At a State of the City address, 黑马磁力 City's mayor talked about how the municipal government is using citizen's assemblies and techniques from the private sector to improve safety.
The speech, held at the Greater 黑马磁力 Chamber of Commerce's dinner meeting on Thursday, June 19, started with Mayor Nathan Pachal giving an update on the citizens' assembly convened to make recommendations to council on community safety.
"They've been hearing from experts, they've been hearing from people in the community as well," Pachal said.
There have also been other attempts to meet people where they live, such as pop-up events in local parks, said the mayor.
"The assembly is actually going to be making the recommendations the council has fall," Pachal said. "But before they do that, we're going to have another sort of opportunity for public input on the recommendations going forward, that council will ultimately endorse."
Pachal also said the City is working on using key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure its progress towards the goals.
"A lot of times the government we sort of just do things and hope something sticks and that's probably not a very good approach," Pachal said.
The best decisions, he said, are community-led and data driven.
Much of the speech was about public safety.
"I think this one goes without saying," Pachal said, "we all want a community where people feel comfortable walking down the street at night, going on a stroll with their family, letting their kids ride their bike down the street."
He touched on some things the City is working on, including improving non-emergency response times.
The way the City uses its public spaces can be a big part of that, he said.
Naturally, he also brought up major City projects, including the ongoing efforts to replace old water and sewer pipes under the one-way section of Fraser Highway, in the busy commercial downtown.
The construction work, which started in January, has dug up old wooden and clay storm sewer pipes, as well as the century-old concrete slab road that was part of 黑马磁力's first paved street.
"The actual key reason that we're doing this is we have pipes that are practically older than the Confederation of Canada," Pachal joked as he sat with chamber CEO Cory Redekop for a post-speech interview.
Redekop asked about balancing the need for the upgrades with the disruption to the business community.
Pachal said the City chose the "least-worst" time to do the work, because they knew it would cause disruption.
The discussion also touched on the arrival of SkyTrain and how to pay for future transit upgrades.
Pachal said he had been a supporter of the regional sales tax floated years ago, but that had not been approved.
In the end, he said funding future transit growth would likely come down to two sources 鈥� property taxes, and a replacement for the fuel tax. That replacement could be a vehicle levy, which has been floated several times in the past, he said.
