Victoria OCP

I missed the meetings about the OCP over the weekend, I was camping in Carmanah Valley, the first time I had been there since the fall of 1989.   I was there with the Scouts, it was a good time and I encourage you to get involved with Scouting, but that is getting off of the topic.

I am looking at the City OCP website and what is on offer for public comment and I am underwhelmed.   We are being offered four very broad based high level concepts to choose from.

• Option One - Growth in the Core Area
• Option Two - Growth Focused on Primary Transit Corridors
• Option Three - Diverse Villages
• Option Four - Growth Focused near Waterfront and Green Spaces

I can not choose between any of the options because there are some many issues not addressed within the scenarios.   The primary issue addressed within the four scenarios is population growth.  There is little addressing issues of economics or social well being.

Most people have trouble seeing what these sort of high level concept plans means for their neighbourhoods.  As an example, in the third option, diverse villages, people likely to do not understand this will mean a lot of three to six story condos around the Fairfield Plaza or more condos in the centre of James Bay.  The information is not being placed in front of the public so that they can visualize the future.

We need to debate specific details about what is going to happen in the neighbourhoods.   Each different direction in the four scenarios has impacts on each neighbourhood. In fact there is no reason some areas could not trend towards one scenario and others to different ones.

Without knowing how the scenarios will be enacted, I can not make any sort of useful decision out them.

The community input has been summarized by topic area on a series of four to seven page long PDFs here.  The input from the public is stripped of all connection to who submitted or the context it came from.   The sheets are a series of one line bullet points.  I recognize some of my input, but only some of it.  

It would have been nice if the city posted the information that received in the way it was submitted to them.  So that we can know who submitted what and the bigger picture of their submission.  The City could have also invited people to make submissions about their vision for the city and made them available for others to read and comment on.  There are people in this City that are willing to put in huge amounts of time to think about the City and write their ideas.   These submissions could very likely containing some unique and innovative solutions to the future of the City.  

It would not have been hard for the City to allowed for a moderated discussion forum for the OCP online.   If this was too much for the City to handle, it could have outsourced this to Vibrant Victoria.

The engagement with the public has been weak and continues to be weak.  I suspect we are going to get a very bland status quo OCP at the end the process that will do little to make Victoria anything more than what it is now.

The only aspect of the whole process that I find interesting and innovative is the Citizen Insight Council.   This is a variation of a Wisdom Council.   I am very interested to see what comes of it.   The idea of randomly selecting 12 people and having them address a core aspect of the OCP.

CRD Plans for the OBPP

OBPP - One Big Poop Plant.

The CRD has decided that they will place the one and only sewage treatment plant at McLoughlin Point.  I know the decision getting to this point has taken ages and if we are going to do this, we should move on it, but it is bizarre that the decision that was taken happened so suddenly.  I can understand why Esquimalt is underwhelmed by the decision.

I do not have enough information to know if this is the best location for the sewage treatment plant and I am not going to get into that at this time, though in all honesty I should address this issue at some point.  What I want to address is the horrible process the CRD has used to consult on this project.

We are many years into the planning on this process, we have seen or heard some many different options that at best only a tiny handful of people in this region has any idea what is going on or what it will really cost us.   The process has defacto shut the community at large out of comment about the project.   There has been no meaningful way for the public to have input into this project.

To be clear, we have no idea what sewage treatment will cost because we have are still not certain what is involved yet with the plant being built at the latest location.   All cost estimates are still so early in the process that we are not in the ballpark, we are likely only certain of the sport that the ballpark is part of.

I never noticed any real attempt by the CRD to engage us in what could be possible.

What would have happened if you held  a weekend public forum/workshop about the gamut of options and possibilities for sewage treatment.   You could have people and companies present what they think the way forward is.  You could ask university students to come up with ideas.   There are innovative approaches out there, companies with radical different approaches to what to do with sewage.  Instead we have done none of this.

We have muddled through looking at this with a 1950s governance lens and traditional insular planning process.   What more can I say other than it all depresses me.

Two interesting posts from Jim Legh

Jim Legh has a blog called Amalgamate Greater Victoria and he has two interesting recent posts.

The first is about the decision by the City of Victoria not to build rail as part of the Johnson Street bridge project.     Quite rightly the City took this decision as there is no benefit to the vast majority of residents.  Should it be used for commuter rail, the people benefiting will be taxpayers on the Westshore.  Why should the people in the City pay for an amenity the Westshore wants?

The second post he has is about Winnipeg and how much better their decision making process is because they have a single local government not hemmed in by arbitrary boundaries  Good decisions are made quickly and acted on quickly.  

Central Saanich and the Urban Containment Boundary

As people should know by now, I think the Hill proposal by the Vantreights is a good idea.  This is land that can not farmed and can not be quarried, it is the perfect place to put houses.

I have been reading through the Central Saanich OCP to see what it really says about things and I have found some interesting things that are dumb and others that indicate the development fits within the OCP and Regional Growth Strategy.

10 Acres of Farmland in Central Saanich in the Urban Containment Boundary
The dumb aspect I found is that there is 10 acres of farmland included within the Urban Containment Boundary in the Saanichton area.   This land between Wallace and East Saanich and Prosser and Hovey is still being farmed, but is shown to be an area Central Saanich considers a good place to build more houses, an infill area.

Central Saanich passed their OCP knowing this land was formerly ALR and is currently not developed.   Why was this placed in the urban containment boundary but the Hill not?  This highlights the problem with macro planning processes like the OCP or the Regional Growth Strategy, errors are made.

The smart thing would be to change the urban containment boundary are remove this land from it.   Central Saanich should also apply to have this land returned to ALR status.  

The housing Central Saanich is relying on from this land can be satisfied with the Hill project.

The OCP and the Hill project
There is concern that the Hill project is too dense for an area outside of the urban containment boundary, but in looking at what Central Saanich placed outside of the urban containment boundary, there are developments with very small lot sizes, ones comparable to the Hill project.   The difference between the houses on Mount St Michael Road and the Hill project is that the Hill project is not bring built on farmland.

There are three examples of densities of the same scale as the Hill project, two of them on former farmland.   The Hill project is the only one that is abutting an existing area of urban development.

The Central Saanich OCP has Mount St Michael Road and Welch and Mallard roads as rural residential and not urban.   On the basis of this precedence in the OCP the Hill project is not out of sync with the plan.

Central Saanich also has a zoning called RE 5 that is considered rural and acceptable for outside of the urban containment boundary.   Nowhere within the OCP was there anything saying RE 5 should not be used any longer.   RE 5 allows for minimum size lots of 0.14 hectares and an average of 0.2 ha.

The small lot rural residential areas in Central Saanich should have been in the urban containment boundary, but by not doing so, the residents of Central Saanich that took part in the OCP process made it clear that small lots outside of the urban containment area in non ALR lands is acceptable.  To be clear here  the Central Saanich OCP makes no recommendations on minimum lot size in rural areas and no comments against subdivision.

If this is not what people wanted in the OCP, there needs to be an amendment to the OCP, the small lot areas need to be considered as part of the urban containment area.  There needs to be more detail in the OCP with respect to rural lands.  

As the current OCP stands, the Hill project is entirely in keeping with how it is written.

Scouting, a great program for youth

One of the local Scout groups is holding an open house next weekend, if you have kids, take some time to check it out.

OPEN HOUSE INVITATION

You're invited to attend a Scouting Open House in Victoria on June 26th, from 1:00pm-3:30pm! 1st Douglas Scout Group is hosting an open house at their Scout hall at 3266 Glasgow Avenue, in Victoria BC. This event is open to Scouters and non-Scouters of all ages, and will include activities and games for everyone, information displays, free food, games, and prizes. If you would like to help with this event, as an activity host, please contact Rick Wells at (250)388-5507, or rickwells@shaw.ca. Please feel welcome to attend, as a helper or guest, and show your Scouting Spirit!

I am involved with the 3rd Douglas group which meets at the Scout Hall on Marigold and I would love to see more youth involved.

Scouting is open to all youth - boys and girls.    People worry about youth not getting outside enough, Scouting is the best program out there for getting the kids in the wilderness and learn about the outdoors.   In our group the Scouts (ages 10-14) spend about 20 nights a year camping.

Scouting is still one of the most affordable programs for youth.

This is the building:

View Larger Map

This is our Scout Hall - people are always welcome to come by and visit

View Larger Map

A letter from a North Saanich resident and environmentalist to the Dogwood Initiative

This came over my inbox and speaks to the strange situation that has occurred with the Hill Proposal of the Vantreights. Somehow the Dogwood Initiative is leading the charge to stop the development and thereby ensure the end of the farm and the ultimate sale of the land. One only needs to look to North Saanich and see how many huge houses are on large acreages. The land is no longer farmed and will remain so far, far into the future.

It also concerns me that the the denial of the development will be in direct contravention of the Central Saanich OCP - the plan very specifically first and foremost calls for the support of agriculture.  This means helping people like the Michells and Vantreights continue farming on their lands.  More in detail on how not approving this in a later process, in fact I think there is a strong legal case that the development has to be allowed unless the OCP is amended to take out support of agriculture.

Dear Dogwood Initiative people,

Somehow I am in receipt of your e-mailed notice of the "townhall" meeting you have organized for tomorrow evening, although I am not a member of your initiative.

May I respectfully suggest that your team of "experts" get their facts straight. Perhaps they could have a tour of the Vantreight Farm and get a first-hand look at the property and also hear what the plans actually are. I find it most unsettling to see so much misinformation being circulated.

Yes, the Saanich Peninsula IS the breadbasket of the region and the Vantreight family IS working very hard to ensure that agricultural land is protected for years to come. Your organization and the Vantreights have the same end goals in mind.

The Vantreight family has farmed this land for well over 100 years and the current generation seriously wants to continue farming. They have some very up-to-date green plans, including an anaerobic composting process that will produce heat and power as well as compost in an enclosed place. Their development plans are also made with the environment in mind.

We need to be supporting our farm families (those who are actually farming productively) rather than discouraging their every effort to keep our rural atmosphere.

The Vantreights need the proceeds of this development in order to continue farming. This is necessary in order to settle the estate of the original Vantreight who passed away several years ago.

Should the Vantreights not be able to build their Hill Project (which is actually much smaller than your organization states) then their land will have to be sold, divided up into small pieces that would not very likely be used for serious agricultural purposes. We do not need more hobby farms. We would prefer to enjoy the vast expanse of productive fields that make the Saanich Peninsula such a desirable area. We, as a society, should be encouraging our farmers to produce more food locally, which is the goal of Vantreight Farms.

The property involved in this development plan is NOT in the ALR. It adjoins other residential property in North Saanich. It is NOT farmable land.

I myself have a vested interest in farmland staying in productive use as I live bordering one of the Vantreights' large fields. I would hate to see this property divided up into small, unproductive pieces. And I would be very sad indeed to see one of our last serious farm families be forced to give up their land.

There IS much community support for the Vantreight family in their endeavor to keep the farm. Unfortunately, we are not as vocal as those who seem to be misinformed and seem to be in opposition. I fail to understand the opposition to this effort to keep the Saanich Peninsula agricultural.

Please do become informed before spreading untruths about this proposal.

I hope that you will circulate my letter here your members - perhaps send it out to your e-mail list. And I hope that they will attend the next open house at the Vantreight Farm.

I feel that I can support some of your other projects as I AM an environmentalist and I do love to live here on Vancouver Island. I definitely want to keep the Saanich Peninsula agricultural. It would be a very sad thing, indeed, if this farm family was forced out of farming.

Sincerely,

Darien Elliott

The Bridge

Council today decided to go forward with a non-rail bridge option for both replacement and refurbishment.   I am very glad to hear that sanity prevails.

Of all the futures I can imagine in the next fifty years, there is none that has the E&N line being used for any significant passenger rail.   In any case, ending at the roundhouse in Vic West is actually a better place because you can better connect to buses there than at the corner of Store and Pandora.

I believe that the council will chose the refurbishment option because they are smart enough to know that the new bridge option will not be able to pass a referendum.  Refurbishment comes with a big crowd of avid supporters that will campaign for a Yes vote.  Given the number of people that signed the counter petition, the refurbishment option will win by a landslide.

So what we are looking at is a debt of something in the order of $60 million for the City.   What will the City do to ensure that this is firm cap?   What will they do to reduce that number?  

Meeting about Vantreight Hill Project organized by people opposed

This may be of interest to some of you out there. I am likely to go out and see how it goes.  Knowing the economics of farming, I understand the need of the family to develop the land to be able to protect farmland they own for long term production.

In the 2006 Ian Vantreight could not raise enough money to save all of the farm's land.   Most significantly he did not manage to buy the kiwi orchards near Islandview and Panama Flats.   The kiwi orchards are not being well looked after any longer.  The Vantreights used to grow enough potatoes in and around Panama Flats to supply each person in the CRD with 10 pounds of spuds a year.   This land now produces nothing.

If one is to build houses, the location the Vantreights are proposing makes more sense than almost anywhere else on the peninsula.

_______________________________________________________________

On Thursday Jun 17 people from across the region will gather in Central Saanich to discuss how Ian Vantreight’s application to build 57 houses and 57 suites in a rural area will effect the region’s environment, its capacity for food sovereignty and its rural identity.

Thursday June 17, 2010

7:30 to 9:30 pm

1209 Clarke Rd. (Brentwood Bay)

Speakers: 

Vicky Husband

Deborah Curran

Carol Pickup

Carolyn Herriot

For more information visit http://www.vi-notforsale.org/.

Facilitiy is wheel chair accessible

Child care will be provided

Johnson Street Bridge Heritage

The City has posted some decent documents about the whole bridge issue on their site.   The City is making available some documents relating to the heritage values of the bridge.

Among this is the Heritage Assessment of the Johnson Street Bridge by Commonwealth Historic Resource Management.

From that document:

Overall Value

The Johnson Street Bridge has very high heritage value in the context of Victoria, the Inner Harbour, and the City’s and Region’s transportation systems.

The Bridge has high heritage value as an engineering landmark designed by one of North America’s most renowned bridge engineers / engineering firms.

Another document is Johnson Street Bridge Heritage Assessment by Jonathan Yardley which also highlights the heritage value of the bridge.

I am curious what sort of weight council will give to these reports in their decision making?  Certainly there is significant weight behind the importance of the heritage values and why it should be retained.   This gives council the space to back away from the new bridge without losing face.

One significant reason council may wish to go for the refurbishment option is that they have enough people that signed the petition to win a referendum to borrow the money.   There is also a large body of volunteers available to campaign for that option.   There is a very high danger that choosing the new bridge option will lead to a defeat of the referendum in the fall.

Oak Bay Secondary Suites Report - "Lets think about it some more"

Corey Burger has posted the final report on Secondary Suites by the Oak Bay committee on the issue.   The upshot of it is the following:

The Committee is of the view that Council should continue to review the issue of legalizing secondary suites. While only a slight majority of surveyed residents favour such a move, it appears that others may support suites if proper protections and restrictions are in place to deal with expected negative impacts.

The Committee feels that a more comprehensive and informed public discussion led by Council could allow a consensus to emerge. Oak Bay currently has many hundreds of secondary suites scattered throughout the community. Ways must be found to deal with these existing suites and the potential for new suites in renovated or newly constructed homes.

Talk about waffle.

The reality is that Oak Bay is dealing the existing situation in such a way as to defacto grant secondary suites by refusing to enforce the bylaw that does not allow them.   Oak Bay has access to the information that will show them where all the secondary suites are through the BC Assessment records on the houses.   They have access but they refuse to act.

The problem with this is that they cause law abiding people to act outside of the law.  It is bad to have a law on the books and not enforce.   Widespread breaking of a bylaw is corrosive to civil society.   It also causes stress to people who rent out such a suite and have trouble dealing with breaking a bylaw.   It causes resentment in the minds of people that do no break the bylaw.

The biggest problem is that is allows for sub standard housing and no recourse to protection for the renter.   If you are renting in illegal suite that is not up to code, you can be evicted immediately with no protection of any sort.

Oak Bay has to make the suites legal through a registry and then require all of them to be up to code.  It then needs to seek out all the suites that do not register and impose a large enough fine to scare the crap out of anyone that is renting out an illegal suite, plus require the landlord of that illegal suite to provide six months free accommodation to the tenant in a legal dwelling.

I have never heard a good reason for having a ban on secondary suites.   All local governments should allow secondary suites unless there is a very compelling reason not to - I can not think of any compelling reason.

This committee report simply highlights how Oak Bay continues to be the CRD's brownest community and the local government least willing to address climate change, affordable housing, and livable communities.   Oak Bay also carries none of the regional weight on industrial lands and offers virtually no commercial space. They do not even have a single gas station.   They simply have never pulled their weight and based on this report are still unwilling to act in a responsible manner and acknowledge that there is a world beyond the tweed curtain.

Johnson Street Bridge- Costs to replace or fix

The media headlines are $89 million to replace and $103 million to refurbish.   These numbers hide what is really going on and the clearly political agenda in the news release.   The City has provided more information this time around.

Some Quick Facts out of the new Class C Estimate - inflation and financing factored out:

• Cost to build a new bridge with no rail link - $66 million
• Cost to build a new bridge with the rail link - $77.3 million
• Cost to refurbish the bridge with the rail link - $86.9 million (this means building a separate bike/pedestrian bridge for $22.3 million)
• Cost to refurbish with no rail link - $66. million

When we add inflation/cost escalation and financing,:

• New bridge with rail link - $89 million
• New bridge with no rail link - $77 million
• Refurbished bridge with rail link - $103 million
• Refurbished bridge with no rail link - $78 million

Comparing December 2008 Class C estimate with the May 2010 Class C Estimate
The previous Class C estimate was $63 million to replace the bridge, but I was always been uncomfortable with that number.   The previous estimate and the new of $89 million were compared in the presentation to council this week.  The presentation blames $19 million of the $26 million dollar increase on the delay, I do not think this is reasonable and see the two estimates as being done differently.


The current estimate has a contingency that is costed out at a higher percentage of the project, a smart idea.   If this had been applied in first estimate, that would have added another $4 million to the cost.  The engineering costs in the first estimate were costed out at 7.5% of construction costs, now they cost it at 12%. If we raise the first one to 12%, this raises the first estimate to $8 million for engineering.  The current estimate has a $1 million for land, the previous one had $0.

The current estimate has $6.9 for the escalation of costs over the time of the project.   The first estimate assumed zero cost increase.   If one applies the same escalation, another $5 is added into the project.

The current estimate has a financing cost of $4 million, the first estimate had no costs for financing.  I do not know what it would have been, but I am going with a $3 million number.

When one makes the two estimates comparable, the first estimate should have been $80 million, not $63 million.

Looking at details of refurbishing the bridge
The headline number for this option is $103 million and this sounds like a large number, much bigger than replacement costs.   There are some reasons for this.

The $103 million option calls for a new bridge to be built next to the existing bridge for bike and pedestrian traffic.   This bridge has a cost of $26.7 million all in, $22.3 million without escalation and financing.

The refurbishment option has a higher project percentage costs for contingency, engineering and escalation, these costs are 38% of the refurbishment of the actual bridge versus 30% of the costs of the replacement bridge.   I do not necessarily have a problem with this difference as there could be many more surprises in refurbishment than replacement.   I point it out to show that the uncertainty about this approach adds about $17.5 million to the project costs in the class C estimate stage versus the new bridge.

Refurbishing the bridge would also lead to traffic problems as some or all of the lanes of the bridge would have to closed, depending on how you proceed.    The economic impact of this from the study done by Banjar Management Inc estimates a loss in sales of 0.2% to 1.0% for downtown businesses.   For transit users the value of their lost time would be about $0.25 per person per trip.  The increased travel time for people in cars if the bridge is fully closed for a year works out to about $25 per car, or about $0.08 per trip.

No Rail Option
If the city goes forward with no rail link in either case, the total cost is almost identical at $77 and $78 million respectively.   To me it would seem to make the most sense to go forward with one of these options.   The City would have to borrow around $56 million in either case

Will I vote in favour?  
I am not thrilled that people in the City of Victoria will be expected to pay for all of the cost of the bridge that is more important to Esquimalt than the vast majority of people in the City of Victoria.   Esquimalt should offer to cover 20% of the costs of the bridge as an act of regional good faith.   I am 100% certain this will not happen because acting in a parochial manner is the norm for the majority of councils in this region.  

If the no rail option is chosen I am likely to vote in favour of either replacement or refurbishment.   If the rail aspect is retained I can not support the extra expense for something that is never going to be used and has no benefit for the City of Victoria.   The rail aspect costs need to be covered 100% by the Island Corridor foundation and not the City.

First Candidate for City Council - Barry Hobbis

This came out via email at 2:30 this morning

City of Victoria By-Election - November 2010

I am announcing my intention to seek the upcoming vacant seat for the City of Victoria Council. This will be a vote for a new voice on council, and for the community to be heard on a borrowing by-law for the Johnson Street Bridge.

The future of our City’s financial stability is potentially at risk as we take on debt for the Johnson Street Bridge and sewage projects, when there may be viable alternatives that cost less, and meet the needs of all. Our downtown core, and village centres, are not attracting new, vibrant businesses to increase employment; that must change. Many of our neighbourhoods, and residents, feel cut off from City Hall and need to be consulted on affordable housing, and economic sustainability, along with many other issues of concern, to ensure our local government is moving in a positive, forward thinking, direction.

To many, and to me, our council is fractured. City Hall is in a state of internal strife and media spin that is eroding the very core of serving the community, and not meeting our needs and priorities. It seems that the tougher things get the more our local government feels it has to operate behind closed doors without the opportunity for public engagement. The harsh reality is a lack of open and transparent government at the municipal level, which disengages residents and business; something that can, and must, be changed.

Barry Hobbis

www.electbarryhobbis.org

Email - campaign@electbarryhobbis.org

Phone - 250 216 3232

Campaign Manager, Mat Wright - Phone 250 686 5945

BC Transit Open House at City Hall

I went down to the BC Transit open house today.   I ran into MLA John Horgan there and chatted with him for a few minutes, the introduction of rapid transit would be of significant benefit to his constituents.  I also saw MLA Rob Flemming signing in as we were on our way out.

All I can say is that I am underwhelmed with what they had on offer.   They certainly had much less detail and information available than when they were looking at the Bus Rapid Transit idea.

I wish BC Transit would address two issues in detail:

1. How much demand is needed to make rail rapid transit a reasonable option
2. How much will it cost to build and operate a rail transit line.

How many people do you need on a rail rapid transit line to make it a good option to replace the buses with?  Is there enough demand from the Westshore to fill rail cars and justify building a dedicated rail line?   Is it impossible to meet the demand with buses?

People keeping talking about wanting rail transit but are doing this in absence of knowing how expensive it is to build.   The cost to build rail is much,. much higher than any bus rapid transit.   Beyond the capital costs, about $30,000,000 per kilometre, there are the operating costs.   Everything points to the need for a very high ridership to make it cost effective to operate rail.

Based on what I saw at the open house, there is no indication BC Transit is thinking of choosing trains over buses.

Talking about the Victoria OCP - what came of the Friday evening at my home

In the end only a small number of people showed up, but they were a diverse selection of people and all of them well informed about the City.    We were small enough that we could be more informal and talk about the OCP in a wide ranging manner.

The evening started with us delving into "What do we mean by a sustainable city?"   We did this because sustainable is such a buzz word these days but rarely has any real details of how it will apply to the majority of the people.

Since more of us were from the Burnside Gorge area, this neighbourhood often came into detailed focus.

I have to thank Sheila for taking notes on Max's easel, they are the basis of what I am writing now.

Industrial Lands
As people I hope know, I have had a growing concern about the loss of industrial lands in this region.   I raised this early on because my concern because it is a core sustainability issue.  In our discussions on this we came up with three clear concerns about the loss of industrial lands

1. The City needs industrial lands near the core to support the functioning of the core.   This means garabage, recycling, storage and other physical needs of a dense office-commercial core of a city.   If the lands are lost, materials, such as waste metal going to Budget Steel, will have to be trucked to somewhere like Duke Point instead of being loaded on a barge at Rock Bay.  
2. With no available industrial lands it becomes almost impossible for someone to start a new business that manufacturers anything or is providing services to offices, retail and restaurants.
3. With less industrial land there are fewer options for blue collar jobs.    Industrial lands in the CRD provide numerous moderately well paying lower skill jobs.   The loss of these lands will also mean the loss of these jobs.  With the jobs no longer available, the economic profile of the region will become like a barbell - lots or poor retail or restaurant work and lots of white collar professionals and very few people in between.

These issues seemed to us to be pushing Victoria towards a city of two classes of people that are economically completely separated - a high gini coefficient.   Where this happens elsewhere the general social well being of the community does not do well.   The best BC example is Whistler.

It also is a problem for the roads and environment if we push even more goods to be moved further distances.   The loss of Budget Steel or Ellice Recycling would add significant pressure to the Malahat.

In the end we came to an agreement that it is crucial for the City to ensure there is no more loss of industrial lands.   People also agreed with my suggestion that the City clearly indicate to developers that consolidation of properties in certain areas of the City would be acceptable for transition to industrial zoning.

Housing and Sustainability
The second issue of sustainability related to housing.   The current house prices have continued to rise and the new mortgage rules have reduced the ability for first time buyers to enter the market.

We discussed in detail about how the youth will be able to purchase houses in the future.   Affordability for many people means finding new ways to buy a house.   The need for a secondary suite has become almost crucial for many younger buyers to be able to afford anything.  Meanwhile secondary suites continue in a grey area through out the region.

We talked about families with two kids living in two bedroom condos.   We talked about multi generational families in a house but the restrictions on what you are allowed to do is not working for a lot of boomer aged parents that would be willing to share a house with their kids as a way to help them buy one.

We also talked about the coming reality that house prices, and by extension rents, are rising faster than the rate of inflation.   Unless there is some serious action is taken to slow or stop this trend, we will be pricing the City completely out of the market for retail workers and Seniors.   Without a change we should expect to see the staff for restaurants, stores, cleaning staff and other people earning less than $15 an hour, to be living north of the Malahat.   A 2 hour commute each way is a reasonable expectation in 2030 if housing costs do not fall.   This already happens in the case of Whistler.

We also talked about the fact the City is becoming unaffordable for people like police, fire, paramedics and nurses.   Are we going to have to offer living allowances to these people so that they can afford to work here?

I made the dramatic statement "Maybe the City should set a goal of seeing the average price of a house fall to $250,000"   The homeowners in the room were polite to me, but made it clear that this would be unsustainable.   My wife was one of those people.   I admit I only made the statement to start the conversation and we could all agree that the City should adopt a measure of sustainability linked to the price of an average house.   The City should take measures to do what is possible to increase the housing stock enough to ensure that house prices remain level for the coming decade or longer

City coming close to capacity
We also noted that the City of Victoria population has grown faster than expected and we are already at to the population level estimates for 2021 and we are in significant danger of hitting the zoning capacity of the city of about 95,000 people in a few short years.   The City needs to consider creative changes to existing single family zoning that would address the need for housing.

Ideas raised were to always allow secondary suites, to make it possible for people to build small out buildings that can be used for people to live.  We also raised the idea of lane housing and in street housing as ways to find more places to build.   I had a further suggestion but we ran out of time - I was going to suggest that the property set back between houses could be reduced to zero on the agreement of both owners and that all new subdivisions allow houses to be built with no setbacks to each other on the new lots.

Danger of the loss of numerous apartments
Several of us have come to the realization that much of the apartment housing stock in the City is coming up on 50 years old and within the term of the OCP is likely to become bulldozer bait.    These three to six story buildings were not dramatically high quality when they were built in the 60s and 70s and are now rapidly becoming low a low quality of housing.   The extreme example is View Towers, but many of those buildings along Cook Street north of the Village are outdated.

So what happens to these buildings?

• If the owner can no demolish and build something new, the buildings will be allowed to decay.
• If the buildings can be demolished but they have to replace each rental unit with another one, there will not be a strong desire of the owners to rebuild.
• It would seem that ultimately many of the owners would ideally want to replace the buildings with larger buildings of condos.

We had no specific solution, but did note there is a strong potential for the loss of much of the rental stock which would cause huge problems in the City as we are a community of more renters than owners.   We did note that in the past there were senior government incentives to build rental accommodation.   Some sort of incentive could encourage more apartments.

This lead us to discuss the role of condos in the rental market.   Some buildings allow a lot, others allow none.   We came to agreement on this is a solution because we did not know enough and were uncertain if this would offer rental security in the future.   As a personal after thought, maybe the City can pass a bylaw that outlaws restrictions of condo units?

Amalgamation
One issue that came up over and over again is the fundamentally flawed planning process in this region.   Planning for the City of Victoria as if the world does not exist beyond the boundaries leads to decision making that is short sighted and badly done.   The neighbourhood I live in should be jointly planned by Saanich and Victoria because it is one neighbourhood, but how things work now we make two plans with no reference to each other.

All of us agreed that it harms good governance and planning to have multiple local governments in this region.

Other Issues 
We all agreed that the current OCP process in the city is another example of the weakness of the current engagement strategy of the City. The feeling was that this process paralleled the problems with the Johnson Street Bridge process and in the case of this neighbourhood, the process to replace the lost parkland.

We touched on transit for a bit and talked about the rapid transit plans for the Douglas Street corridor.   We noted that this was the City of Victoria OCP and that rapid transit offered very little to the majority of residents of the City.

Burnside Gorge
We very specifically discussed the ongoing problem of the loss of parkland the lack of action by the City to replace it.   We noted that the City did a very poor job of engaging with the neighbourhood about park plans and that the survey in the recent local community association newsletter was not well done and not asking the sort of detailed questions we expected.

In the last couple of years we lost the Ellice Street park and part of Cecilla Ravine.  Some of the long time residents in the neighbourhood felt that the city deliberately let the Ellice Street park become run done.

We also noted the ongoing problem in the neighbourhood with pedestrian access to the rest of the City.   The sidewalks along Burnside are not adequate for comfortable walking especially with young children or dogs.   We also talked about the promise from the City years ago to provide a greenway access from Maddock Street to Cecilia Ravine.   The neighbourhood does not register in the priority list of sidewalks in the current pedestrian master plan.

The End?
We wrapped up around 9 pm.   The City did provide us with a wealth of background information that I spread out on our dining room table.

I will send this information in to the City and incorporate some it if my own personal submission on the OCP.

I may also edit this later as I may have more to add.

If I was not working tomorrow, I would be tempted to go to this....

I am curious to see what a gun show on Vancouver Island looks like, I have never been to one anywhere and the culture is one that is very foriegn to me - I am a Quaker.

It is actually amazing how many different small communities of interest that exist, whole worlds that others are completely unaware of.

Parksville-Qualicum Fish & Game Association

7th ANNUAL GUN SHOW equipment sales & swap.

Sunday, June 6th, 2010 at the Coombs Fairgrounds Arrowsmith Hall

Gun Show and Sale Doors open at 8:00 a.m.

Door Prizes – 50/50 draws

Breakfast and lunch available

Contact: Graham Alexander 752.1855 gmalexander@shaw.ca

Talking about the OCP

It ended up only being a small group of us here at my home this evening talking about the City of Victoria OCP.   Our focus became - "What so we mean by a sustainable city?"

Here is the 2 minute run down of what we talked about:
The two primary issues we addressed were work and housing.  

In the realm of work we focused on the dangerous trend the city is headed of only having retail/sales mcjobs and white collar work.   The problem with this is that there is more and more inequity between the people.   We are in danger of losing the blue collar jobs as we lose more and more industrial lands.

In housing we focused on many issues related to how the cost of housing is rising and what may need to be done to address this, how do we make single family homes affordable for a young couple starting out?  What do we do as much of the existing rental stock in the city becomes old and close to the end of its life.

I will write more tomorrow about the details.

The Homecoming Statue and the Neighbourhood Book Exchange

The other day I was looking something up and came across the Homecoming Statue which is on the inner harbour as Navy Centennial commemoration.  I can understand the sentiment for the statue, but ultimately I find it bland.

I know I am likely to be in the minority, but I like public art that is though provoking and something different.   I love the Commerce Canoe in Bastion Square.   I love the Western Washington Unversity outdoor sculpture collection, there are about 40 different works on a campus the scale of UVic.  

The sculpture is well crafted and sculptor is clearly good at his work, but I find it eerie because of the frozen nature of the moment it depicts.  I am not artist, but I wish something more evocative could have been done.

----------------------------------------------
A different note here, this is from Tom Hawthorn's blog.  An Angela Evans built a neighbourhood book exchange in front of her home on Clare Street in the Gonzales neighbourhood.   The article is about a lot more, the building of a community on a street, but I was taken by the book exchange more than anything.   I am tempted to put one up.

Victoria OCP - Meeting this evening at my home

People are welcome to come to my home this evening to talk about the City of Victoria Official Community Plan.

We will be starting at 7 pm and going till about 9 pm.

It is important that we as the people of this city talk about where our city is going and what we want to see.  If we do not plan, we will simply drift about.   If the public does not give full input, the plan will not be one the public will be comfortable with.

3103 Harriet road - Harriet and Maddock is the corner

Shelbourne and Mckenzie - 3959 Shelbourne

Not that long ago I was suggesting the idea that there needed to be much higher degree of density in the area of Mckenzie and Shelbourne, especially with office space that connects to businesses developing from UVic.  There is a new small office building being developed at 3959 Shelbourne - this is across from the mall and next to the PetroCan.

I am happy to see more office space in this area, but the building is rather small, only 15,000 square feet of office space.  Given the location, building it six stories high would be entirely in keeping with the area now that Tuscany Village exists.  In fact going as far as eight stories would have been a bold statement for the future of the area.   At six floors, the building would have gained another 10,000 square feet of office space and at eight it would have gone up to a total of 35,000 square feet.

I understand that if the building had been bigger there would be a parking issue and likely the need to build a couple of levels of underground parking for the offices.

Do not get me wrong, I am happy to see the building go forward because it is a step up from the existing low quality 'medical dental' style offices on two of the other corners, but still it feels like a failure of imagination to me.   It feels like one a small step forward was taken and not the first stage of the fundamental shift needed in this neighbourhood for the health of the whole city.

I remain disappointed at the lack of interest from Saanich in a livable and sustainable community.  Even the simplest things, such as a decent as bike lanea and pedestrian friendly sidewalks along Mckenzie, seem to be beyond the thinking of Saanich.

The randomness of finding out about meetings in this city.

BC Transit is holding open houses to talk about rapid transit and the next 25 years of transit.  The first is Monday June 7th from 1pm to 7 pm at Victoria City Hall.   The second is on Tuesday June 8th from 4pm to 8pm at the Juan de Fuca rec centre.  I almost missed that these were coming.   I have some strong concerns about the issues of rapid transit and what to make sure that my voice is heard in the process.

The second meetings are by the City of Victoria about a traffic plan for Beacon Hill park.    The first one is Monday June 14th from 6:30 pm to 9 pm and being held at the Fairfield Community Place.  The second is Wednesday June 16th from 6:30 pm to 9 pm and being held at the James Bay Community School.

The City of Victoria took out a bland add in the TC to advertise this event.   When I went to the city page on the park, there was nothing there.  I did find it via there Whats New link.  By going to this page I found out I had missed the dates to give input in my local park, the meeting for Cecilia Ravine was on April 28th.

The Friends of Beacon Hill have nothing on their website about these meetings.

Going back to the issue of Cecilia Ravine and this neighbourhood.   We have seen an ongoing loss of park land and no actions by the city to deal with this loss.   The Ellice Street park was no huge loss, but the City promised to replace the park land in the neighbourhood.    This has not happened and there is no indication that is going to happen.

When the Burnside Gorge community centre was built, it removed a nice meadow of the Cecilia Ravine park. The City has done nothing to replace this land.  The City indicated years ago in their planning that is was high priority to buy the land to connect Cecilia Ravine through to Maddock Street.   I have seen no action on this by the City.   Because I did not know about the meetings to deal with Cecilia Ravine, the City did not get my input.  

Would it have been such as hard task to drop a note in our box?

At a minimum I would like the City and CRD to active remove all the invasive plants in the park area.  What I really want is a commitment from the City that within a year they will have acquired the land needed to connect Maddock Street to Cecilia Ravine.   If the argument is that is too expensive, the city could sell some park land elsewhere to fund, carving two building lots out of Beacon Hill park should cover the expense.

Victoria Real Estate Board May sales figures

The VREB has released their monthly statistics on home sales in the CRD.  The numbers look weak, at 671 units sold in May, this is the lowest level for a May some years now.

The normal sales pattern in Greater Victoria is for the number of sales to climb each month till July and then to level off before dropping in the mid to late fall with a trough in December/January.   This year we have seen a decline in the number of sales from March to May.   This is a pattern we have not seen before.

At the same time as the month to month decline has happened, we have seen a dramatic rise in the number of units on the market.  In May we reached 4500 units on the market, just short of the peak of 4700 in September 2008.   The more remarkable thing is how quickly we rose from just over 2500 in December to 4500 now.   This is the fastest rise in units on the market we have seen in this city.

Based on the number of sales in May and a historical average of one in eight sales being in May, we are looking at 5300 to 5500 total sales this year.  This would make 2010 one of the worst sales years in a long time.  I do not see what could cause sales in June and July to rise dramatically from the May numbers.   Based on this estimate, we have a ten month supply of housing stock on the market.

The average price of single family home is up, but in looking through the data I see that in a number of areas this average was heavily influenced by more expensive properties selling.

Among condos, the market looks bad.  The average price in May was lower than the six month average.  In fact the average price for a condo now is roughly the same place where it was three years ago.

Resignation of Sonya Chandler from Victoria City Council

Sonya Chandler, Green party two term Victoria city councilor, is resigning effective September 1st.   She is stepping down because she has a chance to study in Europe.


The impact of this means we will have a by-election in the City of Victoria this fall, I assume this is will be in conjunction with referendum on borrowing for whatever the city plans are for the Johnson Street Bridge.


This by-election will be different that a normal election for a number of reasons

• It will be dominated by one major issue - the bridge
• There will be no incumbents running
• This is the only election going and therefore will get media coverage
• Each person only gets one vote and not eight

So who will run?

• I suspect Rob Randall of the Downtown Residents Association will run.   He came a distant 9th last time
• The Greens should be considering running someone as this is one their few elected members in Canada that is stepping down.   I am uncertain of who they would run
• The NDP/Victoria Labour Council I suspect will back someone, but there are no clear names that come to mind
• I see Rose Henry trying again, she placed 11th in 2008 and not that far behind Rob Randall
• Wayne Hollohan and Tim Can Alstine are two candidates from 2008 that I could see running again.  They come with strong backgrounds in community associations.
• The business community may or may not come together to back someone.   If they did and that person won, this would change the dynamic of council significantly.  Currently there are five councilors from the NDP/Green side of the spectrum and three from the centre to centre right.   With a business backed candidate winning, this would make it a four four tie and require the mayor to the the deciding vote on every issue divided by ideology.
• The people with the best organization to win a council seat at the people behind the Blue Bridge petition, but I am not sure if they have anyone to back.   It could be Rob Randall, and if it is, then he really becomes the front runner in the race.

Given the scale of the task to get elected to council, people that are serious need to start right now and build their team.   To get elected you need a team of people, doing it on your own is not going to cut it.   Serious candidates have to be looking around for their campaign manager and need to asking their core supporters how much money they will donate to the campaign.   People seriously expecting to get elected should count on having to come up with at least 30 volunteers and $10,000 before September.


I was asked earlier today if I would run by two different people - I said that I do not have the money or a campaign manager and without those it is not something to even talk about.