On Monday, Mayor Mike Hurley presented his state of the city address to the Burnaby Board of Trade, laying out a high-level map for 2022.
Hurley focused on the city’s housing, transportation and climate plans, and summarized major projects underway.
Burnaby's strategies to create housing featured prominently in the mayor’s address.
“Housing is a provincial and federal responsibility,” Hurley said, “but when others don't take action, our residents suffer.”
After noting that council recently adopted a new housing and homelessness strategy, the mayor continued, “If someone copies what you've done, it's the biggest form of flattery. The Vancouver mayor just announced a very, very similar [plan] — eerily similar to what we spent two years putting together.”
Hurley was referring to Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s newly proposed protections for renters under the city’s Broadway Plan, which are comparable to those in Burnaby’s rental use zoning and tenant assistance policies.
Highlights from Mayor Hurley's state of the city address:
- More than 9,600 units of rental housing, market and non-market, are currently being built or in the development stream — the city says there are more non-market rental units being built than market rentals
- The city is reviewing how to eliminate delays to business development processes
- A new temporary use permit bylaw allows landowners to apply for a permit to construct a building or temporarily use their land in a way that doesn’t conform to the zoning bylaws for a specific property for up to three years
- Burnaby approved its first major update to its transportation plan in 25 years in 2021
- Last year, city crews picked up more than 20,000 tonnes of green waste, which comprised of more than half of all the materials collected
- Phase 1 of a five-kilometre lighting display along the BC Parkway is completed; the project will include lighting over 178 SkyTrain pillars between Patterson and Edmonds stations
- National Indigenous Peoples Day will be at Civic Square this year on June 21
- Deer Lake Park will host the Blues and Roots Festival on Saturday, Aug. 6 and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s free concert on Saturday, July 16
