WERA General Meeting of April 26, 2022

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Meeting commenced: 19:04.

                                Chair: Elmer Rudolph; Recorder: Gavin McLeod

                                Number of attendees: 5; Mary Trentadue (city liason) did not attend.

Approval of minutes of previous meetings: Motion to approve minutes of Annual General Meeting of January  28, 2020 moved by Gavin McLeod, seconded by Mary Wilson, approved.

Additional Agenda Items:

Mary Wilson: Horticultural sale scheduled for Saturday May 14th from 10 am to 3 pm, at St. Thomas More Collegiate

Community Policing Report (Gavin McLeod): There was no meeting to report on.

Residents” Association Forum (Elmer Rudolph): Scheduled for Wednesday June 8th from 6 to 8 pm. Elmer asked for suggestions for topics.

Recycling Depot on United Boulevard:   The recycling centre in New Westminster was closed long before the replacement in Coquitlam was opened. The location is difficult to access due to heavy traffic on Braid and Brunette and train traffic with some very long trains passing and closing Braid. There are Return it Centers, the one on Braid suffers from the same problems as the one in Coquitlam. There is one in Queensborough that seems to be busy and well run but requires travelling across the very busy Queensborough bridge. There is a small return it center on 8th Street and London but it has a bad reputation. There is limited pedestrian access.

The city announced that they plan to conduct audits on recycling bins due to contamination by glass, the closure of the recycling centre was a possible cause of an increase in contamination. The city plans to distribute grey bins to collect glass jars and bottles.

Jane’s Walk and Walk 30 Challenge (Mary Wilson): Jane’s walk was a success and reported on at the previous meeting. Walk 30 is in progress and will end on May 15th. Entrants are from Burnaby and New Westminster. The goal is to walk at least 30 minutes per day. Individuals and teams are allowed. The results are adjusted based on relative populations. 

New Westminster Adopt a Tree Initiative (Gavin McLeod): The city has offered the opportunity to adopt a tree that will apply to newly planted trees, primarily to water the new trees. The city said that it would not be a cost to the volunteers. Citizens are not allowed to prune boulevard trees. Is the purpose to inspire the citizens or download work from city workers. The city has not moved towards installing water meters. Surrey began installing water meters years ago with an initial offer of free installation. They estimated that a family of five would save money with the use of meters.

Urban Farming (Gavin McLeod): Councillor Nadine Nakagawa suggested creation of an urban farming (urban gardening) program based on food security. City farming can increase the rat problem. 

Advisory Committees (Gavin McLeod): All resident’s associations used to have representation on the Traffic Advisory Committee. That is no longer happening. The number of committees has been reduced, some have been amalgamated. At one time the city was not getting enough applicants so toyed with the idea of paying people. The city also wanted to increase ethnic diversity. A former committee environmental committee member applied this year and received a questionnaire. The questions were: What is your ethnicity?, What is your annual income and what is your gender identity. What is the legality and how could they verify the answers. 

Massey/ Victory Heights member (Karl Brysch): A resident of that area just became of member of the RA and was tasked with getting people involved. Karl suggest that this person visit other RA meetings to see what they were doing. There are many issues that are common to different RAs, traffic is the biggest issue. When each RA had representation on the traffic advisory committee issues could be raised there. Sometimes traffic issues would be raised at the Citizens’ Police Committee meetings but that was strongly discouraged leaving a gap between the citizens and city hall. One issue that galvanized the Connaught heights residents was when the city planned to allow low cost housing on two vacant lots without consulting the community. During Covid many meetings were held outside sometimes several per month to discuss this issue. The city had failed in its due diligence to check the status of one of the lots. The BC government had declared it to be a park in perpetuity. The had not bothered to check. Karl stated that he has become less reliant on city hall and more on the neighbourhood residents. Karl has retired and is very busy with local issues. Karl spoke about the latest property tax increase and commented that he could not see any benefit from the tax increase, using the “tree adoption” program as an example. The city paid a consultant a lot of money to do a study on Twentieth street about 15 years ago but has not done anything to improve the traffic problems on the street. The city instituted what they called Residents’ Association Forums; presidents of the RAs met four times a year. Unfortunately, it started out with the city taking up most of the time “splaining” to the presidents and leaving a few minutes for the presidents to speak. That situation slowly improved but when it began to function the city scrapped the program and now the presidents are invited to meet with council once a year with little time to discuss a year’s worth of issues.

Vehicle Inspections (Elmer Rudolph):  Elmer reported on a Commercial vehicle check on April 7th, by the RCMP at 10th Ave at 18th. The checked out 49 trucks and handed out 70 tickets. 2/3 of the vehicles were deemed to be unfit for the road. 

Evo Car Sharing in New Westminster (Karl Brysch): Karl spoke about the fact that Evo has not designated the west end or Connaught heights as a home area for Evo especially for the 22nd Street Skytrain station. He talked to BCAA who created Evo. Karl sent Evo a message about the fact that home zoning does not exist at the 22nd street station or Connaught Heights or the West End. Karl received a response stating that there are no plans to change the current situation. Many people have expressed interest in getting Evo to make Connaught Heights and the West End Home zones. Evo and Lyft show up at the 22nd Street Station.

BC Parkway in New Westminster (Gavin McLeod):  Commented on the poor condition of the BC Parkway in New Westminster particularly between 5th Ave and 14th Street where it is extremely narrow and there is no fence between the Parkway and Stewardson Way Traffic. There are survey stakes west of the Skytrain right of way. There is also a large dip east of the Queensborough bridge which becomes a sizeable lake when it rains. 22nd Street Station Development (Bob Petrusa): Bob spoke about the lack of any progress with the 22nd Street Station development. Talk about development there dates back several decades. Talk continues but no action.

Meeting adjourned 20:25

Next Meeting: Next regularly scheduled meeting tentatively set for January 24, 2023 at Unity in Action Church.