COUN. Rod Clark bombarded his City of North Vancouver colleagues with motions during Monday night's council meeting, with three of his five ideas going down to defeat following a caustic debate.
In his first motion, Clark asked council to cap the development potential, or floor-surface ratio, for the Safeway site at 13th Street and Lonsdale Avenue at 2.6 times the lot area, which is what the soon-to-expire official community plan allows for. Developer Onni is in the midst of producing revised plans for that site after the city rejected a proposal that called for an FSR of 5.5 and would have included a new museum.
"If we give approval to Onni," said Clark, "we're saying all those one-storey buildings up and down Lonsdale are going to be coming in asking for at least five (FSR)."
Clark said he could live with some "limited fudging" if a developer provided certain community benefits, but anything beyond that would "rip the lid off the bottle that contains the density monster. It's going to get let loose and it will not go back in."
Coun. Craig Keating said that the Onni proposal is still in process.
"To drop a number like 2.6 in the middle of this as some kind of iron law that we shall not pass is, I think, not fair to the process that we began with the community and with Onni. . . . Is that number too low? Is that number too high? I don't know; the process will pick the number."
Coun. Guy Heywood was more direct, saying Clark's motion made "no sense," was "unconscionable" and "ham-fisted," triggering an angry exchange in council chambers.
The motion failed 6-1. But in a similar theme, Clark won a 5-2 vote for a motion that called for council to be informed of pending largescale development applications at an earlier stage.
Heywood and Mayor Darrell Mussatto were the dissenters.
Least controversial was Clark's call for a staff report on the development potential of the Presentation House land, which is complicated by density sales, a heritage designation and a provincial covenant requiring the site be used for cultural purposes. Council approved the request unanimously.
Next up was a call for council's policy committee to meet as soon as possible to discuss the upcoming Nov. 19 civic election, and particularly some of the recommendations of the civic engagement task force. Clark also blasted some of his colleagues for denying the existence of electoral slates and the mayor for spending thousands of dollars during the 2008 campaign despite facing no opposition.
Keating said it was too close to the election to start such a conversation, arguing that potential candidates were already planning their runs in good faith. To even discuss changing the rules now, he said, would be "manifestly unfair as well as unworkable."
Heywood again jabbed at Clark, calling his request "yet another specious motion." It failed 5-2, with only Coun. Pam Bookham siding with Clark.
Lastly, Clark followed through on his year-old promise to call for a referendum on the city's twin relationships with Chiba in Japan and Huizhou in China.
Clark has denounced the twinning for years, describing it as little more than a taxpayer-funded holiday for politicians and senior staff. In 2009, four members of council and the city manager visited both Asian cities as part of a $43,000 provincially funded trip. Delegates from both communities have visited North Vancouver since then.
"I've heard it described as an entitlement: you get elected to council and you get to go to Chiba, and now Huizhou . . . it's a waste of taxpayers' money," Clark said.
Heywood did not go on the 2009 trip and has also criticized the city for not reaping any economic gains from the twinning. However, he said "we can't have a referendum on a $50,000 item."
Coun. Bob Fearnley, the most passionate defender of the twinning relationships, said Clark "just doesn't get it."
"The province wants to open up business in southern China, and you have to understand how officials in that country react to having a delegation like ours come over there," he said. "It says something to them. . . . Why do we want to insult these people?"
Fearnley said the twinning provided a basis for cultural exchanges for young people, and also wondered out loud what the cost of a referendum would be. Clark's motion failed 5-2.
