Tag: Acting Locally

Ask Pat: 8th Street

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

Pedestrian asks—

What is the future of 8th Street? Reading through the Master Transportation Plan I believe that I’ve spotted some inconsistencies. For example, on page 90 8th St is noted as a Great Street and that with a consistent 30 metre right of way it could become four lanes from Downtown to the Burnaby border. There is also discussion of potential bus priority access. However I don’t see any other reference in the MTP to 8th Street being a Great Street. Further, 8th St is classified as a Local Collector. According to page 136 Local Collectors should only be two lanes.

Can you provide more information that would correct these inconsistencies? What does bus priority access mean anyhow?

For what it is worth my personal perspective is that the current width of 8th St creates an artificial barrier in the Brow of the Hill neighbourhood. Further, the absence of a boulevard on the East side of the street and no street trees make for a lacklustre pedestrian environment. I’d hate for the street to be widened, making the problem even worse. With Fraser River Middle School opening up this fall, and developments at 4th Ave wrapping up around the same time, now is the perfect time to clarify direction.

In the short term: not much. There is no capital plan or budget right now allocated to changing the streetscape of 8th Street. There will be a few crossing improvements (Dublin, 7th Ave) and some local improvements as development occurs (like in front of Fraser River Middle School), and these will be informed by the long term vision provided by the Master Transportation Plan.

There is a typo on the MTP that may be causing some confusion. The reference to 8th Street being a “Great Street” on page 90 is wrong, as the Great Streets map on Page 108 and the entirety of Section 4.4 make no reference to it. This makes sense, as aside from a few short stretches, there is little retail on 8th Street, and there is little chance of it becoming a primarily commercial corridor like 6th Street or the other identified “Great Streets”.

As you point out, 8th St. has some other characteristics that don’t necessarily match the designated use. In the MTP it is designated as a City Collector road, but it has many of the characteristics of an Arterial, although the street varies in use along its length. The disconnect between how the road is designated, how it is designed, and how it works, is shown on the following table (all info from the MTP):8thtable

So outside of the MTP, recognizing there are no immediate capital plans changing the road, and to your point of it not being a very friendly road (dare I say “pre-Stroad”?) right now, what can we envision for the future of 8th St.?

lower8th
Google Street View, no permission sought.

The portion below Royal is exceptionally wide (more than 20m curb-to-curb in some spots), and is predominantly a pedestrian space, despite various attempts to corral and displace pedestrians to “get traffic moving”. This is the only part of 8th that has traffic volumes within the “City Collector” ideal – less than 8,000 vehicles per day. Everything about this tells me we should be reducing the driving width of this street, and improve the pedestrian realm. The massive daily flow of students between the New Westminster Station and Douglas College shouldn’t be crowded on a narrow sidewalk while waiting for pedestrian lights to change. The City should not have built the Anvil Centre (or allowed Plaza88 to be built) in such a way that parking garage entrances and loading bays disgorge into what should be a pedestrian-first place, but that ship has now sailed. This doesn’t mean we can’t think about re-allocating underused road space and shifting priorities to active users.

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more Google Street View, not sure how legal this is.

The portion between Royal and 6th Ave is essentially residential, although traffic counts here are higher. It operates as a true “collector” in the sense that the adjacent local roads dump traffic onto 8th as the route to the regional road system (be that Royal Ave, Canada Way, or wherever). The 15-m curb-to-curb width is still pretty wide for a two-lane road, and parking is both free and plentiful. A few curb extensions at important intersections (3rd Ave, 5th Ave) help improve pedestrian safety, but the open road feel definitely encourages travel speed greater than the regulated 50km/h, which combined with expansive asphalt and a general lack of trees, adds to the “barrier” feel you mention. There are some planned improvements around the new Middle School, but I doubt there would be any desire or political will to expand this road to 4 travelling lanes. The traffic doesn’t warrant it, and the impact on the livability of the community would be profound.

upper8th
but hey, Google just took these photos without asking permission…

The portion between 6th and 10th is harder to peg. The lanes are a bit chaotic, parking intermittent, and at more than 20,000 vehicles per day, the traffic is pushing the upper limits of what an Arterial should be handling. This is one of the main connections from the Brow and Uptown to the regional road network (Canada Way), so I guess it isn’t surprising that the end of all the collectors is a logjam. At the same time, it has a High School, one of our most frequented parks, some high-density residential areas, and our largest commercial centre. It is crossed by two Greenways and is frequented by a large number of seniors. It is a mess, and likely the most Stroad-like road we have in New West, but solutions here are difficult to find. There will be re-writing of the interface with NWSS when the new school is built, but I don’t see much other relief any time soon, mostly due to vehicle load.

Finally, Bus Priority Lanes are just that: lanes where B-line type buses can have priority over traffic uses, although not specifically bus-only lanes, as they may share space with right-turning cars or general traffic in some locations. They come in several flavours, but are not common in urban areas of the Lower Mainland. Highway 99 has them approaching the tunnel, and East Hastings through Burnaby has a version of this. They might be considered in the future for 8th if traffic loads increase to the point where congestion seriously impacts bus operations, but I do not think we would consider installing more asphalt to make them happen.

ASK PAT: Car allowance

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Mark asks—

Hi Pat

A question regarding the recent council compensation recommendations, specifically the car allowance. Given the city and council’s vocal support for increased transit spending, reducing traffic in the city and it’s occasional touting of how great the city is in terms of transportation mode share, why would council (well, you at least since we’re on ask Pat) support a flat payment for automotive use?

Given their advocacy on the matter, council members should be leading by example on this. The city has excellent skytrain and decent bus service, and is well connected regionally. Why not give councilors transit passes to cover their travel?

Of course not all commitments can be met by transit, and yes councilors should be free to expense appropriate mileage (or taxis, rentals, car shares, etc) related to their duties. But simply giving councilors money for their automotive expenses runs counter to what the city and council is pushing for.

Appreciate your thoughts and the time to reply, and thanks for keeping up the blog.

Yep, I agree with you. The “car allowance” is a stupid idea for a City of 15 square kilometres, with the densest transit coverage and highest alternative mode share of any community outside of downtown Vancouver, and a Master Transportation Plan that takes priority away from the private automobile as the primary form of transportation. We have a Mayor who walks to work, one Councillor who never drives and a couple others (including me) who make it a point not to use a car to get around within town. A “car allowance” makes no sense.

Of course, it isn’t a “car allowance”, or even the HR-preferred vernacular “vehicle allowance”. It is a “transportation allowance”, as we can use it on any mode we like. We can top up a Compass Card, hire a taxi, gas up our car, get a Modo membership, or buy replacement tires for my bike.

Of course, it isn’t even a “transportation allowance”. It is $100 we get to spend on whatever we want. We are not required to provide receipts or justification, so this is little more than a taxable top-up of our salary. As a Councillor, I will get $1,200 more per year above the “base salary”, and whether that adequately compensates me for the transportation cost related to my job is kind of secondary (which makes it different than our other expense allowances, because they are actually backed up by policy guidance and we need to provide receipts and get them passed by HR, just like any expenses you might accrue in your regular job).

This issue arises from the once-every-term review of Council remuneration, which is always a sticky point. I don’t want to get into a long discussion about how much elected officials should get paid here, because that is pretty philosophical topic with wide differences of opinion, and wasn’t your question. However, it is apropos to discuss what a good governance model is to determine how much elected officials get paid. The decision we made this spring was, in my look at it, more about approving the process than the numbers.

When it comes to local government in BC, it is up to the Mayor/Councillors to determine their own pay. This is a direct conflict-of-interest that is not only permitted under the provincial law regulating local governments, but required by it! In that context, good governance requires that Mayor and Council don’t make a capricious decision and write their own cheques, but that they permit the professional staff in their HR and Finance departments to determine an appropriate process to determine appropriate compensation. The best we (and by “we”, I mean citizens and elected types) can hope for is that the process is transparent and defensible. Where both transparency and defensibility break down is when one or more elected official tries to supersede or run around that process, be it for personal or political reasons.

The process we have in New West is that every 4 years, HR staff compare the wages and benefits of elected officials in New West to those in comparable cities – a collection of other Lower Mainland municipalities, excepting the biggest (Vancouver, Surrey, Richmond) and the smallest (Bowen Island, Anmore, Belcarra) and do regression analysis on several statistics (population, budget, size of Council), with the guidance being to keep our Council firmly in the middle. Between those every-4-year adjustments, annual increases are indexed to CPI. You may suggest a better system, but HR has explained their rationale through reports, find it defensible and transparent. The process made sense to me, in that I could understand the rationale, could follow the numbers and do the math, and it made sense, so I supported it.

As for the “vehicle allowance”? I don’t like it, think it is a bad idea for all the reasons you state. However, respecting the process that provides good governance makes it hard to pick and choose the results of that process. HR and our external consultants determined what constitutes fair compensation based on a policy guideline that was, essentially: do what other similar Cities do. Apparently “car/travel/transportation allowance” is now part of that. We could have rolled it into the regular wage and compared across the municipalities and come up with a wage number that is $1,200 higher per year, but HR determined that making it a taxable expense makes more sense from an HR perspective.

I’m not sure raising a stink and pulling apart that process is the appropriate way to manage my discomfort about the symbolism of a “Car Allowance” in 2016 in New Westminster. How do I do it without calling into question the process – one that I have essentially been at arms-length from to reduce the conflict of interest created by the legislative structure – and not opening the door for a very political discussion with everyone making whatever adjustment suits their specific desires, political position, or special idea? I would argue of all the decisions we make as a Council, this is one where our personal politics need to be ignored, and the decision made (effectively) by staff.

So I don’t really have an answer to the “Car Allowance” question (at least not one I could come up with and propose in a reasonable timeline), but it is clear my personal political opinion is that it is a bad idea. This is something I am thinking about as I think our entire organization at City Hall needs to do a better job walking the walk when it comes to Transportation Demand Management. We are asking residents and businesses in the City to adapt to a more sustainable transportation system, but are slow to adopt progressive change as a corporate entity. Obviously, that argument is easier to make if us elected officials take a position of leadership. I’ve put this issue on my To Do list, and hope to have a better answer for you prior to the next time we go through this exercise.

On consulting the community

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

No, my report for this week’s council meeting is not done. Almost. I need to dot a few “t”s and cross a few “i”s, as it is a long report full of difficult spelling, and Le Tour is on TV. The delay is now extended because I have to spend a bit of time retorting a silly letter to the newspaper.

A relatively well-known local politician wrote to complain that the City’s new Food Truck Bylaw was approved, apparently without his knowledge.

Several parts of this letter were, frankly, baffling. To sum up:

“Why would our city council approve legislation without prior discussion with residents and businesses affected by this bylaw?

It was a year ago when the City first permitted a temporary pilot project to evaluate how Food Trucks may or may not fit in our local context. After a launch of the pilot proved promising, Council asked staff to start public consultations to inform a permitting process and bylaw structure in case the pilot was successful. Both of these stories were well reported by the very newspaper where this incensed letter to the editor was published. As was this update six months later, once the pilot was completed along with the first round of public consultation, and Council had an opportunity to comment on some of the potential policy framework.

In between these reports, the City launched an on-line survey with more than 450 respondents, including both businesses and residents, and received feedback on what types of restrictions or controls might be appropriate. The survey was advertised at the Pilot Food truck location, in that same familiar newspaper, and posters at City facilities. A City webpage dedicated to the consultation was set up, including a comprehensive FAQ section. The results were put together into a draft set of policies, that were then taken back to the public for another survey, stakeholder meetings and an Open House.

The City mailed out special invitations to the Chamber of Commerce, both BIAs, and the two other neighbourhood business associations,asking that the information be circulated to their members and inviting feedback. A special survey was set up specifically to target brick-and-mortar business owners, and circulated through their associations, and of course advertised in the newspaper, on-line, and through social media. Just to be sure, the City mailed out 2,043 postcards – one to every business address in the City – to seek their input. We even had a stakeholder group of business owners, representing each of the business areas of the City, sit down together for workshops to go through concerns and provide more guidance to the policy documents.

Further, staff evaluated best practices from other communities, in the Lower Mainland and further afield, to determine what has worked and what hasn’t for different jurisdictions, and to identify pitfalls that may arise that were not caught by the Pilot program. They talked to other Cities, and to food service companies, and used that input to develop detailed policy documents.

Staff then held a heavily-advertised Community Open House, even providing a couple of food trucks at the Anvil Centre location to give people a first-hand look at what the program would offer. The City partnered with journalism students from Langara and Douglas Colleges to create media pieces and social media buzz to attract people to take part in the Open house and the larger consultation process.

Through this entire process, staff kept Council (and the public) informed through public reports on July 13, 2015 (where the Pilot program was described), January 11, 2016 (where the first survey and consultation reports were outlined), April 18, 2016, (where the second phase of consultation and open house were reported out), and May 30, 2016, where the Draft Bylaw was given two readings, and the Public Hearing was formally announced for one month hence. (I won’t mention the Reports to the Land Use and Planning Committee on September 14 and December 7, 2015, because although they are publically posted and open to the public, few bother to attend. Further, they only recommend to Council, they don’t make decisions).

Now, go back up and read that quote. Any reasonable person would have to conclude we had “prior discussion with residents and businesses”. But there’s more:

“I believe that this decision is dictatorial and totally opposed to open governance and transparency. When a zoning bylaw change is to be considered, all property owners within a specific distance of the project property need to be informed of the pending bylaw changes and when the matter will be brought before council.

“As well, anyone who feels that they are impacted by the change is allowed to express their opinions before council prior to a vote on the bylaw change.

“I believe that this new bylaw did not receive the same consideration and therefore should be struck down until it is brought before all those taxpayers who are directly affected by its passage.”

Actually, after the year of public consultation listed above, this Bylaw went to Public Hearing, much the same process as any rezoning would. It isn’t actually a rezoning, and that level review was probably not strictly required by legislation, but the City did it anyway, because the City is demonstrably committed to open governance and transparency.

I am proud of the high standard we set for consultation in New West, but at some point we need to stop talking and start acting on the results of that consultation. If in 6 months this idea proves to not work out, if our business community tells us that some parts of the new policy just don’t work, Council is free to adapt or rescind the Bylaw and go back to the original restrictions. Some people fear innovation, but I think we need to take a few well-considered chances to continue to improve the activity of our streets, which is a great way to support our business community. We can’t be held back by uninformed cynicism.

“The people of our community should determine where in the community we would prefer to locate the operation of food trucks, not city staff, many of whom do not live in our community”

I need to reiterate: This was a process first driven by the elected City Council (we directed staff to put together a consultation process, then to draft a Bylaw that would allow Food Trucks to operate), then modified after repeated consultations with the residents and businesses of the City. There was a Pilot Project, supported by a business in the City. There was a planning session where businesses in the City were invited to provide input into what elements of a Bylaw ere needed, and where appropriate locations for food Trucks would be. We had a Public Hearing where all of two people came to talk to the Bylaw, both residents and business owners, and both spoke in favour of Food Trucks. We received no negative feedback in that Public Hearing, which tells me City Staff did a pretty great job covering their bases.

Our staff busted their asses to put together a Bylaw package that satisfied Council’s desire to support Food Trucks in our Commercial areas, and addressed concerns and ideas raised by the residents and businesses in this City over more than a year of consultation. At no step was this a staff-driven process. The letter writer’s inappropriate an uninformed attempt to belittle or dismiss the work they did, and his implication that they were indifferent to community feedback, is disconnected from reality.

On a positive note, this provides me one more opportunity to link to this remarkably apropos opinion piece by Stephen Quinn, which is a much better retort to this letter than I could ever pen.

ASK PAT: Begbie redux

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Sleepless asks—

Hi Pat,

I asked a question about train whistle cessation last year, which you answered on November 25, 2015. See: https://www.patrickjohnstone.ca/2015/11/ask-pat-whistle-cessation.html .

It is now six months after I asked, and four months into the new year, and the trains are still whistling away merrily downtown. In fact, the amount of whistling appears to have increased since the Front Street reconstruction project started.

I just noticed an update on the CNW web site (http://www.newwestcity.ca/database/files/library/Train_Whistle_Cessation_Update___May_2016(1).pdf), stating that: “formal application
for whistle cessation may need to be delayed until the Front Street upgrade is complete in August”. That is an additional eight month delay on a project that has already been delayed for almost two years!

In your previous reply, you stated that you are starting to question how the City sets timelines, and I couldn’t agree more. Why does every project undertaken by the city get delayed by months or years? Isn’t it time to have a long, hard look at the city’s planning processes and investigate why they keep failing to deliver projects on time?

Actually, since that conversation I have had some discussions with people in our engineering department regarding transportation projects and timelines, and I am slightly more sympathetic towards their challenges. Especially in regards to some areas where I have a specific interest: active transportation, transit, and accessibility issues. I don’t want to get into details here, but there are some resource issues internally, and some of the priority shifts that the new Council and the new MTP are demanding mean we need to spend a bit more time steering ship and little less time motoring ahead… the ship of government steers slowly, I’m afraid.

That said, many projects are moving ahead in a very timely manner. The Parkade east-refurbishment / west-removal project is pretty much on schedule despite a few early hiccups, and the Mews work is similarly looking like it will be completed reasonably close to on time, and on budget. Moody Park playgrounds, numerous smaller transportation projects, and policy work around Heritage Protection and the Tree Bylaw, things that are less visible but very staff intensive, were completed in a very timely manner. I wish I could say the same about the Begbie Crossing.

However, the Begbie Crossing work, along with the other whistle cessation projects, is not completely under the control of the City. The rail companies are replacing the rails, the level crossing treatment and the controls. They operate on their own schedule based on their own needs. Council commonly gets updates from Staff, and I am confident that we are doing everything in our power to get this project completed. I still hope the Begbie work will be completed by August.

However, you do raise the bigger question – why does it seem that projects always take longer than expected, not less time?

First off – and I don’t think this is unique to New West, but has become the default in our crazy busy hyper-competitive construction market – is a general industry trend towards overpromising and underperforming . Remember, most of this work is not being done by City crews anymore, the majority of it is contracted out. With many things on the go, it is hard to oversee every aspect of an operation – careful management of the Critical Path takes resources, which brings us to a problem more about New West.

We are a City of 66,000 people, relatively small in the great scheme of things. However, our expectations are the same as those for the residents of the larger cities that surround us. We have lots of things on the go right now, and a relatively small staff managing them.

I think some of this falls on Council, as we often create new initiatives before we see the existing initiatives completed. In my short time on council, there has been not just a “yes we can” ethos, but a “Yes we should!” ethos. Setting priorities is sometimes difficult, but never as difficult as slotting something new into an existing set of priorities is. If you look at our recently-completed Annual Report, you can see that we have set a clear set of priorities, which should help both staff and Council better coordinate our desires, which (in theory) should help us hit more deadlines. So I have taken to asking staff, when new initiatives come along, how they fit into our existing strategies, to assure we are not putting last week’s priority aside to address this week’s.

Which circles me back to the first point – I’m not sure we are doing that bad a job. Whistle cessation is definitely lagging behind, for many reasons outside of our control. The 4th Street Elevator is a notable timeline fiasco, and there is a great story to be told about contractor vs. designer vs. inspectors on that one. However, there are many other capital works, from road repairs to sewer and other utility work, that is coming in on time. We had a recent report to Council from SRY about the Whistle Cessation progress, on Queesnborough and Quayside, and it looks good.

I’m sorry the project that is having the biggest effect on your day-to-day (or more night-to-night) life is so stuck in purgatory. All I can do is continue to ask staff where we are with the timeline, and reinforce that this is a priority for the City and for Council. I hope you can get a good night sleep soon!

Sunday

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

This is the latest in my continuing series on how inept I am at continuing my series on the things I am up to in the community outside of the regular Council Meeting schedule. However, there was so much happening on Sunday, it is worth trying to post.

June 12 is Philippine Independence Day. In 2016 that means 118 years since the Emilio Aguinaldo declared the Philippines free of Spanish rule and for the first time unfurled the Flag of the Philippines. It would be another 48 years before the Treaty of Manila was signed, making the Philippines truly independent, but the June 12th anniversary is marked as the one where the Filipino people themselves declared their “inherent and inalienable right to freedom and independence”.

This day is celebrated in New Westminster in honour of our third largest (and fastest growing) ethnic group in the City. We were honoured to have a representative of the Consular General and other dignitaries from the Filipino community, and we raised the flag of the Philippines over Friendship Gardens, with all of the appropriate speeches from people of importance.sunday1

Some of us had to rush off from that event to Sapperton Day on East Columbia Street.

sunday3

I made it just in time to take part in the annual tradition of the Red Tape race, where elected types and their proxies race tricycles for the honour, the glory, and a bag of kettle corn. You will have to read the sports pages to see who won… because it wouldn’t be classy for me to point it out. 😉

Important duties dispatched, I joined the crowds at Sapperton Day enjoying the sunny weather and great variety of events. I did all of those things a politician is meant to do:

?

sunday2

…and even had my bike handling skills tested by the good people at Caps and HUB.

sunday 5

Then it was off to the New Westminster Lawn Bowling Club for the annual tradition of a Lawn Bowling Battle Royale between Team Mayor Cote and the New West Youth Ambassadors. It was a tightly fought competition where accuracy by far outweighed precision for both teams.

sunday7

This was a day of fun and games here in New Westminster, but as the clouds parted and the sun shone on our events, very dark news was unfolding. As the details of the horrific attack in Orlando trickled out, bad news became worse and more troubling as the day went on. Early in the afternoon, a few organizers from New West Pride put the word out that an impromptu vigil would be held at the Rainbow Crosswalk on Columbia Street. Social media news spread quickly, and scores of people showed up.

The President of NWPride, the Mayor and MLA Judy Darcy spoke, and several other members of the community said a few words about their personal experience or feelings. Candles were lit, silence ensued, and people shared a moment of being with other people, supporting one another, as a community is meant to do. There is a lot that people much smarter and more profound than I have said about the violence in Orlando, and I was left struggling for words for the day.

To me, and I think many others in our community, Pride in New West has been a celebration of inclusivity and acceptance. I’ve met so many great, engaged, interesting people through the organization and have enjoyed so many events they have brought to or supported in our City. So it is easy for a vanilla straight, male, cis, person like me to forget that Pride is also about a struggle for acceptance, and that the struggle is not over, even here despite how “accepting” we think our community is.

It is banal to talk about gun violence in the States; it is a national sickness that I lament they will never have the courage to address. The dog-whistle racism of blaming this event (well, every negative news event for the last decade) on a poorly defined religious/cultural stereotype is equally trite. Unfortunately, those are also useful distractions for the media in an overhyped election year. However, at its core, this was an attack on gay men for no other reason than their being openly gay. Whether you are in Orlando or New Westminster, this attack is meant to make you feel less safe simply because of who you are. That is why it is important that we don’t just celebrate, but announce acceptance; sometimes through small acts like a rainbow crosswalk or lighting up the Anvil Centre with rainbow lights, because we need to demonstrate that there is a community here who believe in this struggle, and are ready to support that struggle, hoping we can make our world more just for our friends, and for ourselves.

So you want to do something local to help with the celebration, and the struggle?

Here is a link to how you can help Pride New West out.

ASK PAT: The Timber Wharf

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Daniel asks—

Can we do something with the giant paved lot near Westminster Pier Park (where the shipping container W is)? It’s such a waste of space. Westminster Pier Park is amazing but i think the area could really use more grass space to lay down, play some bocce, toss a football around etc…Another suggestion would be providing additional basketball court(s), tennis courts. There is a real dearth of outdoor sport facilities in the downtown area. Could this empty lot not be temporarily re-purposed into any of these things rather than just the empty black surface it is now? Love what the city has done by putting volleyball courts adjacent to that lot, but are there plans to re-purpose the other lot as well?

We call that part of the park the “Timber Wharf”. My understanding of the history of the space (and this was before my time on Council) is that it was originally going to be programmed as part of the Pier Park project, but that got scaled back during the park development because of unexpected environmental remediation costs that stressed the budget, and generally unfavorable geotechnical assessments for that part of the wharf. The underpinnings are not in great shape, and are going to need some repairs and upgrades before the space is permanently programmed or anything heavy is placed on it, hence the temporary installations there now.

The longer-term plan is to program that space, which will make it more amenable for some of the uses you describe, but I think the priorities for spending right now are in trying to connect the park to the east to complete that part of the waterfront connection to Sapperton Landing and the Brunette River. The capital cost of upgrading the timber wharf isn’t in the budget right now, so I suspect the “permanent” fix is going to have to wait a few years.

In the shorter term, I would love to hear suggestions about temporary programming. We are pretty limited in regards to installing anything of significant mass (the engineering hassles with WOW New West were… substantial), and are even unlikely to be able to smooth the asphalt surface much, but paint and temporary installations are possible if we can find a bit of room the Parks budget.

This also gives me a chance to promote two cool things going on in that area in the very short term – like right now!.

Through a partnership with Live 5-2-1-0, Kids New West, Fraser Health, and School District 40, a Play box is being installed at the Timber Wharf. This is a box full of toys, balls, and outdoor games to help kids get active and have fun in the relatively un-programmed space. It is free to use, and will be opened every morning and re-secured at night. This is the first time this public playbox program has come to New West, although it has been successful in a few other nearby municipalities. If you have kids, take them down and see what may emerge!

There is no better time to go down to the Timber Wharf and check it out than during the Pier2Landing street party coming up on June 19th. We are going to be encouraging people to take advantage of the currently-closed stretch of Front Street that connects the east end of the Pier Park with the west end of Sapperton Landing Park. There will be live entertainment and arts and booths and a BBQ and the usual street festival stuff, but there will also be a lot of open road space on Front where you can bring your own entertainment (road hockey, anyone?). We can look ahead to a me when these two waterfront parks are connected by an urban greenway. Or we can dream of a time when Front Street is no longer a regional through-fare, but is an active street connecting residents to the waterfront – even those who choose to not strap themselves to a couple of tonnes of carbon-spewing steel and plastic first…

Dare to dream.

Outta here (for a bit)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I have, once again, been really slow to get new posts up here, and this one is mostly to tell you it is going to be a bit of time before you see another one.

The picture above is from an SFU City Conversation I had a couple of days ago with two other City Councillors, under the guise of us representing Young/New leadership in local government in the region. Nathan Pachal is definitely young (under 40) and new (in the job for only a few months), Mathew Bond is definitely young (40ish?) and is new (this is his first term on Council), and I am only young in the context of the average age of City Councillors across the region, and that new-Councillor smell is starting to wear off. It was great to be in the company of these two very bright and very engaged local government representatives

It was also good to have three Councillors from municipalities across the region come together to talk to a (mostly) City of Vancouver audience and expand the focus of the conversation to the wider region. The audience was receptive to our self- and hometown-aggrandizing, and we could have gone on for hours talking about public engagement, housing affordability, transportation, taxation, and other challenges our region faces. We were thinking maybe we should PodCast.

I also got a commitment from the organizers that a future City Conversations panel would discuss the issue of gender and ethnic diversity in local government politics, for what might be obvious reasons from the photo above!

So that is it for now. I am off to enjoy a quality long weekend with a couple of friends suffering on my bicycle for some seriously needed recuperation and to get my swollen-up cynicism gland drained. I will be far away from blogging devices. I have three (!) Ask Pats in the queue, and will button them up soon after I return. Hopefully.

In the meantime, if you want to enjoy your screen time in a hyper-local way, you should be over at Tenth to the Fraser, and see what real, local, high-quality content looks like instead of slumming over here.

Have a good long weekend, watch for flying anvils.

Taxes & the CPI

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

We are through the annual budgeting cycle at City Hall, our 2016-2020 Financial Plan passed, our tax increase bylaw adopted with a 2.73% increase for 2016.

I tried during this and previous tax seasons to talk about the hows and whys of our Property Tax system, but there is one topic I didn’t really touch on. It is a topic raised commonly by local contrarian, cyclist, and generally good guy, Ed. I am paraphrasing a collection of Twitter missives a bit, but my understanding of Ed’s position is that property tax increases should be limited to CPI increases, or matched to inflation. In this post where I compared New Westminster’s tax increases to the inflation rate, you can see that we are, and have been for more than a decade, above the CPI rate (which is projected by the Province of BC to be 1.9% in 2016), as is every other City in the Lower Mainland. Why?

It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Every year as a part of the budgeting process, staff bring recommendations to Council about new spending, and provide us (and the public) a pretty clear picture of how much each new staff position, program, or service will cost Taxpayers, right down to the percentage of tax increases. Some of those positions, programs or services come with offsetting cost savings or revenue potential, but in the end it always seems that taxes need to go up, it is just a question of how much.

I’m going to skip a little bit past the easy political talking points: downloading, deindustrialization, and economic bleeds caused by decades of neo-liberal economic policy. That’s not to say these factors should be blithely dismissed; indeed they are real pressures on local governments, and may be the biggest factor in ongoing tax increases. Maybe in another blog post I’ll try to explain what is wrong with the entire world economy (better if you just go read Umair Haque), but for now I am going to keep this local, because we are asking what we in Local Government can do about this.

There are many drivers that push up the cost of running a City the same way they push up the cost of running of your business or household. Just as you pay more every year for food, utilities, banking charges, transportation, and taxes, the City pays more for wages, equipment, supplies, banking charges, utilities, etc. As Ed astutely observes, those increase is (more or less) related to the Consumer Price Index.

There may be long-range factors that impact how closely our operational costs match CPI year-to-year. For example, a long period of ignoring our infrastructure means it will be more expensive to repair when the situation becomes critical. Similarly, if we have extended periods where wages are not keeping up with inflation, that will come back to haunt us.

There is a third factor, however, that is completely in control of local governments and the electorate that empower them. Every year, people want more from their local government, and more never comes for free. To give examples of this, I think I can divide that “more” into three general categories (recognizing there is a lot of overlap between the three): new needs, new programs, and new approaches.

New Needs are things we have to do now, that we didn’t really have to do in the past. There is some aspect of “downloading” to this, but most of it is just a result of changing times. We currently train a group of our NWFD force to respond to Hazardous Materials incidents, in case one happens at the railyards in the City. This was partly a response to the tragedy at Lac Magantic, partly an increased awareness of the hazards that exist in our community and a demand from the public that we do all was can to address those concerns. Another example is the new policy that every single sidewalk corner will have a “let down” to make all of our sidewalks accessible for those on wheels, those pushing children in a stroller, and those with other mobility limitations. We are similarly spending money upgrading all of our bus stops to meet accessibility standards. These are just a couple of examples of things we now do that we did not do in the past, and they all cost money – more money than we collected in the past.

New Programs are things that we have chosen to do because people want them, but are (arguably) not “needs”. I was at the Youth Awards held last week at Century House, and was reminded about the programming we offer in our (still brand new) Youth Centre, a facility used by literally thousands of local youth every year. We have recently been discussing infrastructure upgrades at the Library, and I am learning how they provide the only access to the internet for a significant portion of our community. Everything from interacting to government agencies to applying for jobs is impossible in 2016 without internet access, and the needs of the community are outstripping the computer terminals we have. We are currently replacing one of our all-weather fields for the princely sum of $1.5Million, because it is past its service life. We do this because a plastic turf field is about 5x more used than a grass field, and we can offer much more programming on a limited amount of space available in the City. Our Police Department has officers specially trained to determine when a person is suffering from a mental health issue, and manage their approach in a way that is less likely to result in violence or self-harm for the member of the public. Again, new, modern problems all around, not things we did 20 years ago, but things that our community expects in 2016.

New Approaches are things we have always done, but do very differently now, often in ways that are more staff or resource intensive. I am sitting in on the Public Engagement Taskforce, a group of staff and public volunteers looking at better ways for the City to reach out to the public they serve, both so we can keep the public more informed and so we can get more meaningful feedback from the public when we need to make decisions. The way we, as a City, have turned the Official Community Plan update into a two-year-long public conversation about the future of the City, instead of just a small collection of staff and a few councillors attempting to dictate the future, is an example of how resource-intensive true engagement is, and how important it can be to a community. Again, it seems obvious to us now, but not something we expected 20 years ago.

This is not to say there is nothing we can stop doing or paying for as times change: we save a bunch of money on pesticides with the new approaches to weed management in the City; our fleet fuel budget is going down as we upgrade to a more efficient vehicle pool; the cost of running our solid waste program is definitely increasing at a rate less than inflation as efficiencies are found. Our mental health officers will likely result in lower crime levels, better supports for marginalized people, and law enforcement savings down the road. Building pedestrian-friendly streets will reduce the use of cars in our city saving us money in road maintenance, emergency response, and health care costs. There are also efficiencies of scale as population increases and density makes provision of services more convenient. But the reality is that pipes in the ground and mowing lawns are costs that track along with the CPI, and no-one is lining up to propose which programs they want to see cut in the City. New approaches to new problems are inevitably added to the bottom line.

Every election, people come along saying they will freeze or lower taxes, but do any of them provide details of how they will do it? I still fondly remember former Mayor Wayne Wright in the 2011 election shutting a rather vitriolic opponent down at an all candidates’ meeting by calmly saying “Cutting taxes is easy. It’s the easiest thing for us to do. Just tell us which programs you want to cut to make it happen”. There was no retort, because he put a lie to the “find efficiencies” and “set priorities” memes that neo-liberals use when their real goal is to undermine public services at every scale, from public transit to schools to health care.

It is also telling that even the most strident of anti-tax crusaders find that in Local Government, the bills are always coming due because we have to answer the phone when someone loses a service or program important to their lives.

As a Council, the toughest part is setting priorities. You get elected hoping to do a lot of great stuff, and run up against limited resources and an over-burdened agenda of 7 Council Members. I would love for us to develop the Gas Works site into a public art curator and public park, to complete the Sapperton Landing to Pier Park greenway connection, to build an architectural wonder for a Q2Q bridge and a energy efficient family-friendly and competition-supporting Canada Games Pool. While we are at it, I want to fill the funding gap of senior governments that is threatening the very existence of our supported Co-op housing sector, build a fully integrated and interconnected bikeway network, and plant 10,000 trees to bring our urban forest back to the national average for tree canopy. These are all important things, and they all cost money, and they would all result, eventually, in tax increases above that of inflation. We can probably avoid significant tax increases if we do none of them, along with not doing a list of other things that would make our community better.

So every year at tax time, and actually throughout the year, when new programs or better services are presented to Council, we evaluate them. We try our best to understand the long-term budget implications, ask how or if these ideas can offset costs other areas (“find efficiencies”), and determine if this is something needed right now, or if it can be put off (“set priorities”), and we hear from the public about how critically important, wonderfully visionary, or economically savvy each new idea is. And we make those tough choices, and often we say no. That’s the job.

When people say “The City should…”, I so often want to respond with “Let’s do it!”, but instead end up saying “I wonder how we could…”. That (along with no longer fully enjoying the Letters to the Editor section) is probably the biggest dose of reality going from being a community rabble-rouser to an elected official. I agree with Ed, with former Mayor Wright, and (though I shouldn’t speak for them) with my Council colleagues, that we need to be diligent at finding ways to save money, find efficiencies, and keep our taxes as low as possible. But much like Jordan Bateman, I agree that we have a responsibility to the present and future residents of the City “to build the infrastructure that will keep them safe and healthy… we must balance both present and future needs”

ASK PAT: Housing idea

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Terran asks—

What do you think about the recent Vancouver idea to buy homes and undervalue them? Do you think this could work in new west? http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/city-of-vancouver-affordable-home-ownership-pilot-program-1.3539688

I can’t quite get my head around the City of Vancouver plan. They appear to wan to buy 20% of the housing value, and hold that portion while the market still influences the pricing of the units. If I understand it right, a middle-income-family would by 80% of a home, live in it, sell it off and receive 80% of the sale price. If the value goes up (as is likely today) when they choose to upgrade or move to Temiskaming, do they get 80% of the capital gain and the City the 20%? There are devils in details here.

My first question when putting this in the New West context would be –is it legal? Vancouver seems to be floating the idea of making changes to the Vancouver Charter to make it work, and I’m not sure how this model would fit into the Community Charter that governs New West.

There is another simple resource problem: New Westminster does not have a lot of money. We don’t really have a longer-term land acquisition strategy to speak of (we are working on developing one now), nor do we hold a lot of property relative to many of our surrounding communities. Investments that could have (should have?) been made decades ago when land values were low were not done for what I’m sure were very practical reasons at the time. Our finances are pretty good, but the few capital projects we have coming along in the next few years (Massey Theatre, Q2Q, Canada Games Pool, etc.) are going to tighten things up quite a bit.

This raises the question if this is the most effective way to leverage the money we do have. The City holds about $1Million in our Affordable Housing Reserve, and we have a task force working on a couple of strategies to leverage partnerships to assure those funds go to where they can make the best impact.

Finally, I wonder if the Vancouver solution (making apartments 20% more affordable for essentially middle-income workers) is really the affordability problem we need to solve in New West. I get the sense that New West is affordable for middle-income earners, especially if they are happy to live in an apartment setting. Single Family homes are getting out of reach, but building more “missing middle” housing types like townhouses, laneway houses and cluster homes might help provide better options to those earning family incomes in the $70-90,000/yr range (the target of Vancouver’s plan).

In New West, we are seeing creeping land costs and a paucity of rental availability that is putting a lot of stress on the lower-income cohort of our population. As the working middle are pushed to New West, they are displacing the working poor and underemployed who need affordable housing within transit or walking distance from their jobs, their schools, and their support systems.

Unfortunately, this situation is getting worse at the same time that the largest community network of affordable family homes – Co-op Housing – is going through an existential crisis caused by the federal government cutting off support, and the provincial government failing to fill the gap (as is their constitutional role).
In the meantime, New West is doing what it can to get both market and non-market rental built as soon as possible, and to develop a new Official Community Plan that emphasises diversity of housing choice. Meanwhile, the Mayor has an Affordable Housing Task Force that is working on the best potential use of the affordable housing reserves, and the Mayor himself is working with the Metro Vancouver Housing Board to develop regional affordability strategies.

Not that I am disparaging of Vancouver’s idea. In this strangely super-heated market, coupled by a booming economy where everything but wages are going through the roof, we are going to need a variety of strategies to keep our region livable. Housing is a symptom of a larger economic malaise that points back to decades of neo-liberal economic “progress” where the building of wealth is prioritized over the building of society. But that is a talk for another day.

ASK PAT: Front Street trucks.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Brad asks—

During Front Street’s closure over the past couple of months, trucks have been re-routed to Columbia and Royal. This doesn’t seem to have had that bad of an affect on New Westminster’s traffic (at least, to my eye), so what are the thoughts about banning truck traffic from Front Street entirely? Can this be visited when the Pattullo Bridge gets replaced? Front Street isn’t part of TransLink’s Major Road Network, so we shouldn’t have to ask them, right?

Although I agree the “Carmageddon” promised by Front Street closing has not arrived, there has been a shifting of trucks to Columbia Street, and anecdotal increases in trucks on Royal and 10th Ave. The City is collecting data on the traffic during the closure in order to get good numbers on the shift, and that report is not available yet, but preliminary info seems to suggest about a 30% increase in trucks on Royal. There has also been a diversion of trucks to Columbia and 10th Ave, but these three increases do not add up to the number of rucks that used to ply Front Street. It is pretty clear that a large proportion of the tucks that were on Front Street have, indeed, gone away. Presumably most of them have gone to the $5 Billion of freeways we have built for them over the last decade, as the Lord Kevin Falcon intended.

Front Street is not in the Major Road Network, but it is a designated truck route. To change that, we need agreement from the Ministry of Transportation and at least consult with TransLink. The current policy is that trucks routes cannot be removed unless appropriate alternatives are offered. So if closing Front Street to trucks means we need to allow 24/7 access to Columbia Street, then it is probably not a good deal for the City.

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If the closing of that route means accepting a measured increase in Royal Ave and 10th Ave, then perhaps it is a discussion we should be having as a City. However, to have that discussion, we need some solid numbers to support the cost-benefit, and those numbers are being collected. Of course, this ends up being a political discussion – the people who live on Royal are not going to like it, and it will do nothing to make people feel better about the Qayqayt school transportation situation.

Offsetting these reasons to avoid the discussion, people need to go down to the Front Street right now and look around. I think we can, for just a moment now, have a vision of what could be. I’m not even talking about removing trucks from Front Street, I’m thinking we should explore the possibility of closing Front Street to all but local traffic. Build the Mews, turn the rest into greenway, parkland, open space for any of a thousand public uses we have not yet imagined. I don’t want to close Front Street to traffic, I want to open it for the use of human beings who aren’t dragging tonnes of internally-combusting metal around with them. There is a huge amount of space there, let’s start to dream.front

The primary argument for keeping trucks in Front Street is, of course, “Goods Movement”. The Gateway Council, the Port, the BC Trucking Association, and the Ministry of Transportation make the argument that the regional economy relies on free-flow of trucks along Front – this route is critical. This assertion will not likely be supported by any measureable dip in the regional economy caused by this 6-months closure. But don’t bring facts into this discussion.

Fitting the use of Front Street into the context of the larger Pattullo replacement strategy is important, as is fitting it into the model for the Brunette overpass replacement, which is an ongoing discussion between Coquitlam, New Westminster, and the Ministry. There are well-connected regional voices continuing to reiterate that New Westminster is a through-route, not a community, and are planning with this in mind.

Even as New Westminster aggressively pursues a smart growth strategy reflecting the Regional Growth Strategy; even as we push towards building a compact, mixed-use, transit-oriented community where most commuting and shopping trips are by foot or transit, reducing the need for expanded road capacity; even as we take a leadership role the region in meeting the mode shift goals of the long-term regional transportation vision, those very goals are challenged by our tacit acceptance that our community must play second fiddle to the commuting needs of outlying regions.

We have been leaders in planning and development to reduce our reliance on the traditional transportation models, we are becoming leaders in our transportation policy, but to see the benefit of those changes here at home, we may need to stop leading by example, and start forcing our neighbour’s hands.

Does the region need trucks on Front Street? No. Is there a better way to make use of that 5 acres of public space in New Westminster? Yes.

The rest is politics.