His Worship, Mayor Mike Hurley delivered the following
2019 Annual City Address:
“Good Evening,
As we begin 2019, I would
like to take this opportunity to present the vision to build a world-class
city that’s committed to creating and sustaining the best quality of life for
our entire community. I will share with you some of the highlights from 2018
which the City will continue to build upon, some initiatives City Council has
commenced over the past couple of months, and some of our plans for the
future.
The value we place on
innovation will be the key to finding creative solutions for some of our
current challenges.
Finding ways to create
and provide affordable housing is the biggest challenge we are facing. We’ve
been exploring options to make housing more affordable and available, and I
pledge that we will continue to work and act quickly to find innovative
solutions.
To this end, we are creating
a housing task force that will come up with recommendations to address our
housing issues over the longer term, and to deliver some near-term solutions
to help those affected by new development construction. The work of the task
force will be grounded in needs identified by residents – residents in all
stages of life and at all levels of income and ability. It will consider
that families take many forms, from young people just entering the workforce,
to older residents who may require less space and more care, to working
people who are struggling to make ends meet. As we work to develop a made-in Burnaby
affordable housing strategy, the City and the task force will look
to the people of Burnaby for guidance and make and to shape all
recommendations.
To ensure transparency
and open dialogue, the City of Burnaby is partnering with Simon Fraser University’s
Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue to serve as a third-party facilitator for
the Mayor’s Task Force and to design the City’s resident engagement strategy.
Strategy development will focus on enabling creativity and ensuring there are
meaningful opportunities to wrestle with difficult tradeoffs. It will also
ensure that citizens play an integral role in the decision-making process.
Special effort will be made to reach residents in all areas, connect with
less-heard voices, and remove any barriers to participation.
It will be a strategy
that puts the people of Burnaby’s needs first.
Meanwhile, we are also re-visiting
local housing plans and not advancing any further major developments that
would displace tenants, until affordable housing alternatives can be found
for those tenants. Finding opportunities to partner with the provincial and
federal government, non-profit housing providers, and the development
community.
For example, Burnaby is
working with the BC Government and the Dixon Transition Society to support a
new 20-unit housing development for women and children in vulnerable
situations.
And we are working with
our non-profit partners and BC Housing to help advance more low-cost housing
projects. The new developments on Hastings Street and 18th Avenue are a good
example of this, and will provide about 150 new rental units for low-income
residents and seniors.
As we develop our
affordable housing strategy, innovation will be a key, as it was when we
worked quickly this winter to help people who are facing homelessness in our
City. This past December, just as temperatures were dropping sharply, City
staff worked quickly and creatively to open four warming centres across
Burnaby for people who need a safe place to sleep or warm up. I am very proud
of the hard work and effort of our staff to pull together this project so
quickly.
For the first time in the
City’s history, Burnaby has warming centres to provide safe, warm places for
our most vulnerable residents.
These overnight centres
are open every night until the end of March, and provide refreshments,
bedding, places to sleep and information on how to get further support from
aid agencies.
In short, they are safe
and warm shelters that could possibly save lives during the cold and harsh
winter season.
The warming centres are
just one example of how the City is innovating, moving forward and addressing
the needs of people who are homeless. We will continue to network with the
Task Force on Homelessness and the Society to End Homelessness in Burnaby,
along with the Progressive Housing Society’s Homeless Outreach Program, to
ensure the best immediate, near-term and longer-term solutions are recognized
and implemented.
Other initiatives
underway include the City’s partnership with BC Housing to construct a
three-storey building on Norland Avenue that will provide 52 transitional
homes, and will include shared amenity space and support services. We are
excited to be in the final stages of the rezoning process.
Overall, our goal is to
transition people who don’t have homes, or who are at risk of homelessness,
to more permanent solutions. To this end, we are also now planning for a
facility that will provide temporary shelter for the homeless at all hours,
not just during the night.
Some other key priorities
over the next few years will be to increase safety for all our residents,
especially in public spaces, including adding additional lighting in many
areas and improving sidewalks throughout the City, as well as upgrading some
of our facilities and parks.
Safety enhancements will
also include increasing policing and the budget for the RCMP. We are going to
improve police response to ensure that when our citizens are in our public
spaces, they feel safe. We will enhance the police school liaison program, so
more kids see police in schools as role models.
We are adding more
cameras and new lighting in our parks and will continue to work to ensure the
parks are beautiful, relevant and up-to-date, and to make our sidewalks and
other public spaces safer and more accessible.
We are also focused, too,
on taking full advantage of opportunities for technical innovations that can
streamline interactions with City Hall.
For example, we are enabling
online payments, enhancing City maps, adding archival information, augmenting
our well-used libraries’ services, with more programs that use robotics,
coding tools and virtual reality headsets, focused on connecting and engaging
with youth, while also adding lower-tech, but nonetheless innovative new
features like our pedal-powered mobile libraries that take the library into
the community, beyond the traditional brick and mortar walls. Ensuring City
Council agendas and minutes are easily accessible for all, which we will
further enhance in a very non-technical way by taking two of our meetings
outside of City Hall this year, into the community and, coming very soon – a
one-stop access to property information with a new online My Property
feature, for legal descriptions, tax information, assessment history and
more.
In addition to creating
opportunities for more seamless citizen interactions with City Hall, we are
also focused on streamlining travel throughout the City.
Burnaby’s Transportation
Plan is also being updated, with great citizen input already received during
the first phase of development, which was designed to set a direction. Staff
visited farmers’ markets, libraries, recreation centres and civic events,
engaging directly with almost 2,000 citizens to collect ideas. Hundreds more
residents responded to our questionnaires, we received about 1,000 written
comments, and many citizens participated in our 14 stakeholder meetings.
Based on all of the
public participation to date, we are now drafting a plan, which we will take
to our citizens for additional input.
Meanwhile, we will
continue to work to implement traffic solutions citizens have said are
clearly needed. For example, we will continue to add to our urban trail
network, with the kind of innovative paths that we now see in all areas of
the City.
More work is planned in
2019 for the Central Park Urban Trail, as well as for the Kensington and
Penzance urban trails. The urban trail on the west side of Kensington will
also be extended, to improve connections with the Central Valley Greenway.
Our urban trails now span
more than 70 kilometres throughout the City. By creating opportunities to
walk or cycle, instead of driving, they help ease traffic congestion and they
also lessen our carbon footprint.
Another way that Burnaby
is leading the charge for social and environmental responsibility is our LED
streetlight project, for which Burnaby committed to be the first city in
Metro Vancouver to completely convert to LED street lights – saving the City
nearly a half-million dollars and reducing our eco-footprint. And similar
practices are on the way with converting lights in our parks, pathways and
facilities. This is one part of Burnaby’s long-term strategic energy
management plan.
Another strategy is to
ensure that new developments provide infrastructure for charging stations for
electric vehicles, which are becoming increasingly popular and available. We
will continue to explore the use of sustainable energy to reduce our reliance
on fossil fuel and greenhouse gas emissions.
Recognizing the need for
more childcare options, the City is currently developing childcare centres at
Capitol Hill and Montecito elementary schools. These centres are scheduled
to open in the fall of 2019.
Each of these centres
will provide 25 spaces for children aged three to five years.
Another childcare
facility is also planned at Stride Avenue Community School, with 12 spaces
for infants and toddlers, along with 25 spaces for children aged three to
five years.
As we enter the new year,
the City is looking at many new infrastructure projects, from upgrading
existing public facilities to the development of new recreation facilities,
to meet the needs of our growing community.
Preliminary work is
underway on four key projects: CG Brown Memorial Pool and Burnaby Lake Ice
Arena replacement; Willingdon Heights Community Centre; Confederation Park; Eilleen
Dailly Pool, with additional recreation space; and Cameron Recreation Centre
and Library replacement.
Finally, plans are well
underway for the new South Burnaby Arena, with expectations that shovels will
be in the ground later this year for two NHL-sized rinks with community space
and other amenities.
I am so pleased to have
the opportunity, as Burnaby’s new Mayor, to help to advance all of these
initiatives, and many more that I am hearing from citizens are important to
keeping Burnaby a great place to live and making it even better. For
example, I’ve heard from so many citizens about their concerns regarding
Burnaby Hospital. I share those concerns and am determined to get the
hospital to where it needs to be. Our hospital has been neglected for too
long, I believe that the provincial government understands the need for this
hospital and I will push for funding for the redevelopment of the facility
and the addition of a cancer clinic.
As Burnaby’s new Mayor, I
would like to thank staff for all of the work they have done to support our
new Council’s direction to date, ensuring immediate action on important
initiatives such as housing plans and warming centre development. And I
would like to thank Burnaby citizens for the trust they have placed in me in
electing me as the new Mayor of this wonderful City.
I will do my very best
each day to continue to keep your trust and to implement the programs and
initiatives you tell Council and staff are most important to your quality of
life as a Burnaby resident.
On behalf of Burnaby Council
and staff, Happy New Year. I look forward to working with you to make 2019 a
great year for the City of Burnaby.”
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