 | Saturday, October 02, 2021
Reading this online? Sign up to get this delivered to your inbox every Friday. | | After years of deliberation, Vancouver council faces real decision on its climate plan | | |  | | | Most of the time, heated arguments about big city hall votes are fairly hypothetical.
Will the big tower being proposed truly destroy neighbourhood character? Could the motion calling on the provincial government to change a law really change the premier’s mind?
People make big claims and predictions, and most of the time, it’s hard to know exactly how approved motions will tangibly impact people.
But the vote over new regulations on vehicles, scheduled for next week in Vancouver, is not that.
If the report from staff passes, owners of any new non-electric vehicles purchased after 2022 will face an annual $500 or $1,000 fee. Owners who want (or need) to park their vehicle on the street overnight will face a $45 yearly fee, lowered to $5 if they come from a low-income household. These are real sums of money, intended to both lower greenhouse gas emissions and raise money (around $15 million annually) the city can use for other projects to encourage walking, cycling, transit and electric vehicle use.
“We need to take every action we possibly can to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Vancouver Coun. Adriane Carr, explaining why she supports the measures.
“It’s a reasonably priced plan that I think will achieve some measure of ongoing funding for the climate action strategy.”
Whether you agree with Carr’s argument or not, or think the direct impact on drivers is too onerous relative to the potential payoff, council has been going down this path for awhile.
It unanimously passed a climate emergency motion in early 2019, asking staff to come forward with recommendations to make Vancouver carbon neutral by 2050.
Council then passed a motion a few months later supporting the broad goals recommended by staff, including a number of proposals around vehicle use. Then in 2020, it passed a motion approving the general concept. Which brings us to today.
This is how local government in big cities tends to work: a broad motion to start, followed by more specific motions and reports, followed by more consultation, followed with the actual vote to change How Things Happen.
All of which is to say, next week’s vote has bigger stakes than most, and will be more contentious than most.
And if council decides not to go ahead with the plan, some climate advocates might wonder what the last three years of work were for. | | |  | | | 1. Vancouver | It was a week where talk of mayors past and potentially future dominated the local political discussion. Coun. Colleen Hardwick announced she was part of the resurrected TEAM party, and was likely to seek its mayoral nomination early next year, while former mayor Philip Owen passed away after a long illness. His death prompted many to remember his political era in Vancouver, and how a man that came from the city’s most privileged set spent much of his political capital to help those with the least.
Read more | | | | |  | | | 2. Richmond | City councils don’t normally vote on the fate of one individual house, but such is the case in Richmond next week, after a protracted 13-year saga involving neighbours, bylaw officials, and a family who recently asked for more time to clean up the property. These sorts of cases inevitably get messy, one reason why they rarely get to the stage of a council vote.
Read more | | | |  | | | 3. TransLink | | | | | | |  | | | 4. Langford | No city has grown as quickly (or with as much of a laissez-faire approach to growth) in recent decades as Langford, but the city is looking to break new ground, figuratively and literally, with up to six towers in the core. It will be worth watching how density debates here go once questions of towers get thrown into the mix.
Read more in the Times Colonist | | | |  | | | 5. Golf courses | Every year or so, there’s another debate in B.C. about whether municipalities should convert golf courses into parkland or more housing, and most years the conversation doesn’t go anywhere. But in Armstrong, council just approved reconfiguring the town golf course, adding 141 housing units to the town of 5,000.
Read more in the Vernon Morning Star | | | | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
forwarded to you. | | | | Check out the latest headlines at cbc.ca/bc and follow our municipal affairs reporter Justin McElroy on Twitter. And if you have any questions, you might want answered in a future mailbag, drop Justin a line at metromatters@cbc.ca. | | | |
