Tag: Acting Locally

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. Leave a 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 (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.

Happenings

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The spring-summer transition is a busy time, rivaling only September in the calendar challenges in this job. Besides the work, which also ramps up at this time, there are a lot of community events to take part in. It is really hard to report out on it all.

The (almost) regular schedule of Newsletters has been keeping me on track, and i usually talk about events over there, but this week I decided to switch things up a bit. I send my Newsletter subscribers (you can join here – its cost-free and spam-free! and shows up in your inbox about every two weeks) an update on a couple of slightly controversial issues in the City and how they relate to our public engagement efforts, and I’m coming over to this website to do a bit of a picture essay of some of the community events I’ve taken part in since Hyack Weekend that I haven’t had a chance to talk about much out on social media. So without too much writing:

I was honoured to attend the Change of Command ceremony at the Royal Westminster Regiment. I have really enjoyed working with outgoing commander LCol Greg Chan over the last couple of years, and the relationship between the City and the Regiment has been really positive. Incoming commander LCol Clint Uttley is well known in the New West community, and takes over at a time when the Regiment building is refreshed, but the work of the regiment is feeling new pressures and urgency. It was nice to be able to reiterate the utmost support this City has for the regiment and the soldiers and officers who work so hard to be prepared for whatever call comes.
I’m a proud Brow of the Hill resident, and was able to spend a bit of time at the Brow Garden Party put on by the Brow of the Hill Residents Association in the little park known as Cornwall. I even got to meet a few new neighbours, and catch up with a few I hadn’t seen in while.
I’m also an irrationally big fan of Mariachi, In this case, at the New to New West Intercultural Festival and Information Fair at NWSS, hosted by WINS Local Immigration Partnership, with support form the City. At this event hundreds of people met to learn about resources available for newcomers and share supports that can make New West and Burnaby easier places to land, prosper, and raise your family.
The first week of June was Seniors Week in New West, which means i attended several events, from the Sapperton Pensioners 90th Birthday party to the Resource Fair and Social Dinner at Century House (where you can join if you are 50+!). I also joined the Police and Fire Chiefs for panel discussion on Seniors Safety in the City.
June 8th is Philippine Independence Day, and in New West that means the annual raising of the Philippine Flag at Friendship Gardens. This is always a fun event with the singing of national anthems (Canada and Philippines) and traditional Philippine songs, dancing, and a lot of photos!
There were a few other events during the first week of June to celebrate the Pinoy community, including lunches with several groups, all cumulating with the annual Pinoy Festival at Swangard Stadium. This is the biggest Filipino festival in BC, with music, booths, food, cultural displays and celebrations of the diverse indigenous communities of the Philippine islands.
June is Field Trip season as well, which means a few different school groups came to visit City Hall. This is always a fun chance to talk to elementary school kids about what City Hall is and what the job of Mayor is like. They always have interesting questions about me and about the City, and almost universally love seeing the guest book in City Hall signed by people from the Queen of England to the King of Pop. They are inexplicably less impressed by Raymond Burr.
I also took my State of the City address to an audience of slightly older Youth at Century House. The questions here were equally fun, if a bit more challenging as topics from homelessness, climate action, the poisoned drug crisis, and scooters and bike lanes were top of mind for the mostly high school aged audience.
The Queensborough Kids Festival at QCC was a massive success, with hundreds of kids and their families listening to music and seeing performances, doing crafts and activities, and enjoying perfect picnic weather.
The Sapperton Pensioners Hall hosted an incredible spectacle last weekend, with the Vancouver Battlezone 2025 – Hip Hop Dance competition for all ages, with competitors from around North America and even Europe, DJ Oscar from New West and Shash’u from Montreal put the beats down and the crowd was into it. The street dance culture is such a breath of fresh air – youth of all sizes and shapes competing and supporting each other. So much fun to watch.
Finally, the 36th New West Pecha Kucha Night was a rousing success, with 9 people presenting short talks and fast slides on the things they are passionate – from garbage to Metis history to citrus fruits. Even Tasha had fun!

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.

LMLGA 2025

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

A couple of weeks ago, several members of New West Council attended the annual Lower Mainland Local Government Association meeting and conference in Whistler. I try to report out here on every conference I attend, including the Lower Mainland LGA (with a few recent examples from years past available here, here and here), and this year is no exception – sorry for the couple of week wait.

I’ll copy from my own text in one of those earlier posts and remind you the Lower Mainland LGA is an “area association” that operates as a sort of local chapter of the Union of BC Municipalities, and acts as an advocacy, information sharing, and collaboration forum for a large area, stretching from Boston Bar and Pemberton to the US border, including all of the communities of the lower Fraser Valley and Howe Sound. It represents a large, diverse region comprising dense urban centres, resort municipalities, rural areas, and both the majority of BC residents and the majority of BC’s farms. For an organization centered around Greater Vancouver, it has a strong and effective presence from the Fraser Valley and Howe Sound regions, which makes for an interesting rural/urban mix.

The meeting has three components: the typical convention-type workshops and networking sessions (“Learnings”), the Resolutions Session where the membership votes on advocacy issues (“Resolutions”), and the AGM with all the budget-approving and electing-officers fun you might expect (“Business”). I want to keep this to one blog post, so cannot cover all of my take-aways, every session I attended, or all of the resolutions, but here is enough of a flavor of the serious meeting parts.

Learnings:

This presentation was introduced by Charlotte Mitha, who was days from being named the President and CEO of BC Hydro.

I started the meeting attending learning sessions put on by BC Hydro around their new Distribution Extension Policy and some enhanced municipal Collaboration Case Studies. The latter were examples where BC Hydro and local governments have worked together to better coordinate both project planning and project execution to both reduce impacts on each other’s infrastructure and reduce public service disruptions related to major capital works. The DEP changes were informative, as BC Hydro is changing how they charge the development community, homebuilders, and commercial customers for new connections to the power grid. In many cases this means reduced cost for the homebuilder (aligned with provincial mandates to get more housing built), but a bigger load on ratepayers. We will have to review our policies in New West to determine our financial ability to align or adjust our connections finance model with this in mind.

Trish Mandewo is the president of UBCM and presented a report from the Executive.

The Main LGA session began with a discussion of a Recent UBCM report on the impact of on-again off-again tariffs on the Canadian economy, the BC local fallout and, in turn, the impact on BC communities. Oxford Economics was engaged to model impacts at the Local Government level, from revenues to investment uncertainty to inflation. In short, BC is less impacted than other provinces, and the best counter-measure for the government is fiscal stimulus – investing in infrastructure like housing that needs to be built here by domestic workers. For the longer story, you can read the full report here.

Jessica McIlroy (North Vancouver), Nathan Pachal (Langley), Patricia Ross (Abbotsford) and Jennifer Kinneman (Fraser Valley RD) sat on the panel on public engagement.

There was also a good session on local initiatives to improve Public Engagement, with examples from the Fraser Valley, Abbotsford, and Langley City and SFU’s Centre for Dialogue. The latter talked about the history of Community Assemblies in BC, from the Campbell-era Electoral Reform initiative to current work in Burnaby, Gibsons, and New Westminster. Though the discussion was more on the topic of the threats on our institutions posed by democratic recession and attention capitalism, it was nice to see New West’s assembly held up as a small but effective counter to those forces.

The numbers on Social Procurement all come up positive for the local community.

I also enjoyed the session on Social Procurement, another initiative where New Westminster is engaged (we are a member of the BC Social Procurement Initiative along with two dozen other local governments in BC), if not exactly leading. The idea behind social procurement should be familiar to everyone after the conversation of the last three months as large number of Canadians have taken it upon themselves to shop for not just the lowest price, but to find Canadian grown, manufactured, and marketed products – the more local the better – as a way of buffering an external economic threat and building our community at a time when it needs it. There was a longer discussion about “unbundling” as a process through which municipalities can better support local suppliers in this uncertain time, and other case studies from the BCSPI.

Resolutions:

The resolutions session is where local government leaders bring ideas to the membership with the mind to advocate for changes to funding or legislation from senior governments. We had 42 Resolutions discussed, some quickly passed, some debated at length. For many of us, this is the most interesting and exciting part of the meeting, as ideas are put forward, and members line up behind the “pro” and “con” mics and take their three minutes to convince the room to vote their way. It’s good old fashioned convention politics.

Councillor Tasha Henderson taking the lead on people lined up on the “Con” mic while a few others line up at the “PRO” mic on a debate,. Despite the strong debate happening, lots of smiles around the room as folks work through their debate points.

This year New Westminster had the following resolutions up for debate:

R16- Lobbyist Registration
…be it resolved that UBCM ask that the Government of BC introduce legislative reform that either:
enables municipalities and regional districts to use the Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists for BC, or
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 was endorsed by the Executive and endorsed by the Membership on consent and without debate.

R27- Regulating Vape Shops
…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.
This resolution was briefly debated and endorsed by a large majority of the Membership.

R38- Tracking and Reporting of Votes on Motions and Resolutions
…be it resolved that LMLGA begin tracking and reporting how attendees vote on motions and resolutions at its annual convention and submit a motion to UBCM and FCM advocating for those organizations to do the same.
This was the longest and most interesting (IMHO) debate of the session, and I really wish the public had been there to see how elected officials grapple with what were a couple of really hard questions around the cost (and value?) we put on transparency. There were actually two debates going on at the same time: the first was whether elected officials should be tracked on how they vote on resolutions, some feeling it is an important measure of accountability, others concerned it would have a chilling effect on voting at resolutions sessions because of a fear of public or voter backlash (I argued the former along with the three New Westminster Councillors present). The second argument was a technical/cost concern that our resolution sessions are already lengthy, and bringing in an electronic voting method would be expensive and would slow the process down. There were some attempts to amend to reduce this last concern through softening the language asking the Executive to “explore” the idea as opposed to demanding its implementation, but in the end the membership voted to not endorse this motion by a relatively narrow margin.

So New West went 2 for 3 for resolutions, which according to the great political philosopher Meatloaf, ain’t bad.

Business:

The business of the LGA was fairly light – our finances are in fine condition, though the turnout at the LGA meeting this year felt a little low compared to some other recent events. The Town of Gibsons was permitted to join, though they are also members of the AVICC, they share many concerns and issues with their Sea-to-Sky cohort, and saw the advantage of connecting on this side of Howe Sound.


And New Westminster City Councillor Ruby Campbell was elected again to a second term as an At-Large officer of the Lower Mainland LGA executive, following the tradition of Lorrie Williams, Chuck Puchmayr and Myself as recent New West representatives on that executive.

Of course, like any professional conference, there is also an important aspect of getting to spend time with people who are your cohort. Being able to chat with (or even have a beer with) people who have similar or very different challenges as you while trying to do this work. You can share, support and conspire with one another, and realize that there are many great people (along with quite a few not-so-great ones) who respond to this calling, and shared time with them is a valuable resource. And not without its moments of joy.

Lower 12th

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

There was an interesting discussion at Council Workshop on Monday that is worth unpacking a bit. I don’t usually write up Workshop reports here, because these are not typical Council meetings. They tend to be more free-ranging conversations Council has about items that are preliminary or half-cooked; more of a check in and request for direction from Council on an ongoing initiative than final decision points. We talked about spending on Canucks viewing parties, about the Liquid Waste Management Plan, and about next steps on Vision Zero, but the most interesting item was staff checking in with Council on the Lower 12th Special Study Area.

Blue dashed line shows the “Lower 12th Special Study Area” in the City’s Zoning map.
…and in the City’s Official Community Plan land use designation map.

Lower 12th is a (mostly) grey spot on the City’s zoning map, and an equally distinct purple spot in our Official Community Plan maps. It was an area identified during the 2017 Official Community Plan discussions as being unique, and requiring a unique approach. The current OCP updates (being driven by Provincial mandate) and some preliminary applications by developers interested in putting mixed-use residential development here are pushing staff to ask Council how they want to deal with this space.

The background here is that Council back in 2017 saw this space as needing to continue to be a job-generating space. One of the larger policy goals of our OCP is to continue to develop job growth on pace with population growth (as we have managed to do over the last few years, despite the COVID blip). Staff and Council identified this area as being one of the last parts of the “mainland” where job creation is the main land-use driver. It is also unique in the downtwon area in that there are relatively large lots, it is generally flat, and the transportation connections are robust, including being a short walk from a SkyTrian station. This all means there is opportunity here.

Much of the land there is zoned as light industrial and commercial, and with no OCP designation (except “special study area”), significant development would require OCP amendment and rezoning. Although valuable commercial businesses, used car lots are not likely the “highest and best use” of properties in the centre of a dense urban city only a few hundred metres from a SkyTrain station. There is pent up value here that developers would love to release, and the most value in the region right now is in housing.

Up to now, much of the discussion of this area has been how to maintain ultra-light industrial and commercial space, maker space or light manufacturing while adding housing to help finance the redevelopment of an under-perfomring area. But the demands in New West in 2025 are different than those in 2017, and Council is more interested in learning how new modes of retail and commercial land use can be supported. Council also recognizes the increased need for green space in the Downtown and Brow neighbourhoods, need for school space and potentially other institutional spaces, and even need for expanded community amenity space for everything from a new Firehall to city administrative space and community centre space.

With all of this in mind, I opened the discussion at Council asking that we take a bit of a step back, and Council unanimously agreed. Staff is going to do more work on the Parks and Recreation Comprehensive Plan, on our Economic Development plans (Retail Strategy, Employment Strategy), and bring Council some more options around how this unique part of the City might develop differently. That may, or may not, include significant residential density to support redevelopment, and this is where I think Council still needs to give some clear direction in the next little while. But we need to give that direction with a fuller understanding of the land economics and potential for this unique area.

We are not a City that has traditionally said “no” to housing, and have taken seriously our responsibility to meet our Housing Target Orders, and meet our regional commitment to housing need. Our upcoming OCP update will address our 20-year housing need as required by regulation. That said, it is not obvious that we need housing in this location to meet those commitments or obligations, and we certainly don’t need housing at the density envisioned by the early catalyst projects in this area. I don’t think we should preclude, however, the opportunity to leverage truly affordable (non-market supportive or transitional) housing in this area if senior government partners are ready to fund it.

Everyone recognizes we also schools, we need green space, we need institutional, community, and creative space to support the livability of our community, and this “grey area” is a place that may provide unique opportunity to fit more of those needs in one of the denser parts of the City. It was a great conversation at Council, and I’m happy we were all able to come to a pretty clear consensus on this.

More to come!

McBride

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Last night, another New Westminster pedestrian was struck by a vehicle on McBride Boulevard, and died of their injuries. My heart aches for the person who died, their bereaved family, and the driver or drivers involved who are no doubt dealing with their own trauma today. Everyone is harmed by an incident like this, including our First Responders who yet again have to respond to tragedy.

We don’t know the details of this tragic incident, and cannot rush to judgement, but this is the third serious incident involving pedestrians in less than 6 months on this 1km stretch of McBride, all with differing causes and impacts. We need to take action on the common thread.

With that in mind, I will be calling on ICBC to immediately install intersection cameras at two key intersections in New Westminster, and for the Minister of Public Safety to expeditiously act on the calls from UBCM member municipalities to give local governments the authority to install and operate these life-saving interventions, so that our City can take quick action to save more lives moving forward.

McBride Boulevard is a part of Highway 1a, a Provincially-regulated truck route and key connection to the Pattullo Bridge for regional commuters. It is also a local-serving road that connects New Westminster residents to key destinations, including schools, shopping and recreation areas. The intersections of McBride with Sixth and Eighth Avenues are important crossroads in our community for all modes of travel, and New Westminster residents need to feel safe when using them.

Along with this recent spike in serious incidents where pedestrians were killed or seriously injured, residents are sharing their numerous anecdotes of drivers far exceeding the 50km/h speed limit on McBride and ignoring the existing traffic lights in these heavily-travelled intersections with frightening regularity.

We must work to assure it is safe for New Westminster residents to move around in their City. Engineering improvements to McBride are already being considered following a recent Intersection Safety Review. With the upcoming opening of an expanded (and safer!) replacement for the Pattullo Bridge, we will be engaging with the Ministry of Transportation to determine what speed control measures are required to assure there won’t be negative impacts on vulnerable road users as new traffic patterns emerge. However, engineering alone cannot change the dangerous behaviours that are resulting in death and injury on our streets.

This year, the City of New Westminster is launching a Vision Zero task force to bring partners in from all provincial and municipal agencies involved in local road safety to change the culture of road safety in New Westminster, with a vision to put an end to these unnecessary injuries and deaths. In the meantime, we can still take action in areas where we know immediate intervention is possible.

Intersection and speed cameras save lives and reduce injuries. This is why ICBC funds the Integrated Safety Camera Program. With 140 cameras province-wide, it is insufficient to the current need, and local governments are not empowered to install cameras where we identify safety concerns in our communities.

Give us the cameras, and we will save lives.

Three serious pedestrian incidents in a 6 month period should be a wake-up call to everyone. Drivers need to slow down and follow the rules of the road, and governments have to work together to make the engineering and enforcement interventions we know will save lives. I’ll be delivering this message straight to the BC government when I meet with elected officials in Victoria next month.

Stay safe out there folks.

Action

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Full report to follow, but last night Council endorsed a comprehensive package of actions arising from our ongoing Crises Response Pilot Project. After more than a year of coordination with provincial and non-profit partners, consultation with health care professionals and other jurisdictions, and conversations with residents and businesses in the community, staff have developed a road map of actions for the year ahead and beyond. And there is a lot there.

These two overlapping action plans, a Prevention, Support and Transition Services Plan and Supportive Housing and Wrap-Around Services Plan are about addressing the needs of people who are experiencing the three crises with a focus on supportive housing, and addressing the externalities associated with the three crises that impact other residents and businesses.

There are more than a dozen specific actions – too long a list to include here (though you can read the comprehensive report here). This includes introducing a situation table approach to connect people with services, supporting seasonal and temporary shelter capacity, a Health Connect and Resource Centre, improved harm reduction services, working with RCH in discharge planning, expediting construction of supportive housing with wrap-around care and a continuum of care from detox (where needed) to recovery (where appropriate), trauma informed and culturally-safe Indigenous housing, and much more. At the heart of this work is better coordination with and between the existing Assertive Community Treatment Team, the Integrated Homelessness Action Response Team, the Peer Assisted Care Team and the Substance Use Services and Access Team. All of this in collaboration with BC Housing, the Ministry of Health and the Fraser Health Authority.

What we didn’t discuss much last night was the work that out Operations Support Teams are doing to address waste management, hygiene, and Bylaw compliance or the work of our Community Liaison Officers in support of local business and residents who are also impacted by the three crises.

The community has been asking us to act, and we are acting. We are not pointing fingers, we are not punching down, we are not kicking this down the road or giving up in defeat. We are showing leadership. We are working with our partners in the province and supporting our community using evidence-based approaches. We don’t need to re-invent the wheel here, we are applying the knowledge gained and learning from the experiences (good and bad) of other jurisdictions, and are approaching this work with clear purpose. We are putting resources where they are needed, and better supporting the resources already out there, and are advocating ceaselessly with senior government to better fund the long term solutions our community and every community needs: housing and healthcare.

I want to thank the many members of the community who showed up yesterday at Council and those who wrote to Mayor and Council expressing support for this work. I also want to thank the many business owners and residents who helped guide us through this planning process. You asked hard questions and deserve clear answers, and I expect you will continue to hold us accountable. We hear you, and will continue to listen and adapt as the conditions on the ground change. As was emphasized at the Economic Forum last week, we are a community, and only by working together will we assure everyone is supported, kept safe, and able to prosper in this incredible, proactive, compassionate and engaged community.

Media (Social & Anti)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 4 Comments.

I have been asked recently quite a bit about this story, North Vancouver District ending its twitter account, following Twitter itself quitting Twitter and becoming something else entirely. People have asked me when New Westminster is doing this. The short answer is something like this (apologies for my ham-fisted kerning):

Here is a bit of a longer answer.

The City is challenged in getting its stories out these days, as are many organizations. When I was first elected 10 years ago, there were two local newspapers covering New Westminster, each printing two editions a week, with multiple reporters and photographers asking questions, snapping photos and writing stories. Now we have one “paper” that is only digital, and one reporter doing her best to cover it all.

That same decade ago we also had a pretty healthy Social Media ecosystem in New West, with a pretty successful and active local webpaper called Tenth to the Fraser, a few New West oriented blog sites (of which this is probably the last one?), and (mostly) healthy, (mostly) self-policed Facebook and Twitter communities where (mostly) people actually talked about issues in a (mostly) friendly way. As the City’s communications staff began finding new ways to reach out, they waded into that space, probably quite slowly and deliberately as Cities do, recognizing that their role of informing the public is different than most people’s tendency to editorialize at random on the internet.

As social media has evolved, so has the City’s use of it. In part necessary because the City has a responsibility to reach out to the public and inform them on everything from upcoming development public hearings to unexpected changes in the garbage pick-up schedule. Social Media became tool to inform, but was always a poor tool for engagement. The difference is important. It is also necessary because we are in a different political environment in the post-COVID world, and there is no doubt that something broke (or was intentionally broken) in the way we engage with one another on line over the last few years.

So staff are doing a review of the City’s use of Social Media, and will be making changes and reporting back to Council in a future meeting. This is not something I directed (I am, after all, only one of seven on Council, and don’t have the power of Executive Orders), but work staff had already recognized they need to do. This was based on some recent incidents related to the City’s Social Media pages where profane, insulting, and ignorant comments (which is about half of Facebook now) started to require staff to burn midnight oil doing moderation, or simply turn off comments. Alongside this, the remains of Twitter simply lacks the traffic it used to have that made it a reliable means of disseminating information, especially during critical times. BlueSky is also not there (yet?) in usage, and there is a cost-benefit discussion of any Social Media engagement by staff. The shit doesn’t post itself, so if we are posting to 5 people who are already engaged elsewhere, its not a good use of resources.

There are no easy answers right now, because we are in a time of rapid change in how people receive and share information. The City needs to tell stories, when your garbage is missed or a Public Hearing is upcoming, and traditional media has been hollowed out such that local news simply has no capacity to share the volume of info needed, while most social media is at best untrustworthy and at times harmful.

To answer the question above, I enjoy BlueSky because it is not algorithmically driving me to terrible places, and the culture is to apply the block and mute functions generously.  I also personally think the City needs to get off “X.com”, because people should not have to be exposed to the fascist propaganda and hate that the X algorithm clearly pushes into every feed if they only want to keep track of happenings in the City. But City staff are going to deal with this thoughtfully, are talking to their cohort around the region and the province, and are trying to keep the politics out of it as they seek better ways to inform and engage in a really challenging communications environment. Stay tuned. And in the meantime, if you want more news from me, subscribe to my weekly newsletter by clicking here.