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.