Tag: New Westminster

CEEPing along in New Westminster

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him

I felt the same way the first time I read Catch-22.Yossarian is easily my favourite character in fiction. Part of a bomber crew in Europe during the dying days of WW2, he was surrounded by absurdity, and coped with it by trying to out-absurd his surroundings, and always failing. In contrast, his friend Milo Minderbinder fully embraced the absurdity around him, and found creative ways to profit from it. Milo was the mess officer who bought eggs for 7 cents each, sold them for 5 cents each, and made a clean profit of 1.5 cents per. It was quite the scheme.

That is the trick that Norm Connolly, the Community Energy Manager for the New Westminster, might need to pull off. His task, and this is typical of all CEMs in Municipalities across BC, is to find ways to reduce energy use in the community. Not the energy used by the City itself, but by the residents and businesses of the city.

The problem in New Westminster being that unlike most cities in BC, we have our own electrical utility. The Electrical Utility buys power from BC Hydro at wholesale rates, and sells it to residents and businesses at retail rates (which are the same as retail rates BC Hydro charges residents and businesses). The difference between the two pays for the hardware that runs the system, and (in recent history) makes a little extra money for City coffers. So if Connolly is successful and reduces the amount of energy used by the community, the Utility will sell less power, and make less money, transferring less to City coffers. So why is the City so interested in reducing energy use at all?

There was a report at Council last week on the City’s Community Energy and Emissions Plan (“CEEP”). The CEEP was passed in 2011, and set out the pathway to New Westminster in 2030: a City with 20,000 more residents, but using no more electricity than we do today, and producing 15% less greenhouse gases. I’m not sure the GHG goal is aggressive enough (see my recent tirade on coal), but it is an achievable goal without significant changes in our lifestyle. So it is an easy sell for those interested in re-election.

Last week’s Council report covered a few of the initiatives that are going to arrive in the City in the next few years, to head us on the path towards that goal:

I will talk about item #3, the development of District Energy Utilities, in a later post (short version: it is a great idea, and others are doing it well, but the there are devils in details!). The other two are subjects that came up in a recent NWEP Energy Group discussion. I am glad to see that the City is taking this approach, and might even sign my house up for the program!

Item #1, the Multi-unit residential retrofits, is challenging. The challenge will be in convincing Strata Councils that the gains over the long-term will be worth the short-term hassle and investment in building improvements. The ability for the City to offer incentives, backed by BC Hydro or Fortis, and finding the right test-bed building will be vital for making this work.

One of the systemic issues that we have in the Lower Mainland of BC is that we live in a mild climate- not too hot in the summer, not to cold in the winter, and we have a (somewhat unfair) reputation for lacking bright sunlight. As a result, we build buildings with less insulation and more windows than in other parts of the world. Then, because electricity is plentiful and cheap, we have lined the walls of these inefficient buildings with electrical baseboard heaters, usually on the outside walls under a bank of windows, where they have to overcome the inefficient wall system before they provide any useful heat to the rest of the unit. Because of this, there are many “quick wins” to be found in these buildings, especially many of our older multi-family building stock. In New Westminster, with more than 75% of our residential units being in low- or high-rise multi-family dwellings, this part of the program will be where most of our CEEP gains can be found.

This doesn’t speak of the future growth in the City, however. If we are going to put 20,000 more people in the City, we are going to be increasing the proportion of multi-family dwellings, so we are going to create a whole new stock of buildings. The full CEEP contains some steps in this direction, talking about LEED standards and such, but I wonder if simply banning electric baseboard heaters would be sufficient to reach efficiency goals? I’m not ever sure the City can ban them…

Item #2 is the one that excites me the most, as a detached-home owner. Providing municipal incentives for energy efficient home re-fits is not yet common (most programs have previously been run by major utilities or by senior governments), but is becoming more so (not coincidently as senior governments become front offices for energy companies and the larger programs dry up). There are several cities in BC that have implemented these type of incentive programs, not coincidently in historic cities like Rossland and Nelson, where there is a large stock of older homes with significant heritage value.

We have done a few energy fixes in our 1940 house (including replacing all of our windows a couple of years ago), but have been slow to introduce some other obvious energy-savers. It appears our roof insulation is good, but that in our walls may be upgradable. We have a relatively efficient (if slightly old) gas furnace and gas-fired water heater. Solar water heaters (we have an expansive south-facing roof) and/or an instant-heater for water (as a friend of mine recently installed) seem like great ideas, but the impetus to install is low, even with the potential savings on my gas bill.

However, for people with electrical heat and water systems, the City is still stuck in that same old bind: If we reduce energy use in the City, does the City really gain? Can BC Hydro provide incentives to the City that will offset the “profit” the City currently makes selling electricity? If we continue to peg our rates to BC Hydro retail rates, incentives from Hydro seem the only way we can still pad the City coffers while reducing overall use.

There are good reasons fro BC Hydro to provide those incentives. Wholesale purchasers in BC pay less for electricity than any other customers. The City pays way less for electricity than BC Hydro pays for IPP power from Darth Coleman’s Run-of-the-River contracts. We also pay less than Alberta and California customers, who need to choose between buying cheap power from us or burning hydrocarbons to make their own. Even in BC, we burn hydrocarbons (at Burrard Thermal) only when we have an “emergency” supply issue, thanks to the 2010 Clean Energy Act.

Reducing electricity energy use in BC reduces the need for BC Hydro and others to burn hydrocarbons for electricity, allows Hydro to sell more power to lucrative export markets, and ultimately reduces the need to major expansion of the Hydroelectric System, saving more valley bottoms for other uses… so BC Hydro has incentive to incentivize the City to incentivize the community to reduce energy. Hence the need for our CEEP, and the need for the community of New Westminster to sign up for these programs – at every step of the way, we will be saving money and reducing our impact. We can profit from making less money, like Milo the Mayor did with eggs.

In which Coal gets the best of me.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

I have a sneaking suspicion I might be very bad at politics.

I just don’t see the issue with the coal terminal proposal in Surrey. Worse: I see a big issue with the coal terminal proposal in Surrey  but I don’t see that issue being meaningfully addressed in the current debate about the coal terminal proposal in Surrey, because I seem to care about the one issue few others seem to be concerned about.

For those who don’t leaf through the back pages of the Record or the NewsLeader, or don’t spend their evenings reading through reams of the reports attached to Council minutes (…which makes me curious about why such a person would be reading this… ehrm… Hi Mom!), the story thus far is thus:

Right across the river from New Westminster are Fraser Surrey Docks, you can see the ships and large blue cranes operating from the Quayside boardwalk. They move containers, logs, bulk agricultural products, steel, and assorted cargo on and off of boats and on and off of trucks and trains. Now they want to move coal off of trains onto barges. And apparently, some people are concerned about this for a variety of wrong reasons.

There is a lot of info about this proposed operation available here , including maps, diagrams, and the answers to most of the questions you might have. This will not be a situation like the Delta Port or Neptune Terminals in North Van, where there are large piles of coal being shuffled around. The plan is to move the coal directly from the trains to the barge, and ship it to a deep-sea transfer facility up on Texada Island, then to China. The on-site stockpile will (it appears) be small, and be under one of those big plastic Quonset hut style shelters.

From the looks of the Council Report and the newspaper stories, the local and regional concerns can be summed up as: the health effects of coal dust; increased diesel emissions from boats and trains; the risk related to coal spills into the river; and the general noise and view impacts for Quayside residents.

Most of these issues seem well addressed by the application. The plan is to do all the coal movement with covered conveyors and to use dust abatement measures that are industry practice in urbanized areas. These measures are notably more stringent than those currently used for the bulk agricultural products they move now- that yellow dust sometimes visible from the New West side of the river. Also, this new coal transfer activity will take place at the west end of the terminal, more across from the gi-normous Annacis Island Car Terminal where they unload thousands of cars from those gi-normous car carrier ships than across from the Quayside. The barges, during loading, will be more than 2 km downstream from the Quayside residents who have expressed the most vocal alarm about the project.

The risk of significant spill from the dock or the barges is small, but obviously not nil. That said, compared to moving many other cargoes (especially liquid fuels), coal is relatively stable and fairly easy to contain and clean up in the event of a spill. It would be a very bad day for the salmon in the river if that happened, no doubt, so there is some area to explore here for the local municipalities and agencies like FREMP, clearly an area for more discussion.

The elephant in the room, however, is hardly mentioned in these discussions. According to the Council Report, this coal facility is being planned to move up to 8 Million Tonnes of coal a year that (when burned) will generate about 48 Million Tonnes of CO2 annually. To put this in perspective the same Council meeting had a presentation on the City’s Community Energy and Emission Plan, which would see New Westminster’s 82,000 residents in the year 2030 producing less that 240,000 Tonnes of CO2 annually.

Not to put too fine a point on it: if both of these plans see the light of day this single port terminal will be directly responsible for 200 times the greenhouse gas emissions of the entire community of New Westminster!

So all of our energy conservation actions in the City, all of our appropriate, responsible, intelligent changes we are taking in the City – the sacrifices we are facing, investments we are making, even a few hard choices we may need to take, for all the right economic, ethical, and environmental reasons, will be meaningless in light of the impacts of that coal terminal.

This all arrived at the same time that this month’s Walrus Magazine arrived in my mailbox, with a remarkable piece written by New Westminster’s own Dr. Marc Jaccard that talks about his personal arc from academic to IPCC member to policy adviser to Stephen Harper’s minority government to Nobel Prize winner to being placed in the back of a paddy wagon by the RCMP for protesting the movement of coal through Canada’s ports. It is a great read, as Dr. Jaccard asks himself (and causes us to ask ourselves) what he was doing about the single most important environmental issue of our generation.  This from a guy who has dedicated his life to studying the problem, understanding the science and the economics, and bent the ear of some of the most powerful people in the world. Yet in the end, he felt he was not doing enough, and direct action was the only way he was going to be able to live with himself, or answer to his grandchildren for what we are doing now.

Yeah, I am contradicting myself again. I recently complained that unsustainable shark harvesting as not really being a City issue. This is not strictly a municipal issue, and the Port seems to think the “big issue” of Climate Change impacts is not even Port jurisdiction. This issue, I think, its too important for every single jurisdiction to not take it on. A 450ppm world will not be comfortable for those people living on the Quayside.

The Port is wrong. They are profiting in the trade of a commodity that is causing global catastrophe  It is killing people, and they are part of that supply chain that supports that. For them to say “Hey, we just move the stuff, not up to us to question what we move – none of our business!” is morally bankrupt. We don’t burn Coal in BC, for good reasons, but we are comfortable exporting it to places that do. How is this different than our unethical asbestos trade?

Much more than a few people concerned about how the noise of an operating port 2 km from their waterfront home will impact their property values, I think we need to be asking ourselves why we are supporting the rapid extraction and combustion of coal in the year 2012? And if burning that coal is OK with us, if folks profiting from its burning is OK with us, if the biggest concerns we have about this is the noise of distant conveyors or dust on the horizon, why the fuck are we even bothering with a Community Energy and Emission Plan!?

Sorry for the potty mouth, Mom, but it had to be said.

Smart Meters & dumb stuff…

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 7 Comments.

As a student of science, I am familiar with the Observer Effect in physics. It says that one cannot measure a phenomenon without affecting it, since measurement alone relies on interacting with what you try to measure. In most physical process this is not really a very big problem, as the impact of interaction with the measured phenomenon is usually orders of magnitude smaller than the precision of the measuring tool. So the energy drawn from a swimming pool by the mercury thermometer used to measure it is not zero, but it is so small that it does not have a meaningful effect on the reading. However, at the nano-scale (or in the quantum realm), this can end up being very important: to measure the location of an electron, it must interact with a photon, an interaction that fundamentally changes the properties of the electron being measured.

Apparently, it is also important when it comes to measuring household energy use in BC. Not even the monumental Site C Dam project or the never-ending IPP/Run-of-the-River fiasco have caused as many headaches to BC Hydro as the Smart Meter Program. But what does it mean for New Westminster?

A non-smart meter in the middle of the woods, a hassle to read that
I’m sure BC Hydro would rather avoid (Courtesy Lac Tigre Broom Farms)

BC Hydro had to replace their old analogue mechanical meters, and so does New Westminster at some point in the next year or two. This all goes back (believe it or not) to changes at the federal government level. The electrical meter on the side of your house is a measuring instrument used for trade, and therefore is its subject to federal laws regarding their accuracy. Just like the tag at the gas pump that indicates the last time the pump was calibrated, the meter on your house must be demonstrably accurate.

Now, an electrical meter is a pretty high-precision instrument, and is generally operated by a government agency, so the standards for assuring accuracy are not quite as onerous as the gas pump at Ed’s Gas or the weight scale at Thrifty Foods. Instead of testing every single meter on every single house, the Federal Agency “Measurement Canada” has a randomized verification system. Every so often Measurement Canada requests that some number (around 2 dozen) of the New Westminster Electrical Utility’s meters be sent to Ottawa to assure they are accurate and precise. To assure the selection is random, the agency request specific meters from the long list of serial numbers that they have on file for New Westminster Electrical Utility. The Utility then goes to those houses or businesses, pulls the meter off the wall (replacing it with a spare), and ships it to Ottawa. If those all pass the precision tests, the City gets a pass. If one or more are outside of acceptable limits, then a larger cohort is sent to Ottawa to see if the issue is systematic or a one-off. In theory, if enough are off, the Feds will come and test all of the meters or force the Utility to replace them all.

The problem arising right now is that Measurement Canada will no longer be supporting the older mechanical meters. They are getting out of the business of testing old technology, and will only test the newer digital devices in the future. So if New Westminster still wants to sell electricity, they may be forced to update their meters.

A typical old-school New Westminster meter. 

Note –the old meters still work! Yes, some wear out, and some need occasional repair, but the current meters have a very long service life (being well-built mechanical devices dealing with very light loads), and it has been suggested that with regular maintenance they could easily service us for another 50 years. However, the federal regulations are changing, forcing the utility to replace them. So they are going to the junk pile, operational or not.

The City’s Electrical utility and City Council have stated several times that the much-maligned Corix-installed Wireless Smart Meter chosen by BC Hydro is only one of several options available to them. The new meter will no doubt be digital, but pretty much everything else about it is up in the air. Will it continue to be read by humans going door-to-door? Will it wirelessly transmit data via some sort of SCADA setup? Will it transmit data automatically over attached wires?

These will no doubt be part of a complicated cost/benefit discussion in the City, and it appears there is going to be a public component to this discussion. At a recent NWEP Energy Group meeting, some of these issues came up, and if that small group is any sign- this will be a spirited discussion. Here are some of the points from my viewpoint (and, I hasten to add, many of these opinions were not shared by some other NWEP members – some even hold almost-opposite opinions, which makes me think the larger public discussion with be a compelling one!)

• Wireless Smart Meters don’t cause cancer, lupus, chronic fatigue, scabies, Alzheimer ’s disease, ADHD, autism, or any of the other thousands of afflictions allegedly linked to them. Magda Havas is a terrible scientist, and should be held accountable for stoking irrational public fears. The non-effect of daily exposure to low levels of non-ionizing radiation is not controversial in science community, nor are the alleged links to a myriad of conditions novel or untested to science. There is a significant body of science going back more than 100 years assessing the impacts of human exposure to non-ionizing radiation, including ubiquitous man-made radio waves, and even more ubiquitous solar radiation in the same frequency bands.

• There are significant advantages to developing a “smarter grid” for electrical distribution. Leakages from the system and electricity theft become much easier to detect and eliminate, disaster response and emergency planning are improved. Whether these advantages rely on real-time monitoring through wired or wireless systems should be a determinant if we adopt those technologies;

• The ability to track electricity use in real time provides the ability for people to be more conservative with electricity use in their everyday life. Arming consumers with more information about their purchases should be a good thing! Consumers generally do not want to waste their money, and when given the tools to easily make changes to save electricity, they will usually adopt them. So let’s give them the tools.I would love a meter smart enough that I can collect analytic info off of it to tell me how I use my power. This should be an option available to users, as it will incentivize conservation;

• Any new meter system should accommodate homeowner co-generation. We have a City full of south-facing roofs that may someday include photovoltaic systems, we may have district energy systems or backyard turbine systems. In the next generation, we may find some of our businesses (especially in light industrial areas) may be producing surplus energy they would like to sell back to the grid. If time-of-day pricing is adopted by BC Hydro, then there will be a market for decentralized energy storage and re-distribution. We need to start preparing for this future now.

It has been noted that New Westminster is lucky. In having our own utility, we have the ability to make our own decisions about this, and it seems the Utility and Council are happy to include the public in that discussion. We don’t have to deal with Darth Coleman, and his seemingly random and disjointed decision making about a project that is being administered by a Crown Corporation that is (in theory) supposed to be operated at arms-length from Government.

It is no-where as much as the Smart Meter program where Darth Coleman’s ability to muck about in things that would just be better if he stayed out of the story. At one point not three days ago, he was insisting that BC Hydro will force everyone to install a Smart Meter once their re-education is complete. As of yesterday, Darth seems to have changed his stance, saying that they will not force Smart Meters on those customers that hold out, or they will wait until after the election, or something- it is pretty unclear right now. At least this is a place where the BC NDP have been clear: they will turn the mess over to the BC Utilities Commission, who is should be in a better position to make a decision for the long term good of the Utility than a soon-to-be-in-opposition bully from Langley.

As it stands, we can throw the final implementation of the Smart Grid across BC onto the growing pile of landmines that the current government has laid in the path of the poor bastards who win the May Election, along with BC Hydro deferred debt, unsustainable BC Hydro Rates, the Falcon Gate fiasco, unrealistic traffic projections for Port Mann tolls, the ongoing TransLink budget crisis, the potential shuttering of AirCare, ongoing structural deficits, the long-delayed update of the Water Act, the collapse of the BC timber supply, etc., etc.

If there is a single piece of evidence that even the BC Liberals know they are headed for the political wilderness, it is the path they are laying for the province in the year to come. They would be crazy to want to win the election…

We also have to remember that we in New Westminster are not immune to the effects of BC Hydro mis-overlording. We buy all of our electricity from BC Hydro, so just as Hydro rates are sure to skyrocket over the next 5 years when the offset debt, smart meter bills, Ministerial interference in the Utility Commission’s work, IPP contracts, and Site C shit all hit their collective fans, New Westminster rates will surely follow. I hope I have a meter smart enough to help me find the savings in my household electricity bill by then.

The Return of Green Drinks

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Sorry I haven’t rapped at ya recently, but I have been busy. Work is crazy, a few volunteer things are coming to a head right now, spent a few days trapped outside of New Westminster, attended a massively fun Pecha Kucha event, and am generally enjoying the hell out of life.

I do want to make a quick point, though: GreenDrinks is coming back to New Westminster!

For those out of the loop, GreenDrinks is an international local event. The idea is that people interested in Environmental and Sustainability issues get together once a month or so, and have a casual social and networking event. There isn’t an agenda, there isn’t a formal meeting, or any real formal structure: the idea is to just bring people together and see what arises!

Although lacking that formal structure, this isn’t completely anarchy. GreenDrinks is part of a great international tradition. There are GreenDrinks events everywhere from Argentina to Vietnam, from Perth to Vancouver. All are related in name, spirit, and “The Code”.

It is sometimes amazing what arises. Many of the things the NWEP have done in the past have grown from tossed-around ideas at GreenDrinks, and new friendships and partnerships have grown from these events. For a variety of reasons, monthly GreenDrinks stopped in New West a little more than a year ago, but a crew of people have stepped up to get the event operating again, and the first draft (so to speak) is next week!

There is no charge, no stress, all we ask is that you are willing to get into a conversation, meet someone new, bring your ideas and opinions, and bring a sense of humour. We’ll put name tags on you to make introductions easy, and we will have a conversation starter around the break any ice that might develop. People will start arriving around 6:30, and it will continue until the last person leaves (but hey, it’s a school night – so don’t wait until midnight, you might miss the best stuff!)

New West has the perfect location: the Back Room at The Heritage Grill allows semi-privacy, a great menu, drinks for those who would like them, while being open and inviting to people who don’t want to drink (or are not yet 19 – it is a Restaurant, not a Pub!). Oh, and cool tunes out front later in the night.

So if you need an excuse to be social, are interested in environment and sustainability issues, or think you might have an idea that people should hear about, come by GreenDrinks. Who knows what will develop?

What about the Utilities?

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

I started posting about municipal taxes a few weeks ago. An astute #newwest hashtagger on Twitter, apparently finding me inadequately critical of local tax rates, suggested that once utilities were included, I would find New Westminsterites pay way more than nearly anyone.

“@NWimby Do a comparison with fees for sewer, water and garbage added to property tax and you’ll get a different answer.”

To which I suggested:

“@redacted go for it! Love to see you do that!”

To which the commenter retorted:

“@NWimby It has already been done. NW is 2nd highest behind Maple Ridge but NW is 6squ. Miles and Maple Ridge is 103squ. Mile”

Since no actual data was proffered, I decided to do the analysis myself. Luckily, I had a few hours in an airport with WiFi to do the digging through City websites. The results were interesting, for me at least. For the rest of you, come back next week, I’ll rant about skateboards or bridges or something.

Much like Mil rates, it is sometimes tough to compare between municipalities, as different jurisdictions handle their utility accounts differently. I did my best to compare apple to apples.

Water utility rates are difficult to compare because some cities have water meters for residential users, some don’t, and for some meters are optional. Even the metered cities usually have a flat service charge with a metered rate on top. So to compare the typical annual water bill, I assumed that the house used the average amount of water for metered Canadian households, which is 25 cubic metres per month.

Sewer rates are also sometimes tied to metered water use, and in that case I made the same assumption about typical water use volume. Some cities have extra “drainage” levies or charges to deal with storm water costs, some include it in their sewer bill. I have added all sewer and storm drainage charges, metered or not, into the singe sewerage charge.

Garbage and recycling was the hardest to compare, as every city offers different services. Some have organics collection, some blue box, some co-mingled recycling. Some charge a lot less for “small” containers and really ding the big container users, others have less difference. So for the purposes of comparison, I assumed everyone used a 120L trash, green waste (if available) and blue bin.

I did the best I could collecting all of this data together (and if you find a flaw, please let me know!) I found nothing on-line for Pitt Meadows, and didn’t care to dig too much further. I am suspicious of Burnaby numbers, but that doesn’t affect my analysis too much. This table shows the “typical” household utility bill, per year, for each municipality:

Click to enlarge

Again, we see New Westminster is somewhere in the middle, 6th of the 14 municipalities for which I could find data. Our water rates are lower than most, our sewer rates higher than most, and our trash/recycling about typical.

So what happens when we add this to the annual tax bill for the typical detached home? This is what happens:

click to enlarge

New Westminster ends up right in the middle, 7th of 14 municipalities with utility data available.Maple Ridge isn’t the only Municipality more expensive than New West, as suggested by my Twitter friend – it is actually a relative bargain (except, of course, you are stuck in Maple Ridge).

What is a Mil worth?

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

There were some recent letters in the Record, lamenting New Westminster’s out-of-scale property taxes. Some feel we have the highest property taxes in the region, one fellow last year even opined the second highest in Canada!

As I previously posted, there are many ways to measure taxes, and Mil Rates only tell part of the story. It gets even more complicated when you add utilities to the mix. Municipalities have different ways of paying for your water, sewer, and trash collection, and this impacts what your property tax bill looks like in June.

As part of my continued interest in calling a spade a shovel, I did a little on-line digging around, and here are the 2012 Mil Rates for the 15 Lower Mainland municipalities that publish this stuff on-line (or at least those who publish it in an easy enough way that I didn’t spend my weekend digging through Bylaw pages).

Richmond can claim the lowest Mil Rate at 1.15, with West Vancouver second at 1.81 and Vancouver a close third at 2.02. New Westminster is third highest at 3.54, with only Pitt Meadows (3.60) and Maple Ridge (3.71) higher.

However, many cities list their fire, police, storm sewerage, or other services and “levies” separately from their Mil Rate. These are not utilities (which are defined in the Local Government Act), but part of the regular City service. Also, there are senior government taxes applied to property taxes: School taxes (set by the Province), along with GVRD, TransLink, BC Assessment Office, Municipal Finance Authority. Add these all up, and you get a truer Mil Rate comparison:

You can click to make larger- tax free!

Now we see West Vancouver pull into its rightful place as the lowest Mil Rate Municipality, with Richmond and Vancouver neck-to-neck for second. New Westminster moves up to 12th, now that PoCo’s “levy” load is added on. The Gap to Places like Port Moody and Langley also tighten somewhat. Still, 12th of 15, with a Mill Rate 70% higher than the lowest in the region, is nothing to brag about, right?

Remember, that these Mil Rates are applied against the assessed value of your house. Since houses in New Westminster cost less than in Vancouver, and more than in Pitt Meadows, the amount of tax you pay doesn’t index all that well to Mil rates.You can use the BC Assessment Office data to figure out the “average” house price in each Municipality, but that does not really tell you what the “typical” house price. Medians and means are both overly influenced by outliers, and when looking at house prices from Maple Ridge to West Vancouver, there are a lot of outliers.

Luckily, the good people at the Greater Vancouver and Fraser Valley Real Estate Boards have a better database of high, low, median, and ( this is most important) typical house value. And they break it up by detached, townhouse/rowhouse, and apartment. You can look at their methodology and explanation of why “typical” is better than median or mean here.

Here is the list of the values of the typical house, townhouse and apartment for the 15 municipalities:

Not surprisingly, New Westminster is in the middle-lower part of the list as far as property values go; generally higher than places south and east, lower than places west. Blame the prevailing winds.

The fun part is combining this table with the Mil Rates Table. I know Mil Rates are based on Assessed Value, not the selling prices that are used in the Real Estate Board stats, but can we agree that the assessment process is equally unrepresentative across the region, and that for the purposes of comparison, the data pile is fair, if not the individual data? Again, the result is accurate, if not very precise.

So here are tables of “typical” Property Tax Bills for the 15 municipalities, based on domicile type, not including seniors discounts, Grants, or the three big utilities (water, sewer, and trash – those will be another post, there is already too much math going on here).

New Westminster is, as might be expected, somewhere in the middle of the pack for most housing types. Not the highest-tax municipality in the region, not the lowest. Somewhere between the 5th and 7th highest, out of 15 municipalities.

This doesn’t comment on the comment that everyone across the region is paying too much tax, but it kind of takes the wind out of the specific examples many cite when saying City X pays way more than City Y. So next time someone suggests their “taxes doubled” since moving from Vancouver to New West, congratulate them on their new home, since they would have had to upgrade from a way-below typical $600,000 house in Vancouver to a somewhat-above-typical $850,000 place in New West (or proportionally similar increase). Which seems like a nice upgrade to me.

Jurisdictions

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

At a party this weekend, I was chatting up a striking lady (no worry, Ms.NWimby was right beside me), and I mentioned my interest in local transportation issues. She then started to complain about trains. This is not unusual in mixed company in New Westminster: she was sick and tired of the long whistles, the loud whistles, the middle of the night whistles. Why didn’t New Westminster do something about it?

At this point, I usually repart that there is an issue with jurisdictions: in Canada we have Local Government, who are below the Provincial Government, who are under the Federal Government, who are superseded by the Jedi Council. The Jedis answer to the Railways.

But this post isn’t about the railways, it’s about jurisdictions.

There has been a bit of chatter recently around homeless shelters, and the point that New Westminster has them, Burnaby doesn’t. Chris Bryan at the NewsLeaders (Burnaby and New Westminster) has called Burnaby out on the issue several times.

However, Burnaby’s Mayor Corrigan is resolute: homelessness is not the municipality’s jurisdiction, it is up to Senior Governments to provide these services. If the Province and Feds don’t deal with the issue, that is no business of his, and certainly not something he wants impacting his Property Tax rates! New Westminster’s Mayor Wright is just as resolute: it is the Senior Government’s responsibility, but if they drop the ball, the City cannot just sit and watch people die on the streets. So for both of them it is a matter of principle.

For me, it is pretty easy to see who is on the higher moral ground, and where the leadership is.

I gave New Westminster Council the gears a little more than a month ago over the Shark Fin Soup Ban. It was, in some ways, a similar issue (and no, I am not comparing homeless people to fish). The subject is well outside of Municipal jurisdiction, and contains a moral question that might compel action, real or symbolic, regardless of that jurisdictional nuance. However, unlike the Shark Fin Soup issue, the action taken by New Westminster on homelessness is not a symbolic one, but directly helps people living right here in our community, and comes with a real cost to New Westminster taxpayers. It might even be unpopular with some of the more, um, “frugal” taxpayers in the City. There is a potential political cost to making that decision, and it therefore requires some leadership.

There is a recent parallel issue where Mayors Corrigan and Wright apparently agreed: the supplemental funding of TransLink. Here they both agreed that no more municipal money was going to be used to maintain and grow the regional transportation system, and that new funding had to come from some Senior Government master plan. This despite the fact that they represent two of the Cities that benefit the most from TransLink operations and will be impacted the most bythrough-traffic increases that will undoubtedly results as TransLink is choked off from being able to provide better service to peripheral areas. So here the choice to not do what the senior governments should (in your opinion) be doing saves money for local taxpayers money, but costs your citizens and the region in livability. Tough choice.

I don’t want to live in a community where people freeze to death on the street for need of a safe place to sleep, and I am not the least bit concerned that some small portion of my property taxes go to providing basic emergency shelter needs. I wish we had a Provincial strategy to deal with homelessness and our social services were funded adequately by both senior levels of government so we don’t have homeless. I would even offer that my portion of the F-35 money would be better spent on this. But all the wishes I make are not going to help if no government shows leadership and steps in to deal with the problems. I could be talking homelessness or TransLink right now.

What I can’t countenance is Mayor Corrigan sitting on his hands and refusing to invest even a small portion of City land or any local resources to help homeless people in his City, and hiding behind jurisdictional issues. He may feel like he is on high moral ground on this issue, but I don’t see any leadership coming from up there.

On Assessments and Mil Rates

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 6 Comments.

Regular readers (Hi Mom!) know I like to define my terms. Almost to a fault. That is how a 300-word missive on the latest outrage can expand into a 1500-word explanation of some nuanced difference in language.

Here we go again.

With the BC Assessment Office returning this year’s assessment reports, and everyone able to look up their own house (and that of their neighbour) using the on-line tool, the Cities will now be able to set their “Mil rates” (or less correctly but more commonly, “Mill Rates”) and the Cities can all brag or their citizens can lament about being the highest or lowest taxes municipalities. Ironically, West Vancouver can claim both titles, and here is where defining our terms is so important.

Property taxes are calculated using a slightly complicated formula, based on three factors: the value of your property, the value of the other properties in your tax area (that is, across your municipality), and the Mil Rate established by the Municipal government. There are some other complicating factors, such as the multipliers used for non-residential properties (Commercial and Industrial properties pay 3-10x as much as residential properties for the same assessed value), and the Homeowners Grant which reduces the effective tax rate for lower-value properties, but really, it all circles around the Mil Rate.

How the Mil Rate is calculated is rather simple. The Municipality figures out in its annual budget how much money it needs from property taxes to operate over the upcoming year, we’ll call that “Taxation Income”. It is then told by the BC Assessment Authority what the “Total Assessed Value” is of all taxable properties in the City. The first number is divided by the second, multiplied by 1000 (hence the “Mil”) and the result is the Mil rate.

So if we imagine a City where there are 100 houses all worth $100,000, their Total Assessed Value is $10,000,000. If the City needs $30,000 to operate, the Mil rate will be 3. We can easily calculate from this that every homeowner will pay $300 in property tax ($30,000 / 100), or $3 per every $1000 of house value.

Now imagine a City where there are 100 houses, but 9 of them are worth $500,000, one of them is worth $100,000, and the remaining 90 are worth $60,000 each. Same number of houses, and the same cost to run the City, so the Mil rate will stay at 3. The Lucky Duckies in the mansions will pay $1500, the guy in the $100,000 house pays the same $300, but the median homeowner will pay $180. Mil rate is the same, the average tax is the same, but the median tax is lower.

Back to the first City. If the Council decided it needs to raise property taxes by 5% to maintain services demanded by its residents, they now need $31,500 in tax revenue. If no-one’s house value increases, the mill rate is 3.15, and they all pay $315. If their properties all go up in value by the same 5%, then they all have $105,000 properties, the Mil rate stays at 3, and they all pay $315.

Just for the fun of it, imagine a City that is similar to the first one, but due to a freak of geography, every house has a spectacular view of the sun setting over the ocean and cold beer springs from the back yard fountains. Because of this, all of the properties have values of $200,000. However, the sea-air and beer runoff erodes the roads, and the City needs $36,000 per year to operate. The mill rate would need to be 1.8, and each homeowner would pay $360. So does that City have higher or lower taxes than the first City?

These examples are ridiculously simple, of course, but they demonstrate the point, when comparing taxes between cities you need to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges.

The Mil Rate for residential property in New Westminster in 2012 was 3.5441. This compares to other municipalities across the Lower Mainland from 1.81 (West Vancouver) to 4.73 (Abbotsford ). Vancouver was 2.02. Across-the-board comparisons show New Westminster’s Mil Rate is higher than most, but certainly not the highest in the Lower Mainland.

But how do our actual taxes compare?

The average assessed value for residential property in West Vancouver is just under $2 Million. The average assessed value for property in New Westminster is about $550,000, so for the average homeowner, West Van taxes are $3,620; in New Westminster the same calculation is $1,949. Not even close.

Another way to estimate is to compare BC Assessment numbers with 2011 Canada Census data (different ways of counting and different estimates mean different numbers, but the trend/scale is the same):

New West:
Total value: $13 Billion,
Mil Rate: 3.5441
Tax Collected: ~$46 Million (not counting commercial/industrial).
Households: 30,585
Population: 65,976
Tax per Household: ~$1,500
Tax per Person: ~$700.

West Vancouver:
Total value: $30 Billion,
Mil Rate: 1.81
Tax Collected: ~$54 Million (not counting commercial/industrial).
Households: 17,070
Population: 42,694
Tax per Household: ~$3,160
Tax per Person: ~$1,250.

No matter how you cut it, West Vancouver people pay more in property taxes, despite their lowest-in-the-region Mil Rate.

For the City of Vancouver, their ~$1Million average assessed value and 2.02 Mill rate puts them somewhere between New West and West Van.

A friend recently asked me why they pay more for taxes on a $650,000 house in New West than their friends pay for their $900,000 house in East Van. This is a good question, and probably the real cause for the common (incorrect) complaint that New Westminster taxes are higher than anywhere else. The simple solution turns out to be a little complex. Again, let’s use the West Vancouver comparison. From Canada Census data, here is the distribution of housing types:

New West:
Single/ Semi detached (18.6%)
Townhouse (4.1%)
Highrise Apartment (30.5%)
Lowrise apartment (46.6%)

West Vancouver:
Single/Semi detached (61.0%)
Townhouse (2.1%)
Highrise Apartment (20.2%)
Lowrise apartment (16.8%)

Note the highlighted lines: almost half of New Westminster households are in apartments of less than 5 stories: the majority of them in those three-story walk-ups that pepper the Downtown and Brow of the Hill Neighbourhoods. Less than 20% of households are in single detached homes. Compare that to West Vancouver, where the vast majority are single detached.

Yet the things Cities pay for: roads, sidewalks, police, fire, parks, recreation, infrastructure, etc. are needed by all, whether they live in a two-bedroom apartment on the 2nd floor or a 5,000 square foot house on an acre lot. Those costs index to population, not property value. So in New West, we have more people in lower-value housing, and consequently paying less tax.

So my friend has a $650,000 house in Glenbrook North that may be similar to her friend’s $900,000 house on Renfrew Street, but the relative value of her house ($100,000 higher than the community average) is much higher than her friend’s ($100,000 below the community average), and therefore she carries more of the tax burden for the community.

It might not seem fair, but I cannot imagine the alternative. We could cut Property Taxes in New Westminster to the same Mil Rate as Vancouver, but that would reduce our City budget by more than a third, resulting in a catastrophic reduction in services and infrastructure, which would reduce our property values more, widening the Property Value gap between us and Vancouver, and further choking City Hall of money. That seems a vicious cycle to enter.

Another way to look at the problem, of course, is to recognize that you pay $650,000 for a house in Glenbrook North that would cost you $900,000 off of Renfrew. That $250,000 savings is about 200x the annual increase in taxes you pay in New Westminster, not to mention the savings in borrowing costs for the much less onerous mortgage required.

So do we pay too much property Tax in New Westminster? We don’t pay the most in the Lower Mainland (by any measure) or the least (by any measure). And you can always move to West Vancouver and enjoy paying both the lowest and highest property taxes in the region.

The second debate that happens this time of year is the “fairness” of the assessment process. When Real Estate sales are dropping off and everyone is confidently predicting the long-predicted bursting of the housing bubble- how is it possible that the Assessment Office calculated a modest rise in real estate value for New West?

For the fun of it, I entered my address into the BC Assessment search engine, and asked for all local “sales” in the previous year. It returned the 100 nearest properties (all detached homes) that sold in 2012, ranging from $383,000 to $2,500,000 in sale price. I don’t know how “local” they were, but they were all in New Westminster. Then I compared their sale price to the assessed value. The results were interesting.

NOTE: First off, I tossed one property out of the dataset, as it was both the most expensive sale ($2,550,000) and it sold for a shocking 56% premium over its assessed value ($1,631,700). This was a large property in Ewan Ave in Queensborough, with its single home no doubt about to be torn down and replaced with row-houses or an apartment building. It was so anomalous, I needed to remove it to fit the graph below.

For the remaining 99 properties, I plotted the assessed value on the x axis, and the percentage difference between the sale price and the assessed value on the y axis, and the result is informative, if not interesting, in that there is basically no pattern:

If the assessment authority was systematically underestimating property value, the cluster would be predominantly below the 0% line; if it was overestimating, the cluster would be above the 0% line. In reality, the centre of that cluster is just below the line- the Assessment Authority undervalues all property near my house (relative to the resale market) by about 1.4%. (I’m assuming this has to do with my playing Tom Waits loudly all hours of the day and night). Overall, there are 62 properties undervalued, 36 overvalued, and one exactly valued. However, the majority of properties are assessed within 4% of their market value.

Note, there is not much “slope” to the cluster, the authority does not unfairly value expensive properties relative to inexpensive values in any significant way. The average assessed value of every property below the line is $685,000, and the average assessed value of those above the line is $665,000. So although it is not visible in the data, there is a slight(1.5%) shift of assessed value from expensive homes to less-expensive ones.

All that said:  if I was to characterize the cluster, I would call it high accuracy, low precision. There are more than 20% of properties that are off (plus or minus side) by more than 10%. That means a large number of people are paying $200 a year more – or less – than they “should”. However, you should rest assured that you are more likely (ever so slightly) to be paying less in taxes than your share according to the BC Assessment Office.

Annus horribilis

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

It is the time of year when the media take their annual look back at the year in review. As I am enjoying a short vacation (notably in a place a healthy distance south of New Westminster), I am less immersed in every day life and find myself looking back as well, but I’m afraid looking back doesn’t fill me with joy. Instead, I find myself thinking of 2012 as annus horribilis for the issue I am most concerned about: environmental sustainability.

Nationally, that began with Bill C-38. The least open and accountable government in Canadian History (and that is saying something coming out of the Chretien years) created a 425 page “Budget Bill” that featured a dozen pages on budget issues wrapped in a lengthy, complicated, and harmful disassembly of decades of environmental law.

How bad was it?

They ripped the bottom out of the Fisheries Act: the single strongest piece of environmental protection law the country had. This is (was) the law around which all other laws protecting the quality of Canada’s water were structured. The CCME Water Quality Guidelines, the Provincial Fish Protection Act, the Provincial Environmental Management Act, Municipal Riparian Areas Regulations, (and more) are all structured around the basic protections of water quality and habitat protection afforded by the Fisheries Act. The Harper Government(tm) ripped this fundamental law apart so suddenly and inexplicably that even the Government’s own scientists have yet to understand what the loss of habitat protection means. They left the professionals tasked with applying the laws completely in the dark about what the changes mean, while concurrently firing all of the Government staff who might provide the guidance. They did this just before the report from the Cohen Commission was released, knowing full well it was going to suggest that the Fisheries Act needed to strengthen, not weaken, fish protection.

That was bad enough, but they did the same thing (again completely without consulting the public, their own scientists, or the practicing professionals working with the regulations) with the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (reducing by 90% the number of major projects requiring any environmental planning at all). They scuppered the law that made it illegal for them to break an international agreement (The Kyoto Protocol); they opened up the coincidently ice-free arctic to oil and gas drilling while giving the National Energy Board the only power of oversight over this monumental policy change and not actually asking any of the locals; they also gave the National Energy Board the power to deem which species qualify for protection under the Species at Risk Act; disbanded the National Roundtable on Environment and the Economy (because god forbid we have a rational discussion between environmental professionals and industry about developing business responsibly); specifically exempted pipelines from the Navigable Waters Protections Act; along with several other goodies.

All this under the guise of a “Budget”, and all without any public discussion. One might argue the Act went to committee and there was discussion in Parliament before it was passed, and that constitutes “discussion”. However, not a single amendment was made to the original bill as written – 425 pages modifying a dozen other pieces of legislation that fundamentally changed how the environment is protected across the nation, and it was apparently perfect on the first draft, at least according to the Harper Government(tm).

Then, after all the negative press (even the National Post, the Conservative house paper, called the Omnibus Bill “Illegitimate” and spoke of “fundamental issues of Parliamentary government”), after the outcry from the opposition, former Parliamentarians from both sides of the aisle, and the public, the Harper Government(tm) doubled down with Bill C-45, which further reduced protection of lakes and rivers in Canada, causing the government to shirk it’s constitutionally-mandated responsibility (in other words, Provinces cannot even legallly step in an provide the protection the Feds have stripped).

Aside from Omnibus nuke-the-environment bills, the Federal government has also made some dubious decisions regarding our nation’s ability to protectant exploit its non-renewable resources. They continue to float the idea of signing a free trade agreement with China which doesn’t specifically permit Chinese-owned companies to operate in Canada without following Canadian environmental laws, but it may allow them to sue the Canadian Taxpayers for lost profit caused by following those laws. The race to the bottom has never been so clear.

I’m not as concerned as some about the Nexen takeover by CNOOC, but when you combine that takeover with the increasing interest in Canadian hydrocarbons from state-owned oil companies from Japan to Korea to Malaysia, one has to wonder if Canada is the only nation that is specifically exempt from owning Canadian Oil and Gas. Yes, I am going there: It is time for National Energy Program 2. If all of our customer countries are doing it on our own soil, it is getting tough to argue it will make us uncompetitive…

However, the Harper Government(tm) doesn’t want to openly discuss these important issues any more than they want to discuss changes in the Fisheries Act.

“In spite of all the very important deals and the billions of dollars of contracts we signed this week, more people in Canada will notice the pandas than anything else.” —Stephen Harper to Bo Xilai during a trip to China.

The 2012 story was not much better locally in New Westminster.

The opening of the replacement Port Mann Bridge produced the centre-piece for the $5 Billion subsidy to unsustainable urban planning that is the Gateway Program. Assuring that car-oriented development, traffic quagmires, air pollution, and erosion of livability will continue South of the Fraser of another generation. The minor damage done to a couple of dozen cars by falling ice is an irrelevant distraction compared to the long-term damage that bridge will do to our City.

Especially when put into the context of the ongoing standoff over TransLink funding, where our idiotic-looking Provincial Government is battling the moronic-acting Mayors’ Council over 0.6% of that amount of money to keep our Regional Transit System operating at it’s current level of service. The idea of growing the Transit System to meet the needs of the growing community, and the growing number of people actually using the already inadequate system, is apparently off the table for now. Instead of addressing this issue, the Mayors of our biggest communities bitch and grumble over which rapid transit line should be built next, while ignoring the fact that the one promised to the Northeast Sector almost 20 years ago has still not been built! We can build three freeways at the same time in BC, but ask the same people to build two transit lines at the same time, and that is apparently beyond our engineering capacity.

Meanwhile, the Left Coast of Canada is quickly becoming the new Persian Gulf, as the only industry our Governments deem worthy of investment is the putting of hydrocarbons (be they coal, bitumen, or methane) onto boats to ply the stormy seas of volatile international energy markets. Considering what our planned contributions to Greenhouse Gas Emissions are from these projects alone, I hope they’re building those ports well up the hill from today’s tidewater.

Cazart.

Despite all of this, there was some good news. Despite the Harper Government(tm) attempts to derail all environmental oversight, the push-back over the Enbridge Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan Pipelines are aligning disparate citizens’ groups toward a common cause: assuring their is environmental oversight and public discussion of major projects, even if the Government doesn’t want it. As a result, the ongoing coordinated media blitz between the Oil and Gas Industry, the Provincial and Federal Governments, is being seen for what it is: a cheap sales job paid for by taxpayers to sell them an idea that might be a bad one for them (even if it is a good one for the oil companies eking the last bit of profit out of their 20th Century business models).

These projects, and the failure of the Federal Government in its constitutional responsibilities, are leading to what may turn out to be the most important national political action by First Nations since Elijah Harper held a feather up to Meech Lake. The epicentre may be Attawapiskat, but the real battle will be in Ottawa and Kitimat, and it refreshes me to know that the one group in Canada that has so consistently been marginalized by official proclamation will be Idle No More.

Locally, things are also looking up. TransLink’s rush to expand the Pattullo Bridge has slowed down as they seek more consultation from New Westminster and Surrey, and they re-assess their budget and the alleged need for more bridge capacity connecting King George to McBride. Meanwhile, New Westminster’s Master Transportation Plan consultations showed the people in New Westminster want the City to set aggressive goals towards reducing traffic load on our City, and with EnVision2032, City Hall is taking steps to integrate Sustainability into all future City planning and activities.

however, if There was one dominant “Good News” story for the Environment in this annus horribilis, it was the emergence of Elizabeth May, Parliamentarian. Every day she was in the House (and she was there every day it sat), she demonstrated what a Member in a parliamentary representative democracy should be. She proved that a lone member from a fringe party can represent, and that perhaps it is time for us to stop relying on the “established” parties to represent us, when they really only represent their party, when instead we should be choosing the individual who will fight the good fight in the House.

You should read the speech excerpted in that link above. It is a compelling plea for democracy and the traditions of parliament that once made Canada a model for the world, a place where rule of law, honest discussion and diplomacy was the way to solve problems. Where people didn’t need to fight for our freedoms, but negotiated them like civilized people. People often forget our nation confederated over a table, we didn’t fight a bloody revolution. We did all of our fighting for freedoms in other countries, like France and the Netherlands and Korea and Cyprus and Bosnia, hoping that others would enjoy the freedoms we won through peaceful negotiation. Here at home, compromise and understanding were not evils to be avoided, but were the way we got things done. And I’m proud of the country that approach built…

…but I may be getting ahead of myself a bit here. We lost some things in 2012, I’m not sure if we will know their impact for years to come, but Canada is still here, and BC is still here, and New Westminster is still here, and they are still the best places to live (in my sometimes-humble opinion).

So for the environment, 2012 was annus horribilis. As a proud Canadian, that only renews my energy and drive to do better in 2013.

Happy New Year.

Smoke on the Plaza

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

You know what’s gross? Smoking.

This will shock many of my readers (but not one: hi Mom!) who think “NWimby” and “Clean Living” are synonymous, but I was once a smoker, Off and on for most of my teenage years and early 20s. I started in High School, the same as my siblings and my parents. Strangely, I would quit during the summer to bike race, start again in the winter. I did this pretty much until I met a girl who meant more to me than the MacDonald Lassie; a few years after high school.

I was lucky, in that I just don’t have addictive tendencies. It was just as easy for me to quit cold turkey as it was to pick up a pack of smokes and start again. Once I got old enough and smart enough to think about it, smoking was a bad idea- socially, economically, health-wise. I just stopped, and it was easy for me to do. I was lucky.

So, like many former smokers, I am a bit of a militant anti-smoker. The stuff isn’t good for you, and it really stinks up any environment where it is introduced. Funny how I used to sit in a car and smoke, now I am offended if the guy in front of me in traffic smokes and I have to smell that distant scent from the little bit that works its way to my car’s vents. I’m like a bloodhound for the stuff.

Then there’s the trash. We are, in British Columbia, in 2012, pretty much a post-litter society. Someone opening up a candy wrapper and tossing it on the ground is a rare enough event that it would turn heads and elicit comment from adjacent people. We don’t throw our used fast food containers out the window of our car. But it is still normal to see someone take that last, satisfying puff of a cancer stick, and flick it to the ground on the sidewalk, or toss it from the car window, like it is someone else’s problem to clean up.

The Shoreline Cleanups count cigarette butts as the single most common piece of litter, by far. There were no less than three fires last summer along Stewardson Way related to discarded butts, and all you need to do is look in any storm drain or along any poorly maintained roadside, and you will see that 90% of the gunk accumulating along the curb is cigarette filters.Gross.

Stricken from restaurants and bars, from pubic buildings and most homes, smokers are stuck on the street, smoking outside doorways (but not within 3 m!). I can only think of two bars in New West that still have a place where you can sit (outside), have a beer and a smoke. And I sit inside whenever I am at either of them. But you can’t escape the smell. There has been much Twitter space complaining about the smokers in the underground bus mall at Plaza88 The Shops at New Westminster Station (I have seen the bus loop referred to as the most expensive and dankest smoking lounge in the City).

And then there is the gauntlet of smokers you need to run to get into the London Drugs in Uptown New West.

There was a recent letter to the editor of the Record suggesting BC is the only province that still allows the sale of cigarettes in Pharmacies, and this should change. The thinking is that Pharmacies are “health care businesses”, and the sales of cigarettes are a violation of whatever the Pharmacy version of the Hippocratic Oath is.

Even the Premier was asked about this by The Tyee in a recent interview. And I have to give Premier McSparklestm credit: she makes a good point regarding the role of Pharmacies as some special type of retailer in the world of the London Drugs Electronics section and Walmart prescription counters.

That said, I would argue the exact opposite of the letter writer. I am starting to think Pharmacies are the only place that should sell cigarettes. The entire purpose of the Pharmacist is to distribute potentially-harmful drugs in a regulated way to prevent their misapplication, misuse or abuse. I offer the opinion that cigarettes are little more than harmful drug delivery systems. Nicotine is a powerful, addictive neurotoxin. For the vast majority, smoking is not a habit, it is a chemical addiction, little different than alcoholism or heroin. Perhaps we can start treating it like an addiction.

The BCLiberals, again to their credit, have made a few positive steps in this direction: the Province supports smoking cessation programs as part of its health plan, which is a pretty progressive position to take. This seems a rational approach to health-care policy, which I suspect has a strong business case behind it (lung cancer and emphysema are really expensive to manage, and cost the health care system a lot of money).

The next logical step may be to start selling cigarettes over the counter like other lethal drugs. No prescription needed, but only sold to adults, up to a carton at a time, and every package includes smoking cessation information and important information about use and contra-indications, just like any dangerous and addictive drug. It is part of moving smoking further from the mainstream, and more like the fringe activity it really has become.

In the meantime, back to London Drugs in Uptown; the one you cannot currently get into without second-hand smoking a Dunhill or two. I was at an open house a couple of weeks ago put on the Uptown Property Group. They were showing plans to re-invent that plaza space at 555 Sixth Street. Apparently, the owners of the complex recognize the loitering smoker problem there, the impact on their customers, and have not been able to fix it.

They have put up No Smoking signs (ignored), have their own security guys go out there regularly (similarly ignored). As this a problem impacting is both private and public property, they have found no relief from Bylaw Officers or the Police (unfortunately, Provincial smoking laws are enforced by the Health Department- when’s the last time you met a Health Department cop?) It seems an unmanageable situation.

So UPG decided to apply some CPTED principles, and do a re-design of the plaza. Looking over the drawings included with the Report to Council (the same drawings were shown at the Open House), the plan is to remove the planters and seating under cover in front of the entrance of London Drugs, and retain seating only on the patio in front of Starbucks – and that only accessible from within the Starbucks (making the non-smoking rule much more likely to be respected). Besides opening up the court yard, they wanted to expand the surface out towards the street and add some feature lighting, a couple of trees, and tile designs in order to make it a nice open space.

The Plan from the Council Report (click to zoom)

I thought of comparisons to Plaza88 The Shops at New Westminster Station. The proposed patio is like the new north entrance to Plaza88 TS@NWS between the Tim Horton’s and the Old Spaghetti Factory. I can only hope the newly-fenced-in Starbucks seating will not look like the Plaza88 TS@NWS Safeway Starbucks, which is currently the best-defended deck space in the City. Plans for the opened-up space include introduction of public art, with the bonus that it would provide another stage space for Uptown Live and the Hyack Parade. It would be a half-covered, open, well-lit, modern and inviting space for humans, without being the unofficial smoking zone it is now.

I was surprised to hear Council discussing this at Committee in the Whole last week, and watching the video of the exchange, the surprise began to turn to dismay when it was clear how negative the reaction was from Council (why weren’t UPG there to defend their reasoning?). You can see the video here, by choosing the December 10 Committee of the Whole meeting. The conversation on this topic starts at 1:00:50.

I want to make a couple of points based on that discussion:

• Parking spots? We are worried about 3 parking spots? Look at the picture on Page 2 of the report to Council I linked to above – does that look like a spot where the loss of three (3) parking spots is going to hurt business? There are a thousand parking spots insdie and out within a block. Not ot mention it is, after all, the most prominent business looking to remove them;

• The topic of the length of the bus stop across the street is not relevant to the discussion. Whether this project happens or not has no effect on the bus stops across the street;

• Opening up and modernizing a public plaza is not an assault on the poor. People “having a cup of coffee smoking a cigarette, whatever they are doing” is NOT  “entirely appropriate” when they are sitting in front a no smoking sign two metres from the entrance to a business. It is illegal, and does not make the space more livable;

• Assuming that the City’s “progressive laws” will fix the problems at the site ignores that those same laws have not yet solved the issues at the site, nor are they solving the problem at the Plaza88 bus loop or other places where smokers are impacting people. If panhandling is an issue here, if smokers ignore the signs, the business requests to butt out, then how does that square with the need for our “aging population” to feel safe?

• This is not public space being turned over to a private owner, and it clearly is NOT a “private benefit” by any reasonable definition. We are talking about converting space dedicated to public parking into space dedicated to public walking and standing… how does that make it a private benefit? Is every parking space, bicycle rack, bus stop in front of a business a private benefit?

• There is no “pedestrian safety” concern at the crosswalk at the location. If cars are sometimes forced to wait for people to cross the street, sometimes for tens of seconds, that is not a “safety issue”. To me, it is effective use of pedestrian space, and one of the safest crosswalks in the City. The only safety issue is the parking spot across the street that is clearly a violation of section 400.13 of the City’s Street Traffic Bylaw 6027 (go ahead, look it up!)

As usual, I offer my usual caveat that I am working from public info and a short conversation with UPG coming out of the Open House, and maybe there is stuff going on here behind the scenes of which I am not aware, but I take what people say at face value. I was initially hoping that UPG would come to Council and provide a little more guidance towards their thinking here, and how these changes will address a real problem, while adding a public asset. However, talk around the knitting circle suggests the plans have been withdrawn due to resistance from Council. It seems to be there is a lost opportunity here. UPG may do some similar improvements on their own property (the City may bit be able to stop them), but any plans to make the 500 Block of 6th Street a more open, public, friendly and open space, without the need for non-smokers to hold their breath through it.

Alas, before they take the smokes out of the Pharmacy, they can find a way to get the Pharmacy out from behind a wall of smoke, and that’s really all I want.