Council Meeting? What Council Meeting?

Posted on March 19, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

You may have noticed I didn’t update on last week’s council meeting, nor on the week before. That is because we did not have a council meeting last week, and the previous week’s meeting was limited to a short “Closed” session to deal with some necessary business, and a Committee of the Whole meeting that was more of a workshop.

You can watch that workshop on the live feed, if you are interested in the two topics we dug deeper into. I will cover them a bit here, and share a bit of where my (early, and therefore very open to adjustment as information arrives) thoughts are on these programs.

Family Friendly Housing Policy

I seem to be at the certain age where a great many people around me are surrounded by children, increasingly their own. And the numbers keep growing (Congratulations Mike & Melissa! Rick & Lana!). Recently, there has been quite a bit of conversation having to do with housing affordability – not only of the low-income or supportive housing, but of affordable housing for middle-income families.

Many of my generation (and the next) who have chosen the urban lifestyle of a place like New Westminster as opposed to increasingly soul-crushing suburbia and commutes, are not necessarily expecting a big house with a big yard, but are ok with townhouses and condos. However, most lament the lack of 3+ bedroom places available for their growing families. Very few feel they can afford a detached single family home (even if they want one and the attached costs, maintenance issues, and hassles). Outside of the detached house model, 3+ bedroom options that do become available in the new building stock end up being tower penthouses or the token pedestal townhouses attached to a tower, both of which are unaffordable to buy (challenging the single family detached in price), and come with disproportionate Strata fee loads.

Some go so far as to suggest that this one issue is going to limit the City of New Westminster’s ability to attract and keep a stable population of young professionals with families – the very population we need to provide us a solid tax base, a vibrant school population, and that community feel we love so much.

Problem is, for a long time, no-one really knew what to do about it. Vancouver has already taken steps to encourage the development of family-friendly housing (although notably two-bedroom is only as far as they would go), and some other Cities (North Van, Burnaby) are looking at policies. New West has been working on this for a while, and has already reached more than 800 citizens through the initial outreach/consultation process, and collected a considerable amount of data on the national, regional, and local markets. The City even contracted a financial feasibility study of building more family-friendly units. It seems the City has taken a pretty comprehensive approach (something I can take no credit for, as this was all done prior to my joining Council).

The issue is (in my opinion) more complicated than just forcing new towers to have a higher percentage of 2-3 bedroom units, and I am thinking that may be the completely wrong approach. The cost of concrete high-rise construction would put those units on price competition with single family detached homes in New West, even if they were not the “penthouse” buildings. If we look at the neighbourhoods in New Westminster that have higher density family-sized units, we look at the low-rise areas of the Quayside, the Fraserview area, and Queensborough.

I suspect the solutions to family friendly housing are found in low-rise infill density, and will rely on more than just restrictions on bedroom counts, but on providing more prescriptive design guidelines to assure ground-based homes have adequate space for a family, including storage space adequate for a growing family (where to store the bikes, the hockey gear, the Lego!), adequate kitchen/pantry space (I have a former co-worker who always lamented the massive volume of “boy-chow” he had to supply his active growing kids), and that there are enough safe opens spaces and other community amenities so that growing kids have room to run.

There is quite a bit of data in the report (worth reading if you are interested) and this will be an ongoing conversation, I would love to hear your ideas about what the challenges are.

Canada Games Pool / Centennial Community Centre

There have been rumblings for several years about the Canada Games Pool. State-of-the-art in 1973 when the Canada Summer Games were hosted in New Westminster and showing its age, the pool is increasingly expensive to operate and some significant capital costs are upcoming as major components of the physical plant are reaching the end of their service life. If we keep the pool as it is, we will need to spend several million dollars in the next few years keeping it working. If we replace it or do a major refurbish, then those millions can be rolled into the larger project instead of being invested in a fading asset.

The time to decide what to do is now, as whatever decision is made, there is going to need to be construction happening in this council term. So the public consultation is beginning, and staff came to council to start putting a framework around that consultation, and assure their consultation vision aligns with ours.

Disclosure: I am not a swimmer. I like to swim in warm oceans and lakes, not pools. I see swimming as something one does to cool down in tropical heat, to observe colourful sea life through a mask from a respectful distance, or to prevent oneself from drowning, but I don’t do it for exercise. I don’t even use gyms. I like to exercise outdoors, and see no point in picking weights up and putting them back down again when I could instead be out on my bike or climbing a mountain. So I personally have no skin in the Canada Games Pool game.

I do, however, hear from a lot of people about the pool. The ever-suffering MsNWimby uses the CGP several times a week, as she does like picking weights up and putting them down and such activity. My car pool partner grew up swimming laps with the Hyack Swim Club, and now lives a block away and trundles her kids off to Poirier where the water is warmer. I have heard many people talk about how great Edmonds pool is for their kids (despite the terrible change rooms and sometimes terrifying dumping bucket), but how CGP is still the place to go if you want to do serious laps.

I also know the current pool is not only the largest source of corporate Greenhouse Gasses of any City operation, it is also expensive to operate. For every person who walks into CGP, the taxpayer subsidizes that entry to the tune of more than $1 each. To me, there is no problem with that, we subsidize library users, people at Century House, the Youth Centre, the Anvil, and for that matter everyone who drives and park on our streets or walks on our sidewalks – society is a socialist enterprise. However, I want to know if people feel they are getting good value from the CGOP, and how we can make that value better.

To get there, I want to hear from people in New West about what they want from a Canada Games Pool. This is not the official public engagement, but I want to hear peoples’ opinions on a few questions:

What kind of pool do you want? Do we want a “competition pool” (50+ m, cooler water, proper dive tank with high platforms), a family swimming centre (25m, warmer, more play-time amenities), or both (recognizing the increased cost that comes with having it all).

Besides the pool, what other uses? As the Centennial Community Centre is also reaching the end of its life, the question of how we manage the combined amenities is also a good one. As this is the only community centre in the Glenbrook North / Massey Heights/ Upper Sapperton area – what kind of services should we include? Remember, again, that every new service costs money to build, money to program, and money to operate, and there is no chance that an accessible community centre will ever operate at 100% cost-recovery. What are the priorities for the facility?

Where would you put the pool? Right now, the only discussion is where on the current footprint of the block between McBride, Cumberland, on East 6th Ave. I have been wondering –f we were to build a new pool starting from fresh, would we put it there? Or would we put it nearer more population density, where the future population growth is expected instead of in what is essentially a single-family-detached neighbourhood. Should it be closer to a SkyTrain station? I have to admit, I don’t have a location in mind, and it could be hard to find another 100m x 50m footprint in the City to build a centre like we have (or 100m x 80m to build something like Edmonds), but I think it is important for us to have this discussion before we build an asset that will set in stone for 50+ years. This opens up the floodgates towards innovative approaches:

What other delivery approach could we use? I could see a model where the pool was moved and replaced with a smaller community centre (think a new Centennial type facility, a gym or two with meeting rooms, maybe a pocket library), and excess land on that lot sold off to finance part of the cost of the replacement pool and centre. I could also imagine locating the pool in a denser neighbourhood and selling off density, or even co-developing a larger lot with a residential component to share some costs.

I have to emphasize: I am spitballing here. It is very likely that the pool will be built adjacent to the existing site, and the institutional and neighbourhood momentum that exists overpowers any other option (or, more likely, any other option is deemed too risky or too cumbersome in the relatively tight timeline of the project). But I am open to hearing creative ideas.

So there you go, a couple of weeks without regular Council activity, but lots for council to chew on, even outside of the ongoing “Vote for a livable Transportation future” campaign work. Oh, and I took a 2 hour walking tour with people who want to “Save our Parkade”, attended a celebration of the 58th anniversary of Ghanaian Independence, attended a couple of Residents’ Association meetings, chaired meetings with the Environmental Advisory Committee and the Advisory Committee for Transit, Bicycles, and Transit, had a meeting with the Downtown BIA around their exciting new strategic plan, and attended the 100th Anniversary Concert for the New Westminster Symphony. Back to regular council life next week.

Disclosures – my own this time

Posted on March 16, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

It has been a while since campaign financial disclosures from the 2014 municipal elections were released. I apologize it took so long for me to write this up, but I haven’t had a lot of time to crunch the data. After giving the CTF the gears for their ham-fisted disclosure, the least I can do is point an equally critical eye at my own disclosure forms, and those of the other candidates in the election. Do they support the common narrative of the campaign that we all held last fall?

I should note right off the top that the numbers below are off the unaudited forms as submitted to Elections BC. They have not yet been reviewed by Elections BC, and may contain honest (or otherwise) errors that may impact my analysis. I have not gone through every form (except my own) in any detail, and take the declarations people made at face value. Note, the first error I noticed was on my own form (!), where an extra digit was slipped into line 10 of form 4222, such that it doesn’t match box A of form 4234. The entry on Form 4234 is correct, and the error on 4222 is an obvious transcription error. My Financial Agent contacted Elections BC to let them know as soon as we noticed this. So in the interests of pots and kettles, I’m not going to point out the math errors I note on the forms of others.

Because I am so involved in this, I am going to first concentrate on the details of my own form in this blog post, and will discuss the entire council campaign a little further down. Mayors and School Trustees can take care of themselves!

The first headline is that I spent more than anyone else running for council this time around. If you had told me that a year ago, I would have been surprised, but that surprise would have steadily decreased as the election rolled on. (Of course, I had I known, I might have spent $200 less, and got in under Councillor McEvoy’s total, but hindsight is 20:20). The reason things changed during the campaign was the emergent generosity of people from across the City (and a few from outside of it) who personally contributed to my campaign. This generosity was humbling. I talked in this earlier post about what I think went well and didn’t go so well in my campaign, and fundraising was clearly a success.

When I went into this project, I knew I would need to spend a lot of money to “break the bubble” and get my name out into the community to people who didn’t know me. I had a base level of name recognition, but that needed to be boosted by an order of magnitude if I was going to be successful. Between my core team and I, we set out a preliminary budget of $15,000. Being a member of CUPE, I figured I could count on $3,000 from them, and if I received endorsement from the NWDLC, that estimate would rise to $5000. So I set a non-labour fundraising goal of $10,000 (not including in-kind donations). By the end of the campaign, those goals were met, and exceeded.

I received almost $3000 in donations from companies (representing 12% of my total). About $1,200 of that was “in kind” donations, such as discounted web services from a friend who runs a server, and donations from local businesses that were used as door prizes for my fundraiser. An interesting issue with the door prizes are that they do (by the rules) constitute an in-kind donation, and were declared as such, but according to the instructions we received from Elections BC, they are not counted as a fundraiser expense when they are given away. That donation-without-an-offsetting-expense accounts for a large part of the gap between the money I raised and the money I spent.

The amount of money I received from various labour organizations amounted to $6,300, (26% of the total) of which $5,800 was cash and the rest was in-kind donations (essentially, use of some of their services).

That means the rest of the money (62%) was from private donors- about $3,000 in the form of Fundraiser tickets, and the remaining $10,000 in declared personal donations (plus the $2,000 I put in personally, some of which was refunded at the end to close the bank account). I received no anonymous donations (which are illegal over the amount of $50). Here is a pie:

As I said earlier, I had the highest declared expenditure of any Council candidate, beating last election’s champ by $200 (but spending much less than he did last election). Here is a chart that shows how much every candidate raised, broken up by the category of fundraising, and listed left to right in order of number of votes received. You might want to click to get the details.

Of the 6 elected people, 5 were amongst the highest spenders/fundraisers in the election. Both Kainth and Brett spent more in losing causes than first-finisher Puchmayr did (demonstrating the power of incumbency and name recognition?). A fairer division might be to split up into “big spenders” (myself, McEvoy, Harper and Kainth), “semi-big spenders” (Williams, Trentadue), and “serious spenders” (Puchmayr, Cartwright, Donnelly, Brett, and Palmer). People who spent less than $5,000 getting their names out there did not fare that well. Money doesn’t buy elections, but it sure buys attention, and you need attention to separate you name from the other 20 on the ballot. On this chart, people are in the order of spending, not the order of votes (red columns are those who got elected):

“Labour Money” was clearly a factor in fundraising, representing about 22% of all the money raised in this election (recognizing, again, that much of that is not actual money but “in kind” donations), divided between the 6 NWDLC-endorsed candidates and CUPE member Scott McIntosh. This chart changes the one above by shading out the “labour” contributions, to see the subtle changes in how the campaign would be funded with out it:

Back to the multi-colour chart, Corporate/business donations (in green) did not quite meet the level of labour, totalling 17% of all money raised (again some of this will be “in-kind”) with Harper and Kainth as stand-out recipients. I was the third-highest candidate when it came to corporate donations.

Where I clearly led the pack was in individual donations from private citizens (in blue), with Kainth just behind me. I attribute this to my early start (I was the first candidate out of the gate) and a really stellar effort by my fundraising team to put together a fundraising event that got people excited about the campaign at the right time. I understand Kainth also has a great launch party, and with her deep connections in the business and social community on New West, I’m not surprised she also did this very well. Note that I separated personal donations (the money candidates contributed to their own campaign) from other individual donations, by shade of blue.

Also interesting is that more that 61% of the money raised this campaign, and approximately 50% of that raised by the winning 6 candidates, was private individual donations. I for one would not oppose limits on labour and business donations in local elections, but only if private donations also come with strict upper limits. Unless taxpayers are expected to foot the bill for all election financing (and I don’t suggest they should), if we remove the right of organizations to contribute (through cash or in-kind help), it is inevitable that campaigns will be funded by the wealthier demographic with disposable income, which will no doubt shift how policy is developed on the ground. Tax credits as they exist in senior government elections (and tax credits for volunteer work for lower-income people) would help flatten that disparity.

Finally, I’m not afraid to say that more than $20,000 is a slightly absurd amount of money to spend running for City Council in New Westminster. I would welcome discussions on placing limits to spending, but will not lead that conversation for a good reason. As this election proved, incumbency is a huge advantage, and advertising is more important to challengers than it is to incumbents. For me, who used a lot of money to establish name recognition, to now limit that right for those who would challenge my incumbency in the next election may be politically smart, but not terribly ethical. If a person is able to raise a lot of money from individual donors across the City, if they can raise that groundswell of support for the democratic process, then I suppose we should not discourage that.

Every indication is that things are going to change in the next election. ElectionsBC made some changes going into this election, and the provincial government has hinted at campaign financing limits next election. Expect there to be public engagement during the development of the new rules, so you should keep an eye on the ElectionsBC website if you really care about this issue.

The Future of the Region – Yes or No.

Posted on March 7, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

A few interesting developments on the Referendum front, and it has been a while since I wrote about it. Unless you have been living under a rock, or work in a phone bank for the BC Liberal party*, you are aware there is a referendum going on to decide how we will invest in transportation in the region.

We are less than two weeks from when ballots go in the mail, so it is a good idea for you to look into how you will vote, so you don’t lose your franchise. Elections BC recently released the full details of how the Plebiscite** is going to work. A few details:

If you were born before May 30, 1997, have been a resident of BC since November 29, 2014, are a Canadian resident and live in Metro Vancouver, you can register to vote online at the Elections BC website or call their 1-800 number (you need a Driver’s Licence or a Social Insurance Number). You will get a ballot in the mail. If you don’t get a ballot in the mail in March, you should contact Elections BC and request one. You have until March 29 to return your ballot. The Mayor’s Council set up this helpful graphic to show you the timelines of the vote.

Like my council Colleagues across the region, I have been busy with this campaign. As unique as the voting mechanism is, this is just an election campaign, and identifying your vote and getting it out requires a lot of organization. I have been talking to community groups, helping with phone volunteers to identify support bases, and helping develop the get-out-the-vote plan, etc. etc.

I’ve said before that democracy is not what happens on election day, but how we, as citizens, get involved between elections to get the most out of our elected representatives. If you think this referendum needs to be won, if you think we need to put the brakes on the cuts to transit service and enter a new era of transit expansion in our region, then I ask you – what are you doing about it? Get in touch with me, with the City of New Westminster, or the Mayor’s Council to see how you can help.

When I have time to be involved in the “air war”, I have concentrated on two things (an links below are to others doing exactly that):

1: Outline in as much detail as the audience needs about the myriad of benefits, tangible and otherwise, that this plan delivers to New Westminster and the region; and

2: Hit back aggressively at specific mistruths being propagated by a few very prominent members of the NO side.

One thing that always gives me a chuckle is the plethora of advice for how the YES side should be campaigning, mostly delivered by people loosely connected to the no side (for example, the wife of the guy who is coordinating the NO campaign for the CTF) and wrapped in sanctimony. We have been told, at times, to stop using scare mongering and stick to the facts; that we can’t rely on facts but should instead go for emotion; that we need to describe the plan in detail so people understand; that we need to simplify the message; that we need to appeal to “Joe Sixpack”, or “Students”, or that we should stop relying on “special interest groups”.

I thank them for the advice, but to me, the most effective message I have heard was delivered by Gordon Price at the PechaKucha New West event two weeks ago. It was an inspiring 6 minutes on the past, present and future of the region. After it ended, I thought “we need to get this on YouTube”. Turns out people (as usual) were way ahead of me, and a (slightly shortened, better produced) version has just been made available by the good folks at Modacity. If you do nothing else before you vote, take 4 minutes to watch this video***, if you want to understand what this referendum is really about:

Vote Yes. For nothing less than the future of the region as we know it.

*I received a phone call from a BC Liberal**** fundraiser on Wednesday evening. I allowed him to go through his script about balanced budgets and good times ahead before I asked him what the party was doing to encourage support for the Referendum that the Leader had called, and was (tacitly) supporting. The poor guy had not even heard that there was a referendum going on. He claimed to be in Burnaby (and I have no reason to doubt him, as he seemed to understand what TransLink was and claimed to watch Global News, so he wasn’t in Topeka or Bangalore). I made what I think was a compelling case for the reasons to support the Yes side, and he asked if the result of the referendum would be a deciding factor in the next election for me. I said no, but the leadership shown during the referendum definitely was. He thanked me for my time, and actually forgot to ask for money.

**Yes, this is a Plebiscite, not a Referendum. The differences are rather arcane. In most jurisdictions, the words are synonymous. In BC, they both mean “a vote on matter of public concern”. Where a Referendum is governed by the Referendum Act and “is usually binding on the government”, a Plebiscite is governed by the Elections Act and “may be binding on the government”. Remarkably, this vote is not being regulated by either, but by something called the “South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority Funding Referenda Act”. Regardless, the Provincial Government changed the language from referendum to a plebiscite when the ballot was released, you can make up your own reasons why. Safe to say, whatever it is called, the results of this vote will be politically binding on the government, if not legally binding.

***Note the book at 1:03 in the video. None other than Charles Montgomery’s The Happy City. Nice touch.

**** Since I wrote that footnote*****, I have noticed that some of the strongest messages coming out on the YES side are coming from BC Liberal MLAs, so I am glad to give kudos to the members of the party who are seeing the importance of this vote, and are putting their political capital into it. We need more of this in the next month.

***** This footnote thing is getting out of hand.

Council Meeting – March 2, 2015

Posted on March 4, 2015March 4, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

This was a strange day at Council, because we opened with a Public Hearing on an issue where City Council serves as a sort of appellate court in a semi-judicial type hearing. I’m not really interested in discussing the matter here, but if you wish to know more about it,watch the video here.

The evening meeting began with presentations and open delegations (on of which had me thinking of Alex and his droogs), before the real business commenced with Recommendations from the Committee of the Whole from earlier in the day:

Appointment to the Canada Day Sub-Committee

Our Canada Day events are coordinated by a subcommittee made up of City representatives and representatives from the community at large. This motion was to assign someone from the Multiculturalism Advisory Committee to the Canada Day Committee. And I am reminded again how this City is run and made great by its dedicated volunteers.

Moody Park Off-leash Park Design
A few meetings ago, Council enthusiastically approved the initial concept for an off-leash dog park in Moody Park. Inevitably, this resulted in both criticism (see comments on link above) and kudos, which I take as meaning we threaded the needle of public opinion fairly well. Staff and representatives of Council have followed up with the Moody Park Residents Association and the expressed concerns of other members of the public, and have integrated some their concerns with this modified conceptual plan.

There was quite a bit of a debate at Council about how we ended up with a larger off-leash area than initially sketched, but I can see where Parks was going when addressing one of the major concerns of people who were critical of the original plan. There will now be a full 97m length, making for a pretty good run distance for dogs, especially for a park being shoe-horned into such a compact and well-programed park space as Moody Park. In the end, council voted 4-3 for the larger footprint.

Given the historic nature of the park, and its small size and attachment to adjacent residential and pedestrian areas, I think that the visual impact of the fence is an important part of integrating the off-leach area. Council did discuss the fence options as we see them, and have decided on what I interpreted to be the lowest-impact design, and one that fits the character of the park.

Campaign Finance Disclosure Statements

You may realize that these statements are now out and available for public perusal at this website. It should be noted that the Province just received the statements, and have not yet had an opportunity to review and audit them. I note several reports show declarations that are suspect (and a few that are frankly illegal), and I am sure Elections BC will be asking for some candidates, even locally, to re-issue with corrections. I also note that I will be issuing a correction, as it was only seeing the documents on-line that I realized page three of my declaration includes a typo. The “amounts of surplus funds disbursed” on that page ($12,454.46 ) does not reflect the real number which is disclosed on Form 4234 ($1,245.46). An extra 4 slipped into the .pdf there somewhere.

This does speak a bit to the complexity of these forms, and the fact that none of the forms were available from Elections BC until well into the election period (and they changed significantly since last election). Any Financial Agent who set up their accounting spreadsheets based on last election’s rules (as mine did back in August) found out late in the process that all of the rules had changed, and they had to go back and start again. There was also quite a bit of uncertainty with Elections BC staff about how to interpret some of the new rules. My Financial Agent is a spreadsheet and accounting genius who manages huge capital projects for a living, but the Elections BC staff knew her on a first-name basis by the end of the election, so frequently was she calling them to clarify some nuance of the rules.

This is mostly a pre-amble to my suggesting that we should probably cut a bit of slack to our neighbours in the community who did not file their paperwork in time. The $500 fine under the Elections Act is something we cannot (and should not) fail to enforce, just to be fair to the candidates who did file on time, but I hope you will empathize a bit with the complexity of doing these forms, and recognize that sometimes life interferes with your ability to get paperwork done in time!

Zoning Bylaw changes

Back on February 2, Council asked staff to prepare an amendment to the Zoning Bylaw to limit the number of roughed-in plumbing features allowed in accessory buildings in the City, to discourage he ready conversion of these buildings in to living suites, at least until the City is able to have a proper community and neighbourhood discussion around Laneway housing policy (which is occurring right now as part of the OCP review).

Staff have prepared this draft amendment Bylaw, and it will go to Public Hearing on March 30. C’mon out and tell us what you think.

HRA for 336 Agnes Street

There is a plan to restore the 1940 Dontenwill Hall to some of its former glory, and place long-term Heritage Protection on it. The application has been through a public open house, the Heritage Commission, the Advisory Planning Commission.

The Project will go to Public Hearing on March 30. C’mon out and tell us what you think.

Rezoning of 210 Durham Street

This is a proposal to re-zone a lot in Glenbrooke North to allow subdivision into two lots, each with a 33’ frontage. This is the very beginning of the formal process for a rezoning, as it will go to Advisory Planning Commission, the Neighbourhood Association, Public Open House, and Advisory Planning Commission.

Alberta Street Traffic Review

Regular readers (Hi Mom!) will remember that Alberta Street residents came to Council to express concerns about recent changes in the traffic patterns on their street. At the time, we asked staff to come back with options for a short-term “band aid”, and to look at longer-term neighbourhood traffic planning options. This report brought those, and the recommendations are good, but I was not without criticism of the report itself.

You can see my comments in the video, and I will use another blog post to expand on this issue. In the short term, Council decided to install the temporary traffic diverters at the foot of Alberta (the “band aid” previously discussed), then go back and do another traffic survey to see how it those changes affect drivers’ behavior. After that, we will start planning for a more comprehensive neighbourhood traffic management plan for upper Sapperton.

In my opinion, this speaks to a need or a bit of a culture change in how we (as a City) address neighbourhood traffic impacts in our City. It speaks to the Pedestrian Charter, the priorities set out in our Master Transportation plan, and even the direction we are receiving from the general public in the Official Community Plan public consultations. In short: I care less about how well Alberta Street works for through-commuters, and more about how Alberta Street operates for the people who live on it.

Animal Shelter Task Force

The City is looking to replace it’s 25-year old and wholly inadequate animal shelter. A task force has been struck to oversee the development of this shelter. Council approved the Terms of Reference. Woof.

Special Occasion Permits of Queens Park Arena

Beer and Bellies – two great tastes that go great together! Here’s to a good season!

Electrical Utility rates

The City runs its own Electrical Utility, which makes it pretty unique in BC. The City can buy bulk electricity at wholesale rates from BC Hydro, and sell it to residents and businesses in New Westminster for retail rates. The existing policy in the City is to sell electricity at the same rate as BC Hydro charges at the retail level. The City is able to use the difference to pay for the upkeep of the City’s electrical grid, and put a tidy sum of money into the City’s general revenue. Currently, that amount transferred is about $6 Million per year – that is $6 Million in City services and operations that you don’t have to pay for with your taxes.

The City has a lot of latitude about how it sets rates. We could charge more for electricity than BC Hydro charges in surrounding Cities, or we could charge less. Of course, if we did the former, people would probably not react well to paying more; if we did the latter, we would need to find alternate revenue sources to cover that loss to our operating budget (read: property tax increase). I have yet to hear a compelling argument that we should do anything other than what our current policy is: peg our rates at the BC Hydro standard, and use the income to offset property taxes.

This report recommends (and Council Agreed) to raise our rates to match the changes at BC Hydro. Council added to more recommendations.

Councillor Puchmayr asked that the Electrical Utility report beck on the root causes of BC Hydro’s increases: namely, mismanagement by BC Hydro and the Provincial government of the BC Hydro file, with a lack of oversight of the BCUC on issues from run-of-the-river contracts to the installation of Smart Meters.

I further requested that the Electrical Utility provide some reporting on how our rates in New Westminster differ from or match those of BC Hydro customers in our surrounding community. The overall amount of money we change per KwH is the same as what Hydro charges, but there are some subtle differences in how those rates are charged. Because of the different “base charges” and the tiered rates, there may be instances where these charges are different, and I think it is important that New Westminster residents and businesses know how our rates compare.

New West SkyTrain Station upgrades

There is a summary report on the consultations with Council and several Council Advisory Committees in regards to planned capital improvements at New Westminster SkyTrain Station. Timing of this work is not certain, and is likely contingent somewhat on the results of the upcoming Referendum, as TransLink Capital funding is rather up in the air until then.

The bit Council added to this discussion is about the name of New Westminster Station, and by extension Columbia Station. Back in 1985, calling New Westminster Station (as it was the terminus of the line at the time) made sense. Now we have 5 stations in New Westminster ,and two on Columbia Street. With other stations in the system more reflecting local community landmarks (Stadium, Roundhouse, Waterfront), it was thought that maybe we could re-think New Westminster and Columbia Stations. New West Anvil? New West Hyack Square? New West Riverfront? It suspect this is opening a can of worms that TransLink would rather avoid, but I think just having the conversation might be fun.

Correspondence

Letters, we get letters. We get lots and lots of letters.

Bylaws

1: Commercial Vehicle Amendment Bylaw No. 7742, 2015. As Discussed on February 23, this Bylaw change will permit 4 more taxi licenses to be granted in the City. This process moves the Bylaw forward, and there will be an Opportunity to be Heard on this change on March 30, 2015 at our Regular Council Meeting. C’mon out and tell us what you think.

2: Electrical Utility Amendment Bylaw. As discussed above, your electrical rates are going up to match those rates offered by BC Hydro. This is now the Law of the Land.

3: Zoning Amendment Bylaw 7743, 2015 As Discussed on February 2, this Bylaw will limit plumbing rough-ins in accessory buildings to curtail their illegal conversion to unpermitted living quarters. A Public Hearing on this change will be held on March 30, 2015. C’mon out and tell us what you think.

4 & 5: HRA and Heritage Designation, 336 Agnes Street. As Discussed above, there is a proposal to restore Dontenwill Hall. A Public Hearing on this change will be held on March 30, 2015. C’mon out and tell us what you think.

Spending wisely

Posted on February 21, 2015February 25, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I saw this story in the paper, and could see by the tone (and some social media flitter) that some people are wondering why Council decided to spend up to $20,000 on getting out the YES vote on the upcoming Metro Vancouver Transportation and Transit Plebiscite. I shouldn’t presume to speak for all of Mayor and Council, but I can give you my reasons

Transportation is the #1 issue in this City, and was so during the last election. At that time, this Mayor and the successfully-elected members of Council talked about their vision for addressing this issue, and it centered around implementing the newly-developed Master Transportation Plan. That is the mandate the voters gave us. The MTP contains a variety of goals and strategies, and they are all supported by the plan for transit and transportation infrastructure outlined in the Mayor’s Plan. None of those goals are supported by a NO vote.

Further, during the election I was told by citizens at the doorstep, by people in the media (social and no-so-social), and even by other candidates during all-candidates meetings that the City needs to work collaboratively with our neighbours to solve the regional transportation issues that are impacting New Westminster. The Mayor’s Plan that we are being asked to vote on was developed in collaboration with all of the municipalities in Metro Vancouver, and was approved by the vast majority of them. This is what working collaboratively looks like.

It might also help is we put that $20,000 into perspective.

$20,000 is the cost of a single parking spot. If a YES on this referendum means one more person has access to reliable transit for their daily commute, and the City has to build one less parking spot, we have already broken even.

$20,000 is about 0.7% of our annual paving budget. If traffic is reduced by the infrastructure that comes with this plan enough to reduce the wear on our streets by 0.7% for just one year, then the City breaks even.

$20,000 is less than it costs to respond and investigate a single road fatality in the City. If one less person in a car, on a bike, or walking, is injured or killed in an MVA in our City because traffic is reduced, or because they now have access to a night bus, or because the Pattullo Bridge is made safer, then the City is financially ahead.

A YES vote will bring hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure improvements to the transit and transportation system every person in New Westminster uses every day. $20,000 is a good investment, and we (as elected officials responsible for making good economic decisions for the citizens of New Westminster) would be fools to not support the YES side of this referendum.

On Spending our Reserves

Posted on February 15, 2015February 25, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

A candidate for Council in 2014 wrote one of those letters to the local paper that I just have to respond to. I know Harm, am a customer of his business, curl with him at the Royal City, and respect him very much. However, this letter is so full of wrong, I need to reply in my customary paragraph-by-paragraph basis. I like to quote people directly, because I don’t want to be accused of misquoting them. However, if I err in fact or in representation, I invite Harm (or anyone else) to reply here.

“In response to both Mr. Lundy’s (Why I’ll be voting ‘No’ in referendum, Inbox, Jan. 23) and Mr. Johnstone’s (Why I’m voting yes, Inbox, Jan. 28) letters about the transportation needs and plans for Metro Vancouver. The reality here is that the governance of Metro Vancouver is a mess! Twenty-two city governments, police departments, fire departments, and unelected Metro regional government and TransLink: A gong show that needs a serious overhaul.”

An interesting argument, but not apropos of the current Metro Vancouver Transit and Transportation Plan referendum. Since the Kevin Falcon era, many have been asking for a review of TransLink governance and a return to a more accountable elected board – no-one has called for that more often and vociferously than the Mayors’ Council. However, the Provincial government has made it clear they are not interested in exploring this at this time, and there is no reason to believe a NO vote will bring this about any more than a Yes vote will. I think I made that point in my earlier letter to Mr. Lundy, so I won’t belabour it here.

“The reality is that Metro cities are sitting on a massive cash reserve in the order of $5 billion as reported in annual financial reports to Dec. 31, 2013. Of the $5 billion, the five cities most serviced by SkyTrain hold $3.4 billion.”

Let’s talk about reserves. If you would like to follow along, you can look at this document from the City website. The City of New Westminster has (or had at the end of fiscal 2013) about $15.7 Million in its bank account (“net financial assets”, Page 1 of the Financial Statements). That is derived from subtracting all of the things the City owes money on (invoices in our inbox + revenue we have deferred + money immediately payable on our debts, etc.) from the financial assets of the City (Cash in the bank + money people owe us + the money we have invested, etc.).

If you take away the fact we owe people money, and people owe us money, there are two more important numbers when thinking about the amount of money we have on hand. One is the “Cash and cash equivalents”, which was about $12 Million. The other number which kind of represents what we have in the bank is found on Page 8: $102M in Investments. When discussing “reserves”, this is the money we have set aside in various reserve funds, prudently invested and earning us a bit of interest income.

When we talk of “accumulated surplus” (Page 13), that is a different number, but $622M is a bit of a funny number, because it includes the depreciated value of most everything the City owns, including skating arenas, light posts and the furniture in the Mayor’s Office. I guess we could sell it all, but we wouldn’t really have a City anymore, would we?

“The reality is that the development of public transit infrastructure creates growth and, unlike traditional sprawl growth, does not cost municipal governments massive amounts of money to support. In fact the direct costs for public infrastructure directly related to density growth is charged back to the developers in the form of development cost charges, in reality a pre-paid tax which then becomes part of the purchase price of the units that are developed.”

Correct, the City collects DCCs from development to pay for present or future infrastructure and amenity cost related to the new population pressure. By necessity, we do not spend the DCC the day we get it. We can’t, because most of the needs are cumulative, and many of them carry operating costs that cannot be carried until the population increase happens. See Page 8 where the deferred Development Cost Charges are itemized:

This is money we collect from DCCs, and have put aside for specific uses. In the meantime, the DCCs sit in – wait for it – reserve. While the growth happens, we strategically draw from this reserve to continue to fund portions of capital costs for projects required to provide the services people demand. But you can’t build $100 worth of sewer every time someone moves to town, you need wait for a bunch of people to move to town, then pool their money to upgrade the sewer as needed

However, it isn’t enough. We simply do not collect enough DCC to pay for all future infrastructure needs, nor should we. People living in the existing housing stock have some use for future infrastructure as well, so the City puts a bit of money aside every year, the amount determined by our long-term capital plan based on projected needs, and fiddled with a bit by council (just because we can). We keep the money in the bank earning interest. Look at Page 13…

…and see how reserve funds are set aside for everything from Affordable Housing to Equipment Replacement to Water and Sewer funds (I don’t want to get into the whole Tax vs. Utility thing here as this is already too complicated, so for simplicity, assume it is all tax). I’ll come back to this discussion of reserves in a bit below.

“So, while we all know that municipal spending growth has far exceeded the increases in the cost of living, municipal tax revenues in the cities that benefit directly from transit infrastructure development has even outstripped these massive increases in spending.”

This sentence is simply false. A graph from Woldring’s own website shows how expenses have gone up between 2003 and 2013.

Indeed, all of those upward trends look concerning. However, Cities are subject to two types of continual growth: population and inflation. To understand the effect, I set an “index” value for City spending at $100,000,000 in 2013, and increased this value annually, factoring in only the inflation rate (which ranged from 0.3 to 2.9 over those 10 years) and the population growth rate in New West (based on census data, projecting the 2006-2011 trend up to 2013):

If we superimpose these numbers on to the earlier graph, note how this line is ever so slightly shallower than the City’s actual expense increases over the same amount of time. Spending growth in New Westminster has only just matched population and inflation growth over the last 10 years:

If you want to stop inflation and stop population growth, then we need to have a serious sit-down about Capitalism as an economic model, but this is probably not the right time or place for that.

“What we have here is a giant power struggle and a fight about taxpayers’ money.”

Well, no. What we have here are two levels of government trying to NOT tax at their own level to pay for services that people want. Mayors don’t want to increase your property tax, and the Province doesn’t want to raise your other taxes, but they both agree the project should be funded. Why? Because they are tired of having to explain to people that public services cost money to provide, because every time they say so, Jordan Bateman steps up and calls them all wasteful incompetents, to the cheers of a hundred CKNW phone-in “men on the street”. This letter to the editor is an example of that phenomenon.

“If transit development creates a “development dividend” for cities, some or all of that dividend should be spent on the continuing development of public transit infrastructure across the district instead of simply fattening the coffers of individual municipalities.”

Far from fattening the coffers, that dividend goes to providing the services people who are living in those developments will need – hence DCCs and expenses going up in parallel to population growth and inflation as seen in the graph above.

“The reason I’m voting ‘No’ is that the money is already there and the provincial government should wrest our money away from those municipalities and invest it in regional transit infrastructure with the emphasis being on moving people and goods using transit infrastructure like SkyTrain, LRT and short sea shipping instead of building more roads, tunnels and bridges. The people are ready; isn’t it about time politicos and bureaucrats stopped protecting their own turfs and do what we pay them for: serve the taxpayer!”

I ask the simple question: if the 5 cities cited above convert the entirety of their reserve funds, 100% of them, to the 10-year Mayors Plan (which would only provide 47% of the needed funding, so let’s assume the Federal Government matches those funds, and we get this done): Now what? (I’m going to, for the sake of argument, ignore the fact that some of these reserves are Statutory, meaning the Community Charter or other legislation limits our ability to spend them on whatever we want).

If we drained our reserve and DCC funds to zero, what would that do to those things listed on Pages 8 and 13 of those financial statements? Money we have earmarked for the Canada Games pool replacement? Gone. Money for the required (and incredibly expensive) storm drainage separation project? Gone. Future electrical utility maintenance and upgrades? Money to re-build Massey Theatre? Future support for daycare, affordable housing, roof replacements on City buildings? Money set aside for future fleet vehicle replacements, computers, the cemetery reserve, or paving of roads? All of it gone. How does that serve the taxpayer?

The letter invokes a picture of City hall having this big vault in the back where Mayor and Council occasionally roll around in piles of cash, all for shits and giggles. In reality, consecutive Councils have created and supported a long-term financial plan that will provide for the ever-increasing needs of the community (a problem made worse by downloading of so many senior government coasts to local governments) while assuring that future councils have the capital required for the huge pile of inevitable big-ticket items the City will need in the future without the sudden need for sharp tax increases whenever a capital project is needed. It is responsible governance.

“p.s. The new bridge to replace the Deas tunnel isn’t as much about cars and trucks as it is about getting bigger ships farther up the Fraser River, and since that’s the case, shouldn’t Port Metro Vancouver and the federal government be funding that one?”

This is hardly a PS. This is the central point. But I’ve been banging that drum for so long I’m tired of the rhythm.

*My turn for a PS: This is a good time to have the discussion about the City’s reserves, not because they would be better served bailing out the Province from their responsibility toward TransLink, but because we are going into a budgeting cycle in the City where Council may ask taxpayers for yet another increase, and some of the money that increase will bring in will go towards reserves. The letter writer clearly believes these reserves are getting too big, I have talked to a Charted Accountant who has some experience in Municipal finance, and (after a cursory review of our 2013 Financial Statements, and admitting he didn’t know much about the pressure on New Westminster’s physical resources) he suggested they were moderate, or perhaps a bit low, and he is not alone in that feeling. We need serious talk about reserves and how we use them, for the long-term good of the City.

Brewery District

Posted on February 10, 2015February 25, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

For the first time in my short tenure on Council, we had one of those big development decisions that brought some public comment, most of it negative. So it is worth the time to go over how I viewed the request, to address some of the community concerns, and to explain why I voted the way I did.

The question on the table for Council was whether we approved the Development Permit (DP) for the next phase of the Brewery District, which includes the first residential tower and a significant number of community amenities. Earlier development phases brought the office and commercial space where TransLink offices, Save-on-Foods, Browns Social house and other retail spaces, and the Health Sciences Association offices are currently housed. There are several phases of primarily residential development coming over the next decade or so.

DP is the stage in the approval process where the “form and character” of the buildings are reviewed to see if they align with the applicable Zoning Bylaw and Official Community Plan, and whether variances from these bylaws are required to meet the goals of the Developer. In theory, the City has a lot of power at this stage to adapt the building size and shape, design elements, landscaping, and such. In practice, if the City wants a lot developed it needs to negotiate with the builder and balance what the City wants (i.e. the word and/or spirit of the OCP), what the community wants (as determined through public consultation), and what the builder is willing to invest in building (they wouldn’t be here if they didn’t want to make money). Never are all three of those things exactly aligned. That is why we have planning staff, and why the process sometimes takes months or years.

In the case of this Phase 3 of the Brewery District, the applicable Zoning Bylaw was developed in 2006 and passed in 2007. At the time, there was extensive public consultation, and several iterations of earlier designs were offered. The City’s primary interest (I was not, obviously, on Council at the time, but can infer from going through the old reports) was in seeing the old brewery replaced with (commercial) employment lands, while the site owner clearly wanted to build as many condos as they could sell. The community’s main concern was that the tallest building proposed was to be over 300 feet tall, which some felt was out of scale for Sapperton. As the final “form and character” issues would be delayed until DP, the City and the developer found agreement on the density of the site (i.e. number of square feet of Commercial and Residential), the phasing of the build-out (commercial first), and the maximum heights of the buildings (180’ for the lower three, up to 300’ for the higher one). The City also agreed to permit the developer to shift density between buildings to accommodate community concerns.

I went back through those 2007 documents, and there was nothing unclear about the Zoning as passed – Phase 3 had a 180’ maximum building height, Phase 4 a 300’ maximum height. Although there were concerns raised by some residents at the time, the Council of the time saw the community benefit of that density, and the promise of jobs and retail that came with it. Building >180,000 square feet of commercial/retail space surrounded by residential buildings essentially on top of an existing SkyTrain station aligns well with the Regional Growth Strategy and the City’s own long-term planning. The building being presented right now required no variances from the existing zoning Bylaw, and fit both the spirit and the letter of the agreement made between Wesgroup and the City back in 2009. To turn down this DP at this point would demonstrate very bad faith on the part of the City, in my opinion.

That said, there were some concerns expressed by a few members of the Sapperton community. I will attempt to address the main concerns, recognizing I am not going to make the people holding these concerns happy, but as a new and idealistic public representative, I figure people deserve direct answers.

The McBride Sapperton Residents Association wrote a letter to Council on the issue. In the letter, the MSRA opposed the height of the building, and requested a reduction in the height, although their preferred height was not made clear, nor did they make clear if they would accept a widening of the building into the view corridor (i.e. would they be satisfied with a shorter, wider building, as the Zoning Bylaw would allow, or did they want the City to change the Zoning Bylaw and reduce overall density at this late stage?).

A large part of the contention on this DP centered around the idea that residents expected a smaller tower at the south end of the development, because that was what Wesgroup* promised. Depending on whom you ask, that tower was 8, 9, 12, or 14 stories. Indeed, looking back at earlier representations of the site (notably, ones from the time the 2007 Zoning Bylaw was approved) there were pictures showing abstract blocks that look to be 8 or 9 stories, and detailed renderings that range from 12 to 15 stories. However, the bylaw at the time clearly stated 180 feet (equivalent to 18 stories) as the maximum height at this location, and the total square footage being built now is no more than that approved back in 2007. The balance has always been height vs. width and protecting view corridors. I do not agree with the suggestion that there was a “bait and switch” here.**

A small number of people raised concern to Council about the higher density of this development, and question whether that fits the “character” of the Sapperton neighbourhood. The problem with this argument is that we are trying to call back a ship that sailed long ago. The density represented by this building is exactly in line with the 2007 rezoning, and the public consultation and City desires at the time were to develop density necessary to assure retail success in the block. Looking back at the consultation from the time, the “overall density” argument was not prominent, it was the maximum height issue (at over 300′), which provided for the density shifts we are seeing now. Re-opening that discussion 8 years later, after the developer has built the employment lands on the site, is not good faith in my opinion.

I would argue that when it comes to this development, the more density we can stick on it and still provide essential services, the better it serves the City’s Official Community Plan, the Regional Growth Strategy, and the better it protects nearby residential neighbourhoods. This site is immediately adjacent to a SkyTrain Station and the largest single employer in New Westminster. The way it has developed, it will be the anchoring retail district of Sapperton. The first principle of Smart Growth (upon which the Regional Growth Strategy is built) is to allow people to travel less by putting everything they need close together. This will allow the critical mass of density we need to support a vibrant retail/commercial mix without expanding density increases into the single-family neighbourhoods of Sapperton. Yes, it means that your single family house (like mine) might now be located within a block of a 16-story tower (like mine is), and it will require that the City allocate more of the resources this increased density allows towards providing the infrastructure and amenities needed to support more people.

This brings me to the traffic impact issue, which is one that resonated the most with me. There will be traffic impacts of this development, no doubt. Most of the ~200 people who will live in this building and the ~1000 total who will live in the Brewery District by the time the development is completed, will own a car. Many of them will use it on a daily basis. There will be local impacts of this increased traffic. No debate there. The City will do what it can to mitigate those impacts so that every resident of the City (new and old) can get around as easily as possible, and the livability of our residential neighbourhoods is protected. I think that a neighbourhood traffic plan for Sapperton is due, and will be done before this tower is complete.

That said, traffic is a regional issue. New Westminster produces the least traffic per capita of any City in the lower mainland, something like 26,000 daily trips in total, yet suffers under the load of 400,000+ (depending on whom you ask) through-trips every day. As a regional partner, New Westminster is not just doing its part, it is leading the way. Developments like the Brewery District are part of the regional Smart Growth solution, and are a demonstration of our leadership.

Not everyone in this tower is going to ride the SkyTrain or walk to RCH every day, but the proportion of them who do use those options will be way higher than in lower-density developments away from reliable and frequent transit service that are the alternative. When people accuse New Westminster of being parochial about traffic, or of not allowing freeways to be built through our residential neighbourhoods, it is developments like the Brewery District, Plaza 88, and (let’s hope) Sapperton Green that are our best counter-argument. We are developing our City in alignment with regional growth and transportation plans.

So, yes. I voted in favour of this Development Permit, because it met the spirit and letter of the 2007 Zoning Bylaw without any variances; because density immediately adjacent to a SkyTrain station represents the development goals of the City and the region and represents the best hope we have to preserve the livability of our residential neighbourhoods; and because we cannot forget the regional transportation picture when addressing local traffic issues.

*Disclosure #1: My Campaign disclosure forms are on their way to the province right now for vetting, but I should disclose that Wesgroup, the developer of the Brewery District, donated $750 to my campaign.

** Disclosure #2: This links to a blog post by Brad Cavanagh a Sapperton resident who I know socially, and who is doing the best job of out-NWimbying me right now with his sharply worded and well-researched blog. He’s like me, but smarter with a better editor.

Council Meeting, February 2, 2015

Posted on February 6, 2015February 25, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

It’s been a crazy busy two weeks, I hope to be able to blog about some of it soon, as I went to a couple of events, and Council had a great Strategic Planning session. I also will have really cool website news coming up. But you will have to hold fast with my report of the fifth official Council meeting of the term which occurred on February 2nd. After Presentations and Open Delegations, the meeting usually starts with Recommendations from the Committee of the Whole from the afternoon. However as many of the open delegations were there to talk on the Brewery District issue, the Mayor moved that item up in the agenda to immediately follow the delegations, as a courtesy to the delegates (you can watch the video here).

Issuance of Development Permit for 200 Nelson’s Crescent

This is, of course, the first residential building in the Brewery District development. This will be a 15-story tower on top of a 2-story platform (which will be at underground when seen from the elevation of the Columbia Street side, but a tall 2 stories on the Brunette Ave side). I voted for this DP, and the Council unanimously supported it. There was some community opposition, so I think I will save the longer discussion of this project for another blog post (in the next couple of days). Stay tuned!

From the Committee of the Whole we discussed:

Additional committee appointments
Many of the City’s Advisory Committees have spots reserved for representatives from external agencies, such as Residents’ Associations, the Royal Westminster Regiment, and Fraser Health. Some of these appointments were later than the regular appointment schedule. So who is Council to say no?

Draft Financial Plan
This is the first time Council has had a chance to look at the updated financial plan, so there is much more to come on this in the upcoming month or so. The Staff proposal showed us two potential paths: maintaining the status quo as far as program delivery and the existing longer-term capital plan, which would result in a property tax increase of 2.75%; or increasing program spending in a few very specific places where they are needed to meet citizens’ expectations, which would result in an increase of 3.45%.

I have not had as much chance as I would like to dig through the financial documents, although the longer discussion we had in Committee of the Whole did clarify things quite a bit. There will be a fuller discussion, and the public will have a chance to tell Council what they think about the bigger budget picture before this update of the financial plan (and any subsequent tax increase) is formally adopted – discussion will ensue.

One thing I want to make clear is what a 3% tax increase means. It doesn’t necessarily mean you will pay 3% more than you did last year, although it will be pretty close to that. What it means is that the total amount of money the City receives fro mall taxpayers increases by 3% over last year. I gave a bit of an explanation of Mil Rates here a couple of years ago, but I’ll repeat the basic idea here in a very simplistic way.

Let’s pretend you owned a $100,000 house in New Westminster in 2014, and the City’s “mil rate” for taxes was 3. In that case, you would have paid $300 in taxes. If the City wants to raise taxes 3%, your mill rate will go up by 3% of 3, to 3.09 and you would pay $309 in taxes. But what if, in the same year, property values across the City went up by 5%? The City would still need 3% more to balance its budget, but to get $309 out of your now-$105,000 house, the actual mill rate would go down to 2.94. The fun part is what happens if, in the year that average city-wide property values go up 5%, your house doesn’t go up at all, but your neighbour’s house goes up by 10%. That 2.94 mill rate means you pay $294 in taxes (a 2% decrease) while your neighbor pays $323 (a 7.5% increase).

There are a few other little intricacies. One point to think about is that new properties (for example, the first time a high rise starts paying full property tax on the residential properties, not the abandoned gravel lot it was before) means new taxes, which eats away at that 3%. This is a big reason why a City like Surrey, where new houses are popping up out of the forest every day, can have low Mil Rates – a lot of the annual tax increase required to provide the services people want comes from new lands paying taxes for the first time.

Anyway, this is the start of the discussion – Council has not decided on what the tax increase will be next year. My cursory look at the numbers suggests something very close to 3%, but lots of discussion to come before any kind of decision is made.

Q2Q Bridge update
The Q2Q pedestrian bridge between the Quayside and Queensborough is moving forward. Council is very supportive of this plan, the majority of the money is in place. We are looking at Grants and other opportunities to top up the fund. The City is also working with stakeholders (Southern Railway, Marine Carriers, Port Metro Vancouver, etc.). The Bascule Bridge design was clearly preferred in public consultations, which is fortunate, because it was also the preferred design from the parallel process evaluating the technical aspects of the project.

The benefits of the low-bascule design Benefit of this bridge are many- low visual impact, the preferred location does not impact the Submarine Park, it is safer location from a ship allision risk (“allision” is the nautical term for when a mobile object like a barge runs into a non-mobile object like a pier, when two mobile things collide, it is called a collision. (learn something new every day). This option will also allow the bridge to be useable as an emergency crossing for safety vehicles, to being able to carry an ambulance and/or police vehicle.

The bridge is coming. There are a lot of hoops to jump through yet, but some time in 2017 or 2018, Quayside residents will be able to take a short stroll over to Frankie G’s.

Amendment of Taxi Bylaw
Two Taxi Companies are licensed to operate in New Westminster, and both of them have applied for more licenses. The provincial agency that regulates taxis did not give them all of the new licenses they wanted (a combined 17 more licenses), but instead gave them two each. The regulation requires that the City also approve these license, and because that takes a Bylaw change, we need tot go through a public process to change the bylaw.

This reflects back at how an amazingly high pile of regulations exist around taxis. The number of cars, the types of cars, the rates they may charge, even where taxis can pick up or drop fares, is regulated. In the world of Uber and the internet-enabled sharing economy, this is a situation that will be coming to a head in the next few years. It will be an interesting file to watch develop.

Shops at New West Station Noise Variance
This building project is the first of two going on that will re-shape New Westminster Station. Building the cover that will keep the platform level dry will make for a more comfortable environment for the retailers and passengers. TransLink is talking about some significant changes to the station as well, including replacing a lot of metal mesh with glass and updating the elevators and escalators. All good stuff.

Unfortunately, working around the SkyTrain means working around the heavily trafficked transit times, which means much of the construction must happen in the middle of the night. It is a bit disappointing that this project has been so delayed that they need to come back to the City for an extended noise variance, but it sounds like they are doing a good job addressing issues that arise, and the end will be soon!

Our CITY Visioning committee appointments
We talked last meeting about the Our City visioning event coming up in mid-February, and approved the Visioning Advisory Group volunteers. However, since we discussed it last, two more Residents Associations have nominated representatives. So who is Council to say no?

646 Ewen Avenue rezoning
This is a rezoning for a new single-family home in Queensborough. The rezoning is generally aligned with the goals of the recently-developed Queensborough Neighbourhood Plan. This report is to get the rezoning process started, as community consultation, committee and staff review have yet to take place, so I’ll reserve comment for this time.

Front Street Parkade project update
The west half of the Parkade is coming down in 2015, and a newly-designed Front Street between Begbie and 6th Streets is being designed. As much as I wish the east half of the Parkade was going as well, the Downtown Parking Study and community consultation have made the case for investing in necessary repairs of the East Parkade, so we will be keeping it for a few decades yet. Those repairs are going to come with some significant upgrades, including replacing the no-longer-conforming railing with a screen and mural design.

This is a multi-phased project, and will have profound effects on the waterfront the New Westminster. In this report, staff is outlining the project schedule, and a detailed public consultation process combined with a comprehensive business support plan to help the building owners and small businesses along Front Street weather the storm (always keeping in mind that after that storm, the sun will finally shine on Front Street, for the first time in 50 years). I to frequent a few of the businesses down there ,and yes, they are concerned what a 3-month long demolition project, followed by another 3-month road construction project, will do to their businesses. I’m hoping the City, the BIA and the businesses on Front Street can work together to mitigate the disruption. As a New Westminster resident, you can help by spending a bit of time and money down on Front Street overt the next year, and help our small business community out.

The fixing of the east half will occur through 2015, and will be mostly complete before the removal of the West Parkade, which should occur in the fourth quarter of 2015. The re-forming of Front Street will occur in early 2016.

Fibre Optic Network Business Plan
This is an exciting new project the City is spearheading. Using our existing road and electrical infrastructure, the City is going to install “Dark Fibre” such that 1GB “Broadband” service will be available for most businesses and many residential areas of the City. This is a huge economic opportunity for the City, and will provide us one of the missing pieces for the development of a real knowledge-based economy sector in the City. I want to expand on this in a future blog post (and clarify the stretched allegory I tried to develop during the Council Meeting), so stay tuned, and I will try to pump something out this week.

Investment Report
The City has about $100 Million in the bank. It isn’t all cash – we can’t just draw it out and build a new swimming pool with it. Much of it is already earmarked for various purposes. Some represent money put into reserves for some utilities – i.e. a small portion of your water bill goes in to a reserve fun to build new water pipes when they meet the end of their life. Some are Development Cost Charges – fees we collect from developers when they put in new building to fund necessary infrastructure improvements that will be required by the new population they are building houses for. For a variety of reasons, the City builds up these reserves, and we spend them when the time is right.

While sitting on them, however, we collect interest, and the funds are invested in a larger fund called the Municipal Finance Authority. Because of the size of the fund and the great management of the funds, we make pretty good returns. In many cases, we make more money from the interest on these funds than we pay in interest on some of the loans we take out to fund other projects.

I’m simplifying things a bit, but this report shows our reserves are doing pretty well as far as a managed investment. Deciding how we are going to manage our reserves in the long-term is part of the bigger discussion around the annual Financial Update that I alluded to above.

Plumbing fixtures in accessory buildings
People have been converting garages and sheds into living space. That is a problem. It violates zoning laws, has impacts on neighourhoods, and allows people to cheat on property taxes and utilities. Increasingly, these conversions are done without proper permits, meaning that the places where people are living may not meet building codes, which could actually threaten the lives and health of the people living in these spaces.

One way to get around the permitting process is to “rough in” plumbing to an accessory building, but not install it. Once the inspections are done, and the building is signed off, you illegally install the plumbing features that attach to those roughed-in pipes, and attached the kitchen and bathroom fixtures. A little bit of drywall and some shelves, and all of the sudden you have a rentable suite.
Most cities limit the type of plumbing you can put in an accessory building to avoid this problem, staff recommended we do so as well. If you have a garage with a workshop in it, you will still be able to have a sink, or a small bathroom (without a shower), but you will not be able to have multiple sinks, and a bathtub, essentially making it much harder to install a kitchen and bathroom in these buildings.

As a side note, the issue of Laneway Housing will be a part of the OCP process- there are some nieghbourhoods and locations where laneway houses may make sense in the New Westminster, and the OCP process and adaptable Zoning is the way to get there, not the building of illegal suites in the hope that the City will let them get by. Frankly, as a City councilor and a Municipal Employee, I have no tolerance for people who flaunt building codes and zoning. Fundamentally, it isn’t fair to the neighbours, and hurts the livability of the City.

Meeting Schedule Adjustment
Finally, the new Mayor is making further adjustments to streamline how Council operates. We are looking at reducing the work we do in “Committee in the Whole” when that work can more easily take place in the evening meeting. Part of the plan is to open up Committee of the Whole time to allow for more detailed issue-oriented “workshops”. There will mostly still be open meetings of Council (unless we are working on topics that need to be in camera), but will allow us, as a Council, to dig down deeper into specific initiatives or topics, in the interest of moving those things forward more quickly. So some adjustment of the Council Schedule has to take place to make that happen.

And that is it for Groundhog day. I have two topic above I hope to get blogs out on before we meet again in mid-February. Enjoy Family Day everyone!

Council Meeting – January 26, 2015

Posted on January 29, 2015February 6, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The fourth official Council meeting of the term occurred on January 19th. I am starting to get the hang of this, but you may want to follow along on video, where you can see the Presentations and Open Delegations that I am not going to cover here. The rest of the meeting starts with recommendations from the Committee of the Whole from the afternoon, which started with us reviewing the various committee recommendations for Grant funding for 2015:

Remembrance Day Committee
We made an adjustment to the volunteer Committee that organizes New Westminster’s annual Remembrance Day ceremonies at the New Westminster Regiment and Cenotaph in front of City Hall, and appointed the volunteers.

Heritage Grant Program
The City has an established Heritage Grant program, where the City provides funds to programs that encourage heritage protection, and raise knowledge about the heritage of the City. Applications are reviewed by a Committee of citizen volunteers, and that committee sends recommendations to Council for approval. The budget for this program is $25,000, and $25,762 in requests were made in 2015.

Council accepted the recommendations of the committee and awarded $25,000 in grants, divided between 6 applicant organizations.

Amateur Sports Grant Program
The City further grants Amateur Sport programs across the City. The funding model here is a little more complicated than the others, as different sports programs have funding needs, availability, and resources. Clearly, this grant program is only a small portion of the operating costs of these programs, but the City nonetheless allocated $35,000 a year to the various programs. Unlike other grant programs, this money comes from earned interest on two established Legacy Funds
More than $60,000 in grant requests were reviewed by the volunteer committee, and they recommended $34,000 in grants to 9 sports programs across the City.

Port Royal Land Exchange
The proposed exchange of 700 square metres of land between the City and the Developer at Phase 6 of Port Royal was discussed in the January 12 Council meeting. Public notice was done, and the City received no feedback from the public. The land shall be exchanged.

Child Care Grant Program
The City also has a Child Care Grant program , where the City provides funds to make capital improvements to the City’s stock day care programs, to help keep them accessible, affordable, and well equipped. The program offers up to 8 grants per year, to a maximum of $5000 each (for a total of $40,000), and a committee of citizen volunteers make recommendations to Council on how these grants should be awarded.

Nine requests totaling $49,794 were received, and the committee recommended 8 of them for award. The 9th was the LMPS, who received significant funding this year from the Child Care Amenity Provision Capital Reserve Fund (approved by Council on January 12). A total of $37,824 was awarded across these 8 applicants.

Environmental Grant Program
The City has an Environment Grant program , to provide funding to programs that provide environmental benefits to the City, or promote environmental awareness in the City. The program offers up to $20,000 per year, and a subcommittee of the Environmental Advisory committee provides recommendations to Council.

I recused myself from this discussion. I am a long-standing and very active member of the NWEP, who are applicants in the program. Although I did not take part in the application process, am frankly way to busy this year to help the NWEP with their programs, and have no direct fiduciary interest in their success, I have spent much of the last decade being at times a central organizer, spokesperson, and president of the NWEP, so there is a potential for perception of conflict here, so I let my Council colleagues discuss this without my participation.

Community Grant Program
The City’s Community Grant Program across the City. These grants are meant to support “community-based projects for new and developing organizations, established organizations that work on a project bases, and organizations undertaking a special, one-time initiative.”

The fund for this grant is $48,000, and this volunteer committee had to review 27 applications with requests totaling more than $250,000. A tough job for the committee, as you know some great potential programs are just not going to get the grant they need, but I think they did a great job going through the various applications, and recommending 17 programs for funding totaling $46,815. With a bit of room left in the budget, Councillor Harper moved that we increase Royal City Volunteers’ grant to the amount they received last year, bringing the total off all Community Grants up to $47,565 (which is still under budget).

City Partnership Grants
This is the largest grant fund in the City, and is designed to help not-for-profits partner with the City in the delivery of major programs for community well-being. These grants can be awarded over three-year terms, to provide more funding certainty to the organizations for the larger programs. Applications this year added up to $513,500, and the Partnership Grant Review Panel recommended the awarding of grants to 11 organizations for a total of $348,425.

It was decided by Council that the $15,000 that the City provides towards the Hyack Association float to promote New Westminster at community events is better drawn from the Festivals Grant funds, and that the arts Council grant could be increased by $3,000 within the remaining budget.

The Tourism New Westminster grant caused the most discussion in Committee of the Whole. The grant request of $100,000 for the next three years was not recommended, but that the current funding level of $60,000 per year be maintained. Council recognized the importance of Tourism New Westminster’s work, and recognized they had some increased one-time costs related to their move to the Anvil Centre. However, the long-standing plan to have tourism funded in whole by a 2% Hotel Tax (more properly termed the Municipal and Regional District Tax, which is permitted in the Provincial Sales Tax Act and is done in several other municipalities) has not moved forward, and ultimately, that is the best vehicle to fund this type of activity. There is every reason to believe that a Hotel Tax can be in place by the end of Tourism New Westminster’s next fiscal year, so Council decided to fund Tourism for the requested $100,000 this year, and $60,000 for each of the next two funding years, unless the hotel tax is implemented (which should actually bring in a little more than $60,000 for Tourism every year). These changes brought the total of all grants up to $376,425.

Arts and Culture Grants
The City’s Arts and Culture Grants provide for programs that “contribute to the artistic fabric of the City”. And much like the Community Grants, there are so many applicants for so many deserving programs, that the Volunteer committee has a tough task evaluating them all. There were 18 applications totaling almost $70,000. With a budget of $20,000, the committee recommended funding 14 programs (most for less money than they requested). Councillor Williams recommended a shift of $500 between organizations, which Council agreed to (although we had a bit of math trouble at the final meeting, we got it figured out by the end of the meeting).

Warning! Personal Opinion Ahead! The City of New Westminster is extremely generous in the awarding of grants, and it is to the benefit of the entire community. With more than $700,000 in grants awarded every year, New Westminster puts more into Arts, Culture, Sports, Social Services, and Festivals on a per-capita basis than pretty much any other City in the Lower Mainland. Yep, those are your tax dollars being spent. However, what is more worth celebrating are the hundreds of volunteers and scores of not-for-profit agencies that turn these grant contributions (your tax dollars) into actual programs, services, and events. A small city like New Westminster could easily become a cultural backwater being surrounded by much larger Cities (with much larger tax bases) if it wasn’t for the contributions of all of these groups. Asking the taxpayers to contribute something like $10 each for the wide diversity of services we get from these grant partners seems like a good investment to me.

Funding Cuts to Housing Support Programs
After all that feel-good stuff grant-giving stuff, we looked at a report from the City’s Social Planning staff on senior government supports for homelessness. This follows up on the correspondence from the January 12th Council meeting regarding changes in how the Federal Government is prioritizing its Homelessness partnership programs as part of the Economic Action Plan. This is one of those situations where something that kinda looks good at first might be a hidden negative.

New Westminster has a pretty good record on the homelessness file, partnering with Housing BC to develop shelter beds, and working with a bunch of service agencies to provide supports to keep people from becoming homeless. The City (and this is all before me, so I’m not polishing my own apple) has a lot to be proud of for how it manages this file.

The Federal program is targeted at the chronically homeless, which means programs that provide shelter for people who have been without a home for several months will be prioritized over programs that prevent marginalized people from becoming homeless in the first place. New Westminster has a number of the latter-type programs, and they are all suffering funding crises. It only makes sense that taking money away from homelessness prevention programs to fund programs to deal with homelessness is myopic.

Council moved that City send correspondence to senior government recommendations to review how these program funding decisions are made. This is the start of a longer conversation.

Proposed Rezoning of 328 Holmes Street.
This is a typical infill density application on Holmes Street. The lot has a 66ft frontage, and the owner wants to subdivide to two 33’ lots so that two houses can replace one. The existing house is not considered a heritage structure, and 33’ lots are not common in the neighbourhood, but something around 16% of the lots are at least this narrow. This is the very beginning of the rezoning application process (there would be an Advisory Planning Commission report, Public Consultation, Residents Association review, then back to Council) so I shouldn’t comment at this preliminary stage on the merits of the application.

However, in the report that went to Committee of the Whole, staff recommended that Council not approve the launching of the application process in light of the pending OCP update. The thinking is that the OCP may determine that the type of infill density proposed may not be appropriate in the neighbourhood in question.

I disagreed with this recommendation to pause, as the OCP process is only starting up, and delaying this process until the OCP is developed, while not delaying other processes, seems arbitrary. I understand what Staff is hoping to do by pausing this application – they don’t want to make a change here that might not fit the goals of our new OCP – but to be fair to all homeowners, we need to either impose a moratorium, or allow these processes to proceed. This position was supported by most of Council, so that process will proceed.

Metro Vancouver Transportation and Referendum
This action plan outlines the actions the City will take to make sure people in New Westminster get the opportunity to vote on the upcoming plebiscite, and the action the City will take to demonstrate the value of voting “Yes”.

The reasoning for New Westminster, as a City, supporting the Yes side has been discussed at length, but let me summarize quickly here in one sentence. The Mayors’ Plan, when implemented, with save New Westminster money, improve livability for New Westminster residents, will help New Westminster meet its established transportation goals, and will allow New Westminster to continue to work in partnerships with its regional neighbours to meet regional transportation goals.

LMLGA Recommendation
It isn’t well spelled out in the recommendation, but this is related to the Bailey Bridge arbitration. We aren’t happy that we lost the arbitration, but the insult to injury is that the arbitration process that took place did not provide the City any reasoning. It is easy to be a sore loser, but in an era where everyone is asking for more open and accountable government processes, a secret arbitration with no reporting out seems archaic. The Mayor suggested we take a recommendation to the Lower Mainland Local Government Association meeting, as a pathway towards eventually having this legislation changed.

And that’s it. Although we had a special meeting earlier in the day, where Council learned about becoming a Dementia-friendly City, which was educational and inspirational, and has me thinking about how we can take what we learned to the City’s Access Ability Committee.

My 1500-word case.

Posted on January 25, 2015February 6, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

I started writing a note to a group I was hoping would support the YES side of the upcoming Metro Vancouver Transportation and Transit Plebiscite, and it turned into a bit of an extended rant. Actually, after re-reading, it appeared to be very un-ranty for me, which first disappointed me, then made me a little proud. So I thought I would share it here (edited slightly for audience). So here is my 1,500ish-word case for the Yes vote.

I’ll list some facts for clarity, then give you my opinions. See if you can tell where it shifts.

The Plebiscite

The Plebiscite asks for a 0.5% increase on the PST to fund a package of transportation and transit capital projects across the Lower Mainland. This money is specifically earmarked for the projects listed in the Mayor’s Plan released last year, and there will be annual independent audits to assure the money is spent as promised.

The Plebiscite will be my mail-in ballot. Elections BC has not released all of the election details yet, however indications are that ballots will be mailed to every person on the Elections BC voters list. To vote you need to be 18, a resident of the area served by TransLink, a Canadian Citizen, a resident of BC for the last 6 months, and you must be registered to vote at your current address. The ballot will be mailed in March, and you will have until the middle of May to return it.

The “Congestion Improvement Tax”

The regional CIT is a 0.5% sales tax that will raise something in the order of $250 Million per year for the next 10 years. The province has committed to matching funds, and suggest the Feds would as well; when these three sources are combined it equals $7.5 Billion over 10 years.

The CIT will cost the “average household” something in the order of $100 per year. The number is hard to parse exactly, because it depends on how much you spend. The average household income for the lower mainland is about $60,000, and if you spend all of this on PST-taxable items (i.e. didn’t buy food, pay rent or purchase haircuts) then your burden would be $300.

To put the tax rate in transit-oriented perspective, if you buy a $1000 television, you will pay $5 in CIT, which is less than the cost of a single 3-zone ride. If you purchase a $34,000 car, the CIT will cost you $170, which is equivalent to a single month 3-zone bus pass.

The Mayors Plan:

After almost two years of discussion, negotiation, and finagling, the Mayors of Metro Vancouver agreed almost unanimously on a planned package of improvements (the Mayor of Burnaby was the only dissenting voice):

3 light rail lines in Surrey, which will connect the King George SkyTrain station to a line along 104th to Guildford Town Centre, a second along King George Highway to Newton, and a third to Langley Town Centre along the Fraser Highway;

1 Broadway Corridor extension of the Millennium Line all the way to Arbutus;

1 replacement Pattullo Bridge. The Plan will provide an important portion of the capital funding to build a new 4-lane bridge, with the balance of the capital coming from tolls;

11 new B-line routes, adding up to 200km of much more frequent service. 3 of these lines are in Surrey, 2 are in the North-east section, the rest are in Burnaby-Vancouver, or connect Burnaby-Vancouver to target destinations (Richmond, UBC, SFU, North Vancouver);

400 new buses, which means more frequent service, extended hours, and higher reliability for everyone who uses busses;

50% increase in Seabus service – more frequency, longer operation al hours;

80% more night bus service;

30% more HandyDart services;

129 additional Skytrain/Canada Line fleet vehicles on existing lines, providing more frequent,
reliable, and comfortable service;

2,700 km of bikeway improvements.

Impact on New Westminster:

The City is in support of this plan because it provides valuable tools for us to achieve the goals of our Master Transportation Plan, and helps meet many of the City’s objectives towards building a more sustainable, inclusive, affordable and livable community.

The Pattullo Bridge plan is a good one for New Westminster. The bridge will be 4 lanes, and will be tolled. Both of these are issues the City has pressed hard and negotiated towards. The bridge will be built to accommodate future expansion to 6 Lanes (and this is the exact language of the agreement) “if need arises, to meet demand increases beyond current forecasts”. The plan does not include funding for this expansion to 6 lanes, and tolling the bridge and providing the alternatives (light rail and B-line expansion South of the Fraser) is our best assurance that the demand increase that would drive future expansion to 6 lanes will not occur.

More frequent SkyTrain and bus service will of course have a huge impact on New Westminster, which has one of the highest per capita transit use rates in the lower mainland. These new buses will turn the tide on “service rationalization” that has seen two bus routes reduced in New Westminster in the last two years. Larger, more frequent SkyTrain cars mean you are more likely to fit in the first train that arrives at 8:00 in the morning at New West Station, instead of trying to decide if the next train might be a little less packed. Increased Night Bus service will have a huge impact on shift workers (think RCH – our largest employer) and night owls. Increased HandyDart service will help keep our community connected and accessible for more people.

However, providing improved transit service to South of the Fraser and the Northeast Sector is also a major “win” for New Westminster, as it provides viable alternatives to people so they do not have to drive through New West on their daily commute. This is not the solution to New Westminster’s traffic problems, but it is a huge step in the right direction.

Plan B:

We cannot talk about the YES side without acknowledging the NO side. What will be the result of a NO vote? Frankly, no-one knows for sure, but we can make some educated guesses.

We can be fairly sure that the scale and pace of expansion offered by the Mayors Plan will not occur. No provincial government interested in staying in government is going to reply to a NO vote from the public by introducing a new taxation scheme to replace what was just voted down. The Mayors could, in theory, decide to fund this plan with property taxes, however if you read the history of how we got to where we are now, the chances of a plurality of Mayors agreeing to that in short order are very slim, especially as they will be under the same pressure as the provincial government to not approve a tax that the people just voted down. (I will ignore for now the public policy argument that property taxes are a terrible way to pay for transit infrastructure).

Note that almost every other alternative to funding proposed by the Mayors (carbon tax recovery, vehicle levy, gas tax increase, comprehensive road pricing program, funding from general revenue) has been nixed by consecutive Ministers of Transportation. It is not as if there wasn’t a Plan B considered, it is that no proposed Plans B have received consensus support.

In New Westminster, a NO vote almost certainly means continued “rationalization” of bus services. The delay at getting rapid transit built in Surrey will put more pressure on the Pattullo and provide incentive for a 6-lane option. The delay in other transit expansion projects mean more people will be forced (note – I didn’t say “choose”) to include driving through New Westminster’s neighbourhoods on their daily commute to Surrey or the Northeast sector. Congestion will increase the cost of moving goods, will erode the livability of our community, and will empower the government to build yet more lanes of unsustainable transportation infrastructure – with your tax money, and without a referendum.

TransLink:

It is important to remember that TransLink is the agency created by the provincial government to operate Greater Vancouver’s regional transportation system. It exists at the pleasure of the provincial government, and is governed by them. The province could disband, re-regulate, or replace TransLink tomorrow, but the region would still require a public transit operator who would operate the expanded capital assets the Mayors Plan will provide.

There may be significant governance issues with TransLink, however those governance issues are not part of this Plebiscite, nor has the province suggested that governance changes at TransLink will result from a YES or NO result. To suggest so is pure speculation with no basis in the public record. TransLink is not running the Plebiscite, nor are they particularly in favour of it. Every indication is that TransLink has the same position as the Mayors (if I may paraphrase: “we wish we didn’t have to go through this exercise to get adequate funding, but if this is the only path provided to us to build our service level, let’s get going).

This Plebiscite will raise funds to build capital projects, and the funds raised are specifically earmarked for the projects proposed. The province and Mayors have agreed to annual external audits and reporting on how the funds are spent, providing a level of transparency and accountability unparalleled in the history of transportation capital budgeting in the province. This money is not going into a TransLink black hole, but into tangible assets we can see operating. If you want to see more accountability in how TransLink spends, this provides it.

In summary

I am very much on the record in my support for limiting the lanes on the Pattullo to 4 lanes, and tolling the bridge; I have advocated for better public transit in New Westminster; I have supported the mode shift goals of the Master Transportation Plan; and I have supported working with our regional partners to build a more sustainable transportation network;

All of these goals are supported by a YES vote on the Plebiscite,
None of them are supported by a NO vote.
So I’m voting YES.

Patrick Johnstone

Fan of cities; Mayor of a great one.

Tag: New Westminster