WERA General Meeting of January 24, 2023

Blog: http://www.mywestend.blogspot.com Email: weranewwest@gmail.com Twitter: @newwestwera Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/WERANewWest Meeting commenced: 19:04. Chair: Elmer Rudolph; Recorder: Gavin McLeod Number of attendees: 7; New Westminster city council liaison Paul Minhas attended. Approval of minutes of previous meetings: Motion to approve minutes of Annual General Meeting of April 26, 2022 moved by Gavin McLeod, seconded by Jassy Braich, approved. Additional Agenda Items: Decreased attendance at WERA and other in person meetings. Installation of vehicle activated light at 10th Avenue and 15th. Complaint about speed humps on 15th street. Property setbacks Hard surfaces on residential property. Infill housing report in New Westminster. Investigating ways to increase community interest and involvement in WERA and community issues. John Unger (sensor-controlled traffic light at 15th street and 10th Ave. speed bumps on 15th street between Dublin Street and 8th Ave and hard surfaces on residential properties.): John reported that 15th street is a major route for getting out of the west end but to exit 15th onto 10th Ave requires someone to push the button for the pedestrian light. John lives on Dublin just west of 14th street. John suggested that too much money is being spent on speed bumps. There are speed humps on 15th street between Dublin and 8th Ave. John stated that he and his neighbours are not in favour of the speed humps and cars parked on both sides of 15th street create difficulties. John spoke to a traffic engineer who informed him that the speed humps were the result of a petition. John also stated that in the 80s people in the west end were against speed humps and suggested that WERA was not doing enough to resolve problems. Elmer Rudolph responded and explained how the process works and that WERA can’t respond to all individual complaints especially without community support. John Unger: Suggested that the intersection of 15th Street and Tenth Ave. is a bottleneck and that a sensor-controlled light should be installed there so traffic coming up 15th Street could have easier access to Tenth Ave. John Unger: Suggested that the city is allowing too much impermeable surfaces on residential property causing excessive runoff of water. He also suggested that property setback changes had negative consequences. Elmer Rudolph: (Introduction of Paul Minhas, newly elected councillor and appointed liaison to WERA.) Paul Minhas: Responded to topic of speed humps and greenspace. Talked about previous council’s lack of listening and problems in the downtown core where he has a business and lives. Paul questioned the decision not to assign him as liaison to downtown. Paul spoke about 6th street and problems with emergency vehicles being blocked. Paul spoke about the apparent partisanship of the majority party on council. Elmer Rudolph: (Decreased attendance at WERA meetings) Other RAs are experiencing the same problem. Organizations that have in person meeting have experienced a decrease in attendance. Some meetings have been cancelled due to lack of attendance. Zoom meetings did take the place of in person meetings but it has been discovered that there are negative aspects including increasing visits to plastic surgeons and a sense of disconnection. Gavin McLeod (Community Policing Report): There were minor changes to crime levels except for a major increase in the theft of catalytic converters, the majority of these thefts were in the West End. There was a report on the problems with people accessing ECOM. There has been up to a three hour wait and a high level of abandonment, no stats on call back. New Westminster police plan bring in their own civilian staff for non emergency calls from Monday to Friday, from 8 am to 4 PM. It is planned to have this implemented by mid January 2023. Delta police have implemented this procedure and wait times have decreased from three hours to two minutes. Elmer Rudolph (Report on Residents” Association Forum of June 8, 2022): Reported at the forum about lack of response and call backs about issues, Elmer reported that staff did not return phone calls, usually the phone was not answered, Elmer left a message but nobody phoned back. At the forum Elmer brought up the subject, but the only response was that city hall is understaffed. Mary Wilson asked about scheduling and content of next RA Forum and suggested that the 2023 Forum discuss city hall’s support of RAs. Councillor Minhas suggested that he could get information from city hall about the scheduling of the next RA Forum. Councillor Minhas suggested sending an email to ask about the RA situation. Robert Petrusa: Explained how the Forum used to be held four times a year but now is only once per year. Elmer Rudolph (Report on Mayoral Candidates meeting for 2022 election): Elmer suggested one of the all candidates meeting. It was well attended but it appeared at all were 50 years old or older, no attendance by younger people. This issue is apparent in many meetings and organizations. Elmer Rudolph (Renewed efforts to have traffic control at 10th Ave and 18th Street): A young girl was killed by a truck near that location. The city of Burnaby said they were amenable to a controlled intersection but not until the rinks were completed and traffic on Eighteenth increased. Mary Wilson recalls being told that it was BC Ministry of Highways that had control of Tenth Avenue. John Unger wants to see more lanes to ease traffic flow. Elmer Rudolph (Metro Vancouver water main infrastructure work): Lots of work on Thirteenth street and also 21st street. Elmer Rudolph: Excessively large construction trucks hauling dirt and gravel. When they travel down back lanes they are unable to negotiate turns onto main streets. Trucks become backed up and block local traffic. City hall did not provide information on maximum truck size. A truck delivering rocks had a combined washer, dirty water was rushing down and across Eight Ave. Mary asked about the “Good Neighbour Policy”. John Unger reported a messy worksite. Elmer Rudolph: Electoral Boundary Commission: The Provincial Boundary Commission decided, base on population, that New Westminster was too large for two electoral districts (Queensborough was removed earlier). The decision was to split the remainder of New Westminster into four electoral districts. Connaught Heights would be added to South Burnaby which is much larger in population. A small area bounded by 10th Ave to 8th Ave and McBride Blvd to Cumberland. Elmer Rudolph: Proposed $50 donation to the Church Mary Wilson: Infill Housing: Reported on the five-year review. The purpose of the program was to provide more housing choices. A survey was created through “Being Heard”. The problem with “Being Heard” is that the city picks the questions that the respondent has to answer which limits input. Mary received a copy of the questionnaire because of her involvement with the program. Many people responded to “Be Heard” that did not have any involvement with laneway housing. Most of the interest in laneway housing is in the west end. The public survey got 1152 responders people like me who were involved in having a laneway house built had 38 responses and there was a targeted survey of five people that the city sat down with and actually talked to two owners, two designers and one builder. So when you total that all up that's not a huge number of respondents for a city wide program but there are numbers and I know that when it came to the neighborhood over 30% of the laneway houses that were in processed were in the west end so there was one two three or four in other places but there were at this point there were a dozen of them in the west end and there's more now that we know. Under the recommendations that the city was pulling out of this response was is there any way that we can reduce the cost is there anyway for your speed up the process is there any way that we can encourage greater energy efficiency so my concerns more than the numbers that were low overall for the numbers of responses that they got with this program so to make judgments on the basis of low numbers I think is a little bit risky and you only answer the questions that were given to you. I think generally there are a lot of people especially those who are involved in the laneway house program who found the process very challenging, it wasn't as easy as they expected. I think the process generally would have been better had the city arranged for people who wanted to do laneway houses to get together and talk to each other that would have been a major breakthrough I think because nobody was doing laneway houses got to chat to people who were a year ahead of them or 6 months ahead of them or currently doing this and found out there was no exchange of information between the people who were engaged in the process and it was strictly individually done with city, people were saying you're treating me like a developer I've never done this before there's pages and pages. They said this will take you five minutes any extra comments. I can recognize a lot of my own comments on this thing here but you know it's its a tenuous document but it's there. Meeting adjourned 20:41 Next Meeting: Next regularly scheduled meeting tentatively set for March 28, 2023 at Unity in Action Church.