Monday, February 10, 2025

Making our Community Less Lonely: Building Housing for Social Connection

While it may seem that we are more connected than ever, loneliness and isolation are rising. The pandemic showed us that no amount of technology replaces face-to-face interaction with others. Langley City is a walkable community, and we've intentionally designed our public spaces, parks, libraries, and community centres to help people connect.

Langley City is also a community where 80% of households live in apartments or townhouses. So, there is an excellent opportunity to think about how we design semi-public spaces in and around these buildings to support bringing people together. Community gardens are one of the most basic and powerful connectors I've seen. We have many community gardens in our parks and new apartment projects. Of course, we can go beyond community gardens.

SFU, Happy Cities, and Hey Neighbour Collective have been researching and developing design toolkits to help municipalities and home builders create buildings that support social connections. To be clear, this isn't about co-living, as most people also love the privacy of their own home, but it does include outdoor and indoor amenity spaces of buildings, how buildings connect with the street, lobbies, balconies, hallways, and other common spaces.

The following are the six design principles for the "Building Social Connections" toolkit.

  • Location: Maximize opportunities for interaction by locating social features and spaces in convenient, visible, and prominent locations with natural light; Multiply social impact through co-location.
  • Invitation: Maximize spontaneous daily encounters by designing places to pause and interact; Use the built environment as an icebreaker for social interaction.
  • Activation: Create interesting, functional spaces and a centre or heart for the community through diverse scales of common spaces with intentional things to see and do.
  • Inclusion: Create spaces that are accessible and safe for people of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds; Reflect different cultural preferences and identities.
  • Transition: Balance high-quality, livable private homes with common spaces; Consider thoughtful transitions and gradients from public to private space.
  • Evolution: Nurture a sense of belonging through stewardship of common spaces; Allow spaces to evolve with residents over time to meet changing community needs.
A visual example of the "Invitation" principle. Select the image to enlarge.

One of the things that stood out to me is that many of these considerations can be applied to existing buildings with simple retrofits or even just new furniture.

If you are interested in how to design buildings that help combat loneliness and support community, check out the toolkit and visit the Hey Neighbour Collective website.

Thursday, February 6, 2025

Apply Today for Langley City's Citizens' Assembly

As I've posted about in the past, Langley City is starting a Citizens' Assembly on Community Safety to create a Made-in-Langley-City action plan to improve safety and well-being.

A Citizens' Assembly is a form of direct democracy where regular folks create City policy. The City is fully supporting assembly members with data, people with knowledge about community safety best practices, and people to help facilitate the assembly process.

If you are over the age of 16 and either live in or own a business in Langley City, you can apply to become a member.

The City will randomly select 29 people from those who apply to join the assembly. The selected folks will reflect the current makeup of our community. People will receive a living wage when attending the assembly meeting, and the City will provide support to help them participate in the assembly.

I genuinely believe the only way to create a safer community where people's well-being is improved is when we all come together. We live in a divisive time, so I'm proud that we are coming together to solve real challenges in Langley City.

The deadline to apply is Friday, February 7th. Last week, Langley City mailed out an application postcard to every household in our community. You can also directly apply at https://langleycity.ca/CitizensAssembly

Don't delay, apply today!

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Langley City's Proposed 2025 Capital Projects Budget

Last week, I posted how Langley City compares with other Metro Vancouver municipalities regarding total property tax and debt per household. Yesterday, I posted a breakdown of the proposed 2025 property rate, including proposed changes that Council is considering. Today, I wanted to highlight our proposed 2025 capital projects budget.

The City pays for these projects through reserve accounts, development fees and contributions, casino revenue, grants, and loans. Every year, the City takes a portion of property tax revenue and puts it into reserve accounts. These reserve accounts are savings accounts. The property tax infrastructure levy I posted about yesterday is one component. The City also receives grants from the federal government, province, ICBC, and TransLink to help fund specific projects.

This year's proposed capital budget is $16.3 million. The following chart shows the breakdown of projects by type. You can hover or click on each pie slice to get more information.

Some of the biggest proposed projects for 2025 include:

  • $2.9 million to renew the water main on 200 Street (between 44 Ave to 50 Ave)
  • $2.3 million to renew the storm sewer on 198 St (between 55A Ave and 54 Ave)
  • $1.3 million to renew the storm sewer on 201 St (between Michaud Crescent and 56 Ave)
  • $800,000 for road rehabilitation

There are a lot of smaller projects in the capital budget, including walking, cycling, repaving, and transit improvement. One of the projects that I'm looking forward to seeing completed is the Linwood Park Shade Sails/Picnic Area and Aquatic Facility Feasibility Study.

For more information, you can read the capital projects plan in the City's proposed 2025 - 2029 Financial Plan.

Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Langley City's Proposed 2025 Operating Budget

Last week, I posted about where Langley City stands today with property tax and debt compared to other municipalities in Metro Vancouver as Council was preparing to discuss the 2025 budget. Council gave first and second reading of the preliminary budget last Monday.

Today, I will review the ongoing operating budget, and later this week, I will review the capital projects. I wrote a post called "Infographic: understanding how revenue the City of Langley receives is used," which provides a good overview of our various funding sources and how we use them.

Maintaining our status quo funding levels requires a 4.3% property tax increase in 2025.

Status quo doesn't mean maintaining the same level of service. As our population grows, we need to increase our level of service.

For example, let's say we have 10 spaces for a recreation program. Maintaining our status quo funding means maintaining those same 10 spaces. The demand for those 10 spaces increases as the population increases, and the level of service decreases as a result. So if our population grows from 20,000 to 30,000, we need to provide 15 spaces to maintain the same level of service.

Back to the 4.3%, the biggest driver of this increase is wages and benefits, which are negotiated through collective agreements. The federal government negotiates the RCMP collective agreements. Municipalities negotiate other collective agreements, though collective agreements across local governments in our region have some consistency.

About 40% of the $2.7 million in status quo operating cost increases is due to our RCMP contract, detachment, and community policing office. About another 30% is other employee wage and benefit costs.

Other drivers for the 4.3% increase include fire rescue service equipment, our library contract with the Fraser Valley Regional Library system, and increases in software license costs.

This $2.7 million was offset by increased projected taxes due to population growth, reduced debt services costs, and increased fees. The net status quo overall increase works out to $1.8 million.

Council also preliminary approved other increases in the 2025 budget. This includes:

  • An increase to our infrastructure levy to pay for roads, water, and sewer projects. This increase works out to $418,000 or 1%
  • Two additional firefighters to keep up with population growth and prepare for SkyTrain. The cost is an additional $350,000 or 0.8% increase in property tax
  • A new IT worker to help ensure we are safe from cyber security attacks. This cost is an additional $99,500 or 0.2%
  • A new recreation worker to support our events. This cost is an additional $89,000 or 0.2%
  • Keeping our pool open an extra month (in September.) This cost is an additional $68,240 or 0.2%

All in, the proposed 2025 property tax increase is 6.7%.

If you'd like to learn more about the 2025 budget, please consider attending Langley City's budget open house from 6 pm until 8 pm on Thursday, February 6th, at City Hall. You can find out more about the budget and the open house on Langley City's website.

Monday, February 3, 2025

26-Unit Townhouse Project on 208th Street in Uplands

Last Monday, Langley City Council gave first and second reading, which if approved, would allow the construction of a 26-unit townhouse project between 45A Avenue and 46 Avenue on the east side of 208th Street in the Uplands Neighbourhood.

Render of the proposed project at 20815 45A Avenue & 4560, 4570 and 4580 208 Street. Select the image to enlarge.

In BC, anyone can build up to four housing units on a lot. Langley City has a minimum lot size of 5,995.69 sq. ft. for our regular detaching housing zone. Many larger lots in our community can be subdivided if the resulting new lots meet the City's minimum lot size requirements. Building up to four units and subdividing a lot does not require the approval of Council. The minimum parking requirement is 1 to 1.5 parking spaces per unit, in alignment with provincial standards.

Langley City Official Community Plan allows for townhouses and 'plexes at a slightly higher density than the provincial minimum along the 200th Street and 208th Street corridors. The City requires increased parking and the implementation of our Townhome & Plex-Home Best Practices Guide in exchange for this slightly higher density.

If the builder followed the "by right" provincial minimums, they could build 24 housing units with 36 parking spots for this proposed project. Council would have no say.

Because they are choosing to go through our rezoning process for 26 housing units, they must provide 52 residents parking spaces (2 per unit) plus six additional visitor parking spaces. They must also setback the townhouse units further away from the existing properties to the east and preserve some of the trees on the site. The townhouses themselves must also step back in height on their eastern edge. The project must include at least 50% of the units with side-by-side garages (this proposed project has 58%.) The project must contribute $36,000 to help improve a nearby park (in addition to regular contributions and fees.) The project also cannot allow balconies facing to the east. The project must widen the sidewalk on 208th Street along the project.

Tree management plan for the proposed project. Select the image to enlarge.

With two additional units, the City can achieve a significant number of additional benefits for the neighbourhood.