A divided City of North Vancouver council narrowly approved a payment of $1 million to Port Metro Vancouver Monday night, money the port will use to produce detailed designs for a new Low Level Road.
If the design is acceptable to council, the funds will be returned - although the city will eventually have to contribute $800,000 towards the construction of the $57-million project. The city will also host an information session and a public meeting before voting on the port's plans.
In front of a packed gallery, Mayor Darrell Mussatto extended the usual public input period before the meeting to allow several South Slope residents and waterfront labour officials to speak, as well as representatives from TransLink and the North Vancouver Chamber of Commerce.
The Low Level Road realignment is a joint project by the port, its industrial tenants, TransLink, the federal government and the city. The goal is to raise the street surface higher up the adjacent slope to the north, separating road traffic from the adjacent train tracks and stabilizing the slope in the process. Overpasses would eliminate the two at-grade crossings of the train tracks. But council refused to approve the work in mid June, in large part due to the lack of design drawings and the significant mistrust of the port by nearby residents. In a letter to the city manager, port officials argued the new deal would advance the design work, protect the port from some financial liability, and give the city some engineering data on the slope even if the road didn't go ahead.
But Carol Abbott, co-chair of the North Vancouver South Slope Community Association, told Mussatto the slope stabilization argument was being overstated.
"When, in all your years on council, have you advocated for the safety of the slope?" she asked. "You are willing to spend millions on the Green Necklace and you have proposed a multi-million dollar bike lift for Lonsdale. Even though studies in November of 1991 and 2007, done by professional consultants, have proven the need for stabilizing the slope, nothing has been done. Now, when the profits of multifaceted corporations making multi-billions of annual dollars are being threatened, we are all being asked to toe the line and rush this major decision through."
Other residents told council the port was "fearmongering" by tying the road work to the stabilization, and pointed out that the city had built sections of the Spirit Trail in the area already.
Anne McMullin, president of the chamber of commerce, told council there are several other community issues in play.
"The benefits include improving a potentially dangerous road. The improved road would create more separation between road and rail traffic, improving safety in the area and reducing whistle noises. . . . The improvements to the Low Level Road have the potential to improve the environment, to improve safety, and to allow our nation's port industries to grow and create jobs, increasing tax dollars for our city."
Joe Santelli, a city resident and safety facilitator for Neptune Terminals, said he had worked around the Low Level Road for 33 years.
"I've seen close calls every day, accidents waiting to happen," he said. "People that run the train crossing in frustration and the amount of man hours lost are enormous. The wait time to cross the tracks can take from five minutes to a half hour, every morning when I go to work."
As well as reduced whistling, Santelli said the re-engineered road would allow for better emergency response times in the event of an accident on the waterfront.
"We are all aware that the first 15 minutes are the most crucial in the recovery of a patient. If the crossing is blocked by a train, as it most often is, by the time all parties are contacted to clear the crossing the 15 minutes is basically gone," he said.
Santelli said he himself had waited 30 minutes for paramedics to arrive after an accident at Neptune.
Santelli couldn't have asked for a better illustration of his point - even while council debated the issue, emergency services were en route to a rail crossing outside Neptune, where a truck had been struck by a CN locomotive.
Coun. Guy Heywood asked deputy city engineer Douglas Pope if the city was really saving any money by contributing to the design costs.
"Solely just on the information we're going to gain, it wouldn't be worth a million dollars," said Pope, adding that the road-design work was much more involved than a stand-alone geotechnical study of the South Slope, which would likely cost a few hundred thousand dollars.
"The crucial issue was the absence of detailed design," said Coun. Craig Keating. "What's before us now is a proposal that will give us a detailed design and still give council the opportunity to say yea or nay at the end of the day whether or not this thing should go ahead."
Responding to suggestions that a milliondollar investment might bind council to the project, Keating said "I don't want to disillusion people about how money is spent in this place, but council recently spent $1.2 million on a consultant's report on Harry Jerome (Recreation Centre) and I supported the decision to not go ahead with the results of that."
Coun. Rod Clark said bringing the issue back before council in late July only further damaged the port's credibility with residents.
"It's completely unfair to the community to rally them in the middle of the summer with four days notice. As your councillor I am protesting that and saying to Port Metro Vancouver 'You have to do a better job in the future.'"
Clark proposed that the issue be deferred to September, giving the port time to "sit down with the community in an honest, believable, shirt-sleeve fashion and hammer out a consultation program that is acceptable to the community, to city council, and to them."
"Port Metro Vancouver needs a time out," Clark said. "It's obvious as hell that you don't know anything about community consultation."
However, Clark's deferral suggestion was voted down 5-2, with only Coun. Pam Bookham supporting him. The two councillors were also the only votes against the port's overall proposal.
The million dollar contribution was voted on separately, and Coun. Mary Trentadue joined them on the losing end of a 4-3 vote.
The port's designs are expected to be ready in the spring of 2012.
