Climate emergencies, transportation, and yes, housing: Metro Vancouver's big issues so far in 2019
With city councils taking a 6-week break, here's a look at what cities have focused on, post-election
School's out for summer — and now, so are city councils.
After a dramatic round of municipal elections and nine months of new councils taking on new priorities, local and regional governments in Metro Vancouver are mostly taking a break for the next six weeks, with virtually no meetings or public hearings scheduled until after Labour Day.
Unlike most big Canadian cities, Vancouver isn't amalgamated, and the region's 21 municipalities act independently of one another.
But that doesn't mean there haven't been similarities in the issues they've been tackling.
Here are three big ones.
#1: Housing policies
Are you surprised?
After elections, where "to build or not to build" was the dominant ballot question in most communities, new mayors, from the District of North Vancouver to White Rock, moved quickly putting their stamp on housing issues.
For the most part, the movement was to slow down development, with the aim of doing further consultations with local residents, whether for specific projects or through a revamp of official community plans.
But some municipalities — notably the City of North Vancouver and New Westminster — continued full steam on increasing supply, while several other communities put forward polices to stop or drastically reduce the permanent displacement of renters when buildings are renovated or demolished.
And while the market has cooled from its historic highs three years ago, it takes plenty of time for development projects fo find their way in front of councils — meaning most cities are still facing plenty of high-density housing applications in the months to come.
"There's a lot in the pipeline ... we just don't see a slowdown at all in Langley," said Township of Langley Mayor Jack Froese.
"I know they'll be busy in fall. We'll be right back at it with public hearings."
#2: Climate emergencies
On Friday, the Metro Vancouver board approved a motion that gave it new climate targets: carbon neutral by 2050, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent from 2010 levels by 2030.
Metro Vancouver staff will be coming back with specific steps they can take to achieve the new targets in the coming months.
And if that sentence sounds familiar, it's because staff in Port Moody, New Westminster, and all three municipalities on the North Shore are doing the same thing, after their councils voted in favour of declaring climate emergencies.
"I think there's a real hunger for more leadership, and leadership that matches the scale of the crisis," said Vancouver Coun. Christine Boyle.
She was the first councillor to put forward a motion in the region, which means that staff have already come forward with specific proposals in Vancouver. And it bears noting that the majority of councillors who followed have also been women in their first term in office.
"There are more and more young people who recognize that this isn't a future generation's issue." said Boyle.
This is an issue for their lifetime, and ... they're just not willing to take insufficient actions and answers any longer, they're ready for something real and bold."
#3: Transportation
Finally, how people and goods move across the region continued to create lively debate among mayors.
The first and last TransLink mayors' council meetings of the term were dominated by Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum's campaign promise to cancel light-rapid transit to Newton and Guildford and begin a SkyTrain extension to Langley instead.
McCallum was eventually successful in reversing TransLink's course — mostly due to support from Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart — but a number of other major transit initiatives were approved after years of negotiation, including a Millennium Line extension to Arbutus Street, and a number of new express bus routes through the region.
(West Vancouver's vote to reject a B-Line in most of the municipality excepted, of course.)
But with past transportation priorities mostly approved now, Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley believes new battles will start over what future projects should be prioritized first.
"Transportation is going to be the next big issue," Hurley predicted.
"The cost of putting in the transportation we need is massive. So how are we going to fund all these projects? That's going to be the big challenge."
