Monday night council meetings are a thing to behold! They are open to the public and while many citizens do attend, the process of a council meeting, which can be long and tedious, is often just a bit to late, or early (or dull) to attend in person. Hey, the city gets that, and for several years the civic goings on of our wise and venerable Mayor & Council have been available on TV on the Shaw community channel. But what happens to those of us in our increasingly fragmented media landscape who do not have access to Shaw’s service?

Image by janusz l via Flickr

New Westminster Residents affected by the closure of the Pattullo Bridge last January will no doubt know what is coming as Translink closed the bridge again this season for a significant overhaul of the paved surfaces. Depending on where in the city you reside, festering traffic jams or placid car free streets resulted from the last bridge shut down, caused by a fire set by a transient, that spread to a wooden flex-brace structure. Areas around 20th st. and Queensborough had a nightmare on their …

 
New Westminster is working on a new sustainable development plan for our downtown area thanks to a $136,000 grant from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities‘ Green Municipal Fund. 
The plan will guide development in a proactive manner by identifying policies and implementation strategies to ensure sustainable growth of the downtown as a high quality, liveable, transit-oriented regional town centre.
The plan will:

Review land use/zoning policies
Research innovative ways to provide public open space
Foster adaptive reuse of heritage resources
Identify options to mitigate the noise, air quality and connectivity issues relating to the regional goods movement …

Video is up for last Wednesday’s all-candidates’ meeting, courtesy of David Maidman of Pumpkinhead Productions.
Part one:

Introductions
Regional transportation & the North Fraser Perimeter Road (5:00))
Food security, lower carbon footprint & healthier population (10:02)

New Westminster All-Candidates Meeting, May 6th, 2009 7-9pm from David Maidman on Vimeo.
Part two:

Provincial support for New West waterfront park
Improvements to Royal Columbian hospital (4:06)
Provincial funding for New West schools (8:49)

New Westminster All-Candidates Meeting, May 6th, 2009 7-9pm from David Maidman on Vimeo.

During the 2009 BC Election Campaign, an opportunity has been provided to all election candidates in the riding to post a brief message to their constituents. These messages will not be edited.
In the guest post below, BC Green Party Candidate Matthew Laird has responded with a few words to the voters.

Matthew Laird is well known in New Westminster for his advocacy for a more liveable city. He has a strong record of service in this community and can always be seen volunteering at events around town. As a founder …

As previously mentioned, Tenth To The Fraser is collaborating with New Westminster Environmental Partners and the BIA to organize New West’s only all-candidates’ meeting this election.
NWEP has asked us to provide them with some questions for the candidates, but we thought we’d turn it over to you, our readers: What would you like to ask Dawn Black, Carole Millar and Matthew Laird before you vote?
Leave a comment with your question, or send us a Tweet @10thtothefraser.
As a reminder, the all-candidates meeting is Wednesday, May 6, 7-9pm at …

Tenth To The Fraser will be co-hosting what may be New Westminster’s only all-candidates’ meeting on May 6. Find out what our local candidates stand for, and learn more about BC-STV. Someone from Tenth will be present and liveblogging and/or livetweeting the event, so even if you can’t make it out you’ll be able to catch the highlights online. We’ll post more details closer to the event. 
Here’s the event description from the organizing committee: 
Decisions made in Victoria have a profound influence on our life in New Westminster. Provincial decisions affect …

There was a hint of a congratulatory mood at tonight’s Annual General Meeting of the Royal City Farmer’ Market at the New Westminster Public Library.  The meeting was well attended and a number of people renewed their membership or became members with their $10 donation. Tenthtothefraser.ca also became a member in a way as both Briana and myself joined the society.
Andrew Murray, founder, past president and a major spokesperson for the RCFM, reported that over the 16 market days of the 2008 season, more than 11,000 persons attended the market …

Earlier on Tenth to the Fraser, I reviewed an All Candidates Meeting at the Queensborough Community Center. I really appreciated the event, difficult as it was in organizing an evening where 17 different candidates for Mayor and Council all tried to introduce their next three year plan to the citizens of New Westminster.
I tried to give readers of this blog a brief window into the candidates positions, and present my impressions about them as candidates. We will be covering tomorrow evening’s All Candidates Meeting (Oct 28th, 2008 at the Queensborough …

Traffic congestion and public transit infrastructure are named among the top issues for most civic election candidates in New Westminster – and it seems we’re not alone. Greater Vancouver is experiencing major growing pains related to suburbun expansion. Cost of living has boosted growth in areas like Pitt Meadows, Coquitlam, Surrey and Abbotsford, but the majority of jobs are still located in Vancouver. The result is gridlock due to the funnel effect of so many people coming into the downtown area through a limited number of access points.

Unsurprisingly, those at …