Uptown Centre

We are now about a year away from the opening of phase 1 of the new Uptown Centre, the former Town and Country. The website has a nice new feature, a fly through of the whole site.

I viewed the video and got a much better idea of how the whole thing will look, but I also have some concerns:

• I am amazed to see how much surface parking there will be on the site.
• I can not see what is happening with the large building at the north corner - the one with the big flat green roof. It seems to be a big chunk of nothing at the moment.
• It would have been nice if some short (8-10 storey) residential towers had been included in the site. Getting more people living on site would have improved site usage day and night.
• I also thought that there was going to transit integration - I can see nothing like that in the fly through. I do not see how the buses could function as a transit hub on the site.
• I also do not see any integration with the Galloping Goose/Lochside trail. In fact the northern end looks like it will shut out that as a possibility. The site is located at the nexus of the busiest bike routes in the region and remains apart.
• The stretch along Blanshard is going to make that street almost tunnel like with the large high walls from the development along the street. I had hoped for more improvement along that side.
• The whole site feels like it is going to encourage people to drive around it. It does not look and feel like it would encourage more walking.
• The site could have also been a better entrance to Victoria for tourists if there had been the inclusion of a hotel on the site. Ideally one that would have conference space as well.
  

Some other ideas that could be interesting:

• Have the Greater Victoria School District move their offices to this site and then sell off the old Mount Tolmie school site for redevelopment.
• Build a pedestrian overpass from the Save-on-Foods plaza to the site.
• Build a pedestrian overpass to the Galloping Goose
• Encourage a live music venue at the site
• Encourage a movie theatre at the site.
• Get some post secondary education located on the site - an in town Royals Road site, a UVic Extension site, or University Canada West.

View Royal is using Facebook to get input on their OCP

You can add the View Royal OCP Update as a friend on facebook. I am very interested and intrigued to see if this has any impact on public engagement.

There are some photo albums on there with pics of the community.

At the moment there are only 12 people that are friends of View Royal. My sense of the usefulness of facebook for the provincial election to try and get more engagement with politics is that the venue does not work well for that. Will it work better for View Royal?

View Royal suffers from not having a unifiying reason for being - I know there are those of you out there that disagree with me, but I still can not see what holds it all together. There is no rec centre, there is no library, no community centre, no signigicant shopping centre, no radio station, no newspaper, there is nothing there to allow the community coalesce around.

The neighbourhoods are often very nice ones, but they are small and seperated groups of people.

If online is going to work, it is with somewhere like View Royal that will be able to show how it works better than the status quo.

Peninsula Coop AGM coming up - this relates to problems in how local elections are run

I like the idea of Coops because membership allows people to have control over the business. Peninsula Coop here in the Greater Victoria area is doing well and thriving. We have only been members for about nine months, the opening of a station in our neighbourhood pushed us to join.

We are likely to buy about 1000 litres of fuel from the Coop this year. Members get a rebate based on how much they buy, last year it was 8 cents a litre. Based on 6 to 8 cents a litre, we are expecting a $60 to $80 rebate. The savings are great and I suspect the major reason people join the Coop. I like these savings, but it is the democratic nature of the business that attracts me more.

I am a member of MEC, I have been a member of credit unions as well, though at the moment I am not and it would be a HUGE hassle to move all the accounts over. The service the Bank of Nova Scotia has been offering me has been great and my prefered credti union does not exist here - Interior Savings. I was with Interior Savings when I live in Lillooet and the annual rebates we got were amazing, as much as $1500 in one year.

Seems not all is right with the Peninsula Coop, or at least I think they may be going in the wrong direction. Seems they contributed $16 000 to people running in the Central Saanich election. Sue Stroud of Central Saanich who ran in the election also writes about this here.

It bothers me that the action was taken by the Coop to get involved with the election without involving the membership in the discussion.

Peninsula Co-op’s Mission, Vision & Principles

Our Mission

We are committed to providing renowned service and working together to enhance the lives of our customers and communities by presenting an exciting marketplace featuring high quality products at competitive prices.

Our Vision

We are striving to be a profitable, model co-operative, providing leadership by pioneering business opportunities and using innovative and ethical practices.

Our Principles

We conduct our business in a manner consistent with the following principles:

• We operate on sound business principles to protect the assets of our members while providing the highest possible patronage rebate.
• We are responsive to the needs and concerns of our members and customers.
• We honour the common principles of co-operatives.
• We contribute positively to the communities where we operate.
• We meet or exceed environmental standards.

Seems to me they are breeching several of the values and principles.

If you are bothered about how the Coop acted, then here is something you can do:

The AGM is Weds June 24th at the Saanich Fairgrounds 1528 Stelly’s X Rd. Social at 5:30 pm and mtg start at 6:30 pm. They will likely try and bore you so you walk out before the election so bring your Suduko, knitting or whatever you need. And bring your democratic voice.

Good ethical and progressive candidates are:

1 David Wilson
2 Alicia Cormier
3 David Lawson

It also raise again for me the problem of how local elections are run and the lack of any real accountability. I believe the time has come from all local elections to come under the control of Elections BC. Each local government and school board would pay a per capita sum to Elections BC and then Elections BC would then run all of the elections.

The Case of Catherine Alpha - School Trustee

Last fall Catherine Alpha was elected to the Greater Victoria School District as a trustee as part of the VPEC slate. She was the only one that was elected from VPEC.

On March 12th she filed her elections expenses, there were some changes to the rules since the last election and seeking clarity on which form to use is anything but easy. She unfortunately used the wrong form, though submitted all the information required of her. The person at the school district who's job it is to review the election expense forms took a long time to review Catherine's and only pointed out the error after it was too late to file the information on the correct form.

Even though the school district had all the information and it was correct, they chose to use the fact that it was filed on the wrong form as the reason to say Catherine Alpha did not file her election expenses on time and then removed her from office.

The public did vote for her and she did nothing to hide her expenses but she has been removed as a trustee.

Catherine can rub people the wrong way, she is a very strong voice for what she believes in and she believes that the direction of the school district is wrong and this means by extension that the staff of the school board is not doing a good job. This is the same staff that recommended to the school board that she be removed as a trustee. The staff was clearly in a conflict when recommended the removal of Catherine Alpha.

The secretary treasurer of the school district has a fiduciary obligation to school board trustees to guide them through the law as it applies to the school district. This includes helping candidates with their election expense forms and reviewing them for obvious errors. Catherine filed more than a month before the final day

This situation highlights a problem with local government in BC, the people that oversee and manage the elections are the staff that report to the governing body of the local government or school board. Provincially Elections BC does not answer to the government, but is a non-partisan office of the legislature.

Some more points on this issue:
1) Catherine Alpha clearly filed on time, but made an error. Does this mean anyone who makes an error on their form should be removed? Can she not submit a correction?

2) It seems clear that the senior staff of the school district were not keen to see her on the school board, to recommend her being removed is clearly a conflict of interest on their part.

3) The School Trustees have to trust the senior staff, how can they retain confidence after this situation was allowed to occur?

4) In the past BC political parties have made much bigger errors and actually completely missed deadlines but they have not been sanctioned in anyway as severely as Catherine Alpha has.

5) How much money is the school board going to spend on this? There is the legal costs as this is clearly going to end up in the courts because the process has been obviously administratively unfair. There is also a by-election that will have to held. The school district is going to spend a lot of money on this, money that should be in the schools.

May 12th Election Results in Greater Victoria

Turn out percentages are based on registered voters on April 21st, that number rose towards election day so the actual turn out percentage will be lower.

Esquimalt Royal Roads

• Maurine Karagianis NDP - 10705 - 53.07%
• Carl Ratsoy Liberal - 6098 - 30.23%
• Jane Sterk Green - 3370 - 16.71%
• Turnout 22605 - 54.62%

Juan de Fuca

• John Horgan NDP - 11008 - 57.10%
• Jody Twa Liberal - 6624 - 34.36%
• James Powell - Green - 1645 - 8.53%
• Turnout 19277 - 58.30%

Oak Bay Gordon Head

• Ida Chong Liberal - 11266 - 46.64%
• Jessica Van der Veen NDP 10736 - 44.45%
• Steven Johns Green - 2152 - 8.91%
• Turnout 24154 - 62.96%

Saanich North and the Islands

• Murray Coell Liberal - 12513 - 45.26%
• Gary Holman NDP - 12118 - 43.83%
• Tom Bradfield Green - 3016 - 10.91%
• Turnout 27647 - 63.34%

Saanich South

• Lana Popham NDP - 11141 - 47.11%
• Robin Adair Liberal - 10728 - 45.37%
• Brian Gordon Green - 1551 - 6.56%
• Doug Christie WCC - 228 - 0.96%
• Turnout 23648 - 63.84%

Victoria Beacon Hill - 176 of 183 polls counted

• Carole James NDP - 12591 - 55.59%
• Dallas Henault Liberal - 5998 - 26.48%
• Adam Saab Green - 3768 - 16.64%
• Saul Andersen Ind - 291 - 1.28%
• Turnout estimate 22700 - 54%

Victoria Swan Lake

• Rob Fleming NDP - 12389 - 60.53%
• Jesse McClinton Liberal - 5456 - 26.66%
• David Wright Green - 2459 - 12.01%
• Bob Savage Refed - 163 - 0.80%
• Turnout 20467 - 54.03%

Election Party?

The pro STV folks in the Greater Victoria area will be at Spinnakers tomorrow night to watch the results.

With the end of all the of the elections, I am going to focus in on issue of visions for the future of Victoria.

I like candidates that do things differently

This is an interesting thing for a campaign to do



They all look like they are having fun running in this election.

BC STV - a website where you try it out

I urge you to get better informed about BC STV and to let your friends and relatives know. First past the post is a relic from ancient times that has been abandoned in most of the democratic world because it is unfair and does not work well. BC STV is a voting system that will offer us:

1. An end to strategic voting - you can not strategically vote in STV, you will never have to hold your nose in BC STV and chose the lesser of two evils.
2. More choice - you will be able to chose who you like from the party you support.
3. A fairer representation of public will - every MLA will have a positive personal mandate from the public and there will be more diversity in who is elected.
4. There will no longer be any safe seats for parties, all 85 seats will be under competition with BC STV
5. More responsive politicians - politicians that listen and act on local needs and concerns do well in STV

There are more benefits that come from BC STV, but that is enough for the moment.

Please take time to check out this website and try voting with BC STV.

More on the Blue Bridge/Johnson St Bridge

There has been a good discussion going on over at Vibrant Victoria about the bridge, it is from that discussion that I was made aware of the Te Wero Bridge in Auckland. Now that is an interesting and cool bridge.

I hope that any bridge that is built is something that is a defining architectural masterpiece for the inner harbour. Victoria has had very few buildings or structures built since Francis Rattenbury's time that really have any architectural wow to them. This bridge could, and should, be something everyone in the world is wowed by.

I would like us to think big, outside of the box, and do something that is a landmark. I suspect that the city will not go for anything interesting and if they did there would be a horde of voices complaining about it. This bridge replacement is a once in a century chance to have some vision, it would be foolish not to make use of it.

The local races on facebook

Last time I checked on this it was April 23rd, two weeks ago. So how are people doing? Generally not very well

We have no new entrants in facebook land in the last two weeks.


Victoria Beacon Hill

* Carole James - 2187 +14.3%
* Dallas Henault - 491 +4.5%
* Adam Saab - 159 on fan page and 329 on facebook group +1.2%
* Bob Savage - still nothing online
* Saul Andersen - nothing

Victoria Swan Lake

* Rob Fleming - 522 +5.9%
* Jesse McClinton - 444 +4.1%
* David Wright - still nothing

Oak Bay Gordon Head

* Jessica Van Der Veen - 435 -1.9% in a facebook group 170 on the fan page
* Ida Chong - 142 +17.6%
* John Stevens - 28 -+40%

Saanich South

* Lana Popham - 313 +16%
* Robin Adair - 160 +1.9%
* Brian Gordon - 116 -1%

Saanich North and the Islands

* Gary Holman - 59 +40.5%
* Tom Bradfield - 30 + 16.7%
* Murray Coell - still nothing

Esquimalt Royal Roads

* Maurine Karajianis - 426 +8.5%
* Jane Sterk - 178 +33.7%
* Carl Ratsoy - still nothing

Juan de Fuca

* John Horgan - 263 +24.3%
* Jody Twa - 278 0% in a facebook group
* James Powell - still nothing

The top ten in the region:

1. Carole James - 2187
   
2. Rob Fleming - 553
   
3. Dallas Henault - 513
   
4. Jesse McClinton - 462
5. Maurine Karajianis - 462
6. Jessica Van Der Veen - 435
7. Lana Popham - 363
8. Adam Saab - 329
9. John Horgan - 327
10. Jody Twa - 278
    

The Blue Bridge

I would like to see the city make the bridge a P3, design, build and operate. I would also like to see the city toll the bridge.

You automatically toll through transponders on cars or you people have to pay in person. You offer transponders to people living in the city of Victoria and rent them out to people living outside of the city. I would charge $1 per crossing if you are using the transponder and $2 if you are paying in cash. I would make it a large fine if you do not pay the toll. I would rent the transponders out at about $20 per month.

The tolls would move the burden of the costs of the bridge onto the people that use it and off of the people that do not. I like the idea of user pay for services from government, to much of how we operate governments does not fairly distribute the costs.

Tolls would also encourage more walking, biking and transit use.