Tag: New Westminster

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.

On the New School

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I guess I would be remiss if I didn’t blog something about this news. It does seem to be the biggest news in New West, after all.

Right off the bat, I want to say I had nothing to do with this. The High School is a Board of Education responsibility, and the Ministry of Education holds the purse strings to make things happen. Our primary role since I joined Council is to stay out of the way and let the School District do the work they need to get an approved plan. It is slightly more complicated than that, as we worked on an agreement over Massey Theatre and have plan and money in the budget for the for the Skateboard Park, but I consider those things to be included in “getting out of the way” to allow the School Board to do whatever they need to help things to proceed.

Of course, the Trustees of School District 40 and their staff deserve the most kudos. Jonina and her team have done what no Board over the last 20 years has managed to do – get an approved plan in place and money committed by the province. The School District has done some amazing work over the last few years – getting their perennial budget woes under control, some really progressive inclusion policies, getting one new school built, a second almost finished, and now a third, long-awaited project approved. School Boards often operate a little below the radar. We rarely recognize them unless something goes wrong and the pitchfork-and-torch crowd is looking for someone to blame. Perhaps a great mark for this Board is that they have been quietly and non-controversially getting the job done for the students of the district. A new NWSS may be a crowning achievement, but it isn’t the only one.

This is not to say there are no concerns in public education in New West. We still have several seismically-suspect schools, there are hard decisions being made due to ongoing funding pressures, transportation issues abound, and delivering a new NWSS on schedule is going to be a challenge, but we have many reasons to think this Board will be able to get things done.  So much good work has already been done, with so little fanfare. I am happy the Board got to stand up in front of cameras and take a bow for this one project. They deserve it.

For the Minister of Education, I give a slightly more qualified thanks. There is a hint of Stockholm Syndrome in heaping effusive praise on someone who held the purse strings for so long when they finally come through after what is (IMHO) an unacceptably long wait. A replacement for the decrepit NWSS is not a gift to the City – it is a basic social service this City has been without for way too long. Still, I thank the Minister for doing whatever he had to do in Victoria to get this approved, and I appreciate him taking the time answer what I understand were very frequent phone calls from our Board to work through the details.

Finally, I want to give thanks to the people paying for this school: the residents of the City. They have paid their school taxes through that decade-long wait, they have shown remarkable (if sometimes testy) patience, sending their kids to an increasingly festering building because they believe in public education, because they know the programs inside that building are still excellent, or because they had no other choice. Meanwhile, The students have kept making us proud with the academic, athletic, and social achievements. I have had the opportunity over the last couple of years to work with the Youth Advisory Committee and other youth organizations in the City, and am consistently inspired by the talents and confidence of students going through our school system. They are proud of their school community, I’m glad they will soon have a building to be proud of as well.

There is devil in the details here. My (admittedly under-informed) feeling is that $106Million will get us a school that meets our needs, but may fall short of many of our desires. The City has committed funds to help keep the Massey Theatre as a community asset, but the details of how the existing theatre will interface with the new school, and the pathway to get there, is a work in progress. Some of the school design and construction details are sure to cause conversation, and I still think we have some transportation challenges around the existing site. In short, there is a lot of work yet to do to make these plans a reality, but at least we no know the real work can start.

Exciting times ahead.

Urban Academy Redux

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 3 Comments.

At last week’s Public Hearing, the most discussed topic was the proposal by Urban Academy and their partner Wesgroup to develop the property at 100 Braid Street. Urban Academy had been looking for a place to expand their school operation, and were disappointed last year when Council decided to not support the building of a larger school on their property in Queens Park.

Their second kick at the can involved creating a partnership with Wesgroup to purchase a larger piece of land, and use the available density and development potential of that property to share costs and regulatory hurdles. It was an innovative approach, and considering the significant time restraints, they did a good job putting a package together that Council could support.

The Public Hearing had something like 17 speakers, and if you are the type to score this kind of thing, the support/oppose/neutral count was something like 8/6/3. I don’t do the math that way, however, because I think the job of council at a Public Hearing is to hear all arguments, and evaluate them on the value of the argument, not the number of people able to make it. There were essentially two arguments against supporting this project, but before I get to those I want to outline some of the details of the plan, as it currently exists.

NOTE:I also need to do one of those reminder clauses here, that everything I write here is my opinion. It isn’t the official position of the City, nor does it necessarily reflect the opinions of any of the other members of Council. Let them write their own blog!

The lot at 100 Braid Street is 74,000 square feet, and includes three attached buildings with a largish rear parking lot, all zoned M-1 Industrial. The individual owner of the property leases the space to several businesses, Laser Tag and Bullpen in what I’ll call Building 1, 100Braid Studio/Gallery and an environmental services company in Building 2, and a music studio in Building 3. Under the current M-1 zoning, the owner was permitted to knock the three buildings down and build something like 225,000 square feet of industrial or commercial property, with no regulated setbacks and up to 6 stories (85 feet) high. According to the presentation at Council, all of the current lessees have demolition clauses in their leases, meaning the owner can shut them down and knock the buildings down whenever he wants. No need to ask Council permission to exercise these options.

The plan presented by Wesgroup and Urban Academy is to rezone the property, and as soon as possible build a school for 450 students on the location of the current Building 1. At a later time, they plan to follow up with residential development of the Building 2 and Building 3 spaces with a moderate-sized (21 story) high rise residential tower on a podium comprising enclosed parking, townhouses and some public art space. The timing of that second phase is uncertain, as it will be impacted by the ever-shifting market for residential housing and variable construction and marketing costs, but Wesgroup anticipates that phase may commence in about 5 years.

The first argument against this proposal was the ubiquitous “What about the traffic?” question. The school and eventual residential development will indeed increase the number of cars using the Rousseau and Braid intersection, and have a lesser effect on Rousseau and the adjoining lower Sapperton neighbourhood. The school appears to have a reasonable plan to address pick-up and drop-off, and are making efforts towards Transportation Demand Management which will leverage the proximity to the Braid SkyTrain Station.

I cannot say there will be no impact on the neighbouring properties, however the same could be said for locating a school in any neighbourhood in New Westminster. We have something like a dozen schools in New Westminster, and many of them are located on arterial roads, all of them have neighbouring communities. All of them have unique traffic management issues, and all of them work with the City and their PAC to make the traffic situation as safe and non-disruptive as possible. I also cannot think of another use of this M-1 zoned space that won’t have some sort of traffic-inducing impact. Light industrial and commercial properties have some of the most complicated transportation issues, especially adjacent to residential neighbourhoods.

As it is, the City is working on several projects related to the traffic issue at this property. The Sapperton neighbourhood traffic study will help us put several projects (the RCH expansion, the Brewery District, Sapperton Green) into better context and help us develop a more holistic approach to managing neighbourhood traffic concerns in lower and upper Sapperton. There are also ongoing discussions with TransLink, the Ministry of Transportation, and Coquitlam around the entire Brunette corridor, from Mallardville and the Hwy1 interchange through the Braid intersection and how it interacts with RCH, the Braid Industrial Area, and points west. No-one thinks it works great right now, and longer-term planning is required to come up with solutions to the flow concerns. This project (along with Sapperton Green) will be part of that discussion. Defining what will be on this location for the decades to come helps solidify that planning.

This brings us to the other major issue of discussion at the Public Hearing: the fate of 100Braid Studios, and the remarkable business Susan Grieg has developed over the last couple of years. I have been to the space, have attended events in it, have friends who have used the studio space, have even splattered paint in the booth. It has, in a relatively short time, become a significant piece of the local arts community, providing space for artists to work, and a space for them to display their works to an ever-shifting community of events guests. The space itself is bright, tall, and full of natural light refracting at interesting angles through seemingly-ancient amply-muntined windows.

Early on in the process when this proposal came to the Land Use and Planning Committee, this was identified as a significant community concern, and the proponents were asked to explore ways to address that concern. There was some complication in that process, as the Developer was not the landowner, and (as is pretty typical in a commercial land sale like this) was discouraged from communicating with the existing tenants by the existing landlord. However, these concerns also arose during the Public Consultations, and the developer was able to work with a few of the tenants to address various concerns.

They also added 4,300 square feet of public studio / gallery space to the podium of the residential building. This amenity will not necessarily replace 100Braid Studios for several reasons. The area is large enough for studio and galleries, but not the event hosting part of the 100Braid business. The studio space may be well appointed and designed, but it will most likely not feature that same unique aesthetic that 100Braid has.

However (and this is the ugly pragmatic part), if this project did not move forward, there is no reason to believe the 100Braid space will be preserved any longer than if this project is approved. When this partnership was put together, there were (again, based on what was reported at the Public Hearing) four offers on the land, and we simply don’t know what the other speculators’ plans were for the space. However, with 75,000 square feet of zoned industrial space near major transportation corridors that will allow 85 feet in height and an FSR of 3, the property is potentially a hot commodity, and re-development is almost a certainty.

The way this project worked out, we know that 100Braid will be able to operate for several more years, and a lease developed that will allow her maximum flexibility if another comparable or more amenable space comes available during that time. We also receive a community arts space that will be different from 100Braid, but has the potential to be a real asset to the community, and offering that space and the financial and logistical commitment to build it, is a show of good faith on the part of the developer. I hope that 100Braid can continue to prosper in this unique space for several years, until a new space can be found that continues to allow her artists to flourish.

I also hope that the UA community recognizes that there is some community-building to do with Susan at 100Braid, and with the artists who lease space from her. The UA community may feel they “won” a victory here, but to make it a win for the larger community, they need to understand that this development comes with some concerns for their new neighbours. some of whom are likely are suffering a feeling of loss and uncertainty. I hope the two communities can come together and find their common cause. There is a potential for synergy here, as Urban Academy offers an art-infused program, and they are likely to benefit from a closer relationship with Susan and 100Braid, as she is both an amazing spirit and amazing resource in the Arts community.

And I’m actually optimistic about that, mostly because the public consultation process culminating in the Public Hearing was a respectful and positive one. Although I was not directly involved in conversations between the parties, from my viewpoint the consultation and resolution appeared to be a constructive process. Opponents and proponents stuck to their concerns and proposed solutions, there was none of the acrimony, accusations, or anger that sometimes arises in these hearings. We are talking about people’s neighbourhoods, homes, jobs and community connections here; it is not surprising that it can become a very emotional discussion.

One other comment I want to make about the Public Hearing process itself. It is a regulated process under Division 3 of the Local Government Act, but it isn’t a perfect process. A common comment I hear is that the result feels like a fait accompli, and that Council already made up their mind before the public are allowed to comment. In my experience that is not true. Every item that came to Public Hearing on May 30th passed (although there were some dissenting votes on some projects) but no-one knows better than Urban Academy that this is not always the case.

The way I see it, the Public Hearing is the culmination of a long process that begins when a developer walks into city hall and says they want to build a building. That launches months (and often years) of design, discussion with City Staff, comparison to City legal requirements and policies, review by several committees, updates to Council, public consultations, revisions, more discussion, more Council review, more committee review, more public consultation, and development of enabling Bylaws. By the time a project of this magnitude gets to Public Hearing, staff and Council should understand the concerns of the neighbourhood, and should be able to understand how or if those concerns are to be mitigated. Some projects simply never make it that far through the process because of unsurmountable concerns; all of them are changed substantially through the process. If Council is surprised by what is coming to Public Hearing, and concerns from the public bring issues that Council hadn’t considered, then someone (staff, the Developer, Council) isn’t doing their job.

The project that Council approved through this public hearing is not the same one that walked in the door of City Hall months ago. It was shaped by public consultation, by City Policy, and by discussions between all of the stakeholders involved. Mitigation of concerns raised by the neighbourhood was part of that shaping.

The process is not perfect. Developers often feel it takes too long, too much power is given to a few neighbourhood voices, and that some City policies are too restrictive. “Red Tape”, they call it. At the same time, some in the Public feel that there is not enough consultation, that the City doesn’t get enough community amenity from development, and the developers are driving the process. A “Rubber Stamp” they call it.

It is fascinating to watch from this place in the middle, and it gives insight into why Government is, inherently, inefficient.

Council – May 30, 2016 (Part 2)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Like I said in my last post, Monday’s meeting was a long one (look at that poor lost soul above as he briefly enters his happy place, 5 hours in), so I broke up my report into two blogs. This is Part 2 – everything that took place outside of the Public Hearing.

Partly because of the recognition of the evening’s long agenda and, with anticipation of a lengthy Public Hearing, some Regular Council items were dealt with in a “Workshop” format during the day, so it was more like the old Committee of the Whole model. It was a public meeting with video record and proper notice and all, just during the day.

Note: This wasn’t a real “workshop” the way I define it. That was what we did on May 16 instead of a regular Council Meeting, as we discussed parts of the Official Community Plan development. If you are at all interested in seeing the sausage-making parts of how this Council makes decisions and interacts with professional staff in a slightly less formal setting, I think that workshop is a pretty good representation of the types of conversations we have when we start to dig into things, and it may be illustrative to watch the video for some people. Including the comedy of how long it takes for us all to sit down around a table.

OPEN WORKSHOP

Tourism New Westminster Five-Year Strategic Plan
We had a presentation from Tourism New Westminster on their strategic plan, and a proposed path forward for the organization. There is a bunch of background around this topic relating to Council increasing annual funding for TNW over the last year as a interim measure to help with their transition to a new office and new vision, and in anticipation that the Hotel Room Tax (“MRDT”) that most Municipalities use to augment their tourism promotion programs.

The 5-year vision presented to Council as a draft was full of interesting ideas, but it also included us looking at some new, and increased, funding to leverage the MRDT and external Grants in a pretty significant way. There will be more discussion between the TNW Board and the city leading from this!

We moved the following items by Consent:

Report on Major Purchasing Transactions for the Period January 1 to April 30, 2016
This is a list of everything we purchased as a City in the first third of 2016, at least everything we paid for. Not every pencil and ream of paper, but all purchases with budgets above $50,000. As part of our legal reporting requirements, we list the winning contractor for competitive bids, and even list losing bidders. Not a regular business practice, but something Cities are required to do in the spirit of transparency.

Some of these purchases were just regular invoicing of ongoing projects. This is why, for example, we cut a cheque for $108K for our external engineer for work to date on the Q2Q bridge, although we anticipate we will require about $4 Million in services from them (assuming we find a solution to the Q2Q bridge that we can move forward on). The $4 Million is listed in our 5-year capital plan, but doesn’t necessarily mean we are going to spend it.

2015 Statement of Financial Information
This is more regulatory reporting. This is our official audited financial statements, in the format required by the legislation. In 2015, we collected $69 Million in taxes, an equal amount in utility charges, and about $42 Million in other revenues. We had about $14 Million in Surplus, but through the magic of accounting and tangible capital assets, that means we increased our financial assets by something closer to $9 Million. That surplus was budgeted for, and is directed to various reserves funds to pay for upcoming capital projects.

There is more to read here, including how the City stores its Investments, how our DCC funds are doing, our long-term debt situation, etc.

We also have to report our Council wages, and our expenses, it cost you a little over $40K to have me go to meetings and pontificate. My expenses were a little lower than most because I wasn’t able to attend a conference last year. I will definitely be attending UBCM this year, so that should catch me up.

There is also the annual list of employee remuneration, which I personally hate. In few other industries is a professional making $75,000 – $150,000 required to publically disclose their wages, and have their wage printed in the local paper next to their picture. I understand the public’s right to know what the City pays for public employees, but I would much prefer if these lists provided the Job Title, and not the employee’s personal name. Frankly, it doesn’t matter if the City is paying Jim or Alice $120,000 to be the General Manager of Some Section, what matters is that we pay the General Manager of Some Section $120,000 dollars. I don’t see how the way we do it now serves the public interest, other than puerile voyeurism. Rant over.

The following items were either removed from Consent or part of the regular agenda:

100 Braid Street: Principles for an Agreement between Urban Academy and the City for the Community Use of Proposed School Facilities
This item allowed Council to approve the principles of a legal agreement between the City and Urban Academy regarding a commitment made by Urban Academy to provide community access to some of their facilities.

This meeting was held prior to the Public Hearing where the fate of the urban Academy proposal would be discussed, so the legal agreement does not, practically, exist. However Staff felt it important (and I agree) that Council understand the framework through which a public amenity related to the project would be managed prior to us deciding if we want to approve the project that would bring that amenity.

Council approved the principles unanimously.

Proposed Widening of Blackley Street
Similar to the item above, this references a project coming to Public Hearing in the evening, the Platform Properties plan for Queensborough. The dedication of land to widen Blackley Street is complicated, because some of the lands along this right of way are not part of the development package, and we cannot take the lands away from a property owner who does not want to dedicate it. It is likely that there will be various iterations of Blackley Street between now and the final alignment, which could be decades down the road, and Council was concerned about how Engineering would make this street operate safely over the various phases of developments.

I was satisfied with the drawing provided by Staff, although admittedly, the presentation could have been a little clearer.

National Aboriginal Day Activities at Anvil Centre
There are going to be a series of free events marking National Aboriginal Day at the Anvil Centre on June 21st. Check your calendar, and plan to show up!

Joint Municipal Licensing for Film Industry
Councillor Puchmayr referred to staff the question if the Filming Industry is appropriate for joint licensing, much like the inter-municipal business licensing model the City has undertaken for contractors and the building industry. Similar to that industry, the Film Industry is mobile and regional, as opposed to operating only in one municipality, and there is a potential for great synchronization between Cities to help reduce red tape for them.

Tree Bylaw update
We have had a tree Bylaw for several months now, and we anticipate there may be a few teething problems, or a few places where members of the public have raised concerns that staff or Council did not anticipate. We will be having a review of the Tree Bylaw in the July 11 meeting.

I think that Council was clear when the Bylaw was passed that we want a high level of protection for trees and want to be proactive towards renewing our Urban Forest, mostly because that is what we heard from the public when we spent a year doing public consultation on the issue. Since the Bylaw was passed, I have had a couple of concerns raised by individual members of the public, but mostly I have heard overwhelming support for tree protection. It is not the level of protection that is a problem, but rather a few (hopefully) resolvable details of implementation.

Investment Report to April 30, 2016
We provide a report on our investment portfolio every year as part of our financial reporting. This money is mostly dedicated reserves for things like sewer and infrastructure renewal, and it is saved mostly with the Municipal Finance Authority. This is a very secure, and moderate yield, investment strategy.

There will be some discussion at the UBCM Conference this year about the MFA divesting from fossil fuel assets. Should be an interesting chat.

After dinner, and our lengthy Public Hearing (reported here earlier), we moved on to our Regular Evening Meeting, starting with the dispatching of the Bylaws referred to Council from the Public Hearing:

Zoning Amendment (129 Tenth Street) Bylaw No. 7839, 2016
This Bylaw amendment supporting the 8-unit townhouse development in Brow of the Hill was given third reading by Council.

Zoning Amendment (602 Ewen Avenue) Bylaw No. 7840, 2016
This Bylaw amendment supporting the 16-unit townhouse development in Queensborough was given third reading by Council.

Heritage Revitalization Agreement (313 Queen’s Avenue) Bylaw No. 7834, 2016
Heritage Designation Bylaw (313 Queen’s Avenue) No. 7835, 2016
These Bylaws supporting the permanent protection of the single family house in Queens Park was given third reading by Council

Zoning Amendment Bylaw (501-505 Twelfth Street) No. 7818, 2016
This Bylaw amendment supporting the 5-story residential apartment complex on the corner of 12th Street and Fifth Ave was given third reading by Council.

Zoning Amendment (325 and 329 Ewen Avenue) Bylaw No. 7811, 2016
This Bylaw amendment to make the residential land use legally conforming in exchange for establishing utility rights-of-way for future City services was given third reading by Council.

Zoning Amendment Bylaw (Brewery District) No. 7841, 2016
This Bylaw amendment to add a market rental component to the Brewery District mix of uses, and to make changes to the type of commercial activity that is permitted was given third reading by Council.

Official Community Plan (100 Braid Street) Bylaw No. 7836, 2016
Zoning Amendment Bylaw (100 Braid Street) No. 7837, 2016
This Bylaw amendment to support the building of a 450-student school and a residential tower at the corner of Braid Street and Rousseau Street was given third reading by Council.

Official Community Plan Amendment Bylaw No. 7822, 2016
Zoning Amendment (Queensborough Special Study Area) Bylaw No. 7823, 2016
These Bylaws supporting the designation of uses for the Queensborough Special Study Area to develop a mix of residential and commercial space was given third reading by Council

Following these Bylaws, we opened official Opportunities to be Heard on three other projects.

Development Variance Permit 00607 for 413 Alberta Street
This request was to make some modifications of a 1921 house in upper Sapperton. The house is on a small lot, which pushes some of the requested changes into the world of variances. The owners want to replace a front porch that was removed by former owners, but would be considered a fundamental design feature of the house, so they are fundamentally replacing a historically legally non-conforming porch. The new dormer they wish to add brings the living space of the house up to the FSR maximum (no variance needed) but because they need to match the existing roof pitch, the new maximum height of the house will be 9 inches higher than permitted. Thirdly, they want to build a garage, but the minimum useful garage size (440 square feet) is 1.4% larger than the maximum allowable accessory building size for a lot as small as theirs.

We received one piece of correspondence opposed to the request, but no-one showed up at the Opportunity to be Heard to speak on it. I am satisfied that the variances requested are reasonable and generally comply with existing policy.

Council voted to approve the DVP, and allow the project to go ahead.

Development Variance Permit 00606 for 810 Quayside Drive
The River Market wants to create some colorful banners along their northern side that brighten up the façade of the building and call attention to their tenants. These signs do not comply with the letter of the Sign Bylaw, which is why they came to Council for a variance.

There was no correspondence received on this application ,and no-one came to speak at the Opportunity to be Heard. The designs look tasteful and do appear to add a bit of colour to the outside of the building above a pretty drab road/loading bay/ railyard. I have no reason to oppose this idea.

Council moved to approve the Variance.

Road Closure Bylaw No. 7824, 2016
This Bylaw is related to the development at 12th Street and fifth Ave. The building and the adjacent single family home are separated by a lane allowance that is very unlikely to ever be used by the City. The City is formally closing this lane, but as we are disposing of a City asset, we need to go through the Opportunity to be Heard routine. We received no correspondence or public comment, so Council referred the Bylaw to the June 13th meeting.

The following items were removed from the Consent Agenda for discussion:

Food Truck Policy and Bylaws
It has been a pretty long process, working on policy development, a couple of round of public consultation and discussions with the business community, and more policy development, but it looks like New Westminster is ready ot have a Bylaw regulating food trucks ready for June 20th Public Hearing.

C’mon out and tell us what you think!

1031 Sixth Avenue: Heritage and Revitalization and Heritage Designation – Bylaw for First and Second Readings
This somewhat complicated project is not dead yet, despite some cynicism in the local blogosphere. The Bylaw to support the protection of the house and the building of a second house on the lot will go to Public Hearing on June 20. C’mon out and tell us what you think!

The following items in the evening meeting were moved on consent:

401 & 451 Salter Street: Temporary Use Permit for Film Production Studio
This is an underutilized piece of Industrial Property in Queensborogh. Large old industrial buildings are desirable places for shooting films and TV shows, but that does not necessarily comply with the zoning. The City is being asked to issue a Temporary Use Permit to allow a film company to set up some studio space for current productions. I’m just glad someone is using the space and generating some revenue from what is a pretty derelict piece of land.

900 Carnarvon Street (Tower Four – Plaza 88) – Development Agreement Bylaw for Consideration of Three Readings
You may remember back in 2015 when Council gave third reading to a zoning amendment that supported a planned dedicated-rental highrise for the last spot in thePlaza88 development – the currently empty lot at the corner of Carnarvon and 10th Street. The Bylaw has not yet been adopted, as there were some details to work out, some arising in the Public Hearing. Finalizing a Development Agreement is one step towards eventual Adoption. This is the agreement between the Developer and City around how the building and the City’s infrastructure will interact: sidewalks, driveways, signage, sewer connections, street lighting, etc. etc.

Council referred this Bylaw for three readings.

Amendment to Electrical Utility Bylaw – Adding New Rates 134, 241 and 500
The City’s Electrical Utility is, like everything else in the City, managed by Bylaws. The rates we pay for electricity, and how they are charged, is regulated through the Bylaw. This change to the Bylaw is doing two things, both with an eye to promoting more efficient use of electricity in the City.

The new rates are for multi-family buildings, designed to make it easier for new buildings to use energy sharing and thermal energy (like, for example, hooking up to a District Energy Utility) by pooling the electricity billing within a building and turning over the metering of individual units to the building management (be it a Strata or a Management Company).

The second change is a framework to permit net metering. If you want to put a solar panel on your roof, run a wind turbine, or hook up a thousands hamster wheels and generate your own electricity to reduce your power bill, but still stay on the City grid to work as your “battery” or back up, you will soon be able to do this!

As long as your energy source is renewable (no running the Honda generator in the backyard or Mr. Fusion machines, folks) and you get a two-way meter hooked up to the City’s specs, you can co-generate. Bring out the solar panels!

Commissioner – Electric Utility Commission Recruitment
The Electrical Utility is run by an Electrical Utility Commission, a board of utility professionals who oversee the operation of the Utility on behalf of Council. We are making some changes to the make-up of that Commission because the Utility is being asked to enter into business areas not normally part of their purview – namely setting up a District Energy Utility and overseeing a fibre optic network to bring Gigabit service to large parts of New Westminster.

Finally, we had a raft of Bylaws to go through, which we did thusly:

Heritage Designation Bylaw 7853, 2016
Heritage Revitalization Agreement Bylaw No. 7854, 2016
This plan for the heritage home on 1031 Sixth Ave (mentioned above) received two readings. It will go to Public Hearing on June 20.

Mobile Food Vending Bylaw No. 7850, 2016
The Bylaws to regulate (and therefore permit) Foodtrucks on selected City streets received two readings. is plan for the heritage home on 1031 Sixth Ave (mentioned above) received two readings. It will go to Public Hearing on June 20.

Development Services Fees Amendment Bylaw 7852, 2016
Bylaw Offence Notice Amendment Bylaw 7851, 2016
These Bylaws that support the Foodtruck Bylaw above by setting fees and penalties were given three readings.

Downtown Development Agreement (900 Carnarvon Street) Bylaw No.7855, 2016
This Bylaw to formalize the Development Agreement for Building 4 at Plaza88 (described above) was given three readings.

Electrical Utility Amendment Bylaw No. 7848, 2016
This Bylaw to set a new electrical rate structure for some multi-family buildings, and to allow Net Metering for those interested in renewable alternative generation on their premises (described above) was given three readings.

And that was the end of a very long meeting. See you again next week.

Chumps

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I wrote most of the following this morning on the New West Facebook Group “Rattled about Traffic in New West“, on a whim after reading this story, and wondering if people are connecting local traffic problems to the regional transportation logjam. I figured it was worth repeating here…

From before I was elected, I have said that New Westminster’s traffic problems are not solvable by New Westminster. We simply cannot accommodate the hundreds of thousands of through-drivers every day and maintain safe, livable, pedestrian- and business-friendly streets. The two ideas are mutually exclusive.

The solutions are regional. We need to give people east and south of us better options than driving along our surface streets every day. Regardless of whether you love or hate “TransLink”, an expanded, reliable, and well-integrated multi-modal public transit system is fundamental to providing those options.

That is why New Westminster supports the Regional Growth Strategy that calls for compact multi-use development near transit nodes, and why we are leading the region in this development model. This is why we support Transport2040, the regional transportation plan, and are seeing results where New Westminster residents use transit more than any others per capita. This is why our Mayor is working so hard with the Mayors Council to implement the 10-year capital plan for our region’s transportation work – it is really the best option we have towards addressing our afternoon traffic jams. It isn’t “Us vs. Them“, it can’t be. We need to work together as a region, and the plans I have linked to above are examples of the region working together, putting aside parochial complaints, and seeking regional compromises that will support us all.

And that is why this weeks ‘announcement‘ is such a betrayal. If you care about traffic in New West, you should read this article in the Sun and ask what the hell the provincial government is doing playing the entire Lower Mainland – the economic engine of this province – for chumps. And for how long will we accept that?

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”

Community Update update

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

I’m having a little trouble with the “community” posts here. I was hoping originally to give a weekly update of what I have been doing in the community when I’m not in Council meetings, to give people a better idea of what Council life is like. It is also (apparently) obligatory for politicians to post regular pictures of themselves smiling in the community to remind people that they exist. So mix those together, I figure, and it can be all about Pat once a week.

Two problems: much of what I do is boring subject matter for a blog post, and doesn’t necessarily come with a good photo. If I summarize most evenings, it looks like this:

?With a fair smattering of this:

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And, if I’m lucky, occasional moments of excitement like this:

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Which is all positive, good stuff, but not usually compelling blog info.

The second problem is I usually forget to take photos. #BadPolitician.

So once a week became one every fortnight, and occasionally irregular, and by then there are 20 events piled up and I get this long-winded “Community” post with many dull things and terrible photos.

So I’m going to try to post more frequently with very short posts, essentially Instagram-style, maybe as often as one every couple of days, between my regular posts that are more topic-based. As a result, I may put a few in the queue and have them come out on a regular basis, not necessarily the day the events occur, to sort of meter these things out. Let’s see how this works.

My big highlight last weekend was giving a Jane’s Walk on Saturday. I blended talking about history (of which I know little), architecture (of which I know less) and geology (or which I know a lot) in a talk and walk looking at building stones of New West.

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As it was a Jane’s Walk, I also interspersed my talking part with a few quotes from Jane Jacobs’ monumental book on the nature of neighbourhoods The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Including this one, where I asked my walkers to think and chat about whether New Westminster fits the bill to realize its full potential:

To generate exuberant diversity in a city’s streets and districts, four conditions are indispensable:

1. The district, and indeed as many of its internal parts as possible, must serve more than one primary function; preferably more than two. These must insure the presence of people who go outdoors on different schedules and are in the places for different purposes, but who are able to use many facilities in common.

2. Most blocks must be short; that is, streets and opportunities to turn corners must be frequent.

3. The district must mingle buildings that vary in age and condition, including a good proportion of old ones so that they vary in the economic yield they must produce. This mingling must be fairly close-grained.

4. There must be a sufficiently dense concentration of people, for whatever purpose they may be there. This includes dense concentration in the case of people who are there because of residence.

In combination, these four conditions create effective economic pools of use. The potentials of different districts differ for many reasons; but, given the development of these four conditions, a city district should be able to realize its best potential, wherever that may lie.

By this accounting, we are doing pretty well…

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.