With movement made on a long-requested policy change that could make way for more rental home space in Burnaby, it appears campaign promises of a new way of doing things at city hall have come true.
“New council, new people, perhaps more acceptance.”
That’s how Coun. Pietro Calendino explained his decision to propose a motion that would “direct staff to pursue, on a priority basis, amendments to the Burnaby zoning bylaw that will facilitate construction of full cellars in single- and two-family dwellings.”
He brought the motion forward during Monday evening’s council meeting – the first since the Oct. 20 election that put Mike Hurley in the mayor’s chair after he beat longtime incumbent Derek Corrigan.
Burnaby currently restricts the amount of livable space allowed in a home in relation to the size of the lot on which it sits. This requires some homeowners to keep space in their basement as a crawl space filled in with sand, rather than convert it into a suite.
Corrigan shot down idea
At an August council meeting, Burnaby resident Gurjit Jawandha pleaded with then-Mayor Corrigan to change the rules. Jawandha said he had built a suite in his home to accommodate his children’s grandmother, who planned to move in and help take care of the kids.
The city found out about the suite and told him to demolish it and fill it with sand, he said.
“This is just wrong,” Jawandha told Corrigan.
But Corrigan showed little sympathy for the man who admitted to knowingly violating the bylaw.
“You knew exactly what you were entitled to do, and you’ve chosen to do something different,” Corrigan said at the time. He acknowledged that a change to the rule had been requested for years but did not indicate he planned to support a change in the short-term.
With a new mayor in town, Calendino said on Monday he believed there was now majority support for a change in the zoning bylaw.
“He (Corrigan) wasn't open to that because he worried about parking issues, bulk of houses and neighbourhood characteristics, but I think we can try to work all those things out,” Calendino said. “The mayor (Hurley) campaigned on it and we had some councillors who were open to that, so we decided to do it.”
Councillors disagree on motion, as new dynamics emerge
Asked whether this heralded a new era of cooperative governance on council, Calendino said: “Well, obviously there may be some change in direction on some issues. It doesn't mean that we'll upset the apple cart completely – but there may be some tweaking on some issues.”
Calendino was re-elected to council on Oct. 20 alongside six of his fellow Burnaby Citizens Association party members. Hurley and Green councillor Joe Keithley are the only new faces at the table.
During the campaign, Hurley promised to bring a new leadership style to the role of mayor. He said he believed he could work with BCA councillors, despite campaigning against many of their housing policies.
In a sight rarely seen during Corrigan’s reign, there was open disagreement between BCA councillors Monday.
Calendino wanted to present his motion for a vote at the end of the meeting, but Coun. Colleen Jordan said she felt the issue was being rushed. She asked that council only accept a notice of the motion.
“We just got this in the mail on the weekend,” Jordan said. “It's quite extensive and quite a change to what has been our processes in the city previously and I think it's appropriate that we have a notice, rather than a motion tonight.”
Calendino asked the city clerk whether he could still push the motion through but relented when told that would require unanimous support. The motion is expected to come up for a vote at a future meeting.
Councillor calls new mayor 'extremely childish'
The meeting kicked off with another BCA councillor, Dan Johnston, upset over an unexpected change in the seating plan. He said he was surprised to find his seating position had changed from being nearest to the mayor at the centre of the crescent-shaped table to the furthest edge.
Johnston said that, as the longest-serving councillor and top vote getter, he expected to retain his seat near the middle front of the room.
“Traditionally, those two things tend to have a little more sway than they seem to be having with the current mayor,” he told the NOW on Tuesday.
The 25-year council veteran took it as a slight from Hurley, who set the arrangement. Moments before the meeting started, Johnston tweeted: “Extremely childish decision by #Mayor Hurley to move my Council seating especially to do so with zero consultation.”
Johnston told the NOW he wrote the Tweet and showed it to Jordan, who took his phone, read it and advised him not to send it.
But, he said, she inadvertently hit the “Tweet” button when handing the phone back to him.
“I didn’t actually intend to send it,” he said.
Johnston promptly deleted the tweet, but a CBC reporter later tweeted a screen capture of it.
He quickly deleted it, but I'm delighted a Burnaby councillor decided "where I sit at work" was a place to publicly complain about a lack of consultation. pic.twitter.com/rVjYUBKS6r
— Justin McElroy (@j_mcelroy) November 20, 2018
He said he was more upset that the change came without warning than he was about the actual seating arrangement. He called the move “petty” and “tacky.”
Otherwise, Johnston said he has been getting along “reasonably well” with the new mayor.
