Low number of special needs transit riders concerns councillor
Fewer residents took special needs transit during the second quarter of this year, which concerned Coun. Dawn Luhning since she thought that particular mode of transportation was highly used. According to a second-quarter report presented during city council’s Aug. 12 regular meeting, a total of 9,833 riders used special needs transit from April to June. In comparison, 10,470 people used special needs transit during the same time last year, which represents a decrease of 6.1 per cent. “I’m confused by that because I know the demand for special needs continues to be high,” said Luhning. “I don’t know if administration has an answer to that, or if there’s something missing in those numbers too that aren’t accounted for. It just looked odd to me.”
This is an area administration is monitoring, said Josh Mickleborough, director of engineering. Officials are putting much thought and consideration into addressing why the numbers look low. While administration will present a report to council later this year, he noted changes to major clientele and when certain buildings are open had an effect on ridership numbers. Council voted 6-1 to accept the Q2 report; Coun. Brian Swanson was opposed.
City administration provided feedback to questions from councillors about the following areas:
• The property assessment roll was open from March 6 to April 5 and 104 appeals were received. There were 24 residential/ agricultural properties that signed agreements to adjust. Hearings were scheduled for the remaining commercial appeals. The board of revision has until Sept. 2 to complete its decisions.
The number of appeals was high since many businesses took advantage of the opportunity to appeal, said city clerk Myron Gulka-Tiechko. He didn’t know why that was but pointed out there has been plenty of activity the last couple of years for appeals.
• A request for proposal was issued for the design of a new city website and for content migration. Administration hopes to launch a new municipal website by early January 2020.
• A three-member committee met on June 3 to work on recommendations about what future council remuneration should look like. The panel is composed of Gulka-Tiechko, Brenda Berry from the labour council and Greg McIntyre from the chamber of commerce.
The next meeting is in September.
• The parks department received one application for the adopt-a-bench program. Parks officials are waiting on the design from the applicant.
• No applications have been received yet for the streetlight banner project. The parks department is still installing the banner brackets on the light poles.
• A contractor has been hired to install leftturn signal lights at the intersections of First Avenue Northwest and Caribou Street West, and Ninth Avenue Southwest and Lillooet Street West, for a cost of $581,162. The engineering department is now waiting for the contractor’s schedule, but expects the work to be completed by November. “These are problematic intersections in the city,” said Mickleborough. “We want to get them done.”
• The majority of new residential builds during the second quarter were greenfill developments and not infill developments. There were 85 building permits issued with a value of more than $4.3 million, compared to 72 permits issued worth $4.6 million during the same time last year.
So far this year 113 building permits worth $10.9 million have been issued for residential, commercial/industrial and institutional projects.
• There were 50 new business licences issued, 136 renewed and 45 closed during Q2. Since January, there have been 124 new licences, 1,709 renewed and 129 closed.