Meet Your City Councillors: GWAC meeting on role of neighbourhood residents’ councils (Mon, 14-Jan-2019, 7pm)

Grandview Woodland Area Council is one of the longest surviving neighbourhood association. Their first public meeting of the year may interest many neighbourhood groups, especially as Vancouver enters a city wide planning process.

Public Meeting: Monday, January 14th, start 7 pm
Location: Ice Rink Mezzanine (Britannia Ice Rink), 1661 Parker Street, Vancouver
Topic: Meet New Vancouver City Councillors and discuss the role of neighbourhood residents’ councils

The Grandview Woodland area recently underwent a planning process and GWAC is actively staying on top of things. They recently also inquired with the City about “the pace of change” policy expressed in the Grandview Woodland Community Plan (GWCP), asking how many projects have been built within the parameters stated in the Plan. They also asked how many more are in the planning stages and how many conform to the Plan’s “pace of change” policy. GWAC is expecting answers early in the new year.

 

Happy New Year 2019 from CityHallWatch

Photo credit: CityHallWatch

Happy New Year 2019!

With the new mayor and Vancouver City Council settling in for the remainder of the four-year civic election cycle to October 2022, there is a new game in town after ten years of Vision Vancouver.

Our city has entered a new phase, but many of the threads and power connections that drove Vision Vancouver’s agenda are still deeply entrenched among influential City staff, and extend to the development industry, local institutions and the provincial government. Some of those influences may be good. Some not so much.

Public involvement will be important, especially as the City enters a city wide planning process in 2019. This is momentous, and comes with opportunities and risks to our city and neighbourhoods.

CityHallWatch will continue to support and cooperate with observant citizens and groups to keep a watchful eye on Vancouver City Hall, seeking to serve as a mirror, a magnifier, and a microphone.

We are already in our tenth year and will pass the ten-year anniversary in October 2019. Media coverage and public debate about civic affairs have changed a lot since we first started. Reporters in mainstream media have come and gone since CityHallWatch first began. More of the mainstream outlets have assigned reporters to civic affairs in the past couple years. Plus there has been a significant increase in bloggers, podcasters, and social media commenters. But we know there is still an important role for CityHallWatch in that deluge of words and images. We have posted 2,756 posts since October 2010, serving as a useful archive for everyone. And in 2019 we expect to pass the 400,000 visitor mark, and the milestone of one million views.

Vancouver development applications snapshot 1-Jan-2019

For an explanation of our monthly snapshots please visit this page:
https://cityhallwatch.wordpress.com/city-hall/snapshots-rezoning-development-applications/

As a free public service CityHallWatch takes a monthly snapshot of the Development Applications listed on the City of Vancouver website. The list contains valuable information on each application. Spread the word to anyone who might be affected or interested.

A tech-savvy citizen is voluntarily producing two handy online maps (click bottom right to switch between rezoning and development applications): https://vancouverapps-fa328.firebaseapp.com/

Download the full list of development applications we created in PDF format:
CoV development applications 1-Jan-2019

For a current list of applications, click: vancouver.ca/devapps/.

Below is the list as of January 1, 2019.

Vancouver rezoning applications snapshot 1-Jan-2019

For an explanation of our monthly snapshots please visit this page:
https://cityhallwatch.wordpress.com/city-hall/snapshots-rezoning-development-applications/

As a free public service CityHallWatch takes a monthly snapshot of the Rezoning Applications listed on the City of Vancouver website. The list contains valuable information on each application, and indicates scheduled “open houses” and Public Hearings. Spread the word to anyone who might be affected or interested.

A tech-savvy citizen is voluntarily producing two handy online maps (click bottom right to switch between rezoning and development applications): https://vancouverapps-fa328.firebaseapp.com/

Download the full list of development applications we created in PDF format:
CoV rezoning applications 1-Jan-2019

For a current list of applications, click: vancouver.ca/devapps/.

Below is the list as of January 1, 2019.

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas (B.C. version) – Highlights of 2018, the Bob Mackin version on theBreaker.news

@BobMackin of the @TheBreaker.news prepared some brilliant prose to summarize the highlights of the year 2018, to the rhythm of this beloved Christmas poem. Here is the text, with his permission. It is part of the audio of his informative weekly podcast, which we highly recommend. Support independent reporting!

************

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas
(B.C. version, 2018)
Bob Mackin
theBreaker.news

‘Twas the night before Christmas when all through Whalley
Mayor McCallum was picking some holly
He grinned and combed his thinning hair,
in the hopes that a new SkyTrain would soon be there.

“The lights and decorations so spangly,
“Someday I can take this all the way to Langley.”
First I must cancel, the RCMP lease
So we can get a new police.

I’ve got a new ally in Vancouver’s K-Stew
That’s what Millennials call him, true?
Gregor is gone after a decade in power
A new chap in charge, to rubber-stamp more tower

He got national attention protesting a pipe
Found in contempt for expressing his gripe
Won by 957 votes over Ken Sim
For the NPA, it wasn’t all grim

Five female councillors elected
While Vision was soundly rejected
Geoff Meggs is happy, he got out early
To help Horgan appear less surly

ICBC’s a dumpster fire, casinos flush with dirty money
The province’s problems aren’t so funny
It turned out pro rep wasn’t so lit
To a corruption inquiry, Horgan won’t yet commit

Report on Metro Vancouver’s “Climate 2050 – Transitioning to a Resilient, Low Carbon Future” (Sustainability Community Breakfast 12-Dec-2018)

 

Cover for the report. Credit: Metro Vancouver.

By Eugene Kayal, special for CityHallWatch

 

Building on the release of the Climate 2050 Strategic Framework in September 2018, Metro Vancouver held a well-attended Sustainability Community Breakfast on December 12 to outline the next steps in creating and implementing our regional climate change adaptation and mitigation plans.

Presenting were Jason Emmert, Air Quality Planner at Metro Vancouver, Tamsin Mills, Senior Sustainability Specialist for the City of Vancouver, and Angie Woo, Climate Resilience & Adaptation Lead for the Fraser Health Authority.

They were introduced by Sav Dhaliwal, Burnaby City Councillor and new Chair of Metro Vancouver, who opened by highlighting the commitment to an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050. [CityHallWatch note: This target may be seriously lacking in ambition with the latest IPCC report, released in October, showing that we may have only until 2050 to achieve net-zero emissions and keep warming under 1.5°C.]

In his introduction, Councillor Dhaliwal focused the event on “adaptation” strategies. Detailed plans for emissions reductions (“mitigation”) will be part of future work as the more detailed Climate 2050 Roadmaps for the region are developed over the next two years.

As stated during the presentations, a certain amount of climate change is already “baked in” due to current and historical emissions. The summary of the IPCC report further explains that “[w]arming from anthropogenic emissions from the pre-industrial period to the present will persist for centuries to millennia and will continue to cause further long-term changes in the climate system.”

The speakers presented Metro Vancouver-specific climate projections that show we can expect warmer, wetter winters, drier summers, and more extreme weather events over the coming decades.

Council meeting agendas for Dec 4 (Tue) and Dec 5 (Wed) – Renovictions, lobbyists, conflicts of interest, taxes, water, climate and more

[Update: Click on the City link for the minutes and video of this meeting.]

With the new mayor and City Council there are two more sets of meetings (Regular Council + Standing Committee) — this week and then the week of Dec 17. For posterity, here are the agendas and document links (abridged) for this week. We start by listing a few topics to bring to your attention. Note that the Public Hearing date of Dec 18 has been cancelled. One other Council meeting is on December 11, a Special Council meeting for the 2019 budget. Please to to the City website for the official updated agendas.

Dec 4 (Tues) Regular Council – some highlights

• The motion on “Protecting Tenants from Renovictions and Aggressive Buy-Outs” goes to a vote, now that Council has heard many speakers.
• Staff are recommending this topic NOT go to public hearing: Zoning and Development By-law for RT 7 and RT-8 Zones (Kitsilano) and RT-10 and RT-10N (Kensington-Cedar Cottage)
• Motion B1 by Mayor Stewart on revising “Conflict of Interest Rules”
• Motion B2 by Mayor Stewart on creating a “Lobbyist Registry for the City of Vancouver“
• Motion B3 on “Possible Amendments to By-law 6066 to Allow for Safe and Licensed Ride Sharing in Vancouver”
• Motion B4 on “Building a Family Friendly Vancouver: Affordable Child Care“
• Motion B5 on “Land Value Capture in the City of Vancouver“
• Motion B6 on “Calling for 600 More Units of Modular Housing in 2019″
• Motion B7 on “Call for the ABC Plan for an Accountable, Bold and Comprehensive Poverty Reduction Plan for British Columbia”
• Motion B8. on “A Proposed Alternative to Provincial Encroachment on the City of Vancouver’s Municipal Tax Base“
• Motion B9 on “Mayor’s Office Budget Review“
• Motion B10 on “Creating a ‘Baseline Review’ Task Force“

Dec 5 (Wed) Standing Committed – some highlights

• Report – 2018 Climate Change Adaptation Strategy Update [Timely with COP24 starting this week in Poland]
• Report –  Water Use in Buildings: Enhanced Public Safety, Efficiency and Long-Term Resiliency Measures

Related media coverage: