There are three meetings of Council for the week starting on June 11th. We've included the meeting agendas at the end of this post.
The City Council meeting on June 11th includes a staff report to enable mass timber construction beyond 12 storeys. There's an update on improving the effectiveness of the Standards of Maintenance bylaw and its application to SRO units. A request to reallocate $80,000 of the 2024 operating budget to the Mayor's Office Budget is up for discussion. There are also amendments proposed for implementing vacancy controls for SRO properties (impacting approximately 6,500 SROs). These changes would regulate rental controls between vacancies. There are also a couple of referral items to Public Hearing, with 5455 Balsam Street and 4906-4958 Main Street. For more details, see: Tenants with a long list of grievances at 5455 Balsam (Kerrisdale) prepare to protest developer/landlord Larco. Rezoning background: 15-storey tower proposed at 5455 Balsam St. Virtual. Open house Jan 31- Feb 20. (Applicant is mystery firm Larco Investments)
The Council committee meeting on June 12th seeks approval for a Terms of Reference for the Vancouver Official Development Plan. Staff are putting forward a document that excludes the involvement of residents in the future ODP (for more details, see our related post: Urgent: 'Official Development Plan' – Project Scope, Terms of Reference. This is the Rubicon for our local democracy in Vancouver, a point of no return. June 12, 2024. Tell Council NO!).
By intentionally excluding the involvement of the public from the formulation of the Official Development Plan, City of Vancouver planners are setting up a situation where the ODP is illegitimate. The top down process of imposing a plan doesn't necessarily result in a good final product. The Broadway Plan is a case in point. For the Broadway Plan, there's a huge contrast with the Mount Pleasant Community Plan (revoked in 2022), where the planning process had a Community Liaison Group as a key component. The Mount Pleasant Community Plan also sought to keep mature apartment zones intact and off limits from rezoning. It appears that the decision of planners to allow for mass rezonings in the Broadway Plan apartment zones will result in thousands of residents being displaced as mature rental buildings are torn down and redeveloped. There's a stark difference between the Robert Moses' top-down approaches to planning "where major decisions are made by a select few people behind closed doors" and Jane Jacobs' approach that "favored more citizen participation, where residents of a neighborhood had a say in their city's future" (see A Tale of Two Planners: Jane Jacobs vs. Robert Moses, by Lauren Walser, for more details).
There's a motion on notice called Increasing Vancouver's Tree Canopy for a Safer, Healthier City. Parts of the motion seek funding for Park Board initiatives to increase tree canopy coverage in Vancouver. During the last term of Park Board, there was an updated Urban Forest Strategy that had a stated goal of increasing canopy coverage from 23% to 30%. At that time, there was also a VDLC-backed majority on City Council (with Mayor Kennedy Stewart at the helm) that could have acted on the recommendations by Park Board to increase tree canopy. The current administration had also made commitments to plant trees. To move forward with actually increasing Vancouver's Tree Canopy, funding and resources need to be allocated.
At the Public Hearing on June 13th, there are two area-wide rezonings (items 4 & 5). These are to address the province's small-scale multi-unit housing legislation (for RT-7, RT-9 and FSD districts). Further details and a list of issues with the proposed changes have been compiled by the Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods: CVN letter to Council – Referral to Public Hearing Reports – Rezoning to Comply with BC Bill 44 (opposed)
The other items at the Public Hearing are zoning applications for 988 West 32nd Avenue (RM-8A) and 1026-1108 West 41st Avenue (CD-1, 86 ft/3.36 FSR). There's also an amendment to a Heritage Revitalization Agreement at 6161 Macdonald Street.
For reference, we've reproduced the meeting agendas below:
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