The city’s legal department has been put in the unique situation of determining whether it can continue with a public hearing over a major rental housing development on Commercial Drive after four city councillors walked out of council chambers in protest Tuesday night.
NPA councillors Elizabeth Ball, George Affleck, Melissa De Genova and Green Party Coun. Adriane Carr said they left the chambers because they were fed up with how Vision Vancouver Coun. Raymond Louie was running the meeting.
“Yesterday was a very, very difficult day in our public hearing,” Ball told reporters Wednesday at a news conference outside city hall. “It was impossible for us to continue because we felt that the processes were unfair, unclear…basically, the entire meeting was run improperly.”
Added Carr: “It’s very unusual that you will see myself with NPA councillors at a press conference, and it takes a lot for us to walk out of a meeting. I would have never contemplated doing that if the situation had not been so egregious.”
The walkout effectively ended the hearing into Cressey 18th Avenue Holdings Ltd.’s application to rezone five lots at Commercial Drive and East 18th Avenue to build 110 rental units and restore a heritage house and convert it into two strata housing units.
Council couldn’t resume the meeting because it did not have a quorum. The city now has to determine whether it can continue the hearing or schedule a new one. That decision was expected to be reached sometime Wednesday.
More than 20 people spoke to council during the hearing in which Vision was only represented by three of its seven members, putting the ruling party in a rare minority position for voting. Vision councillors Louie, Heather Deal and Tim Stevenson were present.
At the heart of the opposition politicians’ protest was a move by Stevenson to move a motion asking that a decision on the project be deferred until an independent report by a city arborist could assess the number of trees that would be lost in the redevelopment of the property.
Louie, who was the meeting’s chairperson, said he accepted Stevenson’s motion after conferring privately with the city clerk. The acceptance of that motion is what caused Ball, Affleck, De Genova and Carr to walk out of the chambers.
Carr said she recalled being ruled out of order at a previous hearing involving Rize Alliance’s development at 10th and Kingsway when she attempted to introduce a motion. She pointed out that Louie’s discussion with the clerk was done in private and that he “was not transparent” about the conversation.
“It is not democratic to apply one set of rules to one group of people, and another set of rules to another,” Carr said.
Louie, who stood with media at the opposition councillors’ news conference, told the Courier that he did nothing wrong and didn’t understand why the four councillors didn’t simply vote on Stevenson’s motion.
Louie noted Vision was in the minority at the hearing and Stevenson’s motion would have likely been struck down by the four other councillors. He said it was the first time since he was elected in 2002 that councillors walked out of a meeting en masse.
“Their behaviour is bizarre,” Louie said. “It’s unfortunate – for the public, for the applicant, for city staff, for the taxpayers.”
Coincidentally, at the time of the controversy, the live stream of the meeting that had operated for the two previous items on the hearing list crashed. Louie nor the opposition councillors could say why, only to say it does crash from time to time.
Resident Lee Chapelle, who lives next to the proposed project, was at Tuesday’s hearing. He also attended Wednesday’s news conference, saying “it’s really hard to figure out who’s playing what game.”
Chapelle, who opposes the project, said he hoped he wouldn’t have to attend another hearing on the proposal. He added that he didn’t think the opposition councillors should have walked out of the hearing.
“They had a majority,” he said. “If Carr and the three NPA really wanted to, they could have stayed there and voted down the motion.”
Asked why she didn’t vote for the motion, Carr told reporters: “Because that would have left hanging the very issue of the process that took place [Tuesday] night and the improper application of fair rules.”
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