North Saanich - Wally du Temple

I met up with Wally at the Beacon and Eggs in Sidney at lunch on Friday.  I had met Wally in the past through some shared provincial political activities, but it has been well over a decade since I last saw him.

Wally du Temple is an interesting man that has does many things in his life.   Long time local resident, outdoorsman, golfer, environmentalist, Esperanto speaker, owner of Ardmore golf course, and on various local boards.

Wally was elected to North Saanich council from 1996 to 1998 but was not successful in re-election.  I was not around here during that time so I do not know what happened and why he did not win again.   I also do not know how he was as a councilor.

Wally is heavily involved with the Mary Winspear Centre and the society that runs it, the Memorial Park Society.  One of the changes he would like to see is a closer cooperation and more support from all the local governments on the Peninsula of the Memorial Park Society and combine this with the Panorama Recreation society.

He also would like to see some better cooperation and regionalization of some aspects of policing.   As he points out, the crime happens region wide, but there is no region wide investigative service of the police.

Close to his heart are protecting and preserving the farming community of North Saanich.   Also, he has a very strong environmental ethic and sees it as important that North Saanich protect its shoreline.

In talking with him it is clear he knows what is involved with being elected to local government.  He is also open to hearing new information and acting on it, a very important value for a local councilor.  

If I lived in North Saanich, odds are very high that Wally would get one of my two votes.  I only hedge because I know nothing at all about several of the candidates and should not make a definitive statement without finding out a bit more.

There is an All Candidates meeting coming on November 9th at the Saanich Presbyterian church, this is your best chance to hear the candidates and make a decision.

Paul Brown

I met with him Tuesday at his business on Burnside road, the delay is getting this written is all because of the dramatic changes to government ministries in the area of my work and a week of getting up to speed on it.  Here in finally is notes from our meeting.  

I was not sure what to expect as his website is annoying to read and I could not get much of a sense of his personality from it.  Paul recognizes the short falls of the website and says he will make some changes to it.

At his office he showed me into his boardroom and we had a chance to talk for awhile.   I found that he and I are very close on many issues and approaches to local governance in the City.   High on his agenda are fiscal prudence and due diligence, two values that we both agree the City has not shown when it comes to the Johnson Street Bridge.

Paul believes that there needs to be more of a regional approach to many issues in this region and that the City of Victoria needs to stand up for its interests if the other municipalities are not interested in coming to the table in a cooperative manner.    Policing and transportation are high on his list of issues for a regional approach and sees a way to link the two.   The City of Victoria does not have any real transportation problems but is expected to come to the table in the region to solve the problems others have.   If the City were to insist on cooperation on developing a regional police force in return for cooperation on transportation, maybe we might see some positive changes.

In general he is an intelligent and thoughtful man and would likely make a good person on City council, the problem is that he is very little chance of getting elected if no one knows who he is or what he brings to the table.   Paul suffers from the same problem that many candidates suffer from, they hope the public will find them and then vote for them based on their good ideas.   It is a naive approach and doomed to failure.    To get elected Paul Brown needs to personally contact as many people as possible so they have some idea of who he is.

At last week's all candidates meeting, which I had to miss, he apparently was a strong candidate and went over well with a number of the people there.  But with only about 75 people there and very limited media coverage, he is not likely to gain much from this.

I asked him why he is running in the first place.   He said that he was not convinced that any of the candidates could address the issues that matter to him as well as he could.   He was also concerned that two of the front runners do not live in the City of Victoria and may not seek to put the interests of the City first.  For these reasons he joined the race.

He has not campaign team, no campaign manager, no plans to have signs, and is not taking any money for his campaign.    He wants a low carbon footprint for his campaign, but his campaign is doomed with out having anyone know about him.   His one out could be the website, but it is not a very strong and sells him very short of what and how he is.

I hope he chooses to run for council 2011 and starts his campaign early and campaigns seriously.   If he does that in 2011 I will vote for him in that election.   I have one vote in this election and I am not choosing to vote for him.

Who Owns the Johnson Street Bridge?

This may sound like a dumb question as everyone thinks the answer is obvious and that the owner is the City, well it may not be that simple.   I am quite certain that the City owns the road portion of the bridge but I am not certain who owns the rail portion.

For a living I do a lot of work dealing with land title and tenure type issues, you would be surprised what can happen when a title is not a simple fee simple title or if the registered names change over time.    It can also happen in residential neighbourhoods because someone in the past put up a fence a few feet in the wrong direction and over time everyone assumes the property line is one location when it is another one.  People act on what they think the situation is and not what the reality is.

So who owns the rail portion of the bridge?

• The bridge is in fact two bridges linked by piers, there is clearly a road bridge and a railway bridge.
• The infrastructure over the water is not within a fee simple title within the provincial torens land registry system but the piers seemed to be owned by the City.  
• The norm in BC has been that all physical infrastructure of a railway is owned by the railway.  Even BC Rail and the physical land vested with the company even though it was owned by the company.  I do not know of any examples in BC where the railway is not the owner of infrastructure like bridges - if you know of one, please let me know.
• The bridge was built as a joint project between the City, CPR, Feds and the Province.   The previous bridge clearly belonged to the CPR, so what as the ownership of the new bridge?   Could it be split, rail with the CPR and road with the City.
• The land leading to the rail bridge is clearly owned by the railway, the rail bridge is physically connected to privately owned rail lands.  I do not see an easement registered in the favour of the City for the bridge to be there.  Either there is no need because the bridge is actually owned by the railway or no one every bothered to get one.  I am not certain of the status of the land on the downtown side of the bridge.
• There must have been some contract in place from the start for who was responsible for operations and upkeep of the bridge and there likely was some term to it.   I would love to see the original one from the 1920s and then any updates since then.

What all this says to me is that there is a chance the railway portion of the bridge actually belongs to the Island Corridor Foundation and not the City, in part I have trouble being certain because I do not know the form of ownership the ICF has of the tracks.   If this is the case the City needs the approval of the Island Corridor Foundation to go forward with anything to do with the rail bridge.

The Proposed new E&N Schedule

I am interested to see that the Island Corridor Foundation is asking to move the terminus of the passenger service from Victoria to Nanaimo to allow for a run south to Victoria in the morning.   The idea being that this would allow for some commuter rail in the region.

If this can be done for a reasonable amount of money and does not require a subsidy per passenger than what is provided for each passenger trip on BC Transit in the Victoria area, I am very much in favour.

Pro:

• More use of the infrastructure and the rolling stock meaning the fixed costs are amortized over more passengers
• Very good access for people living north of the Malahat and going to the Esquimalt Base
• More rational locating of rolling stock for the whole network

Con:

• The trip times - it is still long trip, currently Shawingan Lake to Esquimalt is one hour, will a commuter train improve on this much?  It is not bad compared to the existing bus service.
• Taking business away from the existing buses is a possibility.  It is not clear there are enough willing users of transit to have both services get enough passengers.
• Is the afternoon return trip reasonable?   The idea is that the train would leave Victoria at 6 pm to go back to Nanaimo, but if you arrive at work for 8 am, you will want to leave for home at 4:30 at the latest.  The return trip does not work for commuters

Unknowns:

• What will the fares be?
• Can the faster time be achieved?   The proposed schedule is for a two hour Nanaimo to Victoria trip, currently that time is 2 hours and 35 minutes, the commuter run would be expected to complete this in 2 hours.   Is that realistic?

I will be interested to see what happens from here with the idea and how it evolves.   My one big concern is that the cost per passenger will be unsustainable.

The Island Corridor Foundation is right to be looking at more use of the rolling stock and I would encourage more exploration of ideas that might work.   As one example, a ski train.   Leave Victoria at 6pm on a Friday and get to Courtney by 9:30 pm and then bus people to Mount Washington.  Return trip on Sunday leaving Courtney at 6 pm.   You package it with room, lift passes and transportation as a single package of $250 to $300 per person based on double occupancy.

Does anyone care?

With only three and half weeks before the people of the City of Victoria and the people of North Saanich vote in by-elections there is almost no buzz about the election at all.  

City of Victoria
I can understand not seeing signs up as they are expensive to buy and a few hundred will have almost no impact, you need thousands to have an impact.   What I can not understand is why the candidates do not seem to be actively campaigning.

With 11 candidates running in Victoria, and at least seven to eight of them very seriously trying to get elected, I should have run into some of them actively campaigning.   To date no one has been main streeting when I have been out and about and no one has come to my door.  

There are only just over 20,000 doors available to knock on when campaigning in the City of Victoria it is an easy task to go to every door in the city.   The available doors are the houses and townhouses you can walk up to and does not include the 22,000 apartments and condos.   A campaign team only needs to reach 500 houses a day, an easy task for 20 volunteers to achieve each and every night.

With six serious campaigns running, this should mean I should have seen three of the campaigns at my door step already.   Even if campaigns are unable to reach the 500 a night number I still should have seen at least one campaign come to my door by this point.

From what I have seen and heard around town this is the rough order of who is putting in the most campaign effort to date:

1) Steve Filipovic - I have heard several people comment about his mainstreeting

2) Barry Hobbis, Susan Woods and Rose Henry - there are active campaigns, but not nearly strong enough.

3) George Sirk and Marianne Alto - I believe there are campaign teams and I believe the candidates are campaigning, but there is no first or second hand evidence I have heard about them running.

This by-election is about one thing for the candidates - meeting the most people.  It is much more important this time around to shake as many hands as possible than in a normal election because it is a one person race and all 11 candidates are unknown by the public.

A serious candidate will be campaigning 14-16 hours a day for the next 25 days and be doing this with a decent sized team of volunteers.   Anyone that has a job should have planned ahead and taken their holidays for the campaign period.  If a candidate has time to watch TV, work, cook a meal or almost anything else other than meeting people, they are not being serious about getting elected

To put it simply, a serious election campaign is probably the hardest thing a person will ever do in their lives.  I am not seeing this sort of dedication from the candidates.

North Saanich
This race is very different because most of the players in the race are known to the public in North Saanich in some way.  The geography of the community also makes traditional hand shaking very hard to do.   What will matter is the public's opinion of people like Wally De Temple and Heather Goulet.  As former councilors they have an edge, but that edge is dependent on their record when in office.  

Given the results from 2008, I do not give Craig Mearns and Dustan Browne a good chance to get elected.  In the last election the day was carried by the 'anti-development' forces and there is little I can see that this vote has weakened at all.

TC article on North Saanich by-election

I am going to talk to some of the North Saanich candidates, for the moment here is what was in the TC

Byelection: Development and governance among key issues

BY KIM WESTAD, TIMES COLONIST OCTOBER 24, 2010

One of the six candidates vying for two North Saanich council seats in the Nov. 20 byelection already has his eyes on the top job come the next full election.

Former councillor Wally Du Temple said he'll run for the mayor's seat come the 2011 municipal election.

"I think it's time for a new mayor," the owner of the Ardmore Golf Course said. "I'm running in the by-election to run again in the full campaign."

Alice Finall is the current mayor.

Two council seats became available for the remainder of the three-year term -- which is over in one year -- after Bob Shaw and Sheilah Fea resigned. The two said they were consistently outvoted by the remainder of council and were also frustrated at how some personnel issues had been dealt with.

Du Temple, a former North Saanich councillor, said he's running for the one-year council seat largely because he's upset that North Saanich does not fund the Mary Winspear Centre the way Sidney does.

"Sidney supports the centre with twice the amount of operational expenses that North Saanich gives," Du Temple said.

Dunstan Browne, 67, a lawyer, and Craig Mearns, a 68-year-old developer and businessman, are the only ones running on a slate. Mearns said, if elected, the two "will be marginalized" on council since they likely wouldn't vote the same as the other five on numerous issues.

"I don't think we'd see eye to eye with a lot of things these guys do," Mearns said. Still, there are "a whole bunch of issues about good governance that aren't being addressed," and being in the minority doesn't stop them from being brought up.

Mearns, who lives on the waterfront, said he's also concerned about municipal legislation that limits how homeowners deal with the waterfront. "It's very restrictive." He also says that private property rights have eroded and that restrictive legislation is making it increasingly expensive to live in North Saanich.

Browne, who ran unsuccessfully for council before, was previously a councillor in Natal, South Africa. "I sense that there's unhappiness within the council. It's time to bring some common sense, some courtesy back into council."

Artist and farmer Heather Goulet, who was previously on council, wants to bring her experience back to the table. Goulet said: "I'm an independent. Council needs independent thinkers."

Jan Fellenius, 47, hasn't held a council seat before but chairs the municipality's environmental advisory commission.

The engineer and environmental scientist said he wouldn't label himself as either pro- or anti-development. "The thing is to do it in a sustainable way," he said.

Robin Herlinveaux, 58, ran in 2005 and "missed the boat." Herlinveaux, a farmer, has lived in North Saanich for 35 years. He is against development on farmland, or "tweaking" of the Agricultural Land Reserve property.

A candidates meeting will be held Nov. 9 at the Saanich Peninsula Presbyterian Church.

kwestad@timescolonist.com

© Copyright (c) The Victoria Times Colonist

A Rainy Day

Surface runoff harms the Gorge

It is on a rainy day like today that I can see the problems of water management that we have in this region.  We simply have too many impervious surfaces  - houses, roads, parking lots, buildings, hard packed earth and more.  Added to this we have very few natural water retention systems left like wetlands, swamps and water courses.  This means we have water levels in creeks, culverts and sewers rise and fall quickly and a lot more of the rain flows through our city as surface water and no longer goes into the ground.  Is this is a huge problem?

On the scale of world problems or even environmental issues in this region, the water flows from the rain are not a big deal, but if we had been thinking ahead we would not have the problem at all.  In my case it is a bit higher on the radar because I live near the Gorge Waterway and like to boat on it and swim in it.

Less than half the surface is able to soak up the rain and it is the areas that could soak up the most that have been lost.  We have built our city in such a way to be almost completely at odds with the natural water cycle for our area.  We have caused more problems for everyone by having surface water quickly rising to levels of near flooding in many areas of the city and then overburdening our storm sewer system.   These widely fluctuating water levels are a problem but not as big a problem as the fact we have a lot more surface water.

In the past much of the water would have seeped in the ground and then flowed through the soils to the creeks and rivers.   This process filtered the water meaning what ended up in the creeks and lakes was cleaner than it is today.   On top of this is the fact that our roads have a build up of petroleum related waste from all the vehicles (engine oil, grease, hydraulic fluids, gasoline and diesel) - this the sheen water on the edges of streets often has.  All this is sweep along and quickly accumulated on the streets.

There are things we could be doing:

This could have been a good bioswale

• Bioswales  - there is one downtown now on Blanshard outside of the new Atrium building and Saanich has put some in on Shelbourne in Gordon Head.   These are small artificially created landscape elements that allows water to accumulate and then filter into the ground.
• Encouraging large paved areas to be broken up with some locations that allow for water to filter into the ground.   I am talking about taking every tenth to fifteenth parking spot and making them a garden bed.  I know there are supposed to ways to pave that allow for water to filter into the ground, but I am not convinced they work well because the ground becomes so compacted that it does not allow for any water to penetrate.  Hard packed soil is also impervious.
• Working with existing water courses and building ponds and more wetlands into them to allow for water to be retained.  As an example, Colquitz Creek between Burnside road and Silvercity could be altered to make the area to the west of the Tillicum mall parking lot a wetland area.  The existing area of Cuthbert Holmes park is not currently used for anything and would benefit from this change.  This would mean spending money on heavy equipment to make the contours needed to allow the area to become a wetland and I do not know how much spending makes sense.   There are similar opportunities with Bowker Creek and Cecilia Creek

As I said earlier, this is not a big deal, but it is one of those many small things that would not take a lot of change for us to make a big difference.  In the case of Colquitz creek, the change would dramatically increase the salmon runs on the creek.

CANDIDATES' FORUM on THE BLUE BRIDGE

A discussion with candidates running in the City of Victoria byelection

This November, Victoria residents will elect a new councillor, and vote on borrowing $49.2 million to replace the Johnson Street Bridge – the biggest infrastructure project in the city's history.

How would our prospective councillors deal with the bridge, and its effects upon city finances?

Find out at this public forum, moderated by Stephen Andrew of A News.

First Metropolitan United Church
932 Balmoral Road (entrance on Quadra)
Wednesday, October 27, 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Hosted by johnsonstreetbridge.org
For more information, email info@johnsontreetbridge.org 
or call Ross Crockford at 250-592-0574

Cadboro Bay Village

I am in Cadboro Bay Village ever y six months or so.   Our optomoterist Amanda Weinerman is located there.  

When I was there last week I was surprised at how many commercial units were empty.   Ambrosia is gone, the video store on the corner is gone and more units are sitting empty.    I have no idea why it is happening or what is causing it, just noting that seemingly out of the blue there are a lot of retail vacancies.


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If you live in the City of Victoria or North Saanich you need to vote on November 20th

In municipal elections the number of people voting is way too low, this means those elected to council that are not representatives of the people.   I can understand some of the reasons people do not vote, how can you vote when it is almost impossible to become informed about the candidates in the race?

In 2005 I found out how hard it is in this region to find out about the candidates in the election.   In the run up to 2008 I used this blog to let me find out who is running and why.   The by-product for the public was that this was the only location that had comprehensive information about people in the race.   To this day I run into people that I meet for the first time and tell me they used this blog to find out about the candidates.  It ended up that I had what amounted to a personal all candidates meeting with candidates in more than half the municipalities in the region.

I am going to try and personally talk to each of the candidates and post the results on this blog.  I am interested in finding out more about all the candidates so if you know something, please let me know through email, phone or comment on the blog.   I will not be allowing any comments to be posted that relate to the election that do not have someone way for me to verify they are accurate and do not have a person taking responsibility for them.

With so few candidates running in both North Saanich and Victoria, it is not a huge task to learn about the candidates.   Inform yourself and go out vote.   If there is someone you like, call them, meet them in person, help them with their campaign.   They are waiting for your calls and if you like them they can use your support.

North Saanich by-election

There are six candidates running for two positions on council, none of them ran in 2008.

• Dustan Browne
• Wally Du Temple
• Jan Fellenius
• Heather Goulet
• Robin Herlinveaux
• Craig Mearns

I only know two of the candidates, Wally Du Temple and Heather Goulet.  Both are from  a Green Party background but I have no idea as to their current involvement with the Greens. 

Wally has a general website, but I am not finding anything related to running for council.   He is a part owner of  the Ardmore golf course.  I am not sure he remembers meeting me.  I have always found him to be quirkily engaging, though I am not certain he is the sort of guy I would want to see on a council.  If I remember correctly, he served a term or part of a term on North Saanich council some years back.

Heather Goulet was on the North Saanich council and in the past but did not choose to run in 2008.   I think she would fit well with the majority on the current council and I think she would be a good addition as she is reasonable in her opposition to suburban sprawl.   I must admit I am not sure how to refer to the people that are opposed to development on the peninsula because so many of them are sitting on large pieces of land that they are keeping out of active farming, just a few too many mansion estate types arguing against all development.   Heather does not fit this mold and is truly someone that wants to try and retain a rural nature for North Saanich.

Craig Mearns has been linked to the opposition to the current mayor and majority on council.   He is connected the Mearns family that donated the money to UVic for the library expansion.   He spent $1092 in the 2008 election to oppose the people that make up the current majority on the council.   He has also been involved with Property Rights on Waterfront, a group advocating for rights and interests of private landholders on waterfront of the peninsula.

As to the rest of the candidates, there is very little I can find out about them.   When I find out more I will post what I find.   If you know of links to anything, drop me a line or leave a comment

And then there was an 8th candidate

Through a comment on this blog I found out George Sirk is running for council again.   He ran in 2005 shortly after he arrived in town and not surprisingly he placed far behind in that election.  

What makes him stand out from the other candidates is that he has nine years local government experience.  From 1996 to 2005 he served on the Comox Strathcona Regional District board as the representative for Cortes Island.   I will admit I have no idea what his record was like as on the CSRD.

Plaskett Telescope

I was up there again today with my third son Stephen who went as part of a field trip with his school today.  One advantage of him going to SIDES is that he gets lots of field trips, about one a month.   Anyway, we visited the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory today and I had not realized that the Plaskett telescope is still one of the largest in Canada and it is 92 years old now.   In fact, among conventional observatories, only the U of T David Dunlap Observatory is bigger and then only 5 centimeters.  

There is a much larger one in Vancouver, the Large Zenith Telescope will be 6 metres across.   This is not a traditional optical telescope, but a spinning liquid mirror so it can only point straight up.   Great for a cheap to have amazing resolution for one point in the sky, but you can not track anything.

The telescope here on Little Saanich Mountain is still within the top 100 largest telescopes on earth, I think it is about 75th out of the standard optical telescopes currently in use.

I have known about the telescope since I was in physics at UVic in the early 1980s and I have visited it about a dozen times over the last 27 years and I have always known the story that for six months in 1918 it was the largest telescope on earth, what I never knew is that is still a very significant sized telescope globally and close to the largest in Canada.  It is classic Victoria, we have a very significant telescope and one of the few large ones near a city.

The story that it was once the largest is not true, it was close to being number one, but Mount Hooker was in operation before it was.    The Plaskett telescope was still in the top five in 1950.  Even in 1970 it was the 15th largest in the world.  When I was doing field trips to Victoria in elementary school we never visited it, but it would still have been close to being in the top 20.

We have this amazing thing here in town and we are doing a crap job of letting people know about it, but that seems to be about par for the course for this town.

State of the by-election and referendum campaigns

At the moment I would put Barry Hobbis as the front runner but I see Sue Woods, Marianne Alto and Steve Filipovic all having a shot.

Barry has done the most on a campaign and if he were to shift into a very high gear he could be uncatchable.

Marianne Alto is likely to be the Victoria Labour Council recommendation and this would be a benefit of a good chunk or labour and NDP supporters voting for her, but it is not enough on its own.  If she campaigns with as much effort as she did in 2005, she has no real chance of getting elected.

Sue Woods, I do like her and my current plan is to be voting for her.   If she campaigns as she has told me she plans on campaigning, she has a reasonable chance of winning.

Steve Filipovic is seeking to be the Green Party candidate in the race.   The very name Green Party on the ballot will be worth a significant number of votes, though not enough on its own.   He needs to have the Green Machine to campaign for him.

As of this point no one for any campaign has knocked on my door, all well run campaigns should be able to door knock every single family home in this city.  In the next five weeks each candidate should be trying to meet at least 10,000 people in the City.

Meanwhile over in referendum land it is really hard for me to see how things are playing out.   If there were an active No campaign I would betting on them to win, but Ross does not seem to have a campaign team on the issue at the moment.   

The City certainly has mistepped in using public money to pay for the Yes campaign.   I suspect they will get no donations for their the campaign and there will be no space for the public to be in leadership of the campaign.  The campaign feels like it will be more of the same that they have done in the whole bridge process.   When will they figure out that how they are dealing with the public is pissing people off and pushing buttons?   People who would like to see a new bridge are going to vote No because they really dislike the lack of any meaningful consultation with the public and the patronizing way the City has talked to us.   This is 2010, not 1950, we are better educated and better informed and much of the public hates being told by anyone in authority what to do.

Will it the borrowing referendum pass?   At the moment I would commit to either, I think we are at a 50/50 point with the City being its own worst enemy.  The City could very well do something to annoy more people and seal the fate of referendum and any new bridge.

As a quick point that needs reiterating, if the referendum fails and the City tries to go forward with a new bridge, they will setting a unique precedence in undemocratic behaviour by a local government in BC.   I am looking for examples when borrowing bylaws have been defeated and the local government has gone ahead with the project anyway, I can not find any examples.  If you know of one, please let me know.

Campaigning

Last night I went to the Barry Hobbis fundraising event at the Bard and Banker.   I am very pleased to see that Barry and his team are taking the election seriously.   There were about 40-45 people there that had paid $50 each for free food and booze.   I hate to be critical of the event, but I am going to be because I want to see everyone run a better campaign when running for council.


In 2008 Barry ran for council as a one man band and did generially OK compared to the other people that lost, but he was way outside of the money.   This time around Barry is the first one of the mark and is running a real campaign.  Still with a long lead since he announced, his campaign on the ground has not been in evidence.    I would have recommended he and team had been out door knocking since July and really no later than Labour day.   He had a team and he had a time lead but he allowed this to be lost.   I would have also hosted the fundraising event in July, not now.

At the event there was not any moment in which Barry gathered the people there together and addressed them.  There was no one there making sure everyone there was committing to helping with the campaign.   There was no one there asking for $500 to $1000 donations.   Given the look of the crowd, there were some people there that could give that much.

As an aside, the crowd was old, as a 45 year old I felt like I was the youth movement there.   This is not Barry's fault, it is simply a reality of politics these days, the people that come out are older and older each and every year.

If anyone tells you "You need to run for council a few times for your name to be known and before you can elected", you are listening to someone giving you bad advice.   Yes, people need to know your name, but almost no one in this City remembers even a handful of the names of the people that ran and lost in 2008, let alone 2005.  Name recognition matters but you do not get that from running for council.   You should be able to do that in your election campaign. 

A candidate should expect to effectively have no life other than meeting with the public for the month in the lead up to the election.   This hard for someone with a 9-5 job, but if you have one of those odds are you will not be able to sit on council in any case.   A candidate should be shaking hands for close to 12 hours a day 7 days a week during the campaign.  

In 2008 way too many ran for council in this region with no team and spent their own money on the election.   A lot of people were elected despite these huge errors.    Here are some things anyone running for council needs to be thinking about.

1) You need to have a campaign manager - you have to have to someone that organizes where you are campaigning, organizing fundraising events, delegating tasks to volunteers, planning print materials, working with the media.  Basically the campaign manager does everything expect shake hands.   The idea is that this one person makes sure the candidate does not waste time doing other than meeting people.

2) If you are spending your own money, then you are not getting donations.   If you are not getting donations this is a good indication of how strong your support is.   Running for Victoria City Council you should be expect to be able to raise $50 from 200 people or $20 from 500.  If you can not do this you really have to ask yourself why you expect people will vote for you.   If you support is so weak that people will not give you money, you are wasting your time.

Ideally you need someone to ask for money for you.   You need someone that can contact all your friends and relatives and ask them for money for your campaign.   This person has to be someone that will not accept no as an answer and pushes early to raise a lot of money.

3) Volunteer manager - if you have a campaign manager and someone to raise money, next you need someone to organize people willing to support your campaign by volunteering.   This is a big job because once you are over 15-20 supporters, it takes someone fulltime to contact people and knowing what jobs people are doing and when they are being done.  The volunteer manager also looks for more volunteers. 

In an election you should be aiming to have one volunteer per 300 voters as a minimum.  I know that is very hard to reach and almost no one running for council can get organized well enough and early enough to do this.   If can get to this level, you can run an election day campaign to get out the vote.   In a municipal campaign in Victoria this is worth several thousand votes, possibly as much as 5000 votes.   In a provincial or federal election it is worth much less.   The reason for this difference is because a lot more people might or might not vote in a municipal election and are typically not as certain in their voting decision.   You can get a lot of people to vote that would not have voted.   An E-Day campaign takes a lot of work and a lot of volunteers and has to be something you plan for from the start of the campaign.

4) The partner of the candidate has a special role, they are there to take care of all of the personal needs of the candidate, they are the ones that drive them to where they are going, makes sure they have breakfast ready when they get up, that all the cooking, cleaning and housework is done.   They are the ones that make sure the candidate can campaign for 12 hours a day and not burn out.  They are also the person the candidate can vent at and complain to about what is going on.

The partner of a candidate should not under any circumstance be the campaign manager or some senior role in the campaign.

5) Build a team - it is amazing how few election campaigns build a real team.  A strong team builds energy and enthuses everyone to do more, to make that extra push to get the votes needed.

6) Canadians are polite liars.   People ask for a leaflet or brochure so that they can get you to leave them alone, the odds that they are going to actually read it is very, very low.   Many people will imply in a round about way that they will support you in the election, you have to take this with a grain of salt because most people do not want to be rude and tell you they are not voting for you.

You can get elected to local council by doing none of the things I have listed but it means that the election comes down to who has a better known name than anything else.   In 2008 Lynn Hunter was elected to City Council because she was well known to the public from having been an MP, not because she campaigned well and she is only one of many examples from around the region and did no better or no worse than the vast majority of people running.

If you have a strong campaign that is well organized you can win in any election to council against long time incumbents.  You will know you have had a good campaign if you as the candidate have shaken more hands than people that vote in the election.

Monday Nov 8th, next meeting to talk about Amalgamation

Monday Nov 9th @ 7:30 pm
2915 Douglas Street - this is the Super 8, we will be in a meeting room provided by LiqourPlus and accessible via the back.

I am looking for input to create an agenda.

If you are interested, please either give me an email address or join the Facebook Group.

From Rose Henry

Below is information Rose Henry's campaign for city council - this is courtesy of Janine Bandcroft.
_______________________________________________

On November 20th, a vote for Rose will be a vote for social justice and an effective way to challenge the barriers of race, class and gender privilege that typically prevail in the realms of political decision-making.

Rose has contributed 25 years of mostly volunteer front line community-based social services for the poor and marginalized in this city. Her many activities have included:

*anti-racism education.

*advocate for literacy and access to education as a tool for empowering the poor and marginalized. Giving recognition to the thoughts that education is a part of the solution to helping with eradication of poverty.

*instrumental in starting up local community economic development projects the Bent Nail recycling wood project, which allowed the poor and the street community entrance into work force.

* advocated for the creation of the Needle Exchange, ensuring the safety of drug users in the city.

* spearheading the effort to promote the right of the homeless to vote in elections, 1990

*author and distribution of the Red Zone and Street Newz, street community publications

*represented the Victoria community at the Global Anti-racism conference in Durban South Africa

*Organized the B.C Womyn's Walkout for recognition of the value of unpaid women's work and the impacts of poverty on women.

*Organized the public burning of ballots during the Liberal government's racist referendum on aboriginal rights.

*Consistent advocate on behalf of the poor: mobilizing campaigns against the anti-panhandling by-law, for the right to access public benches, against transit fare increases, and for affordable housing.


Highlight of Most Recent Struggles:

-persisting in a 3.5 years court battle with the federal government over the voter ID requirements (Bill C-31 of the Electoral Act).

-In last year's infamous Supreme Court case, Victoria vs. Adams, Rose was a key witness and supporter of the right of homeless people to erect shelter.

-Rose continues in this struggle for the right of unhoused people to live in Victoria's parks and boulevards, specifically by supporting the campaign to challenge the City of Victoria's new Traffics Bylaw.

As most of you would know, local social activist Rose Henry has entered her third campaign to break the cultural barrier at City Hall in becoming the first aboriginal person on council.


Over the past three years I have had the privilage of of working with Dr. Budd Hall Professor Director of the Office of Community-Based Research from UVic (OBCR), Dr. Bernadette (Bernie) Pauly RN, Ph.D
Associate Professor, School of Nursing Scientist, Centre For Addictions Research of B.C. (CARBC) & (Homeless, Housing and Health Research team and Street Stories) and Dr. Jutta Gutberlet - associate professor (MOTHERS" Project-Binning).

Here is what she stands for:

Rose is an outstanding voice for the poor and the homeless in our community, having devoted an accumulated almost two decades of service at the Native Friendship Centre, Sandy Merriman House shelter for women, Victoria Street Community Association, Together Against Poverty Association and the Vancouver Human Rights Coalition. She stands up for the rights of the most marginalized and dispossessed in our city.

She is herself a survivor of a racist colonial system and the foster care system and who faces the multiple barriers of being a First Nations woman, a visible minority, who has lived in poverty her whole life and who has the great strength of being able to authentically represent the reality, issues and needs of a whole segment of the population whose voices are systematically excluded and ignored in the realms of political power, privilege and decision-making.

City Hall has long been the domain of the privilege and the comfortable, the educated and the middle class.

It is no coincidence that the issues affecting the poor are year after year given short shrift. Class interests on city council have almost unanimously been with those who stand for big development and private profits before people's real needs, affordable housing, public transit and poverty alleviation.

Rose is no newcomer to social justice struggles. She operates on substance and not slick. She is one person who will put the urgency of Victoria's pressing social issues at the top (rather than the bottom) of the agenda at City Hall. She is a compassionate and hard-working advocate who will serve beyond the call of duty to press for solutions to the growing problems that our community faces: addiction, homelessness, intolerance, housing affordability, public safety.

Rose has stood with all of us in the social justice community for a long time. It's time that we stood with her now.

Rose can be reached at rose@homelessnation.org or on her Face Book "Rose Henry Group"

Rose Henry Campaign Team

Delcan made a $8.6 million estimate to fix the Johnson Street Bridge in 2008

According to Focus, two years ago the engineering firm Delcan made an estimate that the bridge could be refurbished for $8.6 million.  Read about it here.

I am more than a little stunned to see this and I have wonder what City Hall is thinking when they were offered an option that dramatically cheaper?

If one assumes that the costs are two to three times higher for a host of reasons, it would seem that even in a worst case project over run refurbishment is possible for a lot less than a new bridge.

The $8.6 million number seems much more in line with the costs of other bridge refurbishments of the same sort of bridge and also seems in the right order of magnitude when compared to the Lion's Gate Bridge Project.

I still think the bridge is ugly, I just do not think it is ugly enough to warrant spending $80 million or so dollars to replace it.

Steve Filipovic to run for Victoria City Council

Here is what I got today via email from Steve  - his slogan is catchy, No Bridge before Housing

Hello,


This list is a list generated while promoting the green philosophy in Federal Elections


It has been along time since I posted. The biggest news in my life is that Leah and I now have two daughters.


Corina our latest is just 7 weeks old and Vivian is now 2 years plus some and is the height of 4yr olds.


Leah is enjoying Corina and is especially thank full for all the lessons learned the first time around.


Now to do the work we need to do to keep this place a great place to grow up in.


.I have for you my new website: www.SteveFilipovic.ca


Please do check it out and submit some feed back…


I am very interested to hear your thoughts on how this campaign might work out.


I would like you to start thinking about the many ways possible for us to ramp up this campaign.


I would like to be a City Councillor and I need your help to do it.


Thanks


Steve



www.SteveFilipovic.ca


250 – 888 - 2588

Why I will be voting No on the bridge

I have given this a lot of thought about the bridge referendum and  I have come down on the side of NO to a new bridge. 

I do not like the existing bridge and I would like to see it  gone and replaced with something new and unique, but I am not keen on the expense or the process used by the City to make their decision.

Here are my reasons:

1. The City has not shown me that they have any mechanism in place to ensure there will be no budget overrun.  Around the world transportation capital projects go over budget in most cases.   I want to know who on City staff will put their job online to guarantee no overrun.  I want to know if the City will end the project when the money has been spent even if the bridge is not finished.
2. The process the City has gone forward to deal with the Johnson Street bridge does not give me faith that the decision was well thought out or well researched.   There are too many examples out there of refurbishment projects that have been achieved for much less but no indication of why these examples are not applicable here.   Most specifically the City has a cost to refurbish the bridge that is about the same as the Lion' Gate Bridge project, a very complex and large project. 
3. I am not convinced that the bridge is the single most important infrastructure project for the City.  This was not on the radar in the last election and there is nothing in the reports the City has recieved that action on the bridge has to taken dramatically quickly.  It feels like someone in City Hall saw the stimulus money and thought the City could use the bridge to access this money - when this money would come through the City seemed to have locked itself into a decision it can not back out of without losing face.
4. On a purely selfish reason, no one has given me a good reason why I should pay for this bridge when it holds no benefits for me.   I am expected to pay but the majority of people that use the bridge will not pay anything towards it?  Where is the fairness in that?
5. The final reason why I will be voting No is because of the utterly abysmal consultation process the City engaged in with respect to this project.   From someone that does consultation for a living, it is clear to me there is no one involved with this project that understands what a good consultative process is and how to react to the input from the public.  Voting Yes would feel like rewarding bad governance.   

I am voting No because I can not support a new bridge and want to see the City look at a much, much cheaper option for the bridge.

City of Victoria All Candidates Meeting Oct 27th

The people at johnsonstreetbridge.org are organizing an all candidates meeting for October 27th at the First Metropolitain United Church on Quadra at Balmoral.  Starting at 7 pm and moderated by Stephen Andrew of A Channel.

North Saanich

So I am trying to find out about who may be running in North Saanich for the two vacant seats on council and all I hear is that Heather Goulet is making a come back.

North Saanich Online has this great indepth look at financing in the 2008 election - worth looking at.  The most interesting stat is that winning candidate spent almost twice as much in 2008 compared to those that won in 2005.  The contributions also show how divided the community was in the election.

Transit Planning

We keep talking about this as an important issue, but we rarely address the real underlying interests people have in this issue of transportation and transit in this region.

No one has spent much time addressing what the interests of the different parts of the public are in this region.   I live in the City of Victoria and my interests in transit planning are first a low cost to me as a homeowner and second no loss of service in my neighbourhood.   I have no personal interests in the issues of the Colwood Crawl as it has no bearing on my life.

Someone that lives on the Westshore and commutes downtown has an interest in having a decent trip to and from work, not too long and not too frustrating.   Their interests on the cost side are different, they may not have a primary interest in low costs to the taxpayer.

A UVic student has an interest in being able to get to and from UVic via transit, many of them have trouble getting on buses at peak times because of the scale of use.

A business owner on Douglas has an interest in no negative impact on their ability to do business.

We have multiple competing interests and need to find a solution that can meet the interests of all manner of different people.   When we address interests and not positions, we can find solutions that work.

Advocacy for rail of any sort is not an interest, but a position.   Can all the benefits of rail be met with other solutions?  Yes.   Does rail meet the majority of interests in transit in this region?  No.

We have not addressed the interests to date and this means we will have problems with whatever solution is chosen.   If five years ago BC Transit had started along a process that sought out the different interests and then found solutions that met all the different interests, we would be much closer to a solution than we are now.

When I look at the choices available, the only option that makes sense to me is bus rapid transit.  The cost is lower, it is more flexible, it has a much lower probability of impacting local service, and it can be rolled out to the number destination needing rapid transit much sooner - UVic.

Rapid Transit in Victoria

I went to the open house today at the Ambrosia Event Centre that BC Transit was hosting about rapid transit.

The first thing I saw was the butt ugly pseudo streetcar parked outside on Fisgard.   I am not convinced that it has many advantages over a conventional banana bus, but I was assured by  a consultant that it did.  The cost to Las Vegas for these was $1.3 million.

Inside they showed their planned route, still the westshore as a priority which I think is a huge mistake because this is not where the traffic is.   I am not surprised that UVic to downtown was not chosen by the mayors as the first priority since the 20,000 students at UVic are not civic voters and therefore are off of the radar of the mayors.  If rationallity had prevailed, rapid transit would be considered first and foremost for downtown to UVic, but in this issue rationality does not play well as I quickly heard inside.

The public in the region seems to be completely sold on rail as the solution even though we do not have the traffic to warrant it, it is more than twice as expensive to build and operate, and is less flexible.   One gentleman walked around asked people which they preferred, rail or bus, I was the only one that answered bus.

I said bus because I know we do not have the potential for enough passengers to make rail work in this region.   For rail to be financially viable, by which I mean a better option than buses, it has to be a route that will see 60,000 to 100,000 passenger trips per day.   There are simply way too many example in the US of local transit systems harmed because the operational costs of rail sucked the resources out of the rest of the system.

The people from BC Transit there, the consultants and staff, seem to be well informed about the realities of Greater Victoria and which options fit with the needs of the people here.   These people are professionals and know about the costs and are aware that it is simply unaffordable for the public in this region to build a rail line.   The fact they brought in one of the ugly bus - trams seems to indicate they are now ready to show people that bus rapid transit is the option for this region.

People seem to be unaware of how few people there are on the Westshore in general and how few of them actually travel into the core each day.  People also seem to be unaware of well funded our transit system here in Victoria is by the provincial government and how low our fares are.   We use our transit in the core, it would be a shame to gut that for an unviable rail option.   We could be paying a lot more in property taxes for our system if we go in the direction of rapid transit that is expensive.

Bus rapid transit could be phased in quickly and could allow for a lot of flexibility, the same buses could leave the rapid transit route and still operate as a regular bus.

Barry Hobbis Campaign Office Opening

I got this in my email today, I may make it to this, but I also want to go to the BC Transit open house at the same time, maybe I can do both.

Barry Hobbis for City Council has posted a new item, 'Barry Hobbis Campaign
Office Launch - Tuesday October 5th, 4PM'

Where: 932 Pandora Avenue (next to Speedy Auto Glass, across from Our Place)
When: 4pm to 6pm, Tuesday October 5th
Everyone is welcome to meet and talk with Barry Hobbis and the team. Coffee and
light refreshments will be available.

You may view the latest post at
http://electbarryhobbis.org/?p=153

You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
admin
contact@wrightresult.com

Looking at the September Real Estate Sales

What word is best to use for September?  Horrific comes to mind.

Total sales - 395 units - this is the worst September for sales in more than 20 years, possibly more than 30 years, I do not have detailed data going back that far into the past.

September is normally a average month in the year for sales, it is normally higher than sales than the fall and winter months.  It is in March that numbers rise.

The stock on the market is high, very, very high.   We finished 4300 units on the market at the end of September.   September saw the addition of 1200 units on the market, an above average amount for the month.   Three times as many units came onto the market as sold.

The fall and winter of 2008/09 were dire in local real estate, this fall and winter look to be worse.   The market will be bad enough that an average realtor is unlikely to be part of more than one sale between now and March 1st.

There has been a mix in what prices are doing when it comes to single family homes.   The 'better' quality neighbourhoods are seeing their prices hold better than the cheaper neighbourhoods.  It is in Saanich West and Esquimalt that the prices have fallen the furthest so far.  These locations are seeing falling price because of  the low number of new entrants into the market.  This will percolate up through the market as people can not sell in Esquimalt and move to Gordon Head.

We see lot more houses on the market for under $400,000.  In the core there are 12, the Westshore has a similar number.  There are 65 between $400,000 and $500,000 in the core and 90 on the Westshore.   This means we have 179 single family homes for sale for less than $500,000 in the core and Westshore.  This is more than the total of sales of single family homes in September in these areas.

The bottom end of the market is $339,000 at the moment for a 764 square foot house on Lyall Street in Esquimalt.   The lot is only 2030 square feet, but this is more than what you get with a condo and no condo fees.  

We are going to see a bigger fall in the lower end of the market over the winter with the nadir reached when the cost of a small two to three bedroom house is affordable for a young couple with a combined income of $80,000 or so a year.  This means having a reasonable selection of houses in the range of $300,000 to $330,000.

As the prices fall in Esquimalt and Tillicum Gorge, the number of people that will be able to move up into other neighbourhoods will fall and will pull those prices down.    The problem is that few people that have purchased since 2006 will have enough equity in their homes that they can buy something else in the region.   It was the dramatic rise in equity that allowed people to sell in Esquimalt and move to Gordon Head.

What a City means and what a Neighbourhood means

I speak of a city I refer to an all inclusive socio-economic geographic location.   Something that is holistically complete.   This means an entity that includes where we live, work, shop and socialize.   In the context of this region it means that there is not a single local government that achieves this, the closest one is the City of Victoria, but it is limited because those of us living on the border of Victoria have much of our life outside of the municipal boundaries.

A neighbourhood is a location within a city that has some manner of social gathering place that acts as a hub.  We are city of numerous neighbourhoods, a large number of them which are in two municipalities.   The focus typically is a local shopping area, a school or park.

For the city as a whole to function at it's best, the governance of the city has to reflect the whole and not small parts.   The council of the city needs to be able to see the big picture and to be able to deal with whole neighbourhoods.  Planning needs to be done with the full city has as the focus.

Neighbourhoods have ways to govern themselves through the various neighbourhood associations and through them can address the local issues that the larger city might not be able to.

In Greater Victoria we have a problem because artificial boundaries mean that some neighbourhoods have local governments and some are not self governing.   The municipalities like Oak Bay, Esquimalt and View Royal are simply too limited to effectively govern themselves. 

As an example, Oak Bay has to rely on other municipalities for all the jobs needed and the industrial lands needed for the city to function.  People in Oak Bay have to leave the municipality to access many of the most basic things such as gasoline and car repairs.   By most measures, Oak Bay is less of a legitimate governing area than James Bay would be.

The core shopping street of Oak Bay is partially within the City of Victoria - no one stops at Foul Bay because of the artificial boundary and does not shop on the other side of the line.   The main supermarket used by people in Oak Bay is across the border in Victoria.

It is a huge error in this region to assume that individual neighbourhoods are capable of governing as if they were a whole city.   It wastes resources and it makes for shortsighted and narrow decision making.  

The current status quo in local governments in this region harms the quality of life in this region and adds costs to all of our lives.   If the model of Oak Bay is one that makes sense, then we need to divide up Saanich and Victoria into 12 to 15 smaller local governments.   If Oak Bay is not the model for the region, then we need to amalgamate.

Oak Bay is a series of neighbourhoods which flow across the municipal boundaries.   An amalgamated Victoria would not remove the neighbourhoods and would not remove the character of the neighbourhoods.   Cook Street village manages to act as a neighbourhood and it has been within the City of Victoria since the start.

If we started with a blank map, is there anyone out there that could justify creating the boundaries we currently live with?

I live in Greater Victoria, not the CRD

The name Capital Regional District is ugly and a moronic one to have chosen.  Names matter because they form our identity.   There is no one on this plant that thinks of themselves as a CRDer or considers the CRD home.   We need to change the name to one that reflects where we live.

A few years ago the province started to allow regional districts control over their names with the result that Metro Vancouver has replaced GVRD.   We need to do the same with CRD now and we need to use the name that we all agree is this place -Victoria.

The CRD should be changed to Greater Victoria.  In fact as people we could start this change by refusing to use the name CRD and only using Greater Victoria.

I can hear some of you saying "but Bernard, what about the Gulf Islands?"  There is a simple answer, the southern Gulf Islands should be there own local government and free from the soi-distant mandarins in downtown Victoria and those of the Islands Trust.   The Islands need some real control over their own fate instead of being relegated to a colonial model of governance.

Amalgamation

I have been doing some reading about municipal amalgamations in BC and there have been a number of them. Here is a list of the more significant ones in the last 45 years:

1995 Matsqui - Abbotsford
1980 Chilliwack City - Chilliwack DM
1973 Kamloops - North Kamloops - Valleyview - Dufferin
1972 Abbotsford - Sumas Prarie
1969 Mission - Mission City
1967 Alberni - Port Alberni

I raise the ones above because they clearly show that amalgamation was a benefit to the community on many levels, in fact there is no evidence of any downside from them.  The process produced better communities that could deliver more services for less money and reflect a more realistic geographic community.  Is there anyone out there that thinks North Kamloops should be created now?   Or a return to Matsqui?   There is nothing to be found online indicating anyone would like to see the return of the old municipalities.

Once we have an amalgamated city in this region, the benefits will quickly erase any desire of anyone to return to old municipal boundaries.   Once Oak Bay is gone, no one will mourn it because there is no real community of Oak Bay, only a series of neighbourhoods within our city.   

The provincial government provides funding for communities to investigate amalgamation, the local governments of Greater Victoria should access this money and start the process.  There are communities in BC doing this at the moment.  Currently Trail, Warfield and Rossland are talking about amalgamation as are Fruitvale, Montrose and Area A of the Kootenay Boundary Regional District.

An evening to discuss Greater Victoria amalgamation

I have been very interested in amalgamation of some sort for many years for a host of regions.   Since I moved back to this area in the spring of 2004 I have been looking for people to support in moving this issue forward, but no one was stepping forward to be the leader and start something.   I finally decided over this summer that  needed to take the bull by the horns and get things rolling by hosting a meeting. 

I set a date and had no idea who would come, or if any would come.  I did get some decent responses from people saying they would come, but one is never certain.

Last night 20 people met in my home to talk about the idea of amalgamation of our local governments.  We had an interesting representation from around the region and the political spectrum.   Almost all of the people attending are currently active or very active in local municipal political issues.

I most impressed me with the meeting was the high degree or energy in the room.  This was a group that wanted to take action, that felt a passion for achieving better local governance in Greater Victoria.  The room was full all evening with people talking why we need some degree of amalgamation, the unenlightened self interests opposing it, and how we might move forward from here.

After the introductions went talked for about half an hour about why we want amalgamation.   This is a partial list of the reasons

A more livable city
Rational land use decisions
Regional transportation
Increased clout with senior levels of government
Increase the feeling of cohesion as a city
Consolidate the tax base
Make a reality of the regional identity of Victorians
Land use planning based on real neighbourhoods and not artificial boundaries
True sharing of costs and benefits of services and facilities for everyone in the city.
Sharing costs of services and capital projects
More effective governance
An end to neighbourhoods that are divided by artificial lines
Better policing at a lower cost

This is only part of the list, but a reasonable start to why we want to see this happen.

We then moved onto what the barriers have been to the issue moving ahead. Much of what we saw as being the problem is that there are entrenched interests that benefit from the status quo and have control of most of the agenda. We also saw that the very balkanization of our region leads to very limited media coverage of local issues and ownership of media coverage is in the hands of the people opposed to change. There is no space for any real debate of the issues of our city in the media as long as there are 13 local governments.

The existence of 13 local governments also leads to information overload on the one hand and difficulty getting information on the other. There are simply too many councils out there for people to keep track of what they are all doing. At the same time almost none of them are very good at sharing the information they hold.

We also talked about the negative stories that are floating out there about amalgamation in the rest of Canada and these stories influence people here.

There is also fear in neighbourhoods that they will be lost in a bigger city.

Finally, people end to be conservative and resist change because new things are different and unknown.

For there we started the discussion of how do we go forward.

We felt that what we need to do first and foremost was build a movement from the ground up. In the past the issue had been pushed by elites and not made a real issue for everyone. We felt that making use of social media to find like minded people and to start getting the message of why we need amalgamation would be a good starting point.

The goal will be to make amalgamation the issue of debate in this region. We want to make everyone out there opposed to amalgamation to explain why the status quo is good and how they think Saanich and Victoria should be carved up into municipalities of 15,000 to 20,000 people because that is what they think is best for the region by supporting View Royal, Esquimalt, Oak Bay and others continuing to exist.

Our first steps will be to have all the people at the meeting gather together any and all information that supports amalgamation, to have them work out how we present the human face for the need for amalgamation, to develop an early web presence and to meet again in about four weeks.

I am sorry this does not read well, I am writing under the influence of illness, all of us seem to be down with something, I think it might be strep throat.