The Challenge
Broken roads and sidewalks, permitting delays for businesses and new housing, slow responses to service calls, and decreased access to amenities are all too common in Vancouver. Decades of regulatory bloat, failure to adequately renew aging infrastructure, and senior governments’ downloading of costs for housing, homelessness, childcare, community safety, and mental health and addictions have undermined the City’s ability to deliver the services and amenities expected by people that live, work and play in Vancouver.
Greens will champion a practical and streamlined approach to delivering services that prioritizes customer satisfaction, leverages new tools and policies, and reduces red tape. Green Councillors will continue to prioritize value for taxpayers, good public amenities, renewal of our aging infrastructure, and advocacy with senior levels of government to greatly reduce the cost and impacts of downloading.
Top Priorities
- Guarantee permit and licensing timelines to reduce uncertainty and risks in projects. Establish firm, transparent timelines and deliverables for processing permits and licenses.
- Enable more online applications and simple forms for straight-forward requests. Ensure they are efficient and easy-to-use with menus of common repeatable service requests.
- Increase delivery of needed public amenities that put people first, like active transportation infrastructure, street furniture and benches, slow streets, parklets, and plazas.
- A cleaner, properly maintained city. Target investments in micro-cleaning, removal of street litter, graffiti and nuisance tagging, enforcing property maintenance and untidy premise bylaws, and supporting the maintenance and cleanliness of City streets, utilities, and services.
- Public safety that equitably meets our city’s needs with a continuum of community, health and protective services, that grow with our city and adapt to meet our complex needs.
- Zero-waste infrastructure: Create more zero waste sites and options to reduce waste City-wide, supporting reusables, and separated garbage/recycling bins.
- Public washrooms for everyone by investing and partnering to build, maintain and provide access to public washrooms and ensuring everyone’s right to basic sanitation.
Solutions
Greens will deliver a well-organized public service that runs efficiently and transparently, and prioritizes customer service and satisfaction in all activities.
STREAMLINE PERMITTING AND LICENSING
INNOVATIVE, RESPONSIVE AND EFFICIENT REGULATIONS AND SERVICES
STREAMLINE PERMITTING AND LICENSING
Make the permits and licensing systems more efficient to enable businesses to thrive and much-needed housing to be built more quickly across the City. Greens will:
- Guarantee permit and licensing timelines to reduce uncertainty and risks in projects. Establish firm, transparent timelines and deliverables for processing permits and licenses.
- Shift the focus of permitting and licensing into a service department where customer satisfaction and regulatory efficiency are key performance indicators.
- Enable more online applications and simple forms for straight-forward requests. Ensure they are efficient and easy-to-use with menus of common repeatable service requests.
- Assign a single point of contact case manager to clients for more complex service requests, to improve customer service and expedite permitting.
- Trust the experts. Where applicable, trust third party professionals like engineers to certify projects and accelerate the review process. Create a fast lane for qualified and experienced applicants.
PRIORITIZE ESSENTIAL SERVICES
Services that keep our City safe, clean, and well-run help everyone. Greens will prioritize:
- Public washrooms for everyone by investing and partnering to build, maintain and provide access to public washrooms and ensuring everyone’s right to basic sanitation.
- A cleaner, properly maintained city by targeting investments in micro-cleaning, removal of street litter, graffiti and nuisance tagging, enforcing property maintenance and untidy premise bylaws, and supporting the maintenance and cleanliness of City streets, utilities, and services.
- Public safety that equitably meets our city’s needs with a continuum of community, health and protective services, that grow with our city and adapt to meet our complex needs. (For more protective services and Fire and Rescue, see our Community Health and Safety Platform).
- Public Libraries that are accessible, equitably distributed and funded for the variety of services they provide beyond just books.Staff must have job security and workplace support.
- All City services must be accessible, accountable, timely and transparent. A customer service lens must be adopted for all front-facing public interactions.
INCREASE PUBLIC AMENITIES
Scale-up the delivery of needed public amenities that provide comfort and enjoyment in the public realm. Greens will:
- Enhance and add public amenities that put people first, like active transportation infrastructure, street furniture and benches, slow streets, parklets, and plazas.
- Emphasize heath, safety and comfort in public amenity design and delivery with adequate lighting, regular maintenance, safe spaces, and crime prevention through environmental design.
- Ensure parks and recreation facilities are equitably available and maintained city-wide with adequate budget allocations and ongoing monitoring and evaluation.
- Make trees and public greenspace a condition of new development, including commitments to maintain them and ensure they continue to enhance the quality and comfort of City life.
- Implement a surcharge on parking meter revenue and allocate revenues to local Business Improvement Associations to fund enhanced City services in public places like plaza programming and micro-cleaning.
MODERNIZE CITY INFRASTRUCTURE
We must reverse the decades of underspending on infrastructure renewal and public amenities that have eroded the basic services necessary for the efficient functioning and resilience of our City. Greens will champion:
- Infrastructure maintenance: Fund best practice schedules for renewal of infrastructure and public assets, including streets, sidewalks, sewers, buildings and greenspaces to make up for decades of neglect.
- Resilient infrastructure: Invest in resilience to climate change and seismic risk with cooling and warming centres for vulnerable people, rain and storm surge management, blueways, greenways, sewer separation and eliminating raw sewage outflows. (For more on this, see our Climate Platform.)
- Active transportation infrastructure: Enhance walking, cycling, rolling infrastructure city-wide by prioritizing investments in equity, safety and comfort for active transportation. This includes repairing bike routes, enhancing sidewalks, and adding bulges and curb cuts.
- Zero-waste infrastructure: Create more zero waste sites and options to reduce waste City-wide, supporting reusables, and separated garbage/recycling bins.
- Smart infrastructure: Integrate low-cost smart information and communication technologies into all traffic and safety system renewals. Coordinate project timing and less disruptive repair technologies (like cast-in-place pipes) to minimize public and road disruption. Expand district energy and co-located utilities. As street lamps reach end-of-life, replace and retrofit with LED and explore private partnerships to install curbside electric vehicle charging.
INNOVATIVE, RESPONSIVE AND EFFICIENT REGULATIONS AND SERVICES
The pandemic forced our City to adapt to new ways of connecting and doing business. Greens will champion transforming those successful innovations into permanent improvements.
- Reduce timelines for approvals of special events and activations. Refine and implement clear and simple planning templates for events. Reduce duplication and departmental siloing with one-stop shop service and deliverables.
- Make patio and pop-up programs permanent and easier to implement by greatly reducing the complexity of design/build requirements, while prioritizing construction efficiency, customer comfort and life safety.
- Modernize liquor permits and regulations by revising decades-old and overlapping liquor policies including primary and dual licenses, minimum distances, on-site entertainment, and area-wide moratoriums, in order to be more responsive to contemporary consumer trends, modern provincial regulation and changing zoning in new city plans.
- Support innovative city-building, make it easier to try and pilot new ideas, and plan ways to make them permanent if and when they work.
- Embrace new technologies. World-leading digital technologies and Web3 industries are being home grown right here in Vancouver. Encourage opportunities to test and trial new innovations, efficiencies and partnerships, with everything from blockchain to internet of things and smart cities.