slightly below the regional average of $1,319 and rans us as the 7th lowest of 21 municipalities. The property tax paid by residential property owners only (shown in blue) is $820 per capita, which puts us a little above the regional average of $785, though we are still the 8th lowest of 21 municipalities.

Overall, we are pretty close to the middle and overall slightly below the middle when it comes to tax burden on our residents.

As the province provides these numbers back through time, we can go back as far as 2005 and see New West has always been in about this position relative to our regional cohort, though it varies a bit most years. Graphically, I have drawn this up to show how we have changed since the last “Wayne Wright” budget of 2014 and today, a good 10 year run to spot trends.

Note the y-axis here isn’t the relative tax level, it just ranks every municipality from 1st (Surrey) with the lowest taxes to 21st (West Van) with the highest taxes every year for the last 10 years. New West has gone from the 10th lowest to the 8th lowest over that time, trading places a few times with Delta and Langley Township, while Coquitlam, Pitt Meadows, and Vancouver have passed us going the other way.

When you add all the non-residential taxes to this, it gets a bit messier, as industrial land and residential land change value at different rates and again, cities have different priorities and opportunities when it comes to balancing resident needs and those of businesses. Here, New Westminster goes form 13th lowest to 7th lowest over the last decade. Note Anmore goes from being one of the highest taxed municipalities in the resident-only chart to one of the lowest here – they simply don’t have the business or industrial tax revenue to reduce the burden on taxpayers. And don’t ask me what is happening in Lions Bay.

There are a LOT of factors that play into these comparisons – whether a City is higher growth or lower growth, the timing of when Cities bring in major new operational costs like a new recreation centre, or how the city manages its capital reserves. Some cities have casinos which help reduce tax burden, we have an electrical utility which does the same. So direct comparisons are not easy to make, or even particularly useful, but it is good to have some data to back up discussions about relative tax loads and to spot trends over time. Of course one might argue that all Metro Vancouver property taxes are “too high”, but I encourage you to see how Toronto, Calgary or Seattle compare, and you might be surprised.

Halfway

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The half way mark in this Council term arrived yesterday, and an interesting two years it has been.

People often ask me if it what I expected, and my honest answer is not really. The job is different than the Councillor job, and there is no doubt we are in a different political environment now than we were two years ago. Folks who followed my path here (Hi Mom!) know that I got into this work without a “politics” background, but a background of working and volunteering in the community. When your mindset to problem solving has always been what works best practically (follow the evidence) and where does the community want to go here (follow the community), the shift to include how will this be torqued for political speaking points (follow the meme) takes learning a new set of skills, and a tremendous amount of patience. Not being a trained political lobbyist, this is a steep learning curve.

That said, there are many successes to celebrate from the last two years, and more clarity on the challenges facing us in the next two. In my mind, there are three big news stories in the first half of the term:

Changing Legislation. The provincial government took some bold action on the overlapping housing crises that have been plaguing our region for a decade or more. There was a lot of talk about this, and some pitched political battles between a few local governments and the province. I didn’t stay out of the fray. I said at the time, and continue to believe, that big changes had to happen, and to my Mayor cohort who were gnashing teeth and rending garments, my response was mostly to say “you really should have seen this coming”.

The path we were on was not sustainable, and as radical as the changes proposed seemed at the time, they are not immediate shifts, but long-term system changes that will take a decade or more to demonstrate their value. I am still concerned that the changes they emphasize the wrong tool (“the market”) to solve a problem caused by overreliance on that same tool. None of these changes will make a substantial change unless we have senior governments significantly increase their investment in building non-market housing. And I continue to push to province on our need for investment in schools, child care, and other infrastructure the needs to come with new housing.

Like in other Cities, the sudden legislative changes caused significant work load challenges for staff. Unexpected and foundational shifts in our OCP and Zoning bylaws are not easy to implement, and our new Housing Division did incredible work, met our regulatory deadlines, but also set a path to a new OCP that fits in our community. We were also fortunate to have secured Housing Accelerator Fund support that overlapped with this work, and allowed us to staff up and bring in additional resources to get the job done.

Opening təməsew̓txʷ. No doubt the opening of the single largest capital investment the City has ever made is big news. The doubling of aquatic and recreation space is an important investment, as our population has almost doubled since the CGP was opened in 1972. As expected with a state-of-the-art facility (filter and water management technology that is first in Canada, being the first Zero Carbon certified aquatic facility) of its scale, there were a few technical teething problems, but they are being managed under warranty, and have not taken away from the popularity of the facility. To find out it was listed by the Prix Versailles as a 2024 Laureate is unexpected and something the City of New Westminster should be proud of.

The big decisions about təməsew̓txʷ were made by the previous Council (including the critical “Go-or-No” decision during the uncertainty of summer 2020 that almost certainly saved the City a hundred million dollars), but the opening of the pool means that a myriad of operational decisions, and finding room in the budget for the new staff compliment, is something this Council oversaw. And now with the Parks and Recreation Comprehensive Plan being developed to envision the next decade of recreation investments, it is an exciting time for asset renewal in the City.

One Man Down: Jaimie McEvoy having a serious heart attack and missing a big portion of this year was also something the framed how Council operated, and the work that the rest of Council was able to get done. It also created some procedural uncertainty around what we do when a Member of Council needs to take a medical leave longer than a few days – believe it or not, we didn’t have procedures around this, nor does the Community Charter, or (as best we can tell) any other local government in BC. We are glad Jaimie is now able to transition back into the job and provide his voice to Council, and do those many other things in the community that keep us all grounded.

Halftime is also a goodtime to measure how we are doing in the goals we set for ourselves as a Council. Fortunately, we have two recent reports to Council on this. At the end of September, we received a report called “Council Strategic Priorities Plan Quarterly Status Update” which outlined staff’s assessment of where progress is on the 5 Strategic Priorities and the 49 action categories, using a traffic light model. The majority of items are “green”, indicating we are on track and meeting our performance indicators. Sixteen are “yellow” – meaning at least one performance indicator is falling behind and there are concerns to address. There are seven items that are “red”, indicating we are not on track, and there are concerns about our ability to achieve them.

The biggest challenge in the “red” category is simply resources: staff time and the ability to finance more staff time. There are also some senior government regulatory and funding issues we need to be more effective in advocating toward. However, progress on track or near track for 86% of our objectives is an excellent measure.

The bigger question isn’t how staff feel we are doing, but how the community feels about it, and the good news here is found in our recently-completed Ipsos Survey of the community. This was discussed in Workshop last week, and you can read it all here.

These kind of things always work better graphically, but the short story is that 88% of New West residents find the quality of life in new Westminster Good or Very good, 77% are Satisfied or Very Satisfied with the level of service they receive from the City, and 78% think they get Good of Very Good value for their tax dollar in New Westminster.

On Council Strategic Priorities, most residents feel are doing a good job on most of the priorities:

Meeting the City’s housing need is the only area where the majority feel we are not meeting community expectations, but traffic safety also comes in lower than most. It is perhaps no surprise that housing affordability, homelessness, and traffic are the biggest issues in the community in the extended survey questions. We know this, we can feel it when we talk to folks, but it is good to have come confirmation that what we hear in the bubble is connected to what is happening in the community. With all due respect to Facebook comments and partisan jabs, it is valuable to have actual random survey data that connects with the community and gets a defensible “mood of the room”. If I can summarize: we are doing well, mostly on target, but most certainly have some work to do. That is a good half-way mark check in.

The one thing we are not doing as well as I would like to celebrating our wins. There has been great foundational work this term – region-leading work – that hardly gets the fanfare it deserves, because it is hard stuff to “cut a ribbon” in front of. Our new Code of Conduct Bylaw and functional Ethics Commissioner; bringing the Electrical Utility and Climate Action together into a new Department of Energy and Climate; amalgamating various service areas into a new Department of Community Services; changes that fast-track Childcare and Affordable Housing approvals; our provincially-recognized and lauded Community Advisory Assembly model. This is progress that builds us for future success.

No resting on laurels, but I do feel proud of the work we have done to date, especially considering significant political headwinds and a surprises like the new provincial housing regulations. On to year three!

Council – Sept 23, 2024

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

September 23rd is one of the most important days in the calendar (Happy Birthday Mom!), but for New Westminster Council it was another day at the office. Not just another day, but a relatively low-key return to Council of Jaimie McEvoy, which is a great thing for us as an organization, and for the community. The Agenda was fairly short, and started with us moving the following item On Consent:

Budget 2025: Fees and Rates Review, Amendment Bylaws
We received memos last meeting on the annual fee adjustments, and discussed them then. Staff has now taken that work and drafted bylaws to implement the changes. These are those 7 Bylaws. Council gave them all three readings today.

The following items were Removed from Consent for discussion:

2024 Capital and Operating Quarterly Performance Report
This is our regular quarterly update on the capital and operational budgets. We are making a relatively small ($0.7M) adjustment to our annual Capital budget to $199.8M, but are not changing the multi-year budget (are just moving anticipated expenditures across years). There are lots of details in these reports about everything from the last phase of work (street front improvements on East 6th Ave) for təməsew̓txʷ starting this fall to where we are in our $4.5Million pavement management plan for the year. Our annual operating budget is trending a bit high in both revenue and expenses, but well within 1% of budget.

Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption Request: New Westminster Interceptor – Columbia Street Sewer Maintenance Project
Camera inspection of sewers generally has to happen at night when sewer levels are low, and we are granting a construction noise Bylaw exemption so this work can happen at night.

Council Strategic Priorities Plan Quarterly Status Update
This is the first term where Council is actively tracking progress on our Strategic Plan on an annual basis. The red-yellow-green stoplight model is a good visual of where progress is being made, and where we are falling short. The overall result is demonstrably that we are getting the work done, though have much more to do. Our major challenges are staffing and workload (which we knew was going to be a challenge from day 1, and managing the work load surprise of the Provincial Housing regulations.
We had a short debate at Council about whether these reports should be annual or semiannual, and council decided the more frequent option was useful.

Interim Density Bonus Policy and Revised Interim Development Review Framework
The introduction of Bill 46 (along with Bills 44 and 47) has thrown a bit of a curveball into how we finance infrastructure related to growth in every municipality in BC. Though the bills are now enacted, the Province has provided cities the ability to use an “interim approach” for pending applications while we get all of our updates done – they don’t want all housing approvals to stop while cities figure out how to make the new regime work. This report provides a proposed “interim approach” for the City to use until last 2025 when a more permanent regime aligned with Bill 46 will be brought in.

Quick recap: Cities used to collect Development Cost Charges and Voluntary Amenity Contributions from development to pay for infrastructure needs required to support population growth, under the philosophy that “growth pays for growth”. The VACs are no longer permitted in the new regulations, though we will still be able to apply Density Bonusing (DB), and have a new tool called Amenity Cost Contributions (ACCs). There is planning, engineering, costing and finance work to do to inform these approaches, so this interim approach will give staff the time they need to get there.

In short, we are going to apply a Density Bonus charge of $50.sq.ft for most development above existing entitlements. For this short period of time until the more permanent financing model is completed, all funds collected by DB will go into a reserve fund earmarked for land acquisition for future City projects (Parks, community amenities, etc.). Developers could also have this charge waived if they provide non-market (“affordable”) housing that meets the standards of our existing Inclusionary Zoning policy.

The debate that arose at Council was whether the City should continue to provide DB waivers to Secured Market Rental (or “PBR -Purpose Built Rental”) development. This is a significant part of how the City has managed to encourage Secured Market Rental to get built in the City, as it fundamentally shifts the economics of Secured Market Rental to make it viable even where strata condos may not be. In a split vote, Council decided to change this policy, which will have some repercussions for how the City develops that I simply cannot predict now. More to come.

Metro 2050 Type 3 Amendment Application: City of Surrey (7880 128 Street)
Cities hoping to amend the Regional Growth Strategy can apply to Metro Vancouver to do so, and some of those applications (“Type 3”) amendment. Asking all 20 municipalities in Metro to comment is part of this process. Staff recommended against this application for a variety of reasons, mostly around erosion of viable industrial lands and potential transportation and GHG impacts.

Honestly, I could go either way on this application. Though it meets many Metro needs around integrating commercial space with other uses, and meets several Metro2025 goals, the uses are as in demand as the industrial use it is displacing, and there will be a significant increase in trees and green space, and there is little anticipated impact on the regional water and sewer networks. In general, I am reluctant to oppose local zoning requests unless there is a clear and notable regional impact (like an earlier Surrey Proposal to expand heavy industrial land into greenspace outside the Urban Containment Boundary), and this doesn’t meet that threshold for me.

In the end, Council decided to defer the decision and ask Surrey if they want to provide us a presentation or more detail than exists in the reports received by Council. We will see this again next meeting, presumably.

Report Back on Council Resolution to Develop a City-Wide Public Toilet Strategy
The topic of Public Toilets is never boring. I’ll extract straight from the report here, because I can’t say it any better:

“Access to public toilets is a human rights, dignity and public health issue, and is essential to facilitating independence for seniors and people living with disabilities and underlying health conditions. It is also often the only option for people who are unhoused, who otherwise must use public and private spaces, which negatively impacts overall community health and wellbeing.”

The community needs better access to public toilets, including the ones we already operate and very likely some new ones we need to invest in building. They are not cheap to build or operate (and as we recently learned) are not without community concern. So we are taking a holistic view to how we enhance the service we have, and will ask the community and subject matter experts in gerontology and disabilities, and come back with some recommendations for us to do better in meeting this vital need.

That all said, Public Toilets are a challenge in most of North America, and I have (believe it or not) read a couple of books that delve into why this is. It’s a long complex history rooted in ableism, patriarchy and austerity, and if you are interested, here’s a really great summary with lots of links for a little bathroom reading

We then had a single Bylaw for Adoption:

2025 Permissive Property Tax Exemption Bylaw No. 8474, 2024
There are some properties in New Westminster whose exemption from property taxes is permissive (not statutory), and this bylaw lists the properties proposed to be exempted in 2025. This bylaw was adopted by Council.

Labour Day ’24

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The days are getting shorter, the evenings are starting to cool off, the PNE rains have come and gone. Though the Equinox is three weeks away yet, most of us are looking back at the summer that was, while everything we put off until “after the break” is starting to loom large in our calendars for September. Labour Day always arrives with a mix of feelings: summer’s last hurrah, excitement of a new school year and a new recreation schedule, imminent pumpkin spice.

Labour Day is not just another day off, it is a day off won by working people organizing and asserting their rights. It is a celebration of battles won, a reminder of the quality of life granted to all working people because of 100+ years of work and sacrifice and solidarity though organized labour. It is also a call to assure that the rights won and economic prosperity driven by fair wages are not lost to the imaginary economies of neoliberal austerity.

Workers continue to build this City, this Province, and this Country. At the same time, right-wing politicians at every level are working to protect the record profits of multinationals at the expense of working people. They may talk a long yarn about “affordability”, but they are conspicuously silent when we discuss the erosion of real wages, or how austerity hurts the very social fabric that makes a society livable. They speak about supporting workers, but their votes tell a different story.

In New Westminster, our community is served every day by the professionalism and dedication of members of CUPE, the IBEW, the NWPOA and the IAFF. In the broader sense, our community is also served every day by the Teamsters who are right now fighting the rail multinationals to protect their hard-earned workplace rights and the safety of not only their workers, but all in their community. Our community is also served every day by the ATU members fighting right now to assure reliable and publicly-operated para-transit service remains available to the most vulnerable people in our community.

I was proud to spend some time up at Edmonds Park today showing solidarity with my friends in the Labour Movement: the leaders at every level, and the folks who show up every day and quietly build community while they provide for their family. The fight goes on. Not just on Labour Day, but every day.

Paving Sixth Ave

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Paving a stretch of road in the City shouldn’t be news-worthy, the City spends something like $4 million a year on pavement management, and there are lots of roads that have seen recent paving, but the stretch of Sixth Ave in the West End has been such a bouncy boulevard of broken seams for a while now that people have been asking me why this key road in the City is so bad.

Now that we have timeline for re-paving, it’s a good time to talk about why it took so long, and why bumpy roads are sometimes running on top of a good news story. The West End has been the location of a lot of infrastructure upgrades over the last couple of years, and some of it is coming to an end.

The big project is the West End Sewer Separation and Watermain Replacement project. The main drive behind this project is replacement of the City’s old combined-flow sewer systems in the area with separate sanitary sewers (wastewater from homes that goes to the sewer treatment plant) and storm sewers (rain run-off from roads that goes to the river). This includes 8.4 km of new sewers, along with 24 rain gardens designed to decrease peak flow runoff. This will result in less storm water going unnecessarily to the water treatment plant for expensive treatment, and less chance of combined sewer overflows in to the Fraser River during storm events. There are also some older water mains in the area that need to be replaced and upgraded, , and it only makes sense to coordinate that work at the same time if you are tearing up the road anyway.

The timing of this project was also influenced by the significant support we received from senior governments to make it happen. The total project cost is $14.3 Million, of which $3.8 Million will be paid off over time by water and sewer utility users. The rest was paid by infrastructure grants from senior government: $5.7 Million from the Federal Government and $4.8 Million from the provincial government.

At the same time, this project overlapped with two major Metro Vancouver projects – the Annacis Island Water Main and the Central Park Water Main, and although only one of these crosses Sixth Ave specifically, the overlap with the bigger West End project was such that timing needed to be coordinated to manage traffic flows, cross-cutting infrastructure, and some excavation works.

Finally, because of new federal requirements, these projects required archaeological assessment work and the development of new chance find protocols for the City. This is a new area of work for the City, but an important step in reconciliation and meeting our UNDRIP commitments. This requires (you guessed it) digging of various test holes to identify where the native soils and underlying non-organic sediments interface, and identification of potential hot spots for archaeologic findings.

Overall, this was about a year and a half of work, and there were many occasions to break pavement during these works: various trenches for sewer or water lines or relocation some existing infrastructure, along with installing access chambers, valves, flow monitors, and tie-ins and the occasional archeological test pit. At some spots poor quality soils needed to be removed and replaced with competent backfill to support the sewer works or roadway above. Over that year and a half, there is really little point in spending a lot of money re-grading the road base and repaving when there are so many more excavations coming. Those temporary backfills begin to pile up, and the road becomes the bumpy patchwork quilt that is Sixth Ave. With the bulk of digging work now completed, the pave is about to begin.

There are a couple of spots that will still need one more excavation, likely in the spring, for good technical reasons. So that means a couple of the intersections are not going to be re-paved this time around, but will see their permanent paving next year. But for most of Sixth Ave from 12th to 20th, a smoother ride is coming soon. Sorry it took so long.

Pride 2024

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

It’s Pride week in New West.

For the 15h year, New West is marking its own Pride Week with a series of events, you can check out the entire calendar here, because it isn’t just about the Street Festival on the 17th.

As the week kicked off with the Flag Raising at Douglas College (the DSU and the College itself have been incredible supporters of New West Pride, and were there to help it grow from a small, one-day walk to a week-long-plus event!), and a flag Raising at Friendship gardens at City Hall, and a flag raising at the NWPD department on Columbia Street. These events have had be thinking a bit more recently about the evolution of the Pride movement (represented in part by the evolution of the Pride Flag), and how recent events, locally and globally, have changed the context of Pride.

I think some of us (yes, there is a cis-normative and euro-colonial bias here) have felt that the “fight” has been won, and Pride is more of a celebration of that than a protest against continued injustice. Right to have your marriage recognized, protection from state discrimination or persecution, the end of sodomy laws, these were big fights worth celebrating. But there are active movements right now here in North America to move backwards on these rights, and to prevent basic human rights and appropriate informed medical care to people who are not cis-conforming, with Trans and Intersex people facing the brunt of the intolerance and hate. The inclusive pride flag reminds us that until we all have rights, none of our rights are safe.

It shouldn’t take the persecution of a cis-gendered woman on an international stage, simply because she didn’t conform to a Eurocentric standard of beauty or sense of gender stereotypes for people to speak out about the harms faced every day by Trans and Intersex people, but here we are.

I am not trans, I am not intersex, but I try to be an ally, and often don’t know what allyship looks like, especially when I have this bully pulpit (that term being used in the strictly Rooseveltian sense). It is one thing to say we will not tolerate offensive of discriminatory speech in Council Chambers, and to take action to limit that even with public delegates, but what about the broader discourse in the City? There are a few vocal anti-Trans activists in New Westminster, and a small number of familiar local Social Media denizens who post discriminatory and often hateful rhetoric about members of the Trans and Intersex community. What is my duty as a leader in the community to call this out? To call these people out?

Should I stay out of it or be more vocal? Would I only be calling attention, adding to their audience or even legitimizing their “alternate view” by daylighting it, considering they are operating in a small bubble? Do I run the risk of being a “bully” (in the literal sense) by punching down at people who are, in turn punching down? Or am I being complicit in my silence when I see it and don’t denounce it every chance I get? What’s the balance?

I have taken to opening this conversation with folks I am chatting with at Pride events, especially to people I recognize from social media. Because I think I need to take some guidance from the community on this, and from the community impacted. What’s my role? Learning, listening and thinking about this is my work this year to exercise my allyship. I’m sure it won’t be a consensus on what my role is in combatting local on-line hate, but I’d love to hear from you if you have an opinion.

FCM 2024

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

June’s been a very busy month with little time to get a bike ride in or write about the things going on. The long weekend couldn’t come fast enough, and I got a nice long bike ride in on Saturday, so here is another piece of catching up, sorry it took a month to get here!

Back in the beginning of June, Councillor Henderson and I attended the annual Federation of Canadian Municipalities meeting in Calgary. I gave a bit of a photo preview here, and people who subscribe to my Newsletter got my summary of the politics part of the program, so that leaves this post as a bit of a broad overview and my highlights from the meeting.

FCM is the annual meeting of local government leaders from across Canada. As Lower Mainland LGA is for the Lower Mainland, and UBCM is for the province of BC, FCM is a chance for us to get together, attend tours, workshops and panels to learn what’s happening in other jurisdictions, share our successes, challenges and opportunities, and do some networking. It is also an opportunity for us to meet with national agencies (the Federal Government, Railways, Ports, etc.) and talk though issues or opportunities.

FCM is not my favorite conference. The municipal-federal relationship is a bit less clear than the municipal-provincial one, and FCM tends to skew towards the rural, with many more representatives from small towns in the Prairies and Ontario than there are form the urban areas with who we share challenges and opportunities. This year provided a couple of unique opportunities to talk to folks about train whistle cessation, the Green Municipal Fund, and some other funding opportunities in the transportation and housing files that tipped the balance towards attending in Calgary. Those conversations, still being preliminary, I will be talking more about in the near future.

Solar Energy
As a member of the New West Electrical Commission and somebody generally interested in the energy transition, I leapt at the opportunity to take a tour of new solar generation projects in the Canadian city most closely aligned with fossil fuels. Like most events at FCM, this tour was also a chance to talk to other people around the nation to hear how their transition plan is going (Kirkland Quebec: 75% of their municipal fleet is electric, but two municipal buildings run on diesel generators because of an underdeveloped electrical grid; Summerland BC has invested not just in solar, but in battery storage for peak shaving), but the star of the show was three installations of new solar power by the City of Calgary.

We saw an example of small installations on the roof of neighbourhood community centres, where the queerness of the Alberta “Micro-Generation Regulation” makes it illegal for a project like this to produce more energy than consumed by the building that hosts it. We saw a medium-sized (1.2M kWh/year) solar-panel-as-parking-lot-shade project, and a larger (5.5M kWh/year) filed array at a landfill site on the edge of town. There were some great learnings here about snow (not much of a problem, except when the warm panels melt it and make the parking lot below a skating rink), hail (they manage golf-ball-sized hail without damage) and design angles (turns out pointing arrays optimally at the sun is less important than you think), and various technical and lifecycle costing details.

In the end, it always comes back to economics, and it is hard to translate the Calgary example to British Columbia. First, their consumer electrical rates are highly variable and typically twice BC Hydro rates, so their pay back times and value as a hedge against price uncertainty do not translate at all. Secondly, Alberta still has fossil fuels as the foundation of its electrical generation base, meaning the GHG reductions resulting from these installations are significant, where in BC this would simply not be the case except ins a few off-grid communities.

Sustaining Growth
A common theme across workshops was the challenge of growth and trying to keep up with infrastructure funding. It was a bit relieving to hear it wasn’t just me, as these pressures are being felt in many regions of the Country, from Saskatoon (14,000 people moved there last year, while only 2,500 new housing units were built, having predictable impacts on homelessness, rents and vacancies) to Toronto (much like BC, the Province is bringing in aggressive legislation to drive local development, but not providing tools to fund infrastructure investment).

Among stories of Exciting! New! Massive! Developments! like Quayside in Toronto, Zibi in Ottawa, and Brighton in Saskatoon, the stories are more about development paused due to interest rates, construction costs, and economic uncertainty, local challenges in funding important infrastructure to support the growth, and a general inability to find the financing room for significant affordable housing among new developments. At the same time, jurisdictions across the country are seeing increased downloading of provincial infrastructure costs (school, hospitals, etc.) to local governments while provincial governments in the same breath blame local governments for increased development costs – one of the few tools local governments have to pay for those downloads.

It’s almost like people are starting to recognize the Market is not going to fix the problem created by two decades of runaway market growth. This is hardly news in Greater Vancouver, but to hear the same lament across the country in cities of various sizes comes with both the comfort of not being alone, and the recognition that this is a national crisis that needs a national response. No amount of digitizing local building plans or using AI to speed up approvals is going to fix it. We need a new financial model.

Municipal Growth Framework
The FCM itself does common advocacy, and they are addressing the infrastructure funding gap by asking for a new Municipal Growth Framework. There were several discussions of this during the conference, and it was referenced by the Federal housing minister during his address to the delegates.

Fundamental to this is a review of the funding model for local governments, dominated as it is by the single tool of property tax. Even the way we tax property is such that it is not intrinsically linked to population and economic growth. The senior governments get most of their revenue from income, sales, and consumption taxes. When the economy grows, their tax revenues increase automatically track along with it, because a growing economy grows incomes, sales, and consumption. Though people have the impression property taxes are increasing at unprecedented rates, they are not increasing anywhere near the rate of the thing they tax – property values:

The MGF also asks for the Federal government to step up their contribution to municipalities by $2.6 billion per year (which is about 5% of annual GST revenues), and to index these contributions to GDP growth. There is also an ask for Provincial Governments to agree to match these federal investments through reform of municipal finance, or allocation of a portion of PST or Provincial income taxes.

Finally, the MGF asks for a comprehensive plan to address chronic homelessness through federal re-investment in non-market housing, and a more coordinated approach between federal and provincial governments.

Alas, at least one of the panels I attended around this need for public re-investment in our communities kept circling back to some apparent need for municipalities to “reduce transaction friction” and “build structures where business can invest [in infrastructure] with certainty”. The neoliberal imperative filtering back into the problem created by 30 years of neoliberal austerity.

Mental Health innovation
This was an excellent panel comparing three different municipal approaches to a nation-wide challenge – addressing the community impacts of the mental health crises. The PACT program in New Westminster was one of the models presented (by the Canadian Mental Health Association), along with EMMIS in Montreal and REACH in Edmonton. The targets and the approaches vary quite a bit. This is most obvious in the funding sources, EMMIA being a $50 Million project over 5 years, with the cost evenly split between the Province and the Municipality, where REACH is about $4.5M Million a year, 100% funded by the Municipality, and PACT is 100% funded by the Provincial government.

In Montreal, there is not just a diversion and crisis support function, but also a function to address “social cohabitation issues between people who share public space”, which more closely parallels the City of New Westminster’s Three Crises Response Pilot.

In Edmonton, there is a close tracking of activity and success, and through 33,000+ responses and 4,000+ emergency service referrals, they have tracked the social return on investment of at least $1,90 for every dollar invested. Montreal has seen similar levels of pay back, though the tracking of health care savings and other externals is surely an underestimate.

Finally, there was an excellent expert panel on protecting the health and safety of municipal workers (included elected officials) at the front line of the polycrisis. This spoke of the tools we need to give staff who are addressing a perceived or real loss of civility and standards of respectful behaviors, on the streets and inside City Halls. There was much discussion of the widespread introduction of Integrity Commissioners, and the challenge they have in addressing egregious behaviors, when so many of our policies and practices are based on an assumption of good faith. It was commonly recognized that good faith was not a universal political or social principle these days, presumably driven by social media and increased anxiety in the pandemic hangover.

As maybe a final take-away, one of the benefits of a meeting like this is the recognition that none of your challenges are unique. Municipalities across the country, in every province, are dealing with similar and overlapping challenges. Talking to our cohort, there are areas of work we need to be very proud of in New West – our aggressive Asset Management Plan, our leadership in PACT and with our Three Crises Response work, while there are areas we can benefit from the experience of others.

LMLGA 2024

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Last week was the Lower Mainland LGA annual conference and AGM. This is the annual convention of local government elected folks from all of the municipalities and regional districts from Pemberton to White Rock and Hope to Bowen Island.  As I have done in previous years (here, here, here, etc…), I like to provide a bit of a summary of what happened at the conference. Over in my Newsletter I provided a bit more behind-the-curtain stuff for those who want to read that kind of stuff, all you need to do is register here to get the juice directly into your mailbox every Wednesday.

The LMLGA has three main public-might-be-interested parts. We have a Resolutions Session where we agree as a group on areas of senior government advocacy, Panels/workshops where we share strategies and challenges around emergent local government issues, and political speeches from provincial folks. Maybe I’ll talk them in reverse order here.

Unlike previous years, the Senior Government sessions were structured as Q&A sessions moderated by members of the LMLGA Executive, instead of stand-alone speeches. I appreciated this change, especially as it is an election year, and we didn’t want to hear stump speeches, we wanted to hear their party’s approach to issues that matter to our members.

Like previous years, Sonia Furstenau seemed to connect best to the audience. She worked in Local Government, but also has that third-party opportunity to speak truth about power (something I frankly think the Federal NDP could do more of). One favourite (paraphrased) quote: “You don’t run for MLA with the greens if power is your motivating goal.” A policy wonk after my own heart, she spoke to the flaws in the current Carbon Tax regime, issues with the Water Sustainability Act, and the dismal state of the current political discourse, which is eroding much of the ability to get the actual work of governing done.

Also like previous years, Kevin Falcon sometimes missed the mark in ingratiating himself to the crowd in the room. Local government elected trying to get housing built don’t need to be told “bureaucrats” are the problem, or that his experience as a for-profit developer is all BC Housing needs to fulfill our affordable housing needs while suggesting taxes are the reason the $400k townhouses he built in Surrey are now selling for $1M. He also, unknowingly I suspect, countered Fursteneau’s message around public discourse by suggesting “Decorum is great when you are in government, not great when you are in opposition”, following up with a passionate defense of fearmongering as political rhetoric. Meanwhile, there was no representative from the BC Conservative Party at the conference, so I guess he owned that space.

Anne Kang spoke of the work she did over the last year-and-a-bit as Minister of Local Government, including extensive touring around the province to meet with as many leaders of local governments as possible, and her championing for the turning over $1 Billion of infrastructure money directly to Local Governments through the Growing Communities Fund. She also emphasized the increased support her government is providing to Libraries across the Province. She spoke to challenges she hears from local government on the overlapping homelessness, poisoned drug, and mental health crises, though didn’t really get into the discussion about new legislation coming from the Ministry of Housing that is challenging many communities. She was light on new promises (with two more weeks in this session and an election pending), but was clearly very engaged and informed about the issues Local Governments are facing.

There were several Panels this year, but I found the first one the most interesting. The topic was “Public Safety Challenges in Public Spaces”, and I can imagine the direction of the panels shifted several times over the last few weeks, as the conversation province-wide around decriminalization has evolved. The panels was deftly (and very entertainingly) moderated by Andrea Derban from the Community Action Initiative. Her framing of the challenge really set the discussion up: we are at the Moral Panic phase and need leaders to push past that; This is not an OD crisis, it is a toxic drug supply crisis and there are material differences; the data is crystal clear that safe supply is not causing deaths; the people who are dying are not who you first think, and that flawed assumption is in the way of us saving lives.

The panelists included a police member from Abbotsford talking about their revised approaches to addressing mental health and addictions issues as health issues, not criminal ones, and collaboration with businesses being impacted by people seeking shelter. A Fire Chief from Surrey talked about their Second Responder program (which I wrote about New West adopting here) and signs of its success. Councillor Nadine Nakagawa spoke of our Three Crises Response Pilot and other work the City of New Westminster is doing. My phone lit up when she was speaking about it with texted questions from our colleagues about the Pilot, from how we paid for it to how we are measuring outcomes.

There were some take-aways around the need to collect data on measures we are taking – New West again providing the example of our Second Responder and Pilot Project both include collaboration with academics to measure outcomes). But it was Andrea who told us we need to tell better stories (“compassionate, evidence based, action-oriented”) about who is being impacted, and what success looks like.

The resolutions session is where resolutions from member jurisdictions are put before the membership for support. If endorsed, they effectively call on senior government for anything from policy changes to financial support for various causes. This year there were 60 Resolutions considered (you can read them all here), including the following 6 submitted by New Westminster:

R3- Additional Funding for Overdose Prevention Sites:“…be it resolved that UBCM ask the Province of British Columbia to increase funding for Health Authorities to augment existing, and to open new, supervised consumption and overdose prevention sites, including related inhalation services, across British Columbia and including local governments which do not currently offer this service to residents”.

This was endorsed by the LMLGA executive, and then endorsed by the membership On Consent. This is actually a pretty significant and clear message to the province that the municipalities of the Lower Mainland want to see harm reduction in every community.

R4 – Eliminating Barriers to Publicly-Owned and -Operated Home Care Services and Long-Term Care: “…be it resolved that UBCM ask the Province to eliminate financial and accessibility barriers by investing in more publicly owned and operated and not-for-profit home care services and social supports required to age in place, and by further investing in publicly owned and operated and not-for-profit long-term care to ensure seniors are well supported in the continuum of care.”

This resolution was endorsed by the executive, but was pulled from consent to facilitate an attempt by some members to amend it to also call for more public funding for for-profit care providers, which was wisely defeated when folks argued effectively that the intent of the motion was to build capacity in the public provision of seniors care, as the Seniors Advocate is asking for. The main motion was then supported by membership.

R11- EComm Governance Review: “…be it resolved that UBCM ask the provincial government to engage local governments in a comprehensive review of the governance structure and delivery model of 911 emergency call taking, related non-emergency call taking, and emergency dispatch services across BC with a goal to assure reliable, affordable, and sustainable services for all communities”.

This was also endorsed by the LMLGA executive, and then endorsed by the membership On Consent. It’s clear that much of the province is frustrated by escalating EComm costs and continued failure to meet the expectations of the community. The clear support for this motion is perhaps a bit surprising because EComm currently belongs to Local Governments, and this could be interpreted as us asking the Province to step in and take the management of it over – to upload the problem.

R34 – Creating Safer Streets for Everyone with Intersection Safety Cameras: “…be it resolved that LMLGA and UBCM call on the provincial government to expand the implementation of speed and red light intersection safety cameras in local governments across BC, prioritizing intersections near schools and those with a high rate of crashes that result in injuries or fatalities as identified by ICBC, and that the provincial government provide all revenue from additional speed and red light cameras to local governments as grants to be invested in implementing local and safety improvements;
And be it further resolved that the LMLGA and UBCM request that the provincial government allow BC local governments to install speed and red light cameras at their own cost and set and collect fees directly to be earmarked for road safety improvements”.

This motion was debated well by the members, as was a similar one from the City of North Vancouver that didn’t include the mention of school areas. It was supported by a healthy majority of the members, which reflects the current public opinion about speed and intersection cameras – the majority support them.

R48 – Allowing Local Governments to Apply Commercial Rent Controls: “…be it resolved that UBCM ask the Province of British Columbia to provide local governments with the legislative authority to enable special economic zones where commercial rent control and demo/renoviction policies could be applied to ensure predictability in commercial lease costs, so local small businesses and community-serving commercial tenants can continue to serve their communities”.

This motion was also well debated by members, after being motivated by Councillor Henderson. In the end it was supported by a thin majority of the members. I might expect this one will not do as well at UBCM, but that is some advocacy work we need to do.

R56 – Creating a Ministry of Hospitality: “…be it resolved that UBCM ask the Province to create a Ministry of Hospitality to support and engage restaurants, food service vendors and the hospitality sector generally by acting as advocates within government for policy development and reform”

This motion arose out of advocacy from the BC Food Service Association’s “Save BC Restaurants” campaign, and lead to an interesting debate, but was ultimately defeated by a slim majority.

One more bit of voting news was that Ruby Campbell was elected as a Director at Large of the Lower Mainland LGA. This continues the tradition of Lorrie Williams, Chuck Puchmayr, and myself in representing New Westminster on that executive.

Finally a major part of this, like any conference, is the opportunity to network with leaders from around the region. We can laugh about our horror stories with the only cohort who really understands, learn from each other by sharing successes and challenges, and remind each other that we aren’t alone in this work. As it seems the media is filled by stories indicating (to quote my friend Mary) “we are not always sending our best”, it is great to connect with some of the most dedicated, serious, and accomplished people doing this work for all the right reasons.

Mixing Business

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

As a follow-up to my Council report from last week, there were two items I promised to circle back to, like how I circled back to the preposition at the end of that sentence.

English teachers will find that last sentence fun. Hi Mom!

The two items spoke to supporting local businesses and streetscapes. We had a report on Bill 28, and the opportunity for us to explore whether Bill 28-style property tax relief might be a useful tool for our community, and we had a motion from Councillor Nakagawa to review our development and zoning policies to better support local community-serving small businesses. Both of these linked back to some recent chatter in the community around street-level commercial spaces, with people wanting to see more experiential retail and entertainment, and less service and office, to “liven up” the street (I got through all of that without mentioning dentists once). So I want to unpack each item a bit and discuss not just what a city/council can do, but more about the varying ideas about what a city/council should do.

Bill 28 – Property Tax Relief Legislation
I have written quite a bit over the last 9 years about how property tax works (examples here, here, and here). This new legislation changes this a bit for one category of properties, allowing us to provide some short term (5 year) property tax relief for some commercial property owners.

To review, the City sets tax rates, but the tax paid on property is based on BC Assessment Value, determined by “Highest and Best Use” – not necessarily the current value of the property, but the value the property would have if the owner sought to maximize that value. The change with Bill 28 is pretty specific, limited to properties where the “Land-value ratio” greater than 0.95, which means the value of improvements on the land (the existing building) is less than 5% of the total assessed value of the property. Where it is flexible is in how the local government can apply tax relief, and how much.

Some folks would suggest any tax relief for business is good, but we need to be clear this tool provides us a potential tax shift – giving one type of taxpayer some relief transfers that taxation to other taxpayers – not an overall decrease in the revenue on the part of the City. We are taking a more cautious approach here, because not only are there more devils in details, there are likely perverse incentives in there as well.

There is a general feeling that high lease rates and tax rates make it harder from small neighbourhood-serving business to set up shop, and that is surely a factor. The diversity of business types on Twelfth Street is almost certainly a product of low per-foot lease rates. So one part of the thinking here is that if the lease cost (including taxes) was lower, we would more likely get smaller, more diverse, and more interesting business types setting up. Instead of dentists (there, I said it).

One potential challenge with the Bill 28 approach is the recognition that property owners pay taxes, not business owners. Sometimes a business also owns the property they operate out of, but for most small neighbourhood businesses in New West a lease is paid to a landlord. It is the common practice for the landlord to pass the property tax bill directly to the tenant (through “triple net leases”), but there is nothing in Bill 28 or elsewhere that forces a landlord to pass any tax relief savings down to the small business person, so a tax incentive may not get to the small business types we are trying to support, and might actually make the situation worse for the business owner, but better for the Landlord. It may also be a disincentive to upgrading, repair, or improvement of marginal buildings, reducing the attractiveness and safety of commercial spaces.

The City of Vancouver is the only City that has taken on a Bill 28 approach, and we are going to hope to learn from their example as staff bring some data and analysis back to council to see if this approach can be made to help. It may be a useful tool, if we can wield it creatively enough.

Ensuring that ground level retail spaces in new developments prioritize community-supporting businesses and organizations
This motion from Councillor Nakagawa was a bit more all-encompassing, and completely within our jurisdiction. It was asking that the City “review and refresh current policies relating to ground level retail” and “develop policy to ensure that future ground level retail spaces in new development are built to prioritize community-supporting businesses and organizations in alignment with the retail strategy.”

When people ask what Council can do to assure a (insert type of business you want to see) opens in a specific location instead of a (insert type of business you don’t want to see), I often retort with the question: are you sure you want to give me the power to do that?  Council has some power to restrict different business types through zoning, but do you really want 7 elected people picking and choosing the businesses in your downtown? Are we the wisest ones to choose this, or is this somewhere we need to ask “the market” to address? Clearly there is a huge spectrum between completely hands-off and being so prescriptive that we end up with streets full of unleased spaces because Council of the day fails to understand the market. Personally, I would love to see a small hardware store downtown. But we had one for a few years, and it was really great, but it was not supported enough to stay open and now you can buy discount shoes in that spot. The reasons for that specific store closing may be complex and global (as they were part of a nation-wide chain that changed its focus and has now closing many Big Box offerings across Canada as well). The City saying “only hardware stores here” would not change those global forces, and we would likely have an empty space in its place, and angry landlord, and a decaying business district. That said, we do exercise limited powers to restrict uses like cannabis or liquor stores (for example) to address perceived or suspected risks.

Nothing against dentists, but mine is Uptown and on the second floor, which is probably a better space for the kind of use that doesn’t really “activate” the street or lead to good walking-around experiences. One thing we can all agree is that a street is more fun to live near and shop on if we have a variety of interesting retail and service experiences along it. As part of our Council Strategic Priority Plan, we talked about supporting a people-centered economy, supporting retail areas that address the needs of the local community.

When Starbucks made a global decision to close thousands of stores including Columbia and 6th, people lamented this loss. Since that time, three new coffee shops have opened downtown, and the old Starbucks location is a popular Italian deli. There are literally dozens of businesses Downtown that were not there at the beginning of the Pandemic, and there is not a lot of lease vacancy. By many measures, the business environment Downtown is pretty healthy. Still, the community is engaged in a conversation about retail mix, though it’s not clear how the community wants to get there.

There are two policy areas inherent in this motion we can look at. We can look at how we approve new street-facing spaces in new mixed use developments like 618 Carnarvon, where a brand new dentist office is opening in a space where folks might have wanted to see a coffee shop, or boutique, or other more experiential use. The other is to look at policies that rezone existing spaces to limit the variety of uses possible when businesses turn over, much like we do with liquor stores. To traditional businesses this sounds like a lot of “red tape”, and may result in an incredibly complex zoning bylaw that makes it harder for any business to find the right space. One can imagine this resulting in any new and innovative business types wanting to set up in town having to come to Council to ask permission, because their specific type that doesn’t fit the Bylaw. We went down that path with a video-game arcade that wanted to serve alcohol – and it was a massive pain in the ass for staff, a difficult challenge for the business owner who felt unsupported, and left everyone feeling soured. And that was for a business idea that that everyone on Council liked!

There is a guy I have had lunch with (Hi John!) who suggests the City should simply open more restaurants downtown. I don’t think it is that simple, because I don’t know what the role of the City is in doing that. Restaurants are permitted in almost every business storefont on Columbia Street, there are no rules or regulations preventing them from opening now. At the same time, we cannot force the landlord to kick out the current tenant and put in a restaurant. Reducing taxes of set-up costs will not have any positive effect on a restaurant business model that it doesn’t equally have on a nail salon or dog grooming business model. Further, we are limited by Section 25 of the Community Charter (the part that says it is illegal for a City to “provide a grant, benefit, advantage or other form of assistance to a business”) from directly incenting a specific business owner to do a specific thing. We could, I guess, buy up the land and start leasing it to the business types and business owners we like, but I’m not sure that is the best role of a City government.

All this to say, there is an interesting bit of policy work we can do here, but we are also limited in our powers by legislation and common sense. This also speaks to and augments existing work we are doing around the recently-adopted Retail Strategy.

Council – April 8, 2024

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Back at it after Spring Break and Easter and all of those things, we had a full agenda on Monday, but got through it pretty quickly, partly because we got through this many things On Consent:

Active Rehabilitation Lease Agreement at 65 E. Sixth Avenue (təməsew̓txʷ Aquatic and Community Centre)
Part of the new TACC is a lease space for a commercial physiotherapy business. This is not uncommon in community recreation centres, drives a bit of revenue for the City, and provides a service for the community. The City is regulated in its interactions with private business, so we did a public call for proposals, and staff selected a successful lessee for the spot. This is the real estate agreement, with rates aligned with industry (and a little bit higher than we anticipated in the early part of the term, indicating we had a motivated lessee), and the tenant paying for fitting out of the site. This is a 5 year lease with an option to extend for a second 5 year term. Getting excited about getting this place open!

Appointment of Corporate Officer
The Corporate Officer is a legislated position in the City that has some very strictly defined legal authorities. Our previous CO was “scooped” by another local government last year, and we spent some time doing a proper regional search during which time we had a couple of experienced Interim COs to cover off. We are now appointing a new CO with significant experience that we “scooped” form another local government, as is the nature of the industry right now. So you will note a new person sitting to my right during Council Meetings, and helping guide me through Roberts Rules and the Procedures Bylaw, along with doing many statutory duties that fall on the CO. Welcome, Hanieh!

Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption Request: 230 Keary Street
The last building at the Brewery District is a hole in the ground, and they are going to put a tower in, which for traffic disturbance reasons is better to happen on the weekend in this location, which requires a Construction Noise Bylaw exemption.

Crises Response Pilot Project Update
This is an update on the implementation of the Crisis Response Pilot Project. I don’t need to delve too deep into what this is, you can read about when we approved it here, and get more details on the City website here. Staff are also doing outreach to the Downtown Residents Association and the downtown businesses about this, and I have had a few very good meetings of late with downtown businesses about their experiences, and ways we can assure this response makes visible change to their situation. The big take-away is that the community supports this approach and this work. I am still chagrinned that some on Council would rather make political hay about the challenges facing downtown businesses instead of voting to support the work to address these challenges, but that’s the situation we are in.

Part of the commitment we made to the community is to report out on this pilot on a regular basis, and this is that report. As this program is just being launched (we had to approve budget, then do some hiring and training to set the program up, so it will not be fully implemented until the summer) so this is more a report about the progress on setting up than on the results. We are also receiving great support from Fraser Health and other partner agencies. More to come!

Metro 2050 Amendment Application: City of Maple Ridge
This is inside baseball, but a Type 2 Amendment of the Regional Growth Strategy requires consent from the member municipalities of Metro Vancouver. This is a change in the configuration (usually an expansion) of the Urban Containment Boundary, a planning tool designed to limit sprawl into greenfields and ecological lands, and to concentrate growth in higher density for a variety of good regional planning reasons. Maple Ridge is asking to reconfigure the boundary in an area called Yennadon Lands (which to people like me only vaguely aware of Maple Ridge geography, falls under the category of “out there by the Black Sheep Pub”). This would move the UCB line, add about 18 hectares to job-generating land use (light industrial) where it is currently rural residential, and permanently protect 7.4 Hectares of ecologically sensitive land which is currently designated rural residential.

I serve on the Metro Vancouver Regional Planning Committee, and we had a good review of this proposal, and approved it going to consultation, and Metro Vancouver planning staff see this as an acceptable tradeoff. Therefore Metro is asking New West (and the other municipalities) to comment, and Council agrees unanimously that we don’t oppose.

Parcel Tax Roll Review Panel
This is one of those procedural things we do that almost fall under the category of ritual as the self-defined areas of the BIAs in the City are approved by Council so that the BIA levies can be assessed and we can collect money from the businesses to fund the BIAs. Here we appoint the panel (ourselves), next we sign the review.

Zoning Bylaw Text Amendment: 812 Twentieth Street – Bylaw for Three Readings
The property owner of a commercial building on 20th Street wants to shift to a liquor store. Our zoning bylaw only permits this use adjacent to a Liquor Primary location, and that is not the case here, so a zoning Amendment is required. They need a provincial Liquor Retail license, which they plan to relocate here from the Interior of BC because the Province hasn’t been handing out new licenses since the 1990s. Council agreed to give this Three Readings.

The following items were Removed from Consent for discussion.

2023 Filming Activity and Proposed Updates to Filming Policies and Procedures
New Westminster hosts a fair amount of filming for TV and movies. This drives a bit of revenue for the City (almost $300k in permits with about $50k surplus in 2023), and a bit of income for residents and businesses that host filming on their property. There are also hundreds of New West residents who work in the film industry. Tough the Hollywood Strikes of last year put a dent in this activity after a peak in 2022, it is back in force this year.

Staff are suggesting some minor changes in our procedures and Bylaws around filming to align better with regional and industry standards, mostly around special effects and safety.

Bill 28 – Property Tax Relief Legislation
This is an interesting development. The City sets tax rates, but the tax paid on property is based on BC Assessment Value, determined by “Highest and Best Use” – not necessarily the current value of the property, but the value the property would have if the owner sought to maximize its value. This could be thought of as an incentive for property owners to maximize their property value, or conversely to not let property value degrade. That said, there is a bit of a disconnect in commercial properties, as the owner of the property doesn’t necessarily pay the property tax, but passes it on to the lessee through a Triple Net Lease. The Province brought in Bill 28 which allowed Municipalities to direct property tax relief to commercial properties that see a large increase in value due to “development potential” for up to 5 years. I will write up a follow-up on this, but we are going to get staff to investigate if this approach is helpful for New West.

Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption Request: 78 Jamieson Court (Metro Vancouver Glenbrook CSO Gate Replacement)
Metro Vancouver will be doing some important sewer maintenance work near the top of Glenbrook Ravine this summer. This application is for a Construction Noise exemption (granted) but the bigger story buried in here is that the top access to the Ravine will be closed for much of the summer. This will be pretty disappointing for much of the neighbourhood, as it is a valuable public space for residents. The City asked Metro Vancouver to do more analysis last year to see if this work could be done safely while maintaining access to the trail, or if an alternate trail could be built, but we were not able to engineer an acceptable solution. So closure is the only responsible path. Council approved this, but also asked to assure that Metro Vancouver let people know this was coming through appropriate signage prior to the work proceeding.

We then did some Bylaw Reading, including the following Bylaws for Adoption:

Zoning Amendment Bylaw No.8429, 2024 and Housing Agreement Bylaw No. 8434, 2024 (145-209 East Columbia Street)
These Bylaws to permit 6-storey building with at-grade commercial, second-story office use, and 99 secured market rental housing units was adopted by Council. New PBR for Sapperton!

Zoning Amendment Bylaw (1032 and 1036 St. Andrews Street) No. 8402, 2023
The Bylaw that rezones this assembly for a 12-unit townhouse development was adopted by Council. More Missing Middle for the West End!

Zoning Amendment Bylaw (Miscellaneous Amendments) No.8436, 2024
This Bylaw that made a few “housekeeping” changes to language of our zoning bylaw to correct administrative errors, remove redundancy, and such was approved by Council.

We then had a single Motion from Council:

Ensuring that ground level retail spaces in new developments prioritize community-supporting businesses and organizations
Submitted by Councillor Nakagawa

Whereas the City of New Westminster has developed a retail strategy; and
Whereas community-serving businesses are essential for meeting our climate goals
Therefore be it resolved that the City review and refresh current policies relating to ground level retail to ensure that they are responsive to current market forces; and
That the City develop a policy to ensure that future ground level retail spaces in new development are built to prioritize community-supporting businesses and organizations in alignment with the retail strategy.

There is some chatter in the community around, and I cannot simplify this more: “why do we have so many dentist offices”? Lack of water fluoridation aside, there are complex economics around how service retail operates in the community, and it doesn’t seem the situation now is delivering the kind of streetscape uses that the community wants. I’ll write a longer post about this after, but for now, I’ll just say that there are two discussions to have: what can the city/council do about it, and what should the city/council do about it? This motion, which was endorsed by Council (though not unanimously, which is notable for notable reasons), will allow staff to guide us into those conservations and hopefully develop some useful policies.

And one late addition of New Business to the Agenda:

88 Tenth Street (Columbia Square)
Council read and approved the following resolution:

That Council direct staff to work with the applicant for 88 Tenth Street (Columbia Square) to
a) Revise their proposal for the 7.2acre site, as outlined in the Council Report of June 12, 2023, to include 20% secured market rental, a non-profit childcare, and 0% affordable rental units or related land dedication, in exchange for which the future density bonus charge would apply across the entire site, generally consistent with the City’s Interim Development Application Review Framework, and which Council could use to fund future affordable housing development in the City; and
b) Prepare a basic zoning bylaw to authorize that revised proposal for consideration of Council within 2024, and which secures requirements to complete a master planning process prior to construction.

There is quite a bit to unpack here, and if you love the details, you should look at our June 12, 2023 Workshop Agenda available here. or even watch the video there, and see what the proposal for Columbia Square was wat that time. There has obviously been some work since then, and the landscape has shifted a bit with the new Provincial housing regulation that both provides certain density by right at Transit Oriented Areas (which clearly applies to this site, being within 400m of New West SkyTrain Station) along with other restrictions on how cities charge development for amenities and other costs.

Though we have only seen a preliminary application, and will have to consider rezoning once more work has occurred and zoning bylaws are developed, we are sending a signal about expectations around major amenity contributions. I don’t want to go too deep into this, as there will be details worked out as we move forward and I don’t want to pre-empt or fetter the rezoning conversation, but this clearly falls short of our Inclusionary Zoning policy when it comes to Affordable Housing, though time will tell how we can leverage affordable housing development out of the density bonus structure. A few on Council were not happy with that approach, and (though I should not speak on their behalf, so this is only my read) felt we should be getting more commitment for affordable housing out of this site.

All that to say, much more to come here, and I look forward to seeing how this moves forward.

With that, and perhaps the worst rendering of Happy Birthday ever committed to tape for one of our members, we were done for the night.