Tag: New Westminster

More taxes – with colour!

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

My main argument last post was that New Westminster’s property taxes, on a per capita basis, are not out of line with the rest of the region, and are actually significantly enough below the average that the difference works out to a pretty nice chunk of money.

However, it was noted to me that we don’t actually pay property taxes on a per-capita basis, we pay per household. So I took the same sets of statistics from the BC Government site to see how much each City was collecting in taxes from Residential properties only (not business or industry), and compared it to the number of Households in each community, which is a statistic collected by Metro Vancouver for their own purposes.

table1crop
Total residential taxes collected by Municipality per Household (BC Gov’t and Metro Vancouver data)

As you can see in this colourful chart, New Westminster slips down into one of the lowest-taxed communities in the Lower Mainland in this comparison. We have a relatively low number of residents per household (2.28, compared to a regional average of 2.73) likely because of the larger number of rental suites and apartments in New Westminster than other Municipalities.

Although the presence of taxes irritates some people, the issue really arises whenever taxes are raised, so how do we measure up in the constantly-increasing-taxes department? Every year Council discusses a potential tax increase to keep up with inflation, growth, wage increases and paying for new programs. Again, the Province’s annual reporting is a useful dataset for comparing these increases between Municipalities, in this case the table called Schedule 703, which lists the annual “Total Property Taxes and Charges” for all Municipalities. I calculated the % increase every year for all 21 Municipalities, and to facilitate comparison between Belcarra’s $2M budget and Vancouver’s $1.4B budget, I indexed all of the taxes to the 2005 baseline, which I arbitrarily set at $100.

table 2
Taxes and fees collected by Municipalities, 2005 to 2015, as a percentage of the baseline amount collected in 2005.

As you can see, between 2005 and 2015, New Westminster’s taxes went up about 65%, which puts us right about the middle of the pack regionally. Anmore was off the scale in their increases, and Vancouver was (perhaps surprisingly to some) one of the most conservative in their tax hikes. To answer your question, I have no idea why Langley Township has that big jog in 2014, except to say that’s what the stats report, and it was an election year in Jordan Bateman’s riding!

These numbers, however, mask that over those 10 years, there was a lot of regional population growth, so as taxes went up, so did the number of taxpayers. Your individual tax increase as a resident of one of these Cities is not represented here, so I took data from Schedule 201 to track the rate of population growth with the same set-2005-as-100 indexing, and the same line colours:

table 3crop
Municipal population, as a percentage of the 2005 baseline population.

The data here is, unfortunately, a little choppy, as the BC Government does estimates between census years, and the 2014 Census leaves something to be desired. Why they reported no changes in population in 2013 or 2015, you will have to ask them. Perhaps most surprising are the 6 Municipalities that saw their population shrink since 2005 (we need to sit down and talk about the Regional Growth Strategy here, folks). As you can see, New Westminster was one of the fastest-growing communities, behind Surrey and Port Moody, and quite a bit faster than all of the municipalities to the north and west of us, even those with similar dense urban cores and rapid transit access.

So combining those two charts together, I calculated the “Total Property Taxes and Charges” (from Schedule 703) and divided by population (from Schedule 201), then again indexed the resultant taxes per capita to the 2005 rate, which I arbitrarily set at 100:

Taxes and fees per capita, as a percentage of the 2005 value.
Taxes and fees per capita, as a percentage of the 2005 value.

Not surprisingly, taxes didn’t go down per capita in any Municipality over the last decade, but Vancouver’s rapid growth combined with its relatively conservative tax increases make them look pretty good, and they were the only Municipality whose tax increases were (at least until 2014) on pace with the National Inflation Rate, which I added as a dashed line, mostly for Ed’s benefit. Notably, only 4 municipalities (Vancouver, North Vancouver City, Langley City and Surrey) have increased their taxes at a lower rate than New Westminster. It is interesting that these are amongst the most “urbanized” municipalities, and that taxes are increasing fastest in more rural/suburban municipalities, a correlation I have no theories to explain.

As a summary, New Westminster is far from the most-taxed municipality, and are trending towards being one of the lowest-taxed. Based on BC Government data, I am confident that our taxes, no matter how you count them, are comparatively low, and our increases to date are low relative to the other municipalities in the Lower Mainland.

Tax time again

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

As it is budget time again at New Westminster Council, people will soon be asked to provide some feedback to our somewhat byzantine financial planning.

The feedback the City receives during tax time can usually be summed up in one phrase: Stop raising taxes. Unfortunately, that advice usually offers a paucity of practical suggestions of how to save the money, with the exception of a general idea that we need to fire some number of “gold-plated staff”. For every suggestion of a practical way to save money (“stop wasting money on flowers”), there are other suggestions or how poorly we prioritize our spending (“what happened to the flowers that used to be on the boardwalk?”)

This is an area where the City’s public engagement process could definitely be improved, but it may be the most challenging part of community engagement, because there are a variety of barriers between making municipal financing understandable to most people, while still providing a complete enough picture of how our budgeting works and where our your money actually goes. The City’s books are, by regulation and practice, completely open, but that doesn’t mean the data presented is put into a context that is useful for most people. This is augmented with a general lack of understanding of how municipal financing works, including the Public Service Accounting Standards, auditing, and formal reporting that is done by every City in the Province.

So to start the conversation here about the 2016 budget plan, I want to put to rest, once again, one of the myths we commonly here in New Westminster: that we are “The Highest Taxed City” in the Lower Mainland. To challenge that idea, I am once again going to the standardized financial reporting data that every City provides to the Province.

I have already talked about Mil Rates, and not much has changed since I wrote that blog post all them years ago – Mil rates are still a terrible way to compare taxes between Cities. Actually, pretty much any way to try to compare taxes between Cities is a terrible way. Every comparison includes some confounding variables hidden in the data, because (back to the top) municipal budgeting and taxes are a complicated topic.

So for the purposes of this post, I will provide a couple of charts showing that we are not, as some would assert, the highest-taxed City in the Lower Mainland. Again, all data from the BC Government sources cited above, which is about the most impartial source of data available for local government finances.

Table1
Residential property taxes collected in 2015 per capita.

Table 1 shows the amount of residential property tax paid to the Municipality per person who lives in the Municipality. This does not include taxes paid by industry or businesses, or other fees the City collects, but right off the top, you can see that New Westminster is no-where near the most taxed Municipality.

But this is only Residential Property taxes, and Cities vary somewhat in the amount of industrial and commercial taxes they collect relative to residential taxes.

Table2

As a bit of an aside, Table 2 shows how much of the taxation burden is carried by residential homeowners, relative to how much of the present assessed land value is residential. In every City (except those few lacking commercial or industrial taxpayers), the business community subsidizes the homeowners. The few Munis with almost all of their revenue collected from residential land are the anomalies, but the “gap” between tax burden and assessed land value here in New Westminster (~25%) is not out of line with that of our “competition” with similar tax rates.

Table3
All municipal taxes collected in 2015 per capita.

If we widen our focus away from only taxes collected from residential property owners, and put all municipal taxes (residential, commercial, industrial, etc.) into the bin, we end up with Table 3, the amount of municipal taxes collected from all sources per capita. Again, New Westminster is somewhere in the middle, skewing slightly (but probably not significantly) towards the lower-tax side of the spectrum. The Cities that moved up are (naturally) those with the largest commercial and industrial land bases. Vancouver moved up 11 places from one of the lowest-tax cities to 5th from the top, Delta from the middle of the pack to the second highest (thanks to their low population and the Annacis Island cash cow), while residential bedroom communities like Anmore, Lions Bay and (sorry) Maple Ridge move way down to where they look more like comparatively lower-tax communities.

However, there is one more way these comparisons of taxes are not fair between jurisdictions, and that is in the other ways some municipalities choose to collect money from residents and businesses. Fees, Local Area Service Taxes, and Parcel Taxes are ways that tax burden can be kept off the “Mil rate”, but still appear on your bill. These are, fortunately, reported to the Province, which allows a more fair comparison between the Cities (Surrey, Burnaby, Coquitlam) that collect millions in Parcel Taxes with others (Vancouver, Richmond, New Westminster) that collect none.

Table4

Table 4 shows what happens if these additional taxes are included with your variable property taxes, and the Cities are compared, again on a per-capita basis. Not only does New Westminster compare well against out neighbours, we are significantly below the average per-capita taxes for the region, shown by the dashed red line.

For the fun of it, I calculated what it would mean for New Westminster to raise its taxes to match the per-capita regional rate. To get there, we would have to collect $18.5 Million more every year, or $264 per resident. To put that in perspective, an extra $18.5 Million per year would pay outright for a new Canada Games Pool in 3 or 4 years, a new Animal Care Facility in less than 6 months, or enough money to raise our annual grant fund for festivals and other services by 20 times. That is a crazy amount of money, and that is the amount we are below the average for the region.

Do all cities charge too much taxes? Some would argue that, while other question whether cutting municipal costs to the bone is really worth the erosion of livability that usually results. And threading that needle, my friends, is where we need to have a better discussion around the City’s budget.

Council Report – Feb. 15, 2016

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Council Report – Feb 15, 2016

My Council meeting report is a little late, but its been a heck of a week, and with no meeting this Monday, I figured I would have some free time Sunday. Then my “Sunday without a Council package to read” came along and I slept in a bit, did some yard work, pruned a fig tree, put the compost on the garden, attended a Residents Association meeting, made my award winning meatloaf for dinner, and spared for a curling team in the evening. Time flies when you have free time…

But the belated report is finally here, and you can follow along with the Agenda here. We started by moving the following items on Consent: 

Amendment to the Delegation Bylaw
The City has a Delegation Bylaw, through which Council allows our Staff to make decisions, mostly smaller spending decisions, that are strictly the duty of the Council. This allows the City to operate more efficiently, as we don’t need a Council Report every time we order a ream of paper. As we are doing a bit or re-organizing within the City, the Delegation Bylaw needs to be adapted a bit to fit the new Org Chart.

Recruitment 2016: Advisory Planning Commission Appointment
The Advisory Planning Commission advises Council on planning applications to bring a broader community focus to those discussions. We have filled a recently-vacated position.

Recruitment 2016: New Westminster Design Panel Appointments
The Design Panel provides Council advice on the design and planning aspects of developments, and is usually populated with people with professional skills in those areas such as builders, architects, and landscape architects. We have filled two vacancies on the Panel

Recruitment 2016: Chamber of Commerce Representative to the Access Ability Advisory Committee
The Access Ability Advisory Committee has a spot for a member of the New Westminster business community, and we have formally accepted their nominated representative.

Official Community Plan Amendment for the (UC) Uptown
Commercial Designation:
The idea here is to increase the viability of 6th Street between Royal and Fourth Ave by providing more flexibility in how that stretch is developed. The thinking is that at-grade residential use here may enhance the commercial operations that already exist. This Report was just to get approval to start the statutory consultation for the required OCP amendment under sections 475 and 476 of the Local Government Act, which was granted.

320 Salter Street: Housing Agreement Bylaw
This is a Bylaw through which the aforementioned development on Salter Street will be secured as market rental units. As the Mayor was on CBC radio this week talking about the rental squeeze in the Lower Mainland, it is good to see the incentives that New West is providing is resulting in more developers looking at rental as a marketing strategy. Council agreed to give this proposed Bylaw 3 Readings.

After the Consent agenda, Council went through the Regular Agenda items, which started with a presentation:

Reflective Products for Non-Professional Road Users
After a presentation from Staff and Vic Leach, and a bit of discussion, Council moved resolutions to support calls for CSA standards for consumer reflective safety products, and to ask staff to draft a resolution calling on the Province to make 30km/h the statutory speed limit for urban areas. I’ve already blogged on that topic here with a little more detail, so I won’t belabor the point.

Front Street Security
Councillor Puchmayr brought to Council the concerns of Front Street businesses around security issues around the ongoing work to remove the Parkade and build the Front Street Mews. Although the construction company has security, the NWPD has just begun to work with the businesses down there to improve come of the lighting and other security issues on this expanding construction area.

Port Metro Vancouver and Marina Fees
We had a delegation a couple of meetings ago around several City residents in Queensborough feeling pinched by rapidly increasing water lot rental costs from the Port. Council moved to send a letter of concern to the Port, and engage senior governments in a review of the recent, seemingly quite onerous, increases.

These items were removed from Consent for discussion:

Proposed Amendments to Commercial Vehicle Bylaw
Remember those discussions we had about Uber? This is part of the complex regulatory environment we were talking about that was designed to make the taxi industry safer and more accountable. After a couple of denied chauffeur licenses over the last year or two, staff have provided some feedback with suggestions on ways we can make the administration of our responsibilities under the Motor Vehicle Act better. Some amendments to the City’s Bylaw were recommended, that Council moved to support.

100 Braid Street (Urban Academy): OCP Amendment
This proposed development in Sapperton is beginning its public consultation process, and again, this report was to outline the statutory consultation process that all OCP amendments are required to follow (due to sections 475 and 476 of the Local Government Act), including senior governments and external agencies. The public consultation on this project is progressing quickly!

Metro Vancouver Draft Regional Food Systems Action Plan:
I went on a bit of a rant here, as food security is a major component of regional sustainable planning, and I am generally supportive of the regional vision being put forward by Metro Vancouver. Councillor Harper brought up the interesting link between food security and food waste, which dovetails with the good work that Danison Buan is doing right here in New Westminster to crack that troublesome nut.

There is another aspect of food security that we rarely talk about in New West, because we are one of the few communities with no ALR land. But that does not mean we cannot support the protection of life-sustaining farmlands in the region. The two largest threats to farmland and our domestic food security are the development of farmland for residential sprawl, and the re-purposing of farmland for industrial use. We need to continue to oppose both of these, and make it part of our food security policy.

The first threat is enhanced by the current emphasis on building our regional transportation system to facilitate sprawl – the insane proposal to build a 10-lane bridge to replace the Massey tunnel, even the proposal to increase road capacity over the Pattullo Bridge – act to facilitate further sprawl, in contravention of the smart growth principles embedded in the Regional Growth Strategy. This is part of the reason we are looking at an OCP update that allows more intelligent growth near the regional transit spine. We often hear in New West talk about the traffic impacts of that sprawl to the south and east of our City, because of the traffic impacts we continue to suffer because of it, but we rarely talk about food security and other aspects.

The second issue – the ideological position of the Vancouver Port Authority that we will achieve food security by replacing farmland with warehouses to move imported food around – is something that we again have to continue to oppose.

Metro Vancouver Draft Regional Affordable Housing Strategy
Council also moved a motion in support of the Metro Vancouver regional Affordable housing strategy. More to come on this soon, I hope…

We then read some Bylaws:

Commercial Vehicle Amendment Bylaw No. 7777, 2016
As discussed above, these are the changes to the Bylaw relating to how we regulate Taxi drivers in the City. Council gave the Bylaw changes two readings, and will provide a Public Opportunity to be Heard at our February 29 meeting. Come on out and tell us what you think!

Amendment to Delegation Bylaw No. 7820, 2016
As discussed above, these are the changes to the Bylaw relating to how we delegate powers to staff. Council gave the Bylaw changes three readings.

Housing Agreement (320 Salter Street) Bylaw No. 7805, 2016
As discussed above, this is the Bylaw to secure Market Rental as the housing use for this development. Council gave the Bylaw three readings.

And that, after the Announcements and the receipt of some correspondence, was council for the week. Which explained to people why some of us were in hockey Jerseys.

Meters and Metres of Water

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Last Council Meeting, the New Westminster Environmental Partners brought a presentation to council on the topic of water conservation. I summarized Council’s resolutions resulting from that discussion in last week’s report, but it is worth expanding on the topic.

Full disclosure: I was actively involved with the NWEP before I was elected to Council, and even served as President for a few years. I have been less involved since I got elected, but am proud of the work we did in this community, and am supportive of the continued work the NWEP does.

The ideas that the NWEP brought first to the City’s Environment Advisory Committee, then to Council with that Committees’ recommendation, were a result of last summer’s unprecedented drought and the Stage 3 water restrictions. Those events saw most lawns in the City turn brown, and had many of us wondering if this was going to be a new reality with the double-whammy of population growth and climate change pushing our reservoirs to the limit.

It was a rainy day in February when Council talked about this topic, but much like it is easier to patch your roof when the sun is shining than when it is leaking, Council sent recommendations back to staff to review and update our water conservation approach in preparation for the next dry season. The approaches could be summed up as the stick, the carrot, and the meter.

The Stick

If I can characterize a common theme at the Environment Advisory Committee, there was frustration expressed about a perceived lack of enforcement in New Westminster during the water use restrictions in the summer of 2015. I think we can all remember noting a lawn or two that was spectacularly green in August, against all odds. On early-morning Sunday FR Fuggitivi bike rides through New West and Burnaby, we saw a lot of sprinklers or tell-tale wet asphalt deep into Stage 3.

For most situations dealing with taxpaying citizens and Bylaws, the City understandably takes an education-first approach. Make sure people violating bylaws understand they are breaking the law, order them to stop, then pull out the fine book if these approaches don’t work. The cost of enforcement Is rarely covered by the fines that can reasonably be applied, social pressure is essentially free, and many more people are obtuse of bylaws than deliberately flaunting them.

However, there are scofflaws, and for them the Bylaws need to be enforced. Council asked staff to report back to us on how the enforcement issues was managed last year, and whether Bylaws Staff had the tools they needed to make enforcement as easy as possible in the event of restrictions in 2016.

The Carrot

Different cities have different levels of water-conservation programming. In New Westminster, rainwater collection barrels are (were?) available from the City’s public works department at a discounted price, so gardeners have a little extra supply around. Other cities have in the past offered “water savings packages” that include things like aerators for your kitchen sink, low-flow shower heads, and spring-loaded outdoor faucets, or rebate programs for those switching to low-flow toilets, in order to incentivize the reduction of water consumption year-round.

I’m actually a bit embarrassed to admit I had very little knowledge of what type of incentive programs like this New Westminster has in place. We asked staff to report back on opportunities for active conservation programs, and to provide a bit of analysis about what works best elsewhere. Hopefully we can high-grade the best ideas from other jurisdictions, and bring them to New West.

The Meter

A basic truth of resource management is that you cannot manage what you don’t count. When it comes to managing our limited resource of clean potable water, water meters are the basic tool of conservation.

In New Westminster, all commercial and industrial users are metered, and pay for their water per cubic metre consumed. Every multi-family residence is also metered, and residents may pay by the cubic metre or a bulk rate to their property manager. Only single-family residences are currently not metered, with all houses paying a “flat fee” for a year of water service. Those with legal secondary suites pay 50% more for their flat rate, to pay for the alleged extra use of their tenant, and some seniors living alone get a discount on the presumption that they use less water.

According to a 2008 report done by staff on this very topic, about 80% of the water hook-ups are not metered, however almost 75% of water use is metered through our existing system. The largest pipes are metered, if not the majority of pipes. It is also reported that New Westminster has one of the lowest rates of water use per capita in the Lower Mainland, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we have the most conservative practices. Compared to most Cities, we have a general lack of large industrial and agricultural users, and have a high proportion of our population living in multi-family dwellings, where water use is typically much lower. These facts point to why we have not been all that motivated in the past to implement a potentially-costly universal metering program, but some things have changed since 2008.

First off, Metro Vancouver (who supplies all of our water) have indicated that they are going to be studying whether mandatory metering is something they may require for their customer municipalities. The 2015 shortage and monumental capital costs required to expand our reservoirs may force their hand, which may in turn force our hand. It serves the City and our rate payers if the City is prepared for this eventuality.

Second, the cost of water per cubic metre from Metro Vancouver has gone up substantially, as will the cost of receiving and treating our liquid waste (which is directly related to the volume of water use). Where the cost of saving water has in the past been overshadowed by the cost of implementing a large-scale metering program, this gap may be closing. Especially as more municipalities move towards metering, and the technology costs come down.

Council asked staff to update the 2008 report, and provide us some models for how a voluntary or mandatory metering system for single family homes might be implemented and operate in New Westminster.

Most of the feedback we have heard so far is positive, and I am reflexively in favour of water meters for all single family homes (including my own). However, I need to emphasize that Council has not made any decisions about this other than to explore the idea, and there is a lot of work for the City to do, including costing, engineering, planning and public consultation, before we have a deliverable program. In the meantime, take shorter showers, ok?

Ask Pat: Crappy Park

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Someone asked—

Hi Pat, I am just inquiring about Sullivan Park on Oliver Street here in the Queen’s Park neighbourhood. It is a lovely park and really close to our home. However, I am noticing that there is a lot of dog dropping being left all around the park. I am not sure if this particular park is monitored but something needs to be done. It is horrible. I refuse to take my 14 month old there anymore as I am worried he is going to fall into it.. or worse. Anything you can do for us?

Shh! I didn’t think we were allowed to talk about Sullivan Park. It’s one of those neighbourhood secrets that we aren’t supposed to let anyone know about.

One general rule about a persistent dog-crap problem in a location is that it is probably just one person. Most dog owners are responsible and don’t want crap lying around any more than the rest of us, but one or two bad apples definitely can result in a lot of… uh… road apples. Unfortunately, catching that one person is probably near impossible.

My first suggestion is to use SeeClickFix when you run into a problem like this, to make sure it gets onto the City operations radar. If you aren’t a smart-phone lover, you can use this on-line form to make sure your issue gets tracked and followed up on. Or call Parks, Culture and Recreation at 604-527-4567.

What can Parks do? That is definitely a small park, and we have limited staff, so 24-hour patrols are not likely in the offing. I am not as familiar with Sullivan Park as my Queens Park neighbours, but having a doggie station with a ready source of collection bags, trash receptacle and signage will usually help most people do the right thing – if the park doesn’t have these at the one or two most common entry point, that may help. Of course, it may also encourage more people to see Sullivan as an unofficial “dog run”, which comes with its own issues.

As it is a unique spot, with a relatively small group of users (until you went and let the secret out!), it might be interesting to see if the neighbourhood has any ideas how to approach the issue. Better signage? Neighbourhood dog-watch? As a non-dog owner, I’m happy to hear suggestions!

Curb Extensions

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Sorry, I’m not blogging much, and I would insert the usual “I’m too busy!” excuse here, but my busy-ness right now is at least partially because I have been doing a little better on the work-life balance thing and have spent some weekends away. I’m sure I’ll fall off the wagon soon, but here is something to hold my readers (Hi Mom!) over.

This is the beginning of a (possible) blog series that grew from a single post on the “Rattled by Traffic in New Westminster” Facebook Group. A regular Poster there, member of the Neighbourhood Traffic Advisory Committee, professional driver and all-around good guy Dave Tate wrote a comment that summarized a series of common questions in the City about traffic planning. I genuinely enjoy talking traffic with Dave, both agreeing and disagreeing with him, as he brings a pragmatic and relatively dogma-free approach to “the traffic issue”, which is pretty rare in this City. Anyway, upon reading his rant long list of suggestions, I commented that it was too much to digest on Facebook, but I would chew on it and provide a Blog response or two. This is the first, on the topic of curb extensions, and I hope I can get around to touching on the others in future posts.

Dave’s (slightly paraphrased) comment was:

“Curb Extensions. I understand their purpose and I do agree that they have a use. Having them in places like 12th St between 10th and 6th on the side streets is a good idea. They help protect pedestrians by making them more visible in uncontrolled intersections. But installing them on Royal and 6th at a controlled intersections is a bad idea. If you had a right turn lane there it would allow cars turning to get over and allow others to pass, rather than stopping an entire lane of traffic.”

With all due respect, I think you only understand part of their purpose, and some purposes are different on Royal than on 12th. Arguably, they are *more* important on Royal, and have more uses. I’ve written this before, and there is a significant amount of published information on the value of curb bulges or extensions, or whatever you want to call them, from the fact they lead to better yield compliance by drivers to how they improve overall safety in the urban realm. However, aside from the dusty boring research, I’ll quickly summarize what I see as the benefits of the specific curb bulge at Royal and 6th, as that one commonly comes up in conversation.

First off, it is a tremendous aid to pedestrians when you have a road like Royal Ave. There are six lanes of traffic (including turn lanes) and a significant median, all on a hill. With the curb extensions, the crossing length is almost 30m. For you and I that is no problem, but not everyone is as young and spry as us. Reducing the crossing length by 6 or more metres at each end makes it more accessible and safer for users from 8 to 80.

Royal6_1

Those extra metres have another effect. The timing for a walk cycle is measured based on the distance of the crossing, and a general flat-ground rule of thumb is 1 to 1.2m per second. By adding curb bulges we actually reduce the amount of time that drivers face a red light, and increase the green light time for the cross traffic, increasing the efficiency of the traffic signal cycle for everyone involved.

Another benefit is by extending the radius of the corner, so right-turning drivers have a less extreme curve, and have better visibility through the turn, which significantly improves the safety of pedestrians from being clipped by right turners (one of the most dangerous interactions for pedestrians).

Also, curb bulges tend to slow drivers down when they enter an intersection, regardless of their intended direction (turn or straight through). This is because the narrowing creates visual “roughness”, making the road appear narrower than it actually is, which causes drivers to self-regulate. This is one of those basic road safety concepts: wide straight streets lead to higher speeds and more dangerous conditions for all road uses.

Now back to those right-turners. Why do we want them to skip the queue when traffic is backed up on Royal? Part of the traffic management goals of the City that pretty much everyone can agree on is that through-commuters should be encouraged to stay on the major routes, and not avail themselves of our residential side-streets for their daily rip through town. But you know if you are that through-commuter coming down Royal one morning and see the line-up of 10 cars at the red light, you are more likely to take that empty right-turn lane and go up 6th, and maybe turn left on Queens or Third or Fourth and try to get to Stewardson or places west. Of course, it is a fools errand, because as you mentioned, there is traffic calming in the Brow neighbourhood to make this choice less appealing, in order to make those residential neighbourhoods more comfortable and safe for the people who live and walk there. So it is easier of everyone if people stay on Royal in the first place. The curb-bulge does not reduce through-capacity (unless we made it a through-lane, not a right-turn lane, then we need to talk about making Royal 4 lanes, which is a whole different discussion). Creating a queue-jumping lane for rat-runners is not a great reason to remove a structure that provides so much pedestrian benefit.

So, yeah. You may have to wait an entire light cycle to make the right turn on Royal, and I’m sorry about that. But if that is the cost we have to pay for the multiple safety and neighbourhood benefits provided by that curb bulge, then I’m happy with the choice we’ve made.

Council – Feb 1, 2016

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I can’t believe it is February already, or maybe it was the jet lag related to my cancelled flight, 12 hours in airports, and waking up in Calgary a few hours before the meeting that had me all worn out. If I was more incoherent than usual, that’s my excuse. Regardless, our first Februarian meeting of 2016 started off with a presentation from the Finance Department on the Draft Financial Plan and the Capital budget.

This topic is going to be the subject of several blog posts between now and May when we finalize our budget. This is an early draft version of the budget, and there will be an opportunity for the public to comment on this (as they have already begun to do), and we will be having further talks before the tax increase (if any) for 2016 is decided. You can go to this page to read about the last 5-year Financial Plan, and can read lengthy reports about the Draft proposed budget starting at page 29 of this document . It’s pretty exciting stuff if you like spreadsheets, but I encourage you to ask questions of me and the rest of council about this; it really is the most important thing that Council does every year, so we need to get it right.

We then passed the following items as part of the Consent Agenda:

Proposed Erosion and Sediment Control (ESC) Bylaw 7754, 2016
I’m actually surprised we do not already have one of these. This is a bylaw that regulates how the sediment and sand that may run off of a construction site is managed. This helps keep our streets clean, but more importantly sand and sediment loading into our storm sewers is both harmful to the fisheries habitat the water will eventually reach, and is damaging to our storm drainage infrastructure, which can result in higher maintenance costs.

It is also part of our Good Neighbor Policy, where we are trying to reduce the impacts of construction and capital works on adjacent property owners, residents, and businesses. Council moved to give this bylaw three readings.

205 Clinton Place: Proposed Heritage Revitalization Agreement and
Heritage Designation Bylaws
This unique HRA project in Sapperton was approved for two readings. I’ll hold my comments until after the Public Hearing.

1407 Sixth Avenue Proposed Heritage Revitalization Agreement and
Heritage Designation Bylaws
This rather more typical HRA project in the West End was approved for two readings. I’ll hold my comments until after the Public Hearing.

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

Anvil Centre – VIBE Update and Programming
and
Upcoming Exhibitions at the Anvil Centre
There are many aspects to the Anvil Centre. Besides the bustling convention business, there are incredibly successful museum and gallery programs, and a burgeoning performing arts program that is just starting to operate on full steam. The “arts programming” program is also burgeoning and growing rapidly. The big picture of putting art in front of people, putting people in front of art, and (most importantly) getting people engaged in creating and enjoying arts are starting to merge together to make the anvil a fun place to be.

Investment Report to December 31st, 2015
City has $128.9M in the Savings Account, which is $28.7M more than last year. The base capital is largely our “reserves” that are committed to future capital investments (sewer, water, roads, etc.), though some is uncommitted reserves, which is true “savings” put aside for the financial security for the City

This increase mostly reflects the fact that some capital projects are running behind, and the money we have put aside to pay for them has not yet been paid out. Our interest gains are only $2.7M (although 2.7%, is not bad in a year like this). Most of our savings are in the Municipal Finance Authority intermediate and bond funds which are super secure and diverse.

Filming Policy Amendment and Film Permit Bylaw No. 7793
When film companies shoot in New Westminster, they need a permit that covers everything from the fees they pay for police services to the requirements the City sets as far as parking, road closures, noise bylaws, etc. The report indicates that the current policy would be strengthened with a Bylaw to make the permitting regulatory.

I raised a concern about the wording of the proposed Bylaw, which I felt was much too broad in how it defined “filming”. It is intended to catch the professional film industry) and indeed Creative BC was OK with the change), but with the broadest definition of filming (essentially, anyone filming anything in the City except inside a private studio requiring a permit), and no language around giving the Film Coordinator or other senior Staff Member the authority to waive the permit requirement for (as a simple example) three youths at a Skatepark with a DSLR, we create a confusing Bylaw that is difficult to enforce. So we moved to have staff review that language and come back with a better defined approach.

We then moved through the Bylaws part of the Evening’s program:

HRA (205 Clinton Place) Bylaw No. 7800, 2016
Heritage Designation (205 Clinton Place) Bylaw No. 7801, 2016
As discussed above, this HRA in Sapperton was given two readings. There will be a Public Hearing February 29th, 2016. C’mon out and tell us what you think!

HRA (1407 Sixth Avenue) Bylaw No. 7807, 2016
Heritage Designation (1407 Sixth Avenue) Bylaw No. 7806, 2016
As discussed above, this HRA in the West End was given two readings. There will be a Public Hearing February 29th, 2016. C’mon out and tell us what you think!

Erosion and Sediment Control Bylaw No. 7754, 2016
Bylaw Notice Enforcement Amendment Bylaw No. 7819, 2016
As discussed above, this Bylaw was given three readings.

Community Heritage Commission Amendment Bylaw No. 7808, 2015
This Bylaw was discussed on January 18 and given Third Reading on January 25. It has now been adopted. It is the Law of the Land, please adjust your lifestyle to suit.

We then dispatched with one piece of New Business:

OCP Moody Park Meeting
The public engagement on the “housing conversation” stage of the OCP process has continued. I have commented at length about this, but want to point out one of the most insightful comments by one of the other members of Council at this meeting.

Councillor McEvoy reminded us that the conversation (debate?) going on right now around the OCP is a conversation/debate within and between neighbours, not a debate between Council and the public, or even Staff and the public. There is no OCP to debate right now, because staff has not written one yet, and Council has not reviewed one yet. The plan has yet to be developed, and the conversation going on right now is designed to get the residents, businesses and other stakeholders in the City talking in order to inform that plan as it is being drawn up. Surely some preliminary and very conceptual models of things like density increases have been put together to engage people in a conversation, but no-one on staff should be “encouraging” any specific model ,and Council has definitely not advocated for any specific path forward except in the broadest terms.

There are more opportunities for you to take part in that conversation, and if you are wondering if it is worthwhile for you to take part, this is an interesting article that talks about one of the bigger challenges in Public Engagement in Cities today. If you don’t get involved and make your voice heard, whose voice will be heard?

After a break and Public Delegations we covered one topic that was brought up during the delegations.

The New Westminster Environmental Partners (full disclosure: I used to be President, still a strong supporter!) have been working on making the case for metering residential water in the City, as part of a comprehensive water conservation program. Coming out of the drought of 2015 and Stage 3 Water Restrictions, they did their research and brought a presentation to the Environment Advisory Committee last month. The Committee made some recommendations to Council, and we discussed those recommendations.

As this is already a long report, I’ll write a longer Blog post on this topic soon, but for now will just point out that Council supported reviewing the concept of voluntary and even mandatory water metering for residential customers, and will ask Staff to provide an updated report on what the economic and technological model for this looks like. We also asked Staff to review both water restriction enforcement and our suite of water conservation programs in preparation for next summer’s water shortage season.

And that was the meeting that was

Council – Jan 25, 2016

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

OK, that was a quick one.

We had a very light agenda this council meeting, and between a sparsely-attended Public Hearing and no Public Delegations, it was a pretty unspectacular night. Of course we had a full Council Day with a closed session and an Open Workshop earlier in the day on the City’s Financial Plan, so the little time we spent on TV doesn’t mean we didn’t get work done.

PUBLIC HEARING:

Zoning Amendment Bylaw No. 7781, 2015 (Commercial Storage Lockers)
There are some storage lockers in the Plaza88 development that are not being used by the commercial or residential users of the facility. The owners of Plaza88 want to open them up for commercial rental, but that is not allowed under the current zoning. Therefore a change in the zoning Bylaw to allow that use at this location was required. Such a zoning bylaw change requires a Publci Hearing.

The City received no correspondence on this matter, and no-one appeared to speak at the Public Hearing. The public engagement of the Strata members of the Plaza88 Development indicated no objection to this change of use, and the Engineering Department had not problems. So we moved to send it to third Reading.

We than went on with our Regular Agenda.

BYLAWS:

Zoning Amendment Bylaw No. 7781, 2015
As just discussed, we moved Third Reading of the Bylaw that would allow commercial storage lockers at Plaza88.

Community Heritage Commission Amendment Bylaw No. 7808, 2015
As discussed last meeting, we moved Third Reading of this Bylaw to change the terms of reference for the heritage commission.

NEW BUSINESS:

Lighting up the Anvil for PEDAW
This follows up on my request from two weeks ago to follow up on a request from the Provincial Eating Disorder Awareness Week campaign to light up Anvil Centre Purple on February 5th to support the initiative. Council voted to support his one-time request, and we will be getting a report back from staff on a longer-term policy to support future requests like this.

And that, my friends, was it! See you next week!

Council Report – Jan. 18 2016

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

This week’s council agenda was not a long one, but we covered two topics that are a big deal for a lot of volunteers in the City, and quite a bit more.

The following items were moved on Consent:

Recruitment 2016: Committee Appointments
This is the best of reports, and the worst of reports. Pretty much every Committee and Commission has more applicants than spaces available, and sometimes many more. It is hard to balance refreshing the committees with a few new faces and keeping the people who have contributed in previous years in order to maintain some continuity. However, it always means saying “no” to many excellent applicants and many valuable contributors to the previous committees.

So if you applied and got selected, congratulations, and recognize that there were others who applied who were not chosen, so please come to the committee with an open mind, a strong voice, and a willingness to contribute. For those who were not chosen, please do again next year! We would choose you all if we could, but Terms of Reference need to be respected and in my experience, a too-large committee gets ungainly and reduces the opportunity for individual members to have meaningful input.

Here is the list of the selectees, thank you all for your applications. Let’s get some things done in 2016!

Amendments to Terms of Reference for 2016
A couple of the Committees did have a one-time extension of the terms of reference in order to accommodate a few extra members, mostly because of unique skill sets that would serve the Committee’s mandate well and the desires of the chairs of those committees.

Community Heritage Commission Amendment Bylaw No. 7808, 2015
This is subtle adjustment of the Terms of Reference of the Heritage Commission so that membership can be split into offset two-year terms to allow overlapping terms and create continuity on the Commission.

Report on Major Purchasing Transactions for the Period September 1
to December 31, 2015
This is the ternary report on the things the City bought and paid for in the last 4-month period, which allows us to track if we are hitting or missing our budgets. It also provides a bit of Council (and in turn, public) oversight to the procurement process, and is actually an interesting read if you wonder what your taxes are spent on, and why.

Municipal Security Issuing Resolution #7528 and Loan Authorization Bylaw
No. 7528, 2012
The City passed a Bylaw back in 2012 authorizing us to borrow $59 Million for various purposes, including work on the Anvil Centre and numerous roads, parks, and engineering projects ongoing in the City. In the end, the City was conservative in their borrowing and careful with their spending commitments, and only borrowed $23.5 Million, less than half what was authorized.

Of that $23.5 Million we borrowed, $11 Million is within our 5-year plan to be paid back, which classifies it as “short term borrowing”. The balance will not be paid back until after 5 years, and therefore staff require authorization to borrow $12.5 Million over the long term from the Municipal Finance Authority. This is not new borrowing, just proper accounting for previous borrowing, as the legislations requires of us.

The following items were removed form the Consent agenda:

Draft (EHCC) Roadmap for Council’s Consideration
We had a report on the one of this Council’s priority projects, turning the planned re-development and expansion of Royal Columbian Hospital into an economic driver for the entire City. This means assuring the expansion supports the economic development of the Sapperton neighbourhood, while we manage issues like parking, traffic, and development of commercial areas like the last phases of the Brewery District to best protect the livability and viability of the neighbourhood.

We can leverage multiple advantages – the proposed District Energy Utility, the proposed dark fibre that will form the backbone of our Intelligent City Initiative, and the potential for renewal of the Rousseau Triangle, the Braid Industrial Area, Sapperton Green and even some underperforming parts of East Columbia. At least that’s the hope.

Like the rest of the City, Transportation is a challenge in this area, and internal connectivity is the most pressing issue. We need people to be able to move around in the neighbourhood safely and comfortably as a first priority. East Columbia cannot accommodate more vehicle through-put if it will be a great street at the centre of this economic cluster and a fully accessible safe pedestrian realm. It needs to be That connects the Hospital to the parks and businesses like an open mall, and the pedestrian movement through the Hospital Campus is a major part of that.

We las need to connect the Rousseau Triangle to the hospital site and East Columbia with a similar concern for safe, comfortable pedestrian travel. And we need to make it safe to cross Brunette and the railroad tracks in order to connect the Braid Industrial Area to the rest of our community. Currently, there is a 1.3km stretch of Brunette – from Debeck to Braid – where no person can safely cross the road or tracks. That is a huge barrier slashing right through the middle of our City that is killing the value of the land and the opportunity for better land use on both sides.

So these are some of the challenges, but the opportunities are big, and we need to assure we have the pieces in place to make the best plans viable. Council moved to receive the roadmap outlined in the report.

2016 Festival Grant Recommendations
The City is still working on the process to grant both cash and “in kind donations” (City expenses for things like engineering help and policing that the City pays on their behalf) to organizations across the City who put on festival type events.

Last year, the city granted $188,000 in combined cash and in kind to the organizations. This year’s budget was increased to $210,000 and we received requests for $341,000. The festival committee reviewed the requests and recommended increasing the grant budget to $272,000.

There are two items that are appearing on these requests for the first time, which we had previously paid for out of other City budgets, and are only moving over to the Festival Grant budget to make it more transparent what we are spending. Those are the $36,000 the City provides for May Day events, and the $21,000 we provided for support services around the Hyack float. So that $57,000 is not new spending, but just moving columns in the budget.

I share some of concerns of other councilors about ever-expanding budgets for festivals, and I’m a guy who loves festivals. I would love if we could open our streets more in the summer and have an event happening every weekend to get people to spend time together celebrating our City. It would be a huge boost for the City and for the businesses. But it costs us $20,000 to open a street for a day, and we need to assure that brings us value.

I liked where the Mayor was going in his comments (at the risk of putting words in his mouth here), in that we need to better separate the costs related to opening a street (and granted through this process in kind) and the actual cash we give some festival organizers. The former (in kind costs) we should be doing on the basis of whether we think the festival is a benefit to the community consummate with those costs. The latter (support cash) should be used to provide the smaller organizers with less access to sponsor money some vital but modest support, and possibly providing some seed money to help with the start-up of larger events, with the intent that those larger organizers build sponsorship capacity and move away from relying on City cash to be successful.

We will be having further discussion about this in the year ahead, and will hopefully tune the process a bit for the 2017 granting window, but the organizers for 2016 have been waiting a long time for Council to move on this issue, and the Festival Committee has done a good job, so I was happy to move their recommendation.

Transportation Section Work Plan for 2016
The City’s Engineering Department is working on implementation of the Master Transportation Plan, and have provided a report on the progress so far, and the plan for what parts of the MTP will be implemented or initiated in the next 4 quarters.

The targets are good ones, and reflect progress towards making our MTP successful. This is a transportation strategy that serves the livability of the community first. The goals are to make the Streets and sidewalks safer for all users, to encourage lower-carbon and more sustainable transportation options, and to protect our neighbourhoods while reducing the cost of maintaining our roads.

Some of these things seem small, but make a big difference in how accessible our community is, such as out commitments to prioritize curb cuts, sidewalk expansion and making every bus stop accessible. We are steadily working on improving the greenway network by identifying the gaps or barriers that need to be linked up. We have at ACTBiPed been talking a lot recently about downtown, and how to make the hills less challenging through connecting favourable lower-grade pieces of road.

But these are the things you see, what you don’t see is a bunch of the work that is being done to review how traffic signal timing operates in the City, reviewing how we collect and share traffic data, or the corridor and parking studies we are doing in different parts of the City. And we are working with our regional partners, TransLink on Pattullo plans, Coquitlam and the Ministry of Transportation on the Brunette overpass improvements, BC Trucking Association and the region’s mayors on major transportation funding and things like tolling policy.

It is an exciting and busy time! But consistently, transportation is the #1 issue in New Westminster, and will be for years to come, because the overall congestion problem is regional and the solutions rely on us working together.

2016 City Partnership Grant – Update
It’s no secret I am a big fan of the Royal City Farmers Market. Not just because it is a great way to access fresh local food, or because if creates a community get-together every time it runs where connections are made, but because the enterprise from the start has operated not just as a not-for-profit, but as a social profit. It cranks so much back into the community, working with the schools, Family Services, Seniors Services, Arts Council, Spirit of the Children, etc. etc. They contribute so much to the fabric of the City, and they do it with intention. All this ,and I get to give my money every week to the local person making the food I am buying, which is incredible in today’s consumer world. Council has discussed some ideas to reduce the in-kind costs the Market is paying to make it more sustainable, and these will be coming back to Council next meeting.

The second partnership is for ACORN to run tax return assistance programs for low income people with barriers to help. This is one of those things I feel we need to support because it is a gap senior governments simply fail to fill for the most vulnerable in our community. I wish we didn’t have to support this, but I am secure that the money we invest in this program is returned in multiples to our local community, while making life easier for very vulnerable people.

100 Braid Street – OCP Amendment and Rezoning for School and
Residential Development (Urban Academy)
This is a preliminary review of a potential rezoning for a piece of land in the “Rousseau Triangle”, which you might know as the 100 Braid Art gallery, the Laser Tag facility, and a third property. The proposal is to see the westernmost building replaced with a new school building to house Urban Academy (currently located on the edge of Queens Park, but you already know about that). The rest of the property would eventually be redeveloped into a higher-density mixed high rise (20 stories) and multiple-townhouse residential development.

This came to the Land Use and Planning Committee, and a few concerns were raised, including the ubiquitous traffic and parking, and how the existing buildings on the site would be re-purposed (or not). There is much more work to be done on this project, and it will eventually go to Public Hearing, so I won’t dig too deep into my opinions are, but I am happy that this is going to community consultation, and look forward to hear the results of that consultation.

We then (after a short recess) had some interesting Open Delegations, one looking forward to a better relationship with the Port, one looking back at the remarkable history of marketing in New Westminster, and one introducing an exciting year of Parades for the float we funded earlier in the evening.

We had two pieces of New Business:
1) Councillor Williams raised concerns about BC Hydro’s herbicide plans in the city, and we will see a report back from Staff on that topic
2) We had a bit of an update on the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Expansion Project NEB Hearings.

Finally, we dispatched with a Bylaw:
Community Heritage Commission Amendment Bylaw No. 7808, 2015
As discussed above, this Bylaw adjusts the terms of Reference of the commission, and we gave it three readings.

Tree Bylaw

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Now I very much feel like we got something done.

My first year on Council has been busy, with some really important stuff, though we were at times distracted by issues that have less impact on the long-term viability of the City. I wonder, sometimes, if we are just kicking the can down the road, or are we actually getting things done? Intellectually, I know it is the latter, I recognize that we are moving so many things forward (Canada Games Pool, Front Street, OCP, whistle cessation, etc.), and just because we are not cutting ribbons every day, the work we do on them now is as important as the closing date will be.

However, it feels good to get one big box checked off in my personal to do list, and the Tree Protection Bylaw was a big one.

Of course, *I* did not do this. It was the result of a lot of great work by City staff and an excellent consultant team. Council as a whole provided direction and political support, so this is progress for the City of which my part of the team was pretty small. But just like the guy who sets the football for the place kicker, I am happy to be part of the team that did something the City will be proud of in the decades ahead.

A Tree Protection Bylaw is something I have whinged about for several years, and New West is hardly a leader in this front. The Bylaw we have adopted is, in my opinion, well developed and pragmatic, and reflects the best practices of other cities across the region.

Short version (an you should read the Bylaw, not rely on my Coles Notes version here):

•You need a permit to cut a tree down if that tree’s trunk is larger than 20cm in diameter at chest height, or if that tree is otherwise designated as “protected”.

•If the tree is hazardous or its roots are causing damage to buildings or utilities, you can remove it, as long as you can demonstrate it is problematic, get a permit to remove it, and replace it with a less-problematic tree.

•If you cut a tree down without a permit, or damage it to the point where it dies or becomes hazardous, you will get fined, and will be required to replace the tree.

There are devils in the details here (i.e. when does a hedge become a tree?) that are explained in the Bylaw, and you can contact the City to get those details if need be. Lots of information is available here.

The other aspects of the Urban Forest Strategy we adopted on Monday are just as important as the Tree Bylaw. The City is making a commitment to increase the tree canopy over the City from 18% to 27%, which is the North American Standard. To put that in context, the Queen’s Park neighbourhood has about a 33% canopy coverage, where Sapperton and Glenbrook North have about 19% overall. If we imagine every neighbourhood being as leafy as Queens Park, you have an idea how much this will change the livability of our City.

There is no doubt there will be costs to this ambitious strategy, but there are significant opportunities to offset some of those costs, and the long-term cost/benefit of a healthy Urban Forest has been proven to be positive across the country. The aspirational goal of 10,000 more trees in 10 years is going to impact everything from what types of housing we will be able to accommodate in our upcoming Official Community Plan, to how we design and protect our boulevard spaces and parks.

The implementation of this strategy will be over 20 years, which demonstrates that even with the check in the box for a big progress step, there will always be more work to do.

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today”