Coquitlam Mayor Richard Stewart calls it “amalgamation by stealth.”
Metro Vancouver’s new Regional Growth Strategy (RGS) adds a new layer of bureaucracy for developers in the region and grants the regional board new powers – powers Stewart feels uncomfortable wielding.
“I get elected by the people of Coquitlam,” said Stewart. “I don’t get elected by the people of Tsawwassen, and I’m not sure that I should be making decisions in Tsawwassen.
“This document takes us a step – a big step, some would argue – closer to a regional planning department, in that it puts a regional approval in place for changes that are associated with industrial land.”
Of the 24 signatories, Coquitlam was the last to sign the RGS. Like all other participating municipalities, it now has two years to approve a regional statement that demonstrates how its local land-use policies will conform to the new regional plan.
While the city did some RGS fine-tuning, Stewart still shares concerns the development community has expressed over a plan they fear will add a new layer of government for them to negotiate.
The plan’s critics are unanimous in saying they believe in regional planning for things like transportation, housing and protecting industrial land. They just don’t like the plan that was adopted. It’s inflexible, they say, adds bureaucracy and fails to set housing targets, especially along transit corridors.
“It was a horrible compromise by a bunch of people who sat around the table and traded off parochial interests against each other, and the governance structure was ignored,” said Bob Ransford, an urban design consultant with Counterpoint Communications Inc.
The strategy poses no immediate concerns for developers. But the development community is worried what might happen five, 10 or 15 years from now, as the forces of supply and demand change against the backdrop of a 30-year plan that doesn’t change.
“It basically freezes, in situ, things that you’ve got today,” said Maureen Enser, executive director for the Urban Development Institute (UDI). “Now there’s a complicated process whereby, if you require a zoning and it’s not in today’s plan, you’re going to have to go to the regional board and get approval. When you’re looking, as an investor, at ease of doing business, that is a red flag.”
“It’s added a level of bureaucracy – it really has,” said Kevin Layden, president and CEO of Wesbild Holdings Ltd., a residential and commercial developer. “It’s going to add costs. That’s counterintuitive to affordable housing, and the price of housing to begin with.”
Developers envision the evolution of a whole new level of government with its own planning department.
But Christina DeMarco, Metro Vancouver’s regional development division manager for policy and planning, disagrees that the plan freezes anything in place. The board can always vote to change the plan.
She added that a new planning function for Metro Vancouver is not in the cards.
“We’re not forecasting any changes in the resources.”
DeMarco pointed out that, now that the RGS has been approved, Metro Vancouver’s planning department will shrink to 6.5 planners in 2012 from the current eight.
But Peter Kenward, a lawyer specializing in municipal law, doesn’t see how Metro Vancouver can avoid taking on more planning functions.
“If they don’t have a planning department, they’re going to have a huge bottleneck,” he said, “and if they do, then there’s a significantly increased bureaucracy.”
The RGS replaces the 1996 Livable Region Strategic Plan. Its proponents say it was needed because the old plan failed to protect industrial land – the most productive in terms of job creation – from constant erosion.
The region lost 3,000 acres of industrial land between 1996 and 2005, as local city councils, bending to local lobbying, rezoned it for residential and commercial development, resulting in what DeMarco calls “job sprawl.”
Good planning calls for office space to be concentrated in urban centres, but in places like Surrey and Richmond, DeMarco said only 10% of the new office space has been going into urban centres. The rest was going into outlying areas onto industrial land.
Richmond city councillor Harold Steves – who sits on the Metro Vancouver board – lobbied to stop industrial land erosion by placing safeguards on it, similar to the way farmland is protected by the agricultural land reserve, which Steves helped create in the 1970s.
Steves said it was business leaders in heavy industry, manufacturing and port activity that first pushed for the new safeguards.
“The business community is divided on the issue,” he said.
Previously, local municipalities did the rezonings. Now, industrial land rezoning will also require a simple majority vote by the board of Metro Vancouver – a type 3 amendment.
But getting that simple majority might not be so simple, especially when the region’s bigger cities have weighted votes. There are 125 votes on the Metro Vancouver board (though not all have a vote on the RGS). Vancouver holds 29 votes, Surrey 20, Burnaby 11, Richmond 9.
“That means that Vancouver and Burnaby combine to have something close to a veto over all changes outside of the urban containment boundary in every other municipality, even though they themselves have almost no land outside of the urban containment boundary,” Kenward wrote in analysis of the RGS for the UDI, Business Council of BC and BC Chamber of Commerce.
“They could, to a significant extent, be over-ruled by the representatives of Vancouver and Burnaby, even though their representatives were elected by people who do not even live in the areas in question.”
Added Enser: “If, for some reason, you don’t have Vancouver or Surrey onside, your chances of success are greatly diminished. So you not only have to go around getting everyone’s votes, you have to get the right votes. Just that complicated process is enough to turn anyone’s hair grey.”
DeMarco points out that the current voting structure has been in place since 2007. She concedes the RGS adds an extra layer of approval for some land use decisions. But without it, Metro Vancouver would continue to lose industrial land.
“What we’re saying is it’s worth the red tape for a regional check-in, because the way things are going, every Monday night you lose a bit of industrial land,” she said. “And before you know it, the regional economy doesn’t have enough land to support itself.”
Stewart cites a rezoning that took place in Coquitlam several years ago as an example of what developers might expect in the future. The city rezoned industrial land to allow for the Boulevard Casino and a new hotel. (The hotel got deferred, and is only now back on the drawing board.)
If that rezoning had to occur today, the developer would need the approval of both Coquitlam city council and Metro Vancouver.
Burnaby and Richmond both have hotels connected with casinos – and the weighted votes to nix an application.
“I’m not saying it’s ever going to happen,” Stewart said, “but it does raise the possibility that two or three larger municipalities say, ‘No, no, no – those hotels belong in our communities.’”
Getting land out of the ALR or conservation zones will be even tougher than rezoning industrial land. That will require a public hearing and approval by two-thirds of the Metro Vancouver board. Changing the fundamental goals of the plan – a type 3 amendment – requires the approval by all affected local governments in the region.
Since the RGS was adopted, Premier Christy Clark announced her government’s jobs agenda. The UDI argues that adding new layers of bureaucracy that could stifle investment runs counter to her plan.
“We say to the province, ‘We agree with your job strategy – this is an impediment to achieving its goal,’” Enser said. “The business community is saying to the provincial government, this strategy is flawed and it requires some level of provincial intervention here.”
At the very least, the UDI wants a mandatory review of the plan in five year’s time. Currently, Metro Vancouver’s board has the option to review it in five years, but isn’t obliged to do so.
As minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development, Ida Chong is responsible for local government. She has met with business leaders to discuss their concerns, but has made no commitment to order a mandatory review.
However, she said wants to ensure the RGS doesn’t run counter to her government’s job creation strategy and will ask for an update one year from now.
“I think it’s important that if this RGS doesn’t fit within the plan and it doesn’t work, I think the local governments will see very quickly and will want to work with us – and I will want to work with them – to see what we can do in making sure that the RGS does not appear onerous, does not add those layers of bureaucracy and does not scare away investment.” •
Metro Vancouver by the numbers
Geographically, Metro Vancouver is hemmed in by the sea to the west, mountains to the north, the U.S. border to the south and the agricultural land reserve to the east.
That geographic area is further constrained by land designations. Two-thirds of Metro Vancouver’s 283,000-hectare land base is undevelopable – protected either as watershed, or for agricultural, conservation or recreational purposes. Only 10,400 hectares is designated for industrial use.
Politically, Metro Vancouver is made up of an unelected board of directors representing 24 members:
•12 cities;
•five villages, townships and corporations;
•three municipal districts;
•two regional districts;
•one electoral area; and
•one First Nation (Tsawwassen).
TransLink is not a Metro Vancouver board member, but as a signatory to the RGS it would vote on type 1 amendments, which are required when any of the plan’s fundamental goals are changed.
