The majority of the current White Rock council campaigned in 2022 on the assertion that the previous council had been "dysfunctional."

It was a theme Mayor Megan Knight doubled-down on in this year's State of the City address in June.

In that speech she took shots at what she views as profligate spending and lack of renewal of resources by the Darryl Walker-led former administration, while, as critics pointed out, studiously avoiding mention of two of the earlier council's biggest problems â€“ coping with the uncharted territory of the COVID-19 pandemic and trying to repair severe storm damage to the promenade and the city's iconic pier. 

Yet the second year of its term showed that the current council – while perhaps not dysfunctional – has been sharply divided on a number of issues, and prone to push-back from the public on some of its less popular initiatives.

These have included planned redevelopment of a 'park' at Five Corners, which while ostensibly a measure to help reduce speeding and traffic infractions, would close an established route and actively obstruct operations for a number of long-established businesses. The latter implications had a majority of business owners and neighbourhood residents up in arms when presented at a public meeting in June.

Businesses and residents were also not too happy about the Phase 2 Johnston Road infrastructure upgrade, which constricted the busy uptown route with one-way traffic, dust and construction fences for some seven months starting in late March. The road was open again by November, after a final push to repave after delayed underground utility work was completed, although it's evident that more permanent repaving work, scheduled for the spring of 2025, will be necessary to complete the project.

Council voting patterns now established

While there were exceptions – clearly – in councillors' voting records on some specific issues, basic council voting patterns established in the first year had become quite predictable by the second.

Although not formally a slate, for instance, the grouping of councillors Bill Lawrence, Michele Partridge and Elaine Cheung around the leadership of Mayor Megan Knight – evident from the outset of the current term – has proven a solid and formidable voting majority on council.

On the other hand, councillors David Chesney, Christopher Trevelyan (both strong independent voices from the previous council), and Coun. Ernie Klassen (who has emerged as a highly independent voice in his own right) have agreed more often than not on issues, providing council with the balancing opinions of an unofficial "opposition" – even if they have become resigned to being outvoted.

All three, for example, voted in opposition to spending some $500,000 to move city hall operations to the aging annex building, particularly at a time when Knight and other council members were urging public fundraising to help pay some $100,000 for an accessibility mat that would allow residents and visitors with physical challenges to use the pier safely (council subsequently decided not to move council meetings to the annex, opting instead for the Community Centre, where council business will resume in January).

Pier accessibility mat a hot-button topic

The city finally installed an accessibility mat on the pier in late August, but not before accessibility advocate and wheelchair user Susan Bains and fellow members of the White Rock-based Equal Access Collective (EAC), motivated by city inaction on their initial request, launched a public campaign and a petition in favour of it.

The position of the council majority had been to question whether the pier was actually inaccessible – despite the presence of the large group of people with physical challenges who attended a January council meeting to tell them it was.

It had also insisted that those with physical challenges should participate in fundraising for such a mat – and had subsequently attempted to embarrass Bains publicly for not doing so – while Trevelyan and Klassen (whose own son has a physical disability) had argued that the city had community infrastructure grant money readily available to pay for the project.  

Council's about-face on green-lighting the accessibility mat seemed partly due to EAC campaigning and a successful bid for a $25,000 Social Planning and Review Council (SPARC BC) grant to help pay for it (partly facilitated by Bains herself) – but it is likely that other factors, including a growing city realization of its responsibilities to its physically challenged residents, under the terms of the Accessible British Columbia Act, was also responsible for the change of attitude.

A streamlined, smoother council

The modus operandi of city hall in 2024 seemed to favour smoothly running meetings over opportunities for residents or councillors to make impassioned pleas or express diversity of opinion, but there have been exceptions.

For instance, it was only after much pleading from nearby residents, and assurances that they would take it on themselves to help police and clean up the area, that council decided to support a daytime warming shelter at Centennial Park for the unhoused for this winter, although Knight remained adamant that council would have to field many community complaints as a result. 

Some critics have continued to argue that the unanimity of Partridge and Cheung, who ran together as the informal slate "ME" – and have since virtually voted as one – effectively denied one council seat to a candidate who would have had the opportunity to vote independently on various issues.

No doubt in a desire to streamline a process that has in the past been bogged down in endless haggling over details, Knight as chair of council – while not, clearly, attempting to predict or influence individual decisions of council members – has become more outspoken in laying out to councillors, in advance of their votes, the way in which council will approach some agenda items, most likely with the prior advice of CAO Guillermo Ferrero and other staff.

This approach has certainly helped her in keeping most council meetings to a strict two-hour duration.

But while the question-and-answer period at the beginning of each public council session has been retained, it's also a fact that shifting council meetings to a 4 p.m. start and a 6 p.m. conclusion has made it more difficult for members of the public, many of whom are still at work or commuting at that time, to attend or make comments.

Housing targets continue to drive debate

One of the major themes that continued to be expressed through 2024 was that council's hands have been tied – as other councils' hands have been tied – by provincial edicts issued in late 2023 intended to increase the housing stock throughout B.C.

City bylaws have been updated to comply with Bill 44, allowing Small Scale Multiple Unit Housing (SSMUH) developments (from four to six units on what were previously single family or duplex lots) to go ahead without public hearings – over continued warnings and protests from Knight and other council members.

They have pointed out that such density – particularly without needing adequate parking if the province deems the developments close enough to major transportation – is not appropriate for White Rock's limited land supply and often sloping terrain.

Meanwhile, councillors Cheung and Partridge have not been slow in reminding council and the public that White Rock is expected to provide 1,067 new units by the end of 2029, according to ministry-ordered targets in B.C.'s Housing Supply Act.

The provincial edicts have not, so far, led to a deluge of applications, while some major highrise developments within the city, approved years ago, remained unfinished in 2024 due to an uncertain business climate and labour shortages.

Two new major highrise proposals which came before council in late April, however, were moved forward for further consideration, largely on arguments from Knight, Cheung and Partridge that they would help meet housing targets, while receiving push-back and no-votes from Trevelyan and Chesney as being premature and too far away from what the Offical Community Plan suggests for those properties.

One was for a 31-storey building at 1513 Johnston Rd., proposed by DA Architects and Planners, while the other was for a 26-storey tower at 1556 George St., proposed by Oviedo Properties Ltd.

Lawrence noted the 31-storey proposal included two levels of civic space, beneath residential suites which he said could fit in well with the city's desire for a new "community hub" to replace an aging and overcrowded city hall.

Other residential projects, including the many-times-revised proposal for 1441 Vidal St., in its latest iteration a six-storey, 139-unit development – now with an  affordable housing component locked in by the city – are still in the process of being finalized by developers, while Nautilus' long-approved two residential towers on Oxford hill, amended last year for an increase in the number of units, sought, and received, another extension to the existing development permit in December.

The city's "community hub" idea is still years away from realization, although in January council will be asked to give direction on strategies for this long-term project.

Currently it appears the planned concentration of city hall and other facilities (including the White Rock library) in a new building will have to involve sale of part or most of the current city hall block as well as unused water facility works yard property, and it seems likely city facilities will be split between the existing hall property and a multi-storey development on Johnston Road, such as the DA Architects and Planners proposal.