Talking Taxes (pt.1)

Posted on April 24, 2015April 28, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

For those who were paying attention, the City of New Westminster’s new 5-year Financial Plan just went through public hearing, and passed three readings at Council. After months of work, several reviews by Council, and a not-terribly-exciting public engagement process, the Bylaw that supports the Plan will likely be adopted by Council this Monday.

But we really haven’t talked about it as a community. When you measure column inches in the local paper, hours of council delegation time and discussion, or conversation at coffee shops and pubs, Parkades and Lancers have by far outstripped this. Which is probably not good, as this is arguably the most important thing Council ever does – scheduling the spending of your money.

We, as a City, need to have a better conversation about this, and I hope the Mayor’s Public Engagement Taskforce can figure out how to make this issue front and centre in the City’s conversation for the next budget cycle.

It’s not like people in New Westminster don’t talk about taxes. It comes up every local election, and there will be a few letters to the editor complaining about the increase approved this time around. There was even a Facebook page that *mysteriously* popped up during the last election all about the untenable tax situation in New West. The general opinion is that New Westminster is either one of the highest-taxed communities in the Lower Mainland, or the highest. This spectrum of opinions is only partially true.

A few years ago (long before Council was a glimmer in my eye) I wrote a series of blog posts on taxes in the City compared to the rest of the region. I wanted to understand where we stand and wanted to cut through the rhetoric. I talked about what a mil rate really is, I expanded by talking about how that compares to actual taxes you pay based on typical house values, and for the fun of it, threw utilities into the mix. My conclusion at the time was that we were not the highest-taxed community in Metro Vancouver, but somewhere in the middle. As a general rule, people north and west of us paid more, people south and east paid less.

Now I have a new role, and although I do not agree with the opinion that taxes are “out of control” (as people continue to ask for the services that taxes provide), I do think I need to be more cognizant of how the tax system in the City relates to other municipalities with whom we compete for businesses and residents (with taxes being only one of the many factors that influence location choices for both of those).

So I started to gather data on taxes from various Cities’ 5-year Financial Plans. However, if you start to search through them, you quickly realize the varying ways financial statements are presented in the published plans. For fun, compare recent 5-year plans of Burnaby and Port Moody.

Fortunately, local governments are required to make disclosures to the provincial government every year, and through that process, a standardized set to statistics are collected. You can read them here. I’m not saying they are the perfect Stats to evaluate whether we get full value for our taxes, but it does give us a level playing field through which to compare New Westminster to our neighboring jurisdictions. And comparison, I will do.

This first graph below shows what a typical household should have paid in all property taxes to their municipality in 2014, and breaks it up by different categories. The number on the top of each column is the assessed home value deemed “typical” for that community by the province, and the value used to calculate the tax amounts based on mil rates.

By this analysis (and this is the province’s data, not mine), the typical New Westminster residential property tax bill is the 12th highest of the 21 municipalities in Metro Vancouver. Obviously, a huge driver of this placement is that New Westminster’s “typical” $675,000 home value is below average (14th of 21) and our Mil rate is higher than typical (5th of 21, but in a virtual tie with those that are 4th through 7th):

Recognize, these are averaged numbers, the Mil rate multiplied by the “typical” value. What about what people actually pay? You can calculate a “True Mil Rate” paid in a City by taking all of the Property Taxes collected by the City (in New Westminster in 2014 that was a bit over $65 Million) and divide it by the assessed property value of all taxable property in the City (in New Westminster, that number is just north of $12 Billion), then divide by 1,000. That makes our “True Mil Rate” about 5.32, which is the fourth highest in the region:

Note that municipalities with low land values cluster towards the left side of the graph, and higher-land-value places cluster towards the right, so this graph more displays relative land value than it does level of service provided or efficiency of the operation of local government.

Up to now, we have only been looking at taxes as compared to land value. Land doesn’t pay tax, people do. So it might be more meaningful to look at how much tax we pay per resident in the City. Lucky, the same provincial data provides population estimates by municipality projected from the 2011 census to 2014, so that is also an easy comparison to make. Here, again, New Westminster is up in the top quarter, finishing 5th of 21 municipalities.

However, the comparison here is (yet again) not fair, because all taxes are not paid by residents. Businesses and industry also pay property taxes. The Province helpfully divides out local government tax revenue by land use, and if we limit the comparison of residential property taxes paid per resident in their municipality, we see that New Westminster falls back down to the middle – coincidentally 12th place among 21 municipalities:

I say coincidentally because although New West finishes 12th in the first and last graph here, none of the other 21 municipalities fall in the same location on both graphs. There are many ways to look at the numbers, but by various apropos analysis, New Westminster residential property taxes are pretty much in the middle regionally. Our $572 per person in 2014 puts New Westminster well below the $660 regional average, and essentially equal to the regional median of $573 represented by Langley Township.

So why do some graphs show New West so high? That has to do with how we use our land in New West, and how we tax residents, businesses and industry differently. To see more analysis of that, you will have to stay tuned for Part 2, coming soon.

Council Meeting – April 13, 2015

Posted on April 19, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. 3 Comments.

This was quite the meeting. We had a relatively light agenda, but there was an annual special event where Elementary students are awarded by Council (with generous sponsorships from several Architecture Firms and other businesses in town) for their winning Heritage Poster Contest entries. We had presentations from the Labour Council on workplace safety (with continued depressing stats about worker deaths in British Columbia) and the Arts Council (an organization that is going through some exciting changes right now). We also had a presentation from the Mayor and CAO about a future vision for Sapperton as Royal Columbian Hospital sees expansion (this is something people should be paying attention to, as it could be a significant re-shaping of our City). Then we had more than 2 hours of delegations on two topics.

The Parkade issue is one I have already discussed at length, and as the delegations really brought nothing new to the table, I have little to add to my earlier comments.

The Lancers issue is something I have not written about. Actually, that is not true, I have sat down and written quite a bit on the topic, but cannot find a way to write my feelings and opinions without risking throwing more fuel onto the fire, so I have not posted those writings. Instead, I have been having conversations in the community, with people in strong support of the Lancers, and with those who wonder what all the fuss is about. I always found those discussions circling back to two terms: “tradition” and “patriarchy”, and those discussions have been thoughtful and respectful. So I am going to put the on-line discussion aside for now, and may write something more after next meeting, where Council will be discussing the Lancers.

What I didn’t mention was that we had our annual Parcel Tax Roll at 6:45. This is when we formally review and approve the list of properties that are voluntarily part of a Parcel Tax. These are generally BIA members who have allowed the City to collect the BIA fee on their behalf, and residents in areas where a special local tax was applied to pay for a local amenity, such as enclosing a ditch in Queensborough.

On to Recommendations from the Committee of the Whole meeting from earlier in the day:

Appointment to the Environmental Advisory Committee

One of our committee members has moved out of town for job reasons, so we went back to the original applicants and found a promising replacement! We also had an applicant for the vacant “representative from a local business”. I co-chair this committee with Councillor McEvoy, and we will be seeing good things come out of it this year, I hope!

Council Representative to the Community Social Issues Committee

This was another committee with two Council co-chairs, and one of the Councilors ended up having an unmanageable timing conflict, so this committee is back down to one Council representative.

E-Comm appointment

The regional emergency communications organization (E-Comm) has a board of directors which includes representatives from Local Government. Councillor Trentadue was nominated by our Council to be one of those representatives.

Council Procedure Bylaw No. 7744, 2015

This amendment to how the City does public delegations was recommended to Council by staff, specifically by the City Clerk. To understand the change, it is helpful to understand the role of the City Clerk, and the law around Public Hearings.

Amongst other jobs, the City Clerk is responsible for assuring that Council does things legally. Provincial Legislation gives relatively broad guidance about how a Council runs meetings, but at times the rules are very strict. For example, when Council discusses things in camera it is on the recommendation of the City Clerk and her understanding of Section 90 of the Community Charter that requires us to have those conversations in camera, and actually limits our ability to speak about those deliberations.

Public Hearings are a required aspect of many types of Bylaw changes, including Rezoning. Appropriate notice of must be given of that Public Hearing, and Council is not supposed to take any kind of position on the topic prior to the Public Hearing. Of course, that is a rather silly game we play saying we have a completely “open mind” and no opinions prior to the Public Hearing (if there is one thing politicians have an excess of, it is opinions). However, there is clear intent in the law that Council members should not prejudice the process prior to a full Public Hearing.

Staff were concerned that the open delegation process we have at New Westminster Council, where anyone can come to a Council Meeting and take 5 minutes to talk about anything that concerns them, created a challenge at protection of the Public Hearing process. A small but vocal group could overwhelm the public conversation about a project headed to Public Hearing, and potentially derail the ability to provide a project (or, for that matter, those opposed to a project) a fair hearing.

The way this Bylaw change is drafted, no delegations would be permitted once the date of the Public Hearing has been announced. To put that in perspective, most development projects will come to Council once or twice, see committee review, and go to public consultation (open houses, Residents Associations, etc.), and be publically “in the pipeline” for a year or more before we get to the point that a Public Hearing is scheduled. The Hearing is usually scheduled when the final report is received from City Staff which summarizes the project, as adapted (or not) by public engagement, committee review, and the long push-pull between developers and staff as the project is compared to various City policies and bylaws. A Public Hearing is usually scheduled one to three weeks after that final report is received, and a special day is set aside such that people cannot delegate on other topics on that date..

During the entire year-or-longer process, people and groups can delegate to Council on any aspect of the Project. However, once the Public hearing date is set, there will be a one- to three-week window when no delegations will be permitted. You can write letters to Council (yes we read them), you can write Letters to the Editor, write a blog post or tweet to your hearts content. You can call us on the phone or corner us in a coffee shop (yes, we are that small a town!). However, if you want to provide a public presentation to Council on that topic, you need to save it for the Public Hearing.

We referred this amendment to Council for three readings.

Urban Academy – Robson Manor Heritage Restoration

This proposal is for an Official Community Plan amendment and a Heritage Restoration Agreement to permit the building of a second structure at adjacent to Robson Manor at 101 Third Street which will allow this local private school to realize expansion plans from about 150 students today to about 450 students by 2022. I have received more correspondence about this project in my short time on Council than any other topic, and I can safely say the community is divided over this project. I have continued to learn about the process, the project, and the pros and cons.

In Council today, we did not approve or oppose the project; we agreed to allow the process to continue forward to Public Hearing, which will be held on May 4, 2015, and I expect it to be a long one. C’mon out and tell us what you think.

HRA Amendment Bylaw 7752, 709 Cumberland

This is a Heritage Revitalization Agreement that lapsed due to a short timeframe allowed in the original Bylaw, and staff underestimating the time it would take to get through the procedure of subdividing the Lot. We need an amendment here to extend the deadline. No conditions have changed, we have just given the City and proponent a bit more time.

Regulating Heat Pump location and installation

Heat Pumps can be super-efficient ways of heating a modern house. They are becoming more common as people seek to reduce energy prices, to use electricity instead of fossil fuels, and to get both heating in the winter and cooling the summer from the same unit. Air-to-air heat pumps are basically air conditioners in that they move heat by compressing air and taking advantage of the Ideal Gas Law (my favourite gas law, because it rhymes: PV=nRT!), and they can move that heat into our outside of your building, depending on the season. The only down side is that they contain a bunch of mechanical devices (compressor, condenser, pumps and fans) in a tight space and can sometimes be noisy. Installing one on the side of your house might put it right under your neighbour’s bedroom window, and they don’t want to hear it pumping away all night.

The City is currently limited in their ability to enforce noise bylaws around heat pumps, and the ways a homeowner can address a heat pump that disturbs their neighbor are sometimes unreliable or expensive long after the unit is installed. Best if we address the problem when the heat pump is installed, as other cities have done.

Council authorized Staff to go ahead and start researching and drafting a Bylaw to address this issue.

Heritage Register update

When the City designates a property as a “Heritage” building, road, wall, etc., we list in in the City’s Heritage Register. It is in turn sent to the provincial Heritage Branch, where they may be added to the provincial Heritage Registry, and from where it is forwarded to Heritage Canada’s Register of Historic Places. So far, the UN is not involved (don’t get me started with UNESCO!)

Properties that receive a Heritage Revitalization Agreement are, by policy, added to the Local Register, which is what we are doing here for Dontenwill Hall, The MacKenzie Residence on Cumberland, and the Shymkovich Residence on Ewen. Meanwhile, the Royal City Glass building on Carnarvon has not retained much of its heritage character, so it was removed from the Register. And the Hansen/Emery Residence had an address change (it didn’t move, the roads did). Glad we got that all cleared up.

Boyne Street Closure

This is an unopened portion of the Boyne Street alignment in Queensborough that will never actually become a road because of the way development around it has been organized. But to close the road and sell the land, we need to pass a bylaw and have a public hearing. We will hear from the public on April 27. C’mon out and tell us what you think!

Financial Plan 2015-2019

For lack of a better term, this is the City Budget. Provincial legislation requires that local governments have a 5-year plan that is updated annually. You can read the Financial Plan here, and I will write in future posts about taxes in the City, because there is are some strange ideas out there about how New West measures up when it comes to Property Taxes. We had one (1) person delegate to council about the Five-year Financial Plan, which should send some sort of message, but I’m not sure what it is!

In the short term, we have moved the Bylaw that adopts the Plan for three readings.

Correspondence

We supported taking a resolution supporting the Westray Act to FCM

There was a correspondence we acted on from the City of Richmond. I removed myself from this discussion, not because I had a fiduciary interest or this in any way interferes with my ability to do my job in Richmond or remain impartial at New Westminster Council, but because Richmond is my employer, there may be some perception of conflict, so better to step out and avoid that perception.

Anvil Centre Budget

We received a Report for Information about the operational budget for the Anvil Centre. We are early on in operation of the Anvil (2015 will be the first full year of operation), and this is a facility with multiple overlapping purposes, which makes integrating them an interesting challenge.

The Convention Centre portion of the operation is doing very, very well. They are booking ahead of expectations and are receiving kudos regionally as a place for conferences medium to small, weddings small to large, and meetings of every shape. The Media Gallery, Hall of Fame, Museum, and Art display spaces are things that will not generate as much revenue, although they are a major part of the attractiveness of the facility overall and dovetail nicely into the Conference Centre operation. On the other side is the new home of the City Archives, which is not a revenue-generator, but is an important part of the operation of a City as historic as New Westminster.

The part we are still ramping up and need to make successful if we are going to call the Anvil Centre a success are the public use spaces: the dance studio, arts spaces, meeting rooms and classrooms. These are the parts of the Anvil that the City will always subsidize, for the same reason that we currently subsidize use of the Canada Games Pool and Queens Park Arena and other City amenities. I hope that in 10 years, we see the types of talents being developed in the Anvil Centre towards the arts being as valued in our community as the types of talents being developed at Canada Games Pool or Queens Pak Arena towards athletics.

That said, we moved (very late into the evening) on the Bylaws:

Bylaw #7743 2015 – Plumbing Fixtures in Accessory Buildings

I discussed this previously, and it was formally Adopted. It is now the Law of the Land.

Bylaw #7744 2015 – Council Delegation Procedures

As discussed above, this saw three readings.

Bylaw 7747 2015 – Five-Year Financial Plan

As discussed above, this saw three readings.

Bylaw #7739 2015 – Boyne Street Road Closure

As discussed above, this saw three readings.

Bylaw #7752 2015 – 709 Cumberland

As discussed above, this saw three readings.

Bylaws #7753 2015 and #7704 2015– Urban Academy

As discussed above, these saw two readings, and will go to Public Hearing on May 4, 2015. C’mon out and tell us what you think.

And that, after a Notice of Motion and Announcement on the Blue Dot Movement, at some time just short of midnight, was a Council meeting.

Council Meeting – March 30, 2015

Posted on April 3, 2015April 3, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

As with most end-of-the-month meetings, there was a Public Hearing as part of the March 30 Council Meeting. On these nights, we start a little early (well, we start at noon most days, but the evening portion starts early) to give people a change to provide input to items that are required to go to Public Hearing prior to Council decision. Tonight there were a few topics, one which attracted several speakers.

HRA Bylaw No. 7734, 2015 & HD Bylaw No. 7735, 2015

These two complimentary Bylaws allow the re-purposing of Dontenwill Hall at 336 Agnes Street, to convert its use from “Public Assembly” to “Church”, and to make some improvements to the historically important building. At Council, we were able to see reports by the City’s Heritage Commission (in support) and the Advisory Planning commission (in support, with some comments). We were also told that the non-compliance in regards to on-site parking were a concern to the City’s Engineering staff, regardless of the parking study provided on behalf of the Proponent. The Open House feedback was minor, but positive, and the single piece of correspondence we received was opposed.

We heard a delegation from the architect who did the heritage assessment, and from a leader at the church. We also heard several delegations from a couple of concerned neighbours and one adjacent church about the parking situation at the site. Frankly, parking around the property is the one issue that might have derailed this plan. However, there was simply no location on the property to accommodate parking – any future development of this site that provided the required parking would result in razing of the historic building, or no redevelopment would likely result in the loss of the building through neglect. Through the delegation process I heard that this was a small congregation, and there were no less than 5 other churches in the immediate area, most of which provided little or off-site parking (the Emmanuel Pentecostal being the exception – they built an underground parking lot in a residential development adjacent to their church to accommodate many of their parishioners). In our compact, transit-oriented downtown, if we want to save our heritage structures (most built without parking) we are going to have to allow these types of exceptions.

In the end, I supported this HRA and repurposing of the hall. I hope they can work with their neighboring churches to find creative solutions to Sunday Morning Parking Crunch.

Zoning Amendment Bylaw No. 7743, 2015

This Bylaw limits the number of plumbing fixtures in Accessory Buildings. The issue staff is trying to manage here is the illegal conversion of accessory buildings to living spaces. Our RS-1 zoning allows for a single accessory building, up to 10% of the lot coverage, which for many lots in the City means a 500+ square foot building. Meant to be a garage, storage shed or hobby shop, people are converting them into “mortgage helpers” and renting them out.

There are a few reasons we want to avoid this. It isn’t fair to people with legal secondary suites who pay for that privilege (through extra utility charges, mostly) or to people without secondary suites (who shouldn’t have to subsidize the extra suite of their neighbour) if people start renting out their garages. Accessory buildings also do not have many of the building code requirements for dwellings, meaning they can be firetraps, have mold problems, or otherwise be unsafe.

One way to prevent these conversions is to simply make them harder to do at the time the accessory building is built and the Building Inspector is signing off. Recently, the City has seen plans come in for “Accessory Buildings” with a hookup for a furnace, a laundry, and a full bathroom, all strategically placed so that setting up a full kitchen would be simple – the builders aren’t even being subtle about it. This Bylaw hopes to give staff the tools they need to say “um, no.” It will not make conversion to illegal suites impossible; it will make them more difficult.

The issue of secondary suites and laneway housing is an important one in the City right now, and has been prominent in the discussions around the new OCP. This Bylaw will not prevent future development of Laneway Housing, but it will slow the building of illegal ones until the OCP is updated, and we can get a handle on how nieghbourhoods want to accommodate (or not) laneway housing.

In the end, I supported this Bylaw, as I want to give staff the tools they need to do their jobs. Turning a blind eye to illegal conversions of accessory buildings is not a good idea.

After the Public Hearing, we launched into our Regular Council Meeting. As is typical on Public Hearing nights, there were no Public Delegations permitted this evening. What we did have instead was an Opportunity to be Heard on the City’s 5-year Financial Plan, right at the start of the meeting.

I am going to have to write in more detail about the Financial Plan for the City. If I start here, I am going to fill this entire blog post, so I will put it off for a later post except for a short summary.

Currently, we have a $111 Million budget, and have a proposed tax increase of 2.42%. For a typical single family home, that means you will pay $62 more in Property Taxes this year. And despite what some may tell you, that keeps us squarely in the middle regionally as far as property tax levels. As I once explained at length, Cities in the Lower Mainland to the north and west of us pay more taxes, Cities to the south and east generally pay less.

The bigger news, however, is that all of your utility rates are going up proportionally much more than that – Water by 6%, sewer by 7.5%, and solid waste by 8.5%. This reflects the reality that Metro Vancouver is charging us more per cubic metre of water, the sewage plants are charging us more for taking our waste, and tipping fees are going up at the solid waste facilities. For single-family detached homes, this means about $50 more in utilities next year.

If you missed the meeting or the Opportunity to be Heard, you can read the Plan here, and yes, you can still comment to Council about it by sending us a note through the contacts on this page.

Once we got through the Opportunity to be Heard, we addressed the Bylaws that were addressed in the earlier Public Hearing, then moved on to yet another Opportunity to be Heard:

Commercial Vehicle Amendment Bylaw No. 7742, 2015

The two Taxi Operators licensed in New Westminster applied to the Province for additional licenses, and although they did not receive as many as they would have liked they each received two new licenses. The law says we need to approve this at Council, and our Bylaw requires that we bring this to the Public for comment. We received no comments, and I have no problem with there being more taxis in the City.

Don’t even get me started about Uber…

Following this, we next addressed Recommendations from the Committee of the Whole Meeting from earlier in the day:

Arts Commission appointment

The Arts Council of New Westminster has a representative seat on the Arts Commission. In case you haven’t heard, the Council has a new Executive Director, Stephen O’Shea, and he was nominated by the Commission to represent them.

Royal Lancers

I am sure we are going to be talking about this for a while, but City council, The School district, and the Royal Lancers exchanged some correspondence over the last two weeks. I am going to hold back at commenting about this issue until we have had a chance for some discussion between the multiple parties. I had a respectful conversation with one of the Lancers after the Council meeting, and another today (I am writing this on Friday, April 2), and can see that there is potential for agreement or respectful disagreement without calling each other stupid. More to come on this issue, obviously.

Steel and Oak Brewing Company

Two local Good News Beards opened a brewery in town, and I have to admit I have sampled a fair amount of their product. As I mentioned in a previous Ask Pat post, zoning around brew pubs is a bit challenging, as is navigating the various local, provincial, and federal government agencies that have to sign off when you open a new brewery. When setting up, the boys at S&O applied for and received the easiest type of permit for their operation: that of a limited tasting room. However, their success has made it apparent that they are ready to operate as a proper “Lounge”. This will remove some restrictions on how they serve, while putting other restrictions on how they operate.

Seeing as they are a real regional success story, they have no real competition in town, and they have not generated any complaints from neighbours, the Police, or the Liquor Inspector since opening, it is easy to support their license change and support their move to be more competitive.

223 Queen’s Ave Subdivision

The Heritage Home at 223 Queens Ave has an extra-long lot, and wants to subdivide it to build a new home facing the lane behind (which is effectively a road, as it is named Gifford Place). This is not a “Laneway Housing” application, as the proponent wants to subdivide into two separate lots, as opposed to just building a second residence on the same lot. This project will be going to Public Hearing on April 27, 2015. C’mon out and tell us what you think.

Sign Bylaw 610 Sixth Street

The owners of Royal City Centre want to change the big signs on their property, by adding more signage to the existing structures. These are not new signs (as I realized after asking what, in hindsight, was a silly question in the Committee of the Whole – my first embarrassing moment of incomprehension on Council – likely not my last) but additions to the existing signs. The required Variance to the Sign Bylaw will be going to Public Hearing on April 27, 2015. C’mon out and tell us what you think.

Spring Freshet Report

As most skiers know, the snow levels in the interior and the south coast are well below average, so barring an incredibly anomalous melting season, we should not have any flooding risk during this year’s freshet on the Fraser River. Put away your sandbags, folks.

Encroachments, Covenants

Apparently the restored Trapp+Holbrook project (and, presumably, the previous Trapp Block) encroaches over City land. The building is on private land, but the cornices and some of the decorative rockwork actually projects over City land. A Section 219 Covenant assures the City will not be held liable for any damages done to anyone or any entity due to the existence of elevated rock in the City’s airspace. Ugh. Lawyers.

Guiding Principles for Canada Games Pool

The project planning for a Canada Games Pool refurbishment/ replacement is only just beginning. This is a big project, so it is wise if a set of project principles are developed prior to the start of public and stakeholder engagement. Reading through it, Many of the principles are very high-level, reflecting Council’s feeling that all options are on the table right now until a good reason arrives to take them off the table. One edit we made to the draft principles is the idea that the Pool be the centerpiece of a “precinct” of community uses. Some thought (and I agreed) this limited the consultation from considering other delivery options – two smaller pools at opposite ends of the City, for example.

Anyhow, not much to report here yet, except that public and stakeholder consultations about what you want in a Pool/Community Centre will be starting soon. This will be the biggest capital project in the City over the next decade, so you might want to pay attention!

RCFM Letter

The RCFM letter formally asks us to endorse their return to Tipperary Park for the 2015 summer season, which we have done. Talking to the Board and Manager of the RCFM over the last few weeks, they have some exciting ideas for the summer and for next winter. A real community-building organization in the City, powered mostly by volunteers, bringing food security, commerce, sustainability, and community service together with a smile! Last winter market is April 22, and first Summer Market is May 21. Support them!

In the final business part of the evening, we adopted the Bylaws formally from the earlier discussions:

Commercial Vehicle Amendment Bylaw No. 7742, 2015 (the taxi one from above) was Adopted. It is now the Law of the Land

Sewerage and Drainage Regulation Bylaw No.7746, 2015 (which saw third reading last week) was Adopted. It is now the Law of the Land.

336 Agnes Street Heritage Revitalization Agreement Bylaw No. 7734, 2015 (the first Dontenwill Hall one) passed Third Reading.

336 Agnes Street Heritage Designation Bylaw No. 7735, 2015 (the second Dontenwill Hall one) passed Third Reading.

Bylaw to Limit Plumbing Fixtures in Detached accessory Buildings No. 7743, 2015 passed Third Reading.

223 Queens Avenue Heritage Revitalization Agreement Bylaw No. 7710, 2015 passed First and Second readings, and is off to Public Hearing.

223 Queens Avenue Heritage Designation Bylaw No. 7711, 2015 passed First and Second readings, and is off to Public Hearing.

…and that was a night’s work.

Intelligent City: the Fibre

Posted on April 2, 2015April 3, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

The City is installing fibre optic infrastructure, and this is a good thing. It is a significant step in the ongoing shift from our old economy of sawmills and manufacturing to the new “knowledge-based” (ahem) economy that will be our future if we choose to establish a balance between employment and living space in New Westminster in the decades to come. The Intelligent City Initiative is more than just fibre in the ground, it is about leveraging the advantages that come with that fibre to build a City ready to receive the future. It is about building the infrastructure the businesses and citizens of tomorrow are going to want/need, and about making that infrastructure accessible. But it isn’t without its challenges.

In Part 1 of this blog, I’m going to talk about the fibre. In Part 2, I will talk about some of the bigger ideas around the Intelligent City Initiative.

For those who don’t know about the Intelligent City Initiative, it starts with Broadband Connectivity, and the City plans to encourage this by providing open-source fibre-to-the premises of businesses (and eventually residences, I hope) along major corridors, which will provide the opportunity for others to offer Gigabit service to their customers. This does not mean the City is getting into the volatile telecom business in competition with Telus or Shaw. Instead, we are increasing the opportunities for the major telecoms and a myriad of smaller players to provide high speed and specialty internet service to the businesses and residents we want to attract to (and sustain within) New Westminster.

This technology and its benefits are hard for some people (even some of those who own the buildings in New Westminster that may benefit) to understand – what is the City’s role going to be? In an attempt to explain this I improvised a rough allegory during a Council meeting when the project was reviewed. I thought I would expand upon that allegory a little better here, with the benefit of long form-writing and hindsight.

The factories, sawmills, and warehouses that formed the economic backbone of New Westminster only a few decades ago relied on transportation infrastructure to move the goods they produced. Indeed they located here because the River was that original source of transportation. Before globalization, free trade deals, and the invisible hand smeared most of those manufacturing jobs to various regulation-avoiding far eastern shores, manufacturers needed roads, rails, and the river to move raw materials and manufactured goods. In the new “Knowledge Economy” (ahem), the raw materials and manufactured goods are information. They are lines of code that move at the speed of light, but they still need infrastructure to move, and the better the infrastructure, the more competitive our local businesses will be at adding value to that information.

Today, that information is being moved mostly by (allegorical) oxcart or rails. For most of us living and working in New Westminster, the data is moving by oxcart – by copper wires piggy-backed on phone service. This service is reliable and cheap, but slow with limited capacity. It is ok for surfing the net and the occasional NetFlicks binge, but if you are trying to run a 3D animation company and are communicating with head office in Palo Alto, or if you are running web services company with global customers needing access to your server, the oxen can’t carry the load and they move to slow. If you need to move more stuff, you need to get a contract with one of the railways.

To continue the allegory, the railways are the major telecoms (Telus, Shaw). Much like the railways of old, they (and only they) can provide lots of capacity, but need to create a business case before they build the spur line to where the heavy lifting is required. When choosing between increasing capacity into existing tech hubs where the customers already are (downtown Vancouver) and building to the tech frontier where they don’t know who is going to show up (New Westminster), their business plan is pretty simple. The alternative for local businesses is to finance the building of their own spur, which can be a difficult investment at the start-up stage, and you are still beholden to the rail company you connect your spur to – you cannot ask for lower bids from the competition without also building them a spur.

What New Westminster wants to do is get away from the spurs belonging to the major monopoly players, and build some roads. Highways, actually. Serious onramps to the Al Goreian “Information Superhighway”. We will help our customers build driveways to connect to the road, but mostly our job is to build the road. We are not creating a new major trucking company (the telecoms will provide that service) nor are we supplying trucks. The major telecoms will be able to rent our roads for running trucks to customers in our City – they save the cost of setting up the infrastructure, we get the long-term benefit by having them here. As a bonus, the smaller telecoms (yes they exist) can also use those same roads to provide boutique services to high-tech customers in our City, and can really start to compete with the larger telecoms to push the wholesale cost of these services down, making businesses in our City more competitive in turn. The win-wins pile up pretty quickly.

By providing the road (in the form a glass fibre), we encourage the telecoms and service providers to sell a service, and we charge them rent on the infrastructure to support it. Unlike real trucks on roads, these ones move at the speed of light, and you can fit thousands of them on the same road at the same time. It is ridiculous to suggest that capacity is “unlimited”, but the limit on the installed capacity is so high that if we ever get close to exceeding it, we will be making so much money from the rental of the service that upgrades will be easily paid for. Another bonus is that the network hardware (another stretch of the transportation analogy: the intersections, crosswalks, traffic lights, etc.) can be supplied by the telecoms and service providers, and we can change them for using our space to store them. Imagine if trucks driving through New Westminster paid for their own intersection lights, and we charged rent for putting them there!

The business case here is solid, so you might wonder why everyone else isn’t doing it. The simple answer is that many of them are, although their models often differ. The New Westminster business plan was developed after careful review of what has happened in other jurisdictions, and what we can learn from them. It also leverages some significant advantages New Westminster has over other Cities. We are a compact city of only 15 square kilometres, with high commercial density along major corridors, which means the initial fibre installations can be put near a lot of potential customers for very low cost. We also own our own electrical utility, which provides us both an infrastructure advantage (we own rights-of way, poles and conduits, instead of having to negotiate them from a myriad of partners) and an administrative advantage (we can use the utility expertise and administrative structures in that agency to guide our operation). We also have a backbone of fibre already connecting many City assets (parks and buildings), and have been installing fibre-ready conduits as we upgrade and maintain our roads and sidewalks.

It happens we have a few “major tenants” (think educational and health care institutions) whose increasing need to move data would benefit from signing up to this, and we have recently developed, or are looking at developing, a lot of office space on our major corridors that are increasingly becoming attractive to the types of small- and medium-sized high-tech firms that would benefit from having access to this fibre.

The investment here is not insignificant, more than $5 Million in initial outlay. However, a conservative business case has this system revenue-positive within 6 years, and paying off the infrastructure investment in about 20 years. There are very good reasons to believe the payback time will be much shorter than this, and the City will begin to see revenue generation from this project within the first half of the long-term 30-year plan. Long after I’m gone from Council, but sometimes you need to plant a tree knowing the shade will be enjoyed by others, to bring another metaphor into the discussion.

In a future blog post, I will talk about some of the fruit that tee could bear. In the meantime, here is a taste:

Council Meeting – March 23, 2015

Posted on March 26, 2015March 25, 2015. by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I was Acting Mayor last week for a few days, as Mayor Cote took a short vacation. As such, I got to enjoy media attention around the “Rescue Our Parkade” issue. This Meeting of Council included several delegations around that issue, so I guess I will need to write another blog post about that. The main decisions around the Parkade were already made months ago, so I will save this blog post for writing about the issues on our agenda.

We had a few announcements (interesting procedural note than one cannot both provide a Presentation and Chair the meeting, so The Mayor relinquished the Chair role to me as Acting Mayor, which caused general hilarity all around). After announcements and delegations, we started the meeting with an Opportunity to be Heard:

Development Variance Permit – 111 Wood Street
There were no delegations and no correspondence received on this Permit application, which was to develop a set of Townhouses in the southern part of Queensborough. This construction aligns with the adjacent developments, fills a bit of a gap on the South Dyke and obviously raised no hackles in the neighbourhood. We moved to issue the Development Variance Permit and the Development Permit.

We then moved on to Recommendations from the Committee of the Whole meeting of March 9, 2015:

YVR Request
Representatives of Vancouver International Airport sent us a letter requesting an opportunity to meet council and discuss their plans and visions for their operation and impacts on the Region. Council moved to formally invite them to our May 11th Council Meeting.

ICBC Representative to ACTBiPed
We formally approved the naming of the representative from ICBC to the Advisory committee for Transit Bicycles and Pedestrians. Welcome to the team (officially) Karon!

We then moved on to Recommendations from the Committee of the Whole meeting of March 23, 2015:

KUDOZ – A City of Learning
We had a great presentation during the Committee of the Whole meeting from an organization that is working to get people who have employment or other social barriers into learning experiences throughout the City. We were happy as a council to endorse the project. If you want to make a meaningful change in someone’s life but just sharing an hour of your everyday work or volunteer life, you should definitely check out Kudoz at this link!

Amendment of Council Schedule
Legislative Services wants to adjust our schedule to accommodate a few larger projects that are coming to Public Hearing. Although Public Hearings typically happen at the last meeting of the month, the April Hearing looked to have a couple of high-profile projects, and staff are concerned that people’s ability to be heard will be limited by the schedule. They first suggested holding a second Public hearing on April 20, but the project proponent did not like the shortening of their schedule while they are still doing public outreach, and trying to address some concerns. Therefore, we have added a May 4 Public Hearing date. Mark your calendars!

Nomination to the FCM
Councillor Williams was unanimously nominated by Council to represent Mayor and Council at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities for 2015.

318 and 328 Agnes Street
There is a proposal to put two new dedicated rental housing buildings on the old school property and empty lot 314 Agnes Street (kitty-corner from Qayqayt School). We moved agreement with the principles of the Housing Agreement, then the required Zoning Amendment passed first and second reading, and I will hold off on offering comment as this will go to Public Hearing on April 27, 2015. Come on out and tell us what you think.

26 East Royal Ave (Victoria Hill Parcel E)
This is one of the final pieces in the Victoria Hill neighbourhood development. This building will bring a bit of ground-based retail to provide some basic services to the Victoria Hill neighbourhood for the first time. This site has seen significant review since 2012, and the current design (two 4-story buildings with a walkway between them, mostly 2- and 3-bedroom units and 113 parking spots for 64 units) definitely reflects earlier concerns expressed about the earlier plans. This is a preliminary report, as the development will be going out to community consultation, design panel, etc.

Sewerage and Drainage Regulation Bylaw
Staff is also updating the Bylaw that regulates the City’s sewer systems. I deal with these types of bylaws in my regular working life, so I went through this with more interest than is strictly healthy. The good news is that I do support it.

An interesting note related to this bylaw and the provisions for source separation. The City of New Westminster is encumbered by a very old sewer system, a legacy of our being a 150 year old City, and a lack of infrastructure investments in the second half of the 20th Century – we have a lot of catching up to do. We have 70 km of storm drainage lines (21km in closed storm sewers, 49km in open watercourses – or “ditches” as they like to call them in Queensborough). We also have 33 km of sanitary sewers, all relatively new. The problem is the 150km of “combined flow” sewers. These are sewers that collect sanitary waste from houses and businesses, but also collect storm water from roof leaders and roadways.

The problem with “combined flow” sewers is that they have to be treated at the end of the pipe like sewage (because of all the nasty stuff we flush). When it rains, there is a huge volume of water that enters the system and is mixed with that sewage, causing us to have to treat it all. The sewer treatment plants in Metro Vancouver don’t like this – it costs them a lot of money to treat all of that volume (and they pass that cost on to us). Environment Canada doesn’t like it either, because occasional very large rains can overwhelm the system and allow some untreated sewage to enter the River.

The City has a decades-long plan to separate the City’s remaining combined-flow sewers, and we are putting some of your annual sewer bill away in a reserve fund to use for this work when it makes sense to dig up a road. However, separation also had to happen at the source. Many residences (like mine) have a single “out” pipe that directs relatively clean roof leader and perimeter drainage water to the same place as that decidedly unclean sanitary outflow goes. If the City wants to separate the systems, then homeowners are going to need to separate their systems as well. Doing the necessary in-ground work to install two pipes and an inspection chamber on residential properties is costly 9up to $10,000, which can be a surprise to homeowners who just want to repair their perimeter drains. The City takes a long view on this, and is not forcing people to do this work until they are performing major renovations, building new structures, or actually repairing the outflow pipes on their property.

Yeah, I probably care too much about sewers.

Statutory Right of Way for FortisBC
Fortis want so provide utility service to supply utility service to a development in Victoria Hill. Not much to discuss here.

Energy Save New West
New Westminster has an energy save program that is pretty cutting-edge. The report received shows they are meeting and exceeding their targets. You should go to their fancy new web site and see how they can help you save money on energy use for your home or business in New Westminster, and help you get rebates for the cost of those energy saving renovations. It’s good stuff.

Do I show my age by even using the phrase “fancy new web site”?

2014 Election – Disqualification of Candidates
A couple of candidates in the recent Municipal election failed to file financial disclosure statements. That’s against the law. There are penalties under the Act, including big fines, but that is the province’s problem. The part the City is responsible for enforcing is a one-election ban from running for local office again. Remember, these candidates are not in trouble for filing false or incomplete declarations, but for not putting anything at all in. They could have downloaded the form, left it blank and signed it, and they could have avoided this (at least until the review of the declarations is completed by ElectionsBC). The issue that one of these two candidates clearly shared advertising with a couple of people who were successfully elected, and those people did not disclose any such shared expenses, is also something I suspect ElectionsBC will deal with when they start reviewing the declarations.

This is separate from the concerns raised by Council around some of the concerns about polling stations last election. It seemed there were one or two polling booths that were not well organized and had long line-ups, some machines that did not work, and a few procedural and/or logistical problems around people needing assistance at the polling station, such as language interpreters. We have asked that there be a report brought to council to review what went right or wrong during the election, so we can do a better job in 4 years.

410 Columbia Street Upgrades
The building on the south side of Columbia at 4th is an eyesore. The owner is going to renovate and reduce the soreness. This is a good thing. I kind of hope it waits until after May 2, as there are some ugly, but interesting, rocks attached to the old façade.

Family Friendly Housing Policy
The City has been working on a policy to assure a supply of family-friendly housing. I wrote a bit about this previously, as we did some work-shopping on the topic. Council decided to endorse the recommendations in the staff report and take the Bylaw to Public Hearing on May 25, 2015. C’mon out and tell us what you think.

We received some correspondence.
The one from the Ministry of Transportation rather irritated a few members of Council. At some point, people are going to start to think that the Minister wants the Metro Vancouver Transportation and Transit Plebiscite to fail. I’m not saying that, because that would suggest he wasn’t being honest when he repeatedly said that he supports the YES side. But I cannot square that with the idea that the week we receive our ballots to decide if we will ask the Province to please allow us to invest $750 Million a year of combined Local, Provincial and Federal money to keep our struggling transportation system operating the right time for the Minister to announce he will be spending $2.5 Billion over three years to build bridges and pave highways and buy busses for everywhere in the Province except the Lower Mainland. You are paying for all of that $2.5 Billion, you are not allowed to vote on it, nor will you be allowed to vote on a similar amount spent on a Massey Tunnel replacement, just as you didn’t vote on a Port Mann bridge that is now $3.6 Billion in debt. Yeah, this is a rant, but as local leaders are busting their asses trying to get the word out that we need a little transportation funding here, he is taking a “hands off” approach while handing money over to Kamloops and Kelowna and Chilliwack. So yeah, that letter arrived at a sensitive time.

And that’s all I have to say about that, except maybe Vote Yes: at least that way some of your taxes will go to building something near where you travel every day.

Bylaws:
The Electrical Utility Amendment Bylaw which saw three readings on March 2, 2015 was adopted – it is now the Law of the Land.

Zoning Amendment Bylaw 7740 (318 and 328 Agnes Street) as discussed above, had two readings, and will go to Public Hearing on April 27, 2015.

Zoning Amendment Bylaw 7741 (Family Friendly Housing) received two readings, and will go to Public Hearing on May 25, 2015.

Sewerage and Drainage Regulation Bylaw No. 7746, as discussed above, received three readings.

And after a few Notices of Motion which will be discussed later, we were done for the evening.

Big important notice: The March 30th Meeting of Council will include a Public Hearing at 6:00pm. At 7:00pm, we will have an opportunity for Public Comment on the Draft 2015-2019 Financial Plan for the City. That’s usually a good one. Background info here.

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.

Patrick Johnstone

Fan of cities; Mayor of a great one.

Tag: New Westminster

Talking Taxes (pt.1)

Council Meeting – April 13, 2015

Council Meeting – March 30, 2015

Intelligent City: the Fibre

Council Meeting – March 23, 2015

Council Meeting? What Council Meeting?

Disclosures – my own this time

The Future of the Region – Yes or No.

Council Meeting – March 2, 2015

Spending wisely