Meet The Candidates 2018 - Waterloo

Waterloo Meet The Candidates

Date

Sunday, 11 October 2018, 4:00pm to 6:00pm

Location

First United Church, 16 William Street, Waterloo, ON

Affordable Housing

• What will it take?
• We're building expensive buildings
• People losing housing uptown
• City has not made moves to make Affordable Housing
• But there's lots of affordable housing
  • but the rental bylaws prevent people from renting their property
  • Bylaw is not about safety; eg. no fire inspections required
• Lack of Affordable Housing is more than just bylaw; the problem also exists in jurisdictions without the rental bylaw
• Gentrification -- No affordable housing is built into new development
• But we can't have ghetto areas

• How does the Region work with Cities?
  • Can apply inclusionary zoning laws
• LRT builds up areas, but not affordable housing

• "Single biggest issue"
  • affordable housing is related to homelessness, people feeling safe in their community

• Q: How does the rental bylaw help?
  • A: It's a trade-off -- safety?
  • People were dying in unsafe housing

• Cambridge has ideas, eg. taxes on vacant land deferred
  • Developers can afford to build Affordable Housing
  • municipality provides rental supplements

• Other groups help, eg. Working Centre
• Region can lead the charge

Traffic

• Roundabouts - Is there any consultation between the Region and the Cities?
  • Concerned about areas near schools
  • Safety for pedestrians
• There was a workshop on roundabouts
  • Bicycles are vehicles too
• No-one has ever been killed in a roundabout, they're the safest thing
• St. Mary's accident with a child exiting a school bus
  • Crossing guards have been added to that roundabout

• Public consultation is important
  • Planners miss things important to residents

• Jurisdiction: Mostly on Regional roads, sometimes on Municipal roads
• Crossing guards are paid for by the Region
  • A new roundabout already has crossing guards

• Traffic calming? Roundabouts do slow traffic some

• Awareness of pedestrians in roundabouts?
  • Need 4-way lighted signals at all four entrances/exits to the roundabout (all go on at the same time)
  • Narrow bumpy streets are safe (from a trip to Bolivia)

• People don't like traffic calming
  • Speed bumps are too close to each other, or only at the ends of the street
  • Sometimes people become more accepting of traffic calming measures after they've been installed

Light Rail Transit

• When is it going to be operational?
  • Every day at Charles Street there's construction
  • There was too much construction (during LRT installation)

• How much money has been spent on repairs already?
  • Constantly tearing up concrete and putting it back
  • Large scale projects can take a lot of repairs

• Region has done a reasonably good job in budget

• The LRT lateness is due to Bombardier

• Public/Private Partnership: Poor use of resources
  • Paid too much for contractors doing work

• When extending the LRT to Cambridge don't repeat the same mistakes
  • Need better communication with property owners
  • Perhaps there should be a regional tax break for affected businesses

• Lots of infrastructure changes (water, sewer, hydro) paid for by Provincial and Federal contributions; would not have happened without the LRT

• Needs to be coordination between installing infrastructure and rails (avoid 2x road tearup)

• Transit hasn't worked in the past, why should this be different?
  • That was collusion between government and Standard Oil and General Motors to replace transit with personal vehicles

• Getting cars off the road?

• What will the LRT fare be? Less than the cost of driving?
  • Not getting people out of cars if fare is higher

• Low/No fare for economically disadvantaged
  • No fares at all (done in other jurisdictions)

• Need reasons for using cars less, eg. environmental reasons
  • Needs a balance of these reasons
  • Encourage bike lanes -- safety!
  • for well-being, exercise

Environmental sustainability

• How does environmental sustainability relate to Region?
  • Preservation of Green Belt; province to extend Green Belt area to Waterloo Region

• Waterloo Region standards already higher than other jurisdictions
  • Fear that our standards will be lowered
  • Hope that other standards will be raised to our levels!

• Drinking water (mostly from) ground water

• What mechanisms exist to promote environmental sustainability?
  • Constructive voice with the Province
  • but there is concern over the current provincial government
• Need to have provincial government hear our concerns
  • New MPPs need to hear us

• Salt in groundwater? What can the Region do?
  • People are throwing salt around
  • Region did an audit of business' salt usage
  • Salt runoff goes to pumping station at Williams and Regina
  • Region asked to have contractors minimize salt usage
  • but insufficient salt brings danger of people slipping and falling, and lawsuits
  • There are "Smart Salt" courses for contractors, but not mandatory
  • Not even Region staff follows Smart Salt guidelines
  • Snowplow operators need (Smart Salt courses?)
  • Needed at City level too
  • Need training across the board

• Countryside Line?
  • Wilmot line? Slows down traffic
  • Helps preserve countryside
  • It is challenging to get out of subdivision
  • Was it Wilmot's decision (to build outside the countryside line?)

• The Countryside Line has been in the Regional Official Plan since about 2009
  • The Cities decide what goes into areas established by the Region
  • Erbsville Road, Ira Needles, Wilmot Line, Benjamin Road, Grand River all part of the Countryside Line
  • Regional Council unanimously supported the Countryside Line
  • "The fight is done"
  • Great for biking, &c.

• The LRT helps build up, not out

• People don't want urban sprawl, but don't want high-rises in their neighbourhood either
• Province sets urban densities in the "Places To Grow Act"

• What we have to do
  • Not a lot of land left
  • Need smart growth
  • We have urban design guidelines
  • What do people want?
  • What do we have, what do we need?
  • eg. we now have a surplus of student housing

• Developments are proposed for one bedroom units, but we need room for families
• Stand behind developers so we can meet our goals

• Green space in cities
  • "Green To Grey" (https://greytogreenconference.org/)
  • Green space for physical and mental health

• Best interests of community
  • Better job of communication with residents

• Cities have a "density bonus"
  • Affordable housing can be built by flexible building codes

• Vertical communities
  • How to get people to connect with each other? Community

• Participatory budgeting
  • Folks get together to decide how to spend money
  • Funding challenges at Region

Cycling

• Behind Conestoga mall there are green paint lanes: How to use them?
• How to coordinate cycling infrastructure
  • Bike lanes in Waterloo look like parking strips in Kitchener
• Need better communication!
• Signage at intersection refer to websites: cyclists can't do that
  • If instructions are needed it's an indication that the intersection isn't designed correctly
• Cycling lanes abruptly end
• Active Transportation plan calls for 600km of cycling and pedestrian routes
• Active Transportation is in the Regional capital budget

• Older areas of the city has narrow streets
  • Can't take away roads (for bike infrastructure)

• Need a plan on how to cross the City (Region) on a bike
  • Map showing routes from north Waterloo to south Kitchener, east/west corridors

Grand River Transit

• Need major improvements for the GRT
  • The app is poor, website doesn't work on small devices
  • Region approved Transportation Master Plan three months ago
  • Includes server and website platform upgrades
• Regional transit moved from Hub-and-Spoke to a Grid pattern
  • eg. iXpress routes connecting to LRT backbone

• New On-Demand bus service, like Uber
• Plan to link ION to all-day GO trains
• Driver-less buses? (autonomous vehicles)
• Want one app for GO, VIA, Uber, taxis

• Municipal Mayors have a role on Regional Council too

Notes taken by Bob Jonkman