An unfortunate thing happened at a Burnaby council meeting on March 25.
Coun. Joe Keithley, the only Burnaby Green Party member on council, introduced a motion to send a condo and townhome development back to staff “to see if some accommodation can be made with the developer to include some non-market housing.”
Polygon plans to build a four-storey, 58-unit condo building and 43 townhomes at the corner of Southridge Drive and Byrnepark Drive. The property is currently a forest of trees.
The City of Burnaby owns the lot, which will be sold to Polygon once its rezoning has been finalized.
City council was set to vote on whether to send the proposal to first reading and a subsequent public hearing before Keithley attempted to intervene.
But his motion was not seconded by any of his council colleagues, meaning it was not discussed or put up for a vote.
“I suppose I probably took the other councillors by surprise ... as I was met with stone silence,” Keithley later told the NOW.
Keithley was trying to reflect the needs of a community crying out for more affordable housing, and the rest of council couldn’t even stomach debating the issue, so they let his motion die.
Coun. Paul McDonell, who was among those who opted not to second Keithley’s motion, said it came too late in the process, and delaying the project would have been unfair to Polygon.
Unfair to Polygon, which, by sheer coincidence, has been a major contributor to McDonell’s Burnaby Citizens Association for many years with thousands of dollars in donations.
This project is a leftover from the previous BCA council, which has been accused of being in the pocket of big developers.
The BCA should have demanded non-market housing at the very least when this deal was first put together.
At least having non-market rentals included would make cutting down a forest a little more palatable.
As for Keithley’s motion being late in the process, we take you back to June 2018 – just months before the civic election.
It was at that time that the BCA-dominated council dramatically pulled two rezoning proposals – a 34-storey high-rise on Barker Avenue and a 24-storey building on Marlborough Avenue – from the docket of a public hearing less than 24 hours before they were set to go up for discussion.
The BCA made a big show of telling city staff to ask the developers to explore the possibility of including non-market rental units as part of their plans.
The move was supposed to reflect a come-to-Jesus moment in which the BCA had a housing plan.
Suddenly, they were telling developers to do more.
Of course, now that the election is over, BCA councillors don’t want to hurt Polygon’s feelings by doing anything so late in the process.
The hypocrisy is piled up so high you need stilts to wade through it.
