Category: New Westminster

Over 800 people have signed the online petition and a number more have signed the hardcopies circulated throughout New West. The petition asks city council to rescind its decision to arbitrarily drop the ‘Royal City’ moniker.

I’ve been hearing a lot on the door steps about this issue the last couple of weeks and today I appeared on the Jas Johal Show on CKNW to discuss. If you want to hear the entire interview, please click on the image below.

My fellow council candidate karima budhwani (yes, spelling is in lower case) just issued this media release today. I support where she is going with this and hope we can give the Canada Games the opportunity for a second lease on life!

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New Westminster (June 30th, 2022): New West Progressives council candidate karima budhwani is requesting the City of New Westminster explore all options regarding the existing Canada Games Pool building. She’s calling for a cost-benefit analysis to be conducted and shared with the public regarding the feasibility of refurbishing the current building envelope in order that it can house a new year-round indoor sports and recreation facility.

“We’re about to tear down what appears to be a perfectly good building while we are facing a major infrastructure deficit in our city,” says budhwani. “I think we should be exploring whether we can remove the pool, while keeping the building envelope and converting the inside to a year-round facility that can be used by our seniors, youth and families.”

The floor surface area within the Canada Games Pool building is large enough to house a significant number of indoor sports and recreational activities. This could include new pickleball and volleyball courts as well as indoor gymnastics and other recreational activities that are well suited for the indoors.

“Our city is rapidly growing and we need to explore every opportunity we can to be adding capacity for our citizens who want to participate in sport and recreational activities,” says budhwani. “The thought of tearing down what appears to be a perfectly good building and hauling it off to the dump and recycling centers doesn’t makes sense to us unless that was the only option available.”

According to the City of New Westminster website, the current Canada Games Pool building is slated to be demolished and converted into new surface parking lot spaces.

“I realize there were some challenges to accommodate parking, but tearing down a perfectly good building that could have been repurposed should haven’t been the only solution.”

The Record published a story today about concerns expressed by the New West Progressives regarding the shelving of a report by city hall outlining serious human resource challenges at city hall.  I couldn’t agree more with mayoral candidate Ken Armstrong when he says we need to focus on the basics and make sure city staff are not being pulled in multiple directions.

Here are some excerpts of the story…and a link to the entire story below:

The City of New Westminster’s staffing challenges highlight the need to focus on core civic responsibilities, say the New West Progressives.

On Monday, council received a staff report and memos from several department heads outlining some of the staffing challenges being faced by the City of New Westminster. In response to “higher than anticipated” staff vacancies due to retirements, departures and challenges with recruiting staff, some department are changing up their work plans and delaying work on some projects.

The reports prompted some councillors to comment that council has heard staff’s concerns, is concerned about the issue, and will do what it can to support staff and city projects.

Ken Armstrong, mayoral candidate for the New West Progressives, issued a press release the following day stating that the NWP team has heard city staff “loud and clear” and is committed to addressing staff’s concerns rather than “shelving them” in a report. He said the report to council showed that city staff are impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, short on capacity due to the tight labour market and are overburdened with city council’s strategic priorities.

“First and foremost, our thought is that we acknowledge that the city hall staff are singularly the most valuable resource the city has, and we want to be as supportive as possible with them,” Armstrong told the Record. “A clear meta message from this report is the staff are either burnt out or on the verge of being burnt out. I think everything that can be done needs to be done to support them through that. And that’s a challenge for sure.”

Armstrong noted staff have identified various opportunities and priorities for addressing staffing challenges.

The New West Progressives have consistently called for a “back to basics” approach to running city hall – a message they’re reiterating in response to the staffing challenges currently being faced by the city.

…The New West Progressives have consistently called for a “back to basics” approach to running city hall – a message they’re reiterating in response to the staffing challenges currently being faced by the city.

“We would really encourage our city council to direct the city staff to really focus on the basics, the core responsibilities that city hall has with potholes, with repairing the sidewalks, with maintaining our parks, and these kind of topics, ahead of some of the other sort of special projects,” he said. “Not that the special projects aren’t valuable, but when you have finite and taxed resources you sort of need to consolidate around the core responsibilities.”

Click here to read entire story