Port Moody city council voted Tuesday to reject Metro Vancouver’s Regional Growth Strategy, a 30-year infrastructure plan set out to deal with the 1.2 million new residents expected in Metro Vancouver by 2040.

In a five-to-one vote that saw every councillor (except an absent Coun. Meghan Lahti) vote down the growth strategy, Port Moody Mayor Joe Trasolini registered the lone vote in favour of accepting the plan.

City councillors roundly rejected the 30-year growth strategy in keeping with the city’s ongoing “no-growth” policy, which calls for construction to have begun on the Evergreen Line and the Murray-Clarke Connector before any further development in the city is allowed.

Their worry, as always, is traffic as Port Moody has become an increasingly congested choke point between Port Coquitlam and Coquitlam and communities to the west.

Coun. Karen Rockwell said that unless Port Moody is ready to block all non-resident commuter traffic from entering the city, she would not support the growth strategy.

Coun. Mike Clay’s response to Metro Vancouver over the plan was, “Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us.”

He also said it’s Port Moody’s responsibility to warn other Metro municipalities against believing that if they meet Metro’s population targets, they’ll get the transportation infrastructure promised in the growth strategy.

Despite voting to accept the growth strategy, Mayor Trasolini agreed with Clay that Coquitlam and other Metro municipalities are rushing ahead too quickly with development projects, saying they should look to Port Moody as an example of responsible, sustainable growth.

The first draft of the Regional Growth Strategy was drawn up in November 2009 and municipalities have been requesting adjustments ever since. 

This, the third and final draft of the Regional Growth Strategy, addresses some of PoMo council’s past requests for the region, such as that Moody Centre be included on Metro’s maps of “Local Centres, Hospitals and Post Secondary Institutions” and that Metro Vancouver increase its affordable housing stock.

But on the issue of including Murray-Clarke and the Evergreen Line in Metro’s priority Future Major Road Upgrades, Metro Vancouver responded that all transportation financing and governance for the region ultimately begins and ends with TransLink and not the Metro Vancouver Board.

tcoyne@tricitynews.com