This Weather

We are now well into the cold and camp season in this city.   I look of you office window and see wet branches on the fig, a sodden lawn, and damp streets.   I really hate going out in this weather.

If this were snow I would be going outside more, but walking in the rain when it is 5 degrees sucks.   I should be putting up the Xmas lights, but the wet outside just depresses me.

I look at my yard and see a mess, and not just because there is stuff all over the place, but because all things look more disorderly in the rain.   Snow makes mess look nicer, rain makes it look worse.

We are going to have four more months of this being the dominant weather in this town.  

I like taking pictures of the city, but in this weather the lighting is bad and the pictures are all dull and lifeless.

I like rain when it is warm and falls in huge amounts all at once.   This light cold drizzle is for me the worst of all weathers possible.

Election tea leaves

The full election results are in with the City.  

The Referendum
Yes won every poll in the City and won them all by a large margin.    The closest the two sides came was 55% Yes to 45% no.  

Interestingly Yes did very well in Burnside Gorge even though this is a neighbourhood that benefits the least from the new bridge.   You have to go out of your way from Burnside Gorge to use the bridge.   For most people living in the Burnside Gorge neighbourhood, the best bridge is the Tillicum bridge.  It also is the neighbourhood that had the lowest turn out

Council Race
There were 1176 people that voted in the referendum that did not vote in the council election.   In two areas of the city more than 10% of the referendum voters did not vote for a council candidate - Burnside Gorge and Vic West

Highest voter turn out at a single polling station was the Fairfield New Horizons with 1924 votes. The lowest was Burnside Gorge.

Total council race turnout was 15389, down from 17080 in 2008 and 17015 in 2005.   This is a 10% drop in voter turn out.

The advance poll, Sundance, Central Baptish and Vic West saw increases in turnout, all the other polling stations saw drops.   Sir James Douglas dropped by 28%.

Marianne Alto dominated the race and won every poll, the closest race was at Margret Jenkins where she bested Barry Hobbis by 6 votes.  This is the only poll that was close by any measure.   Her top poll in votes was Fairfield New Horizons at 530 votes and her best percentage was at Oaklands at 36.04%

Barry Hobbis did best in Fairfield, James Bay and Vic West, it is north of Fort Street that his vote collapses and he finishes as low as fourth in some polls.  Interestingly, the second best poll for Barry Hobbis was Vic West which was one of the best areas for Yes in the referendum.

Steve Filipovic had a much more consistent vote across the city.   He had not clear highs and lows.   He also did not do well in his home turf of Vic West.  He did not break 20% in any poll.

Rose Henry had two strong polls, Central Baptist (18.62%) and George Jay (20.50%).  Her lowest vote was at Margret Jenkins at only 7.44%.

Susan Woods had a couple of good polls that pulled her totals up but most of them were between 6.66% and 7.89%.    It is here three high polls where she pulled her vote ahead of Paul Brown, otherwise the two of them were very close together.

The five candidates had no areas of strength in the city as none of the scored over 5% in any polls in the city.

The snow

Conditions on Gorge Road at 8:30am
no evidence of plowing

I was on the roads this morning at 7 taking Daniel to school for jazz band.    The snow had been falling since 10 pm the night before.   That is 9 hours and I saw virtually no evidence of any plowing in main roads.   I have driven Harriet from my house to Gorge,  Gorge all the way from Harriet to Admirals, Tillicum from Craigflower to Burnside, Burnside from Tillicum to Harriet,  and Craigflower from the road to Esquimalt high to Tillicum.  Not a single one of these roads have been plowed.  

Someone that manage to spin out and
completely destroy their front end

So what are they waiting for?    Do they have not have plow attachments for their trucks?   This should have been done before 7 am this morning and should be on going at the moment.   There are numerous accidents that would have been avoided if the roads had been plowed.  Transit would also be running better today.

Taken from David Foster

I came across this on Facebook from David Foster - it is some well done satire.  Here is, stolen in its entirety for your amusement.

A new political group, the Oak Bay Tea Party, is protesting plans to upgrade Oak Bay Avenue and several adjacent streets.

"No more socialized roadworks!" chanted a crowd at a recent town hall meeting.

"The ruts and potholes are really the only thing enforcing our speed limit of 20 kilometres per hour," said Pierce Plaumann, a local resident. "Most of our bylaw officers and traffic police are technically retired and couldn't drive faster than that if they tried."

The Tea Party has also launched a recall petition against Oak Bay-Wooden Head MLA Ina Dong.

Dong said the road upgrades were part of a provincial stimulus package but didn't have more specific information.

"You'll have to speak to the Minister of State for Highways and Byways," said Dong in between mouthfuls of chocolate truffle. "I honestly don't think the government is going to fall over a few smooth patches in the road."

However, Tea Party activist Francesca McGillicuddy calls Dong "hopelessly out of touch" with Oak Bay residents.

"Our current government has completely sold out to socialism and turned into another nanny state," McGillicuddy angrily asserts. "My ancestors built their homestead here in 1905 without any government intervention and that's the way it should be."

The Tea Party has started an initiative for a bylaw which would eliminate public works in Oak Bay. Streets would be divide into sections and each resident and business owner assume sole responsibility for maintaining the section of road adjacent to their property.

"People are self sufficient here and should be able to decide how they want their stretch of road to look," said Plaumann. "I like to keep plenty of moss growing on my patch so it matches my house."

Oak Bay mayor Kriss Fosston was trying to dig his car out of a snowbank in downtown Victoria and could not be reached for comment.

Access to the Gorge Waterway

Some people have access to the water

Not enough is being done to offer more and better locations for access to the water on the Gorge.   It is not easy to launch a canoe or kayak unless you drive to the locations set up for that.  There are numerous other locations that should be available for access to the Gorge.

1970s apartments on the water

The Gorge should be the focal heart of our neighbourhood but it is effectively more like the Berlin Wall than centre of the community.   There are some good spots where there is access to the Gorge.   Esquimalt Gorge Park and the walkway on the Saanich side are the better locations as is the park and beach at Craigflower park.

Closer to the harbour we have gained access at Selkirk, via the trestle and in the Railyards, but they remain the exceptions.  Of course there is also Banfield park, but there could be so much more.

We have about a dozen streets that end in cul de sacs at the water but we have little or no access to the water at these locations.  I did a quick drive and looked at a few spots today.

Harriet Road

Looking at water from the end
Harriet Road

Harriet as seen from Arm Street

The end of Harriet Road is located right above the Gorge and the crazy part is that the land between the end of the road and the waterway is already public property and could be a park.   There is a little of a space at the end of the street and a single bench, but there is no access to the water.   It is moderately steep but not unreasonably so and not for a long distance.

Some of the blackberries
at Harriet Road

There is no sign telling you the spot is there and it is heavily overgrown with blackberries.  We have lost a lot of public space to these plants and we need to start seeing some local government take action and pull them out.

It would not take much to make a path down to the water on which you could carry a canoe or kayak to the water.  I would also offer another location you could swim in the Gorge.





Arm Street Park

This is the empty field on the cul de sac

Path to the water

Arm Street is directly across the water from Harriet Road and it is a decent sized park.

There is an empty lawn/field at the end of the cul de sac.   All the site does at the moment is require mowing by the City.

Arm Street Wharf

A nice path leads you down a look out and they down to a decent sized concrete wharf.  There is no sign telling what is down there or that the park is there at all.  Once one is down at the water, there is no way to access it from wharf area as there is a fence around.   You could even have this as a stop for the Habour Ferries.

The park even has a path you could wheel a canoe down on.

Decosta Place and Burlieth Crescent

End of Decosta - this is a park

Burlieth Crescent Park

In theory these two locations have park to access the water, but there is no sign to indicate it is public access to the water and there seems to be little or no attempt to make them places where people would want to try and access the water.

If there the local governments are going to the trouble of making these parks, put a few dollars into them and make them useful.  Both of them could be made to have decent water access for the public

Gorge Park

Aaron Point in Gorge Park

  This is a decent sized park near Tillicum and Gorge but from the street you can not see anything of the park.   There is some decent access to the water and there is this nice dock close to the reversing waterfall.   This is a stop for the Harbour Ferry and makes for a great place to swim, but it is underused.   The access to the water in most of the park is limited and the brush in the park makes the seeing the water hard to do.

Few people know that Aaron point is part of the park.

In the past this was a major gathering point for people in the whole region and was the main swimming location

Washington Street
There is a nice little park at the end of Washington, but it has not access to the water even though it borders the Gorge for 140 metres.   This park should be connected to the Galloping Goose and would only need a 150 metre trail to do that.

End of Washington Street, Selkirk is across the water

 At the very end of Washington there is a perfect location to access the water easily and launch a boat.   You make some parking available in the park and you offer a nice ramp into the water and then we have more access.

Nearby there is the Gorge Road hospital, there is no attempt by the hospital to make access to the water available to the public.  There is 175 metres of waterfront at the hospital

100 years ago the Gorge Waterway as the heart of the city, it should be so again in the future

Snow in the city

Tillicum Mall two years ago - lots more snow

Victoria is beyond belief in the snow.    I am amazed at how many schools and public locations like rec centres and libraries are closing early.    This in the face of transit still running and not problems to get back home.

 I would post some pictures, but the lighting made all of the ones I took very boring.  Instead I am posting some pics I took in December 2008 when we got a bit of snow.

See we get snow here, this is two years ago

I have known for several days that snow as coming today, do people not believe the forecast?    How could anyone have managed to go to work and not be prepared for the snow?

There have been huge numbers of car accidents, I find this astonishing as people knew there was snow and still drove.    I would not drive my minivan today, but our truck has good tread tires and is four wheel drive and I am comfortable driving in these conditions, though I keep a large distance from all the other drivers.

Prius driving in worse conditions

In most years there is some sort of snow in this region, how can people not remember from year to year how to deal with it?   I grew up in Tsawwassen and there was snow there every winter and there were people who could not deal with it, but was never this bad.

So how much snow have we had? About three centimetres.   Really?!?!?!  Are you seriously kidding me that this is enough to shut the city?

I know am sounding like a ranting cranky old man, but I guess I am claiming that as my right now that I am 45!

I should not moan about Victoria, London was even worse.   I remember there was a forecast for snow so I headed in the office in Oxford Street early, I left half an hour earlier and got to work on time.   Out of an office of 50 I was the first in and only six of us made it in at all for the day.   The English make the people of Victoria look like they are from Terrace.

Personally I love the snow and would take every time over rain.

This was the view from my place at Pavilion Lake in the winter
I had a 1000 hectare frozen lake to walk with my dog

This is the view from my house in Lillooet
on December 23rd 2000

City of Victoria 2010 By-Election and Bridge Referendum Results

• Marianne Alto   4529
• Barry Hobbis    3220
• Steve Filipovic 2280
• Rose Henry      1799
• Sue Woods       1361
• Paul Brown      1065
• Saul Andersen    331
• Hugh Kruzel      330
• George Sirk      299
• Pedro Mora       116
• Rimas Tumasonis   59

TOTAL - 15389

• Yes  10020
• No    6522

TOTAL - 16542

There were 1153 people that voted in the referendum but did not vote for a council candidate, that is 7% of the votes cast in the referendum.

Marianne Alto has a very clear win.  Even if one were to combine Barry Hobbis and Susan Woods' votes, it would still barely beat Mariane Alto.   Even though she did not break through 30% of the vote, she had a large margin of victory and it can not be put down to vote splitting.

If one looks at the votes from a left/right perspective, the left (Alto, Filipovic, Henry, Andersen and Sirk) polled 9238 versus the right (Hobbis, Woods, Brown and Kruzel) at 5976.   This is 60% left and 40% right, almost exactly the same split as the referendum.

The election of Marianne Alto means that Victoria city council is down to one person elected to council as a Green.   I have no idea if Phillipe Lucas will run as a Green in 2011 or not, but he and Sonya Chandler were elected as Greens to city council though are at odds with their own political party at the moment.

2010 North Saanich By-election Results

Two candidates to be elected

1. Craig Mearns     1310
2. Dunstan Browne   1271
3. Heather Goulet    717
4. Robin Herlinveaux 582
5. Jan Fellenius     581
6. Wally Du Temple   296

TOTAL - 4757 votes by 2400+ voters

Interesting is that almost all the voters cast two votes, very few plumped.

2011 Municipal Elections

(added on November 19th 2011 - on the right hand side of the page you will see links to pages with all the information you are seeking on the candidates running)

Anyone interested in getting elected to a local council in this region needs to start now building a team and plan how to get elected.

Non-incumbents need to be active long before the incumbents officially announce they are running for election.   If you wait till when the sitting councilors announce it is like having to run a marathon when the sitting councilors are running a 10K.

If you want to get elected in Victoria or Saanich and need to defeat an incumbent, you should be aiming to have a campaign manager, a volunteer manager and a fundraiser in place before April 1st.   You also want to have $30,000 to $40,000 in the bank before labour day and a list of 200 volunteers.

For signs to have an impact in an election, you need about 1000 on private lawns.   This many signs will cost $4000 and will need to be ordered long before the election.

You also need to personally shake a lot of hands, a huge number of hands.  It may seem daunting to try and meet 10,000, but it makes a difference and is one of the few tools at your disposal to make a difference.

Running for council in this region is a harder task than running to be MLA or MP.  Even vacant seats on councils are hard to win and will tend to be won by the best know name on the ballot.

Barry Hobbis rare one of the most professional campaigns I have seen for council, but he lost.   He needed more volunteers and more money.  Mat Wright deserves a lot of credit for running a strong campaign, but still they fell short, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.   In politics no one cares about anyone other than the person that won.

2010 Election

I am looking for the final results in the two elections, but I can only find preliminary results for North Saanich.  I will post full results when I find them.

North Saanich
I am surprised at the election of Craig Mearns and Dunstan Browne and that Wally duTemple came last.   I had assumed that Heather Goulet would be an easy win because she had recently been on council and seemed to be in-sync with the current council.  

What the election of Mearns and Dunstan says to me is that the current council has alienated many people in North Saanich and a mood has arisen to change the council.   Could this mean a whole new council in 2011?

Victoria Council Election
Marianne Alto won and she won convincingly, this is not what I was expecting and I was caught off guard by the result.  So what did I miss?

I had not fully paid attention to the fact that Marianne Alto was the only candidate that managed to get any people with strong name recognition to endorse her.   There is a lot of trust in Victoria for the opinions of Rob Flemming, Denise Savoie and Lana Popham.

I had also assumed that Marianne Alto would have a campaign like Dean Fortin for mayor of the VCE in 2005.   What changed is that she had a surge in serious left wing opinion leaders getting actively involved with her campaign at the end.  From what I can gather she had the strongest election day campaign to get people out to vote.

While I sensed an ABA (anyone but Alto) movement out there, it is was ultimately weaker than the ABH (anyone but Hobbis) sentiment in the City.   I spoke with a number of VERY surprising people that voted for Marianne Alto because they did not want to see Barry Hobbis win.   I am talking federal Conservatives that voted for her.   Because they were the front runners in most people's minds, they both were the recipients of the sentiment against the other.

One factor I can not be sure of how it played out is voter fatigue.   I had heard a growing number of people simply state they were sick and tired of the bridge debate and no longer cared about the election at all.   Thinking back to who these people were, they were more likely to be against borrowing than in favour and not on the left.   This is a constituency that I would have expected to have voted for Barry Hobbis.   Maybe some of them did not vote because they though Barry and No would win and did not need to go out and vote?

I have faith that Marianne Alto will make a good councilor and be an improvement over Sonya Chandler.   She was in my set of five candidates that I thought would be capable of effectively serving on council if elected.

Victoria - Referendum
The Yes side won with a landslide, so why is that when you have about 10,000 people sign the counter petition?  I had not honestly thought the City could win unless there was a high turn out.

So why did Yes win?

• The No side did not mount any serious campaign
• The Yes side flooded the airwaves with a lot of information
• The left was better at motivating people to vote than the right though many of the right wanted a new bridge.
• A very large number of people that signed the petition chose not to vote.

In closing, I have never missed any election by as much as I did this time around.   All I can say in my defense is that local by-elections with their very low turnouts, no incumbents and lack of party affiliation, can be very hard to correctly forecast.

Wow was I wrong in how I thought the election would go

I have predicted many elections, I have even made very reaching predictions to show what could happen.   I have never been as wrong as I was this time in Victoria.

1) The Yes side won with a landslide.  Interesting foot note, I have been looking for an example where the counter petition process was used and the No side got fewer votes than people who signed the petition, in the 15 I could find results for it never happened.

2) Marinanne Alto has also won with a landslide, Barry Hobbis was not even close to her vote

Detailed results later on

VOTING PLACES ON SATURDAY IN THE CITY OF VICTORIA, NOVEMBER 20, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

• Burnside-Gorge Community Centre, 471 Cecilia Road
• Central Baptist Church, 833 Pandora Avenue
• Fairfield New Horizons Centre, 380 Cook Street
• George Jay School, 1118 Princess Street
• James Bay Community School, 140 Oswego Street
• James Bay New Horizons Centre, 234 Menzies Street
• Margaret Jenkins School, 1824 Fairfield Road
• Oaklands School, 2827 Belmont Street
• Quadra School, 3031 Quadra Street
• Sir James Douglas School, 401 Moss Street
• Sundance School, 1625 Bank Street
• Vic West Community Centre, 521 Craigflower Road

You need TWO pieces of ID that provide evidence of identity and place of residence. At least one of the documents must contain your signature. Voter ID may include:

• a British Columbia Driver's Licence
• a British Columbia Identification Card issued by the Motor Vehicle Branch
• an Owner's Certificate of Insurance and Vehicle Licence issued by the Insurance Corporation of BC
• a British Columbia Care Card or British Columbia Gold CareCard
• a Ministry of Social Development and Economic Security Request for Continued Assistance Form DES8
• a Social Insurance Card issued by Human Resources Development Canada
• a Citizenship Card issued by Citizenship and Immigration Canada
• a real property tax notice issued under section 369 of the Local Government Act or section 21 of the Taxation (Rural Area) Act
• a credit card or debit card issued by a savings institution as defined in s.29 of the Interpretation Act, or
• a utility bill issued for the supply of electricity, natural gas, water, telephone services or coaxial cable services by
• a public utility as defined in section 1 of the Utilities Commission Act
• a gas utility as defined in section 1 of the Gas Utility Act,
• a water utility as defined in section 1 of the Water Act,
• the British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority, or a corporation licensed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission for the purposes of that supply.

One line reasons for each candidate

If you want to show support for Mayor Dean Fortin and a new bridge, vote for Marianne Alto

If you want to elect a new progressive voice onto to council that does not want a new bridge, vote for Steve Filipovic

If you want to elect a strong business voice for council but opposed to a new bridge, vote for Barry Hobbis

If you want to elect someone that may be able to work with everyone on council, vote for Susan Woods

If you want to make homelessness a primary council issue, elect Rose Henry

If you want to elect someone with lots of local government experience, vote for George Sirk

If you want a well spoken person that will think independently and be an addition to Geoff Young, vote for Hugh Kruzel or Paul Brown

If you are looking for a middle aged anarchist, Saul Andersen is your guy

If you are looking to make a statement about how our political system works, vote for Pedro Mora

If you are looking to spoil your ballot, vote for Rimas Tumasonis

The Blue Bridge - Why voting No is the only responsible choice

I have a number of reasons for a No vote

Consultation:
Voting Yes rewards the council for refusing to engage in public consultation.   No matter how good a decision is, if it is arrived at through a very bad process the implication is that long term decision making will be impaired.   Remember, a stopped clock is still right twice a day.

The City should have engaged the public in consultation about the priorities for capital infrastructure in Victoria.   Consultation now has some very specific meanings within the law becuase of the numerous decisions in relation to government needs to consult with First Nations.

A proper consultative process includes the following:

• Clear objectives about what is being consulted about
• Enough time and information for the people being consulted with to be able to engage in the process
• A open process by which information is gathered from the public
• A process to reflect back to the public all the input received and comments on how this information will be used
• A draft of what the action will be and how all the input from the public was used to create it.
• A chance for the public to comment on the draft actions planned.
• A detailed explanation of the decision to take action

The City has engaged in a public relations process and not in a consultation

Costs:
I have raised the issue of my concerns about the costs of a new bridge from the very start.   I still have seen nothing from the City that shows how there will be any cost certainty for the new bridge.  

The current cost estimates have the cost at $77,000,000 for a new bridge.   In looking over the cost estimates for the new bridge I believe that they are currently understated and do not have reasonable cost contingency built into the estimate.

Based on the experience of other bridge projects built by the public sector and not via a P3, it is safe to assume the current class 'C' estimate is likely about $20,000,000 to $40,000,000 too low.   There is a lot of data available on this from Bent Flybvjerg at Oxford.  The new bridge seems to be suffering from optimism bias, that is not to say that the people opposed to the new bridge are not doing the same for refurbishment.

I can hear you say "but the refurbishment will have the same issues".  Actually the class 'C' estimate for the big refurbishment has a much larger cost contingency built into and therefore is much less likely to widely off of the mark, though I still expect that if that is the route take the costs will be $10,000,000 to $20,000,000 more.

There is a lower cost option available.   The originally suggested 40 year upgrade of the bridge remains a viable option and would seem to be possible for in the range of $35,000,000 to $40,000,000 in my estimate based on the reports from the engineers.

My expectation of the final costs:

• New Bridge - $100,000,000 to $120,000,000 - I was estimating this amount more than a year ago and the costs have kept getting closer and closer
• Gold Refurbishment - $90,000,000 to $100,000,000
• Normal Refurbishment - $35,000,000 to $40,000,000

I see no reason why the basic refurbishment, as highlighted by the engineers,  is not on the table.

The City is not borrowing enough money to build the new bridge if there are any cost overruns and have no plan in place for when they run out of money.   To not accept that the project is more likely to go over budget is  irresponsible.   There is no Plan B for the probable cost over run.

Without a clear Plan B for a cost overrun and no indication of how the budget will be maintained, voting Yes is irresponsible.

Steve Filipovic - Green Candidate for Victoria City Council

I met up with Steve yesterday at Spiral Cafe in Vic West to talk for a a bit over coffee about his campaign and how it is going for him.

Steve Filipovic is running for council as the Green Party candidate, this alone is the single biggest reason he may win.   No over candidate has anything on the ballot beside their name to give them to set them apart from the rest.   The impact of having the identifier on the ballot is worth a lot of votes when it is something people recognize.

The Greens do not have a lot of money for the campaign and Steve does not have a lot of volunteers, but he has campaigned hard and he has managed to personally shake more than 8000 hands to date.  He has clearly won the sign war in this campaign has gained more name recognition from his signs than all the other candidates combined.

Politically Steve and I agree on the need to deal with issues that are of concern for society, especially when it comes to the environment, but we do fundamentally disagree on the approaches that are most likely to work.  As an example, I have become a strong supporter of the use of P3s because from the data I have seen they do give us cost certainty for capital projects - Steve does not agree with this.

He is clearly the leading candidate on the left for getting elected to council, so if you are politically a progressive and are looking to defeat Barry Hobbis you only have one viable option.

Steve is a hard working guy, if he does win I doubt anyone else on council will put in as many hours as he would.   I do worry that if he comes in and is automatically perceived to be in opposition to the mayor that he personally will suffer a lot more stress than he needs to his life.  His energy I would hope would re-energize a council that has become tired and distant from the public.

As it stands at the moment, I see Steve coming in second within an outside chance of winning because his party name on the ballot may have more of an impact than I expect.

George Sirk - Best prepared to be on Council

I thought I would quickly make some comments about George Sirk who is running for Victoria City council in the current by-election.  He has unique experience that no other candidate in the race has, he was elected to the Comox Strathcona Regional District for nine years as the director for Cortes Island.

His experience is not a trivial thing.  Being on a local government is a learning process and whoever wins on Saturday will have to try and get up to speed outside of the normal environment in which new councilors learn about how to sit on a council.   The new councilor will only be on council for one year and they will be need to be able to get up to speed very quickly.   George has the experience that he will be the quickest off the mark if elected.

If being well prepared to sit on council is important to you, this is the guy for you.

Ultimately his being the best prepared to sit on the council means very little of he can not get elected.   I really can not see a scenario in which he can win the election.

Handicapping the Top 3 in the City of Victoria By-Election and the Referendum

I will quickly handicap the front runners in the race:

Barry Hobbis - 4 in 5 chance of winning

Barry will win because he has the best campaign I have seen in this region for a council seat.   His campaign has been serious and professional.   He will also win because he is not Marianne Alto and is gaining the vote of the people opposed to an New Democrat getting elected.  Even though he is opposed to the new bridge, he seems to be garnering the majority of the supporters of the new bridge.

Steve Filipovic - 1 in 7 chance of winning 

Steve has several factors in his favour.   He will have Green Party on the ballot.   He is the most obvious left of centre candidate in favour of saving the bridge and from this he is getting a lot of traditional NDP support.   He has won the sign war.  He has shaken more than 8000 hands himself.

Marianne Alto -  1 in 25 chance of winning

The only factor she has going for her is the NDP machine, problem is that large parts of that crowd are not voting for her because of her stance on the bridge.   I do not see the evidence that the NDP machine is strong enough to get out enough vote to elect her.

No - 9 in 10 chance of winning


No starts with a much higher portion of the public because of all the people that signed the counter petition.   The downside No has is that there has been very little to see of an active campaign for No.  An active No campaign from the start would have sealed the deal.

Yes  - 1 in 10 chance of winning

The City has put a lot of resources into trying to get a Yes, if the turnout is high enough they might be able to pull of a narrow win.  The City campaign does suffer from being arrogant and looks it comes from the to down.   It has been a very badly run campaign and might only succeed because of shear brute force.

Last Night's Forum about the Johnson Street Bridge

I went to the Focus Magazine hearing into the matter of the Johnson Street.  I am going to present things as I saw them and not from the point of view of rah rah.  I am voting No and I will post a number of piece on why I am voting No later today.    Here are my observations:

There were about 200 to 250 people in attendance.   The crowd was older and it was one I would call left of centre.   Many of the usual suspects were there but not a very large representation from other parts of the community.   The youth were not there, the business community was not there and only limited parts of the right of the spectrum were there.  

The idea of a hearing was a good idea and approach, unfortunately the moderator did not choose to be neutral, I can understand wanting not to be neutral, but it takes away from the concept of being a citizens's hearing into the issue.

The four presentations were good and I learned more about the bridge.   David Broadland of Focus made some interesting relevant points about the cost estimates, it reinforces in me that the replacement bridge is suffering from optimism bias and is much more likely to cost in the range of $100,000,000 when all is said and done.  I have to admit I did not go through the estimates in the detail I should have as I missed several glaring things within the estimates.   In looking through the estimates again here is what I see as the ranges:

• Gold Standard Refurbishment - $45 - $80 million (there is within the refurbishment estimate a lot of wiggle room and could lead to a much cheaper cost - detailed analysis tomorrow I hope)
• Replacement - $90 - $110 million

Geoff Young outlined how council came to the place they did and it more or less lined up with what I expected to here.   Council rushed because of the hope of some money and then could not back down from a decision they had made.   They avoided asking the questions needed to get the answers that might call into question the replacement option.

I had not thought about the issue of the loss of heritage bridges in BC which was raised by engineer Michael Roberts.   For example, I thought the Alexandra bridge in the Fraser Canyon was nicely protected, turns out that this is not the case.   As much as I think the bridge is ugly, I can see the case for why it should be protected to protect the history of the City, province and country.  I would love to a talk by him about heritage bridges.  He also showed some slides of amazing signature bridges, one being the Sundail Bridge in Redding California.

Michael also raised the fact engineers need clear directions or costs go way up and there is a new way to assess bridges when it comes to seismic standards, I can not remember the exact name, but it was performance based.  I would love to look into it some more to understand it.

Ross Crockford was the only one with nothing substantively new for me, though he found some great newspaper headlines from 1900 to 1920 dealing with the bridge project back then.

The audience was rather self congratulatory in their selflessness in wanting to save the bridge, but the people were talking with a lot more emotion than facts.  The idea was that it should be the hearing the City did not hold but very few people really treated it like that.   This was much more of rally to save the bridge.

There were eight candidates for council in the audience and five of them spoke before I left, I know two of the others did not speak and the last one I am not sure about.    I wish the candidates had stepped aside and let more of the public speak, but I understand the need they have to speak to an audience.   It did mean I did not speak and the specific issues I raise were not covered last night by anyone, I will post them here online later today.

I have a concern about a lot of the supporters of the bridge, too many people are looking for some sort of conspiracy in this process and I see nothing that makes me see any organized conspiracy going.   Focusing on this issue starts to make people look a bit crazy.  It also means people are raising issues that are not accurate.

There was on gentleman that raised a number of very specific points about the replacement bridge and the current assumptions about it that I found very interesting, I can not remember the details but it had a fair amount to do with seismic issues.

The turn out was much larger than any of the City sessions on the bridge which says to me that the people motivated on this issue are voting No.   The fact that the split for No is 75/25 left - right in my opinion means that Marianne Alto is backing the wrong side in the debate.

City of Victoria Election

Just a quick note here, three of the candidates are currently running ads on CFAX - Barry Hobbis, Paul Brown and Marianne Alto.

I personally think that CFAX is the best bought media location to advertise in this region for anything to do with politics.   The people that listen tend to be engaged in the political process and the ads can not be avoided.

Print ads are too easy to avoid and get lost in the newspapers.   The lead time for a magazine ad is too far ahead for people to get their act together for them.

So far I have only heard the Marianne Alto add.  It is too the point and gets her name out but boring, if I hear it over and over again it will grate on me very quickly.   I hope her campaign thought to have three or four ads in the can if they are getting a high rotation.

I will amend this post after I hear the Hobbis and Brown ads.

If anyone sees any ads in print for any candidate in Victoria or North Saanich, could you alert me via email, ideally with a PDF?

_______________________
1:45 pm  I have heard the Paul Brown ad now, it is nothing exciting.   It is a bit punchier sounding than Marianne Alto's , but it does not mention his name as much.

Looking at some data about the Blue Bridge

The City commissioned a report to be done on the economic impacts of the Blue Bridge project on the city.     The Banjar Management report is what came out of this.

The report has created the $12 million economic impact number that is being currently bandied about if the bridge is closed for a year for refurbishment - a time frame I have seen no data indicating to me it is a reasonable assumption.   So what how much can we rely on this number?   I would argue not much.

The total economic activity downtown is roughly $1 billion dollars.   The estimated economic impact on downtown businesses is $10 million.    This is 1% and is a smaller number than the margins of error of the current estimates of downtown economic activity.  It is effectively unmeasurable and will be something that would not be noticed by the businesses if it were true.   Annual fluctuations due to economic factors are much larger than this estimated impact.

Is it even reasonable to assume that the $10 million loss is what would happen?   I would argue that it is not.  Currently many people in the city due not shop downtown because the parking sucks, it is hard to find a space where you need it when you need it.   This says to me that downtown is close to capacity for shoppers.   The loss of some people from Vic West and Esquimalt would be be made up with people like myself that can see that it might be easier to park downtown.  

The analysis done made no assumptions of the impact of downtown being at capacity for shoppers and therefore used a simplistic model to assume the loss in business.  The reality as I have shown is very different.   Where do the extra shoppers come from?   Disproportionately from Mayfair and Uptown as they have the stores that most directly compete with downtown.

The analysis also ignores the positive impact on businesses in Vic West from the bridge closure.   The money that was going downtown is going to go somewhere else in the region.   Since the majority of this money is coming from Vic West and Esquimalt, this money will tend to stay local and benefit businesses on the other side.  Because there are fewer businesses on the west side, the increase may be enough to be noticeable.  In any case, the positive impact on businesses in Vic West and Esquimalt should have been accounted for in the report.

The analysis also looks at cost in time for drivers and assigns a value to this, but the analysis only looked at moving traffic between destinations and did not look at downtown traffic seeking a parking space.   There are a high number of vehicles downtown that are spending time seeking a parking space on the streets or in the parkades.  With lower traffic coming in from the west, drivers will be able to find a parking space quicker than they do now.   If this is not the case, it means total traffic downtown has not changed and therefore there can be no significant economic impairment for downtown businesses.

The analysis is also working with old traffic data.  Most specifically the available traffic volume possible on Esquimalt road has been significantly reduced.  This change is reducing the demand for the Johnson Street Bridge.   There is also new traffic volume space available on Habour Road.  It is not used much yet, but as more people discover it, more people are using it to get to Tyee.

Clearly transit will suffer and will take a loss, $500,000 for a year is a reasonable amount.  The dollar value assigned to the transit passengers is a notional number and should be really be measured in total time lost sitting in traffic.   Converting the time into a dollar value confuses the final number

We come back to the $12 million number for a full year bridge closure and here is my estimate of what it should be:

• Business impairment downtown - negligible
• Driver time loss - $800,000
• Transit operations - $500,000
• Transit passenger time loss - $1,000,000

So I come to $2.3 million of which only $500,000 is an actual monetary loss.

Last Week's Amalgamation Meeting

Sorry for the delay in this, but various life things got in the way and I am waiting on the notes from the meeting from someone else that took them.

We had a  decent and interesting turnout at the meeting last week, several new people to the process that heard about the meeting from the interview with me on CFAX the afternoon before.   I am impressed that the group is a serious and level headed one.   The group of people that have been to either meeting or wanted to come is now somewhere over 100 people.   This without any real publicity or a formal group in place.

At the meeting we discussed more about how we can move the issue of amalgamation forward and what the next steps should be.   We have a couple of small groups working on different issues or researching information we need to know.   In general we realize that we need to develop a grassroots approach to amalgamation and work on talking to people, researching issues, and starting the debate.   We can not show up with the solution but find out what makes the most sense in this region.

The next meeting will be in the early new year, I am realistic that in December it is impossible to get people to come to meetings.

End run around local planning

Sobey's, the owners of Thrifty's has announced plans to build a new warehouse in North Saanich on Airport Authority lands.  Here is the report from CFAX:

BIG NEW GROCERY WAREHOUSE TO BE BUILT NEAR THE AIRPORT

Nov 15, 2010

THE PARENT COMPANY OF THRIFTY FOODS PLANS TO BUILD A $31-MILLION DOLLAR DISTRIBUTION CENTRE ON VICTORIA AIRPORT AUTHORITY LAND.

SOBEYS INCORPORATED SAYS THE 150-THOUSAND SQUARE FOOT FACILITY IS TO BE BUILT ON 19 ACRES OF LAND AT THE CORNER OF MCDONALD PARK AND MILLS ROAD IN NORTH SAANICH.

CONSTRUCTION IS SCHEDULED TO BEGIN MID 2011 AND BE COMPLETE BY MID 2012.

IN A PREPARED STATEMENT RELEASED THIS MORNING, SOBEYS' PRESIDENT AND CEO BILL MCEWAN SAYS "SINCE 2007 SOBEYS HAS INVESTED OVER $90-MILLION DOLLARS IN NEW AND UPGRADED THRIFTY FOODS STORES AND DISTRIBUTION CENTRES, ADDING MORE THAN 800 JOBS TO BRITISH COLUMBIA."

THRIFTY FOODS HAS A DISTRIBUTION CENTRE NEAR BY, OFF KEATING CROSS ROAD IN CENTRAL SAANICH. THE COMPANY SAYS THAT LOCATION WILL STAY OPEN AS THE SOBEYS DIVISION OFFICE.

- Ryan Price

My concern is that the local council in North Saanich has no say over what happens on the airport lands.  The Airport Authority is outside of the jurisdiction of local government and has no need to answer to the public or partake in any planning or zoning.

I believe we need more industrial lands in this region but I do not like it if this happens by end running any locally elected government.

I have been long concerned that the Airport Authority can choose the land use on their lands, there is no real limits on what they do on their lands.   I could almost understand the need to allow them the power to manage their lands for airport purposes, but to be allowed to build something on their lands that has no connection at all to the airport seems an arrogant approach.

Is North Saanich really the right location for a huge warehouse?  It might be, but it should be decided by the people of North Saanich.  It is wrong to have the airport outside of the jurisdiction of local government when it comes to planning.  I suspect that North Saanich is also not allowed to set the property tax rates for Airport lands and has to accept whatever the Airport wants to pay.

If I have time, I am going learn some more about the relationship between the Airport Authority and North Saanich.

All that said, I do think it is a good location for a warehouse and the need is crucial for more warehouse space in this region as there is very little space for anyone to store goods in this region.  I also understand that if this land were within the jurisdiction of a local government the odds of the warehouse being able to go ahead is remote.  

Observations on the City of Victoria Campaign

Here are some observations I have about the campaign to date:

Campaign signs:
I have seen signs for Susan Woods (and not just the one on my lawn), Barry Hobbis, George Sirk, Rose Henry and Steve Filipovic.   Clearly the leader in signs is Steve Fililpovic, hard to miss all the ones he has up.   George Sirk and Rose Henry are using home made signs, a smart thing to do in a campaign where it would cost way too much to make enough signs to cover the city.

Door to door:
So far no one has come to my door, in 2008 two candidates did come to my door.   The ones I know that are doing door to door are: Barry Hobbis, Steve Filipovic, Susan Woods, Marianne Alto, and Rose Henry. I have heard of any of the other candidates going door to door

Burma Shaving:
I am aware of Marianne Alto and Steve Filipovic doing this but no one else.

Calling:
I understand that Marianne Alto's campaign is calling people.   Barry Hobbis' campaign has made use of automated calling to call all the landlines in the City of Victoria.

Posters:
I have seen posters up for Paul Brown and Steve Filipovic

Leaders in the Race:
Barry Hobbis on top with Steve Filipovic behind him but retaining that wildcard of the party name on the ballot.   Marianne Alto some way behind the top two and will finish third unless something dramatic happens to enliven her campaign.

No one else will be coming close to winning.

One last observation, George Sirk has more knowledge and experience than all the other candidates combined when it comes to sitting on a local council, he was elected to an up island regional district a number of times and therefore knows how local government works from the point of view of someone that has sat on council.

North Saanich Campaign

I was out on the Peninsula yesterday and saw that the nature of the election campaign in North Saanich is quite different than in the City of Victoria.

1) Two of the candidates are not going to the all candidates meetings.   Craig Mearns and Dunstan Browne are saying in a statement, the candidates said they will not participate "as in their opinion, past events, except those hosted by the Chamber of Commerce, have been confrontational, disrespectful and non-productive."

Interesting strategy as it is the received wisdom that going to all candidate meetings are really something all candidates should take party in.   The lack of attendance will not reflect well on them, though if they used the time to go door to door they may have used their time well.   In most cases the people coming to an all candidates meeting are their to support their candidate and are not open to being swayed.   I was not at the one in North Saanich so I do not know if it was the same.

The downside Mearns and Browne will face is the way their non-attendance will be seen as a negative reflection on them as possible councilors.  They did host their own event on November 6th in Sidney, though I have no idea who came or how many.

2) The people running are posting a lot of small signs with their names and nothing else on it.  Many of them are hand made.  There seems to be very little space for there to be an easy way for the public to meet the candidates and learn about them.

I admit I have not tried as hard as I could to find out about the candidates, but I have a busy life and can only do so much.  My best source has been North Saanich Online for news about the election

The Pensinsula News Review has been surprisingly short of coverage on the race.   I do not see letters to the editor for or against candidates.

My current estimate of the race is that Heather Goulet will win one seat.   As to the other, I would lean towards Wally du Temple but I have no way to back up that gut feeling.

From Jennifer Hastie in support of Rose Henry

I know that Barry Hobbis, Marianne Alto and Steve Filipovic are going gung ho in the campaign and you can see them around, so I thought I would post something in relation to Rose Henry - though I am voting for Susan Woods

MY BELIEF IN ROSE HENRY

October 26, 2010

I have known Rose Henry since we first came to Victoria in 2001 through

the alternate newspaper, “Streetnewz.” Rose is one of our vendors.

I am really pleased to see that Rose is running for a position on City

Council in the byelection on November 20, 2010. Rose has run for a Council

seat in previous elections. In the last election, she drew over 3,370 votes.

Why vote for Rose? Because Rose truly represents the disadvantaged

people in our community. Rose has been homeless; she is a Native Indian from

the Powell River area; she is female. What other candidates would know more

than she does about these minority groups?

Rose is not full of academic rhetoric. She is not speaking out of both sides

of her mouth, as many candidates do—saying that they care but then never

putting their support behind anything that will change the situation in our society

for the oppressed. Rose cares; she lives and she breathes poverty. More than

any other candidate, she knows what needs to be done to improve social

conditions.

The final point that makes me believe in Rose is that she has the ability to

handle conflict in a respectful way. She is able to disagree without hostility,

name-calling or abusive language. I consider this quality valuable for any

problem-solving.

Do turn out to vote for Rose Henry in this byelection. Let’s see some

change in attitude toward helping the homeless get housed and getting help for

any mental health or addiction problems that they may be facing.

Respectfully submitted,

Jennifer Hastie, retired social worker, living in James Bay.

Save Mary Lake

Mary Lake is a small lake in the Higlands that has been completely privately owned for many years.   The property is now available for sale for $4.5 million, the ability to raise this amount of money is going to be very hard unless there are several angel donors or the CRD coming on board.

The 106 acres is in five titles of which the largest one, at 70 acres +-, contains the lake which is about 7 acres in size.  86 year old Bob McMinn is leading the campaign and I hope I remain active in the world in 2050 when I am that age.  He is part of the Mary Lake Conservancy which has been created to spearhead the campaign to save the lake and forest.

There is support for the campaign from the Habitat Acquisition Trust, though how much that means in $$$ I have no idea.  HAT has a specific mandate to acquire ecologically important lands in this region



Mary lake is not the only privately owned lake in the area.   We have quite a number of lakes that are the size of Mary lake or larger in View Royal, the Highlands, and western Saanich.  Pike lake, 18 acres, and Maltby lake, about 19 acres, are two of the largest   There is also Fizzle, Fork, Second and Mitchell lakes in the area.

I raise these other lakes because I am not a fan of the lack of public access to reasonable sized lakes.  There should be a long term plan in place to acquire the relevant properties so that there is no need for a last minute campaign as there is for Mary lake at the moment.  The crazy part is that the lake beds are public owned lands but there is no access for the public to these lakes.

I am not sure I can support the idea if government spending the money to acquire these lands, but I do support the idea of long term planning for park expansion to take in these lands.   The Highlands Stewardship Foundation exists to try and promote stewardship of lakes in the Highlands and is actively behind the Mary lake campaign.

As of this time the campaign for Mary Lake has raised $113,330, only $4,387,000 to go, though the campaign is only a few weeks old.  I need to go out and see about "buying" a few square meters or seeing if the Scouts and Venturers are interesting taking it on as a project to raise money for.

The City Bridge Campaign

The City has clearly increased the campaign for a new bridge.   I am hearing more and more voices in CFAX speaking for a new bridge but no voices speaking against the new bridge.

The City is also spending money on ads in the TC, I have seen several mid sized over the last few days in the paper.

Will this have any major impact on the public vote?   I wonder about this because the City side of the campaign does not feel like it has any strong grassroots involvement, I reminds me of the 1992 Federal referendum campaign.  It feels like the City is spending money to make up for an on the ground campaign. It also feels like the City is seeking people with titles and organizations to come out to support the new bridge.

The City still has a huge hill to climb to win.   It is only reasonable to assume that the people that signed the petition are likely to vote and are motivated to vote against the new bridge.   There is a built in large part of the public that will be a No vote.   Nothing I have seen from the City is likely to have changed the minds of the people, in fact the way the City is addressing the issues is likely to push the buttons of people that signed the petition to actively vote No and let their friends and family know they are voting No.

The City also has not taken on board that they have had a process that has left the public disengaged but never come out and admitted they had made an error.   I suspect the single biggest thing the Mayor could do to get a Yes vote would be come out and apologize for doing a bad job of working with the public and admit that the council handled this badly.   Admission from the City that they have made a mistake and then acted differently would have made a difference.

Instead the City is coming out and saying "you are wrong" to the people opposed on all the different issues.   The problem with this is that there are many very well educated people that have never had their concerns addressed and have never had an explanation of how the City can read the reports and come to some of the conclusions they do.  Finally, the City has never given a large portion of the public the impression that the all the options were seriously considered, the impression of the fix being in widespread and has never been adequately been dispelled.   This comes down to the mayor never coming out and admitting the process has been handled badly each and every step of the way.

The City is also making a huge mistake highlighting the poll they had done on the bridge.    First off the provenance of the data is very, very suspect and does not give us information that be relied on as a measure of public opinion.   The problem comes from the sort of questions asked and the type of answers allowed.   Beyond the issue of the methodological weakness, relying on the poll in a campaign to get a Yes vote is a huge strategic error.   The City is telegraphing to supporters that things are fine and the public will vote Yes and no need to be concerned and vote.   The message the No side gets from the poll is work hard or the bridge will be lost.  

I suspect the City would have been better off if it had simply left the Yes campaign to the public to run and did not actively take part as the City.   The top down approach pushes people to vote No.

Meeting to discuss amalgamation tonight at 7 pm

2950 Douglas Street in the meeting room accessed via Liqour Plus.

Please come out and become part of the debate

Our One Victoria

I am hosting a second meeting to discussion municipal amalgamation in this region on Monday November 8th at 2915 Douglas Street - we are in a meeting room accessed through Liquor Plus.

The first meeting I hosted at my home and was pleasantly surprised at the turn out.   This meeting I hope to have us move forward with some idea of what we want accomplish in the next six months.   We have the energy from enough people that there is the start of a movement or group to explore, educate and advocate for better local governance in this region.

In encourage everyone to come because there is no one single model that is the right answer for Victoria.   Where ever you stand on this issue, however educated you are on this issue, there is a role for your input.  

With all certainty I can say there is no earthly way we would have current municipal structure if we were to start from scratch.   I have yet to meet anyone that believes the current set up of 13 local governments is the right solution for this region.   I have met people that defend their municipality existing, though this almost always comes down to fear of possible change and being overwhelmed by 'outsiders'.  

Since we all can agree that the current boundaries are not a good choice for this region, we have an ethical obligation to develop something better and do this in a cooperative manner that meet everyone's interests.  This current structure will change, the question will be who gets to decide how and when?

Tentative Agenda for the meeting

1) Introductions
2) Additions to the agenda
3) Choose chair for meeting and someone to take notes
4) Review of issues coming from the last meeting
5) Brainstorm issues that are negatively impacted by the current structure
6) Brainstorm list of possible models from the status quo to completely unitary CRD structure.
7) Brainstorm possible ways to move the amalgamation issue forward
8) Make some decisions on the way forward and assign tasks
9) Set the date for a next meeting

Current Estimates of where the City of Victoria by-election and referendums are at

Turn out
It is hard to be certain what the turnout will be but there are a few factors that I think will make it higher than typical for a by-election:

• close to 10,000 people signed the petition for the referendum
• at least four of the candidates will touch base with significant numbers of people

These two factors lead me to estimate that the turn out will be around 14,000 to 18,000


Referendum
Of the roughly 10,000 people that signed the petition, I would be surprised if we did not see a high turn out of these people and they overwhelmingly vote No.   I see No starting at 7000 votes before we consider anything else.   I am basing this number on some data I have managed to gather on the intentions of people that signed the petition.

If assume the next 7,000 to 11,000 split 50/50, we get a landslide win for No.   If we were to get a 60/40 split for Yes, we end still end up with a strong win for No.

Any turn out of less than 18,000 effectively means there is a No win.   The Yes side needs a turn out of more than 20,000 and a 2 to 1 Yes to No vote in the general public that did not sign the petition.

From information I have been able to gather from various sources, the only area of the City that Yes has a lead is on the west side of the bridge, in all other neighbourhoods No is leading.

My current estimate is that the result will be:

• Yes - 4000
• No - 11,000

These numbers can change if there is a strong scare campaign from the City and therefore Yes benefits or if strong No campaign appears on the ground and raises the No vote.

By-election
My current estimate is that the candidates will finish in the following order:

• Barry Hobbis
• Steve Filipovic
• Marianne Alto
• Susan Woods
• Rose Henry
• Paul Brown
• Hugh Kruzel
• George Sirk
• Saul Andersen
• Pedro Mora
• Rimas Tumasonis

At this time I see Barry Hobbis as the odds on favorite with Steve Filipovic having a chance to surprise people.  Marianne is a longshot and Susan Woods is a hail Mary longshot. Everyone else has no hope.  All this is assuming nothing dramatic happens and the campaigns continue as I have been told they will.

Local Governments looking for citizens to sit on committees

Everyone should take a year or two to serve on a committee of local government, I think it is an important civic duty and leads to better governance when a broader range of people serve.

You can read more for the City of Victoria on this link.  You have till November 12th to apply.      The committees they are looking for people for are:

• Public Advisory Planning Committee
• Advisory Design Panel
• Heritage Advisory Committee
• Community Development Public Advisory Committee
• Environment and Infrastructure Public Advisory Committee

Esquimalt is looking for people to join the following committees (November 12th deadline):

• Advisory Planning Commission
• Board of Variance
• Access Awareness Advisory Committee
• Arts, Culture and Special Events Advisory Committee
• Environmental Advisory Committee
• Heritage Advisory Committee
• Parks and and Recreation Advisory Committee

Oak Bay, also with the November 12th deadline is looking for the following:

• Advisory Design Panel
• Board of Variance
• Heritage Advisory Panel
• Recognition of Renovation and Building Achievement Awards Panel

I do not see on Saanich's website when they are making their decisions, but they have a host of committee positions coming open at the end of the year.

I have no idea what View Royal's process is or their schedule.

I would do more, but my freaking computer and the network are fighting giving me intermittent access to the internet

Hugh Kruzel

I had a chance to sit down and talk with him yesterday at Cranberry's Cafe on Pandora.

You can find out all you want about his positions on things at his website, so I am not going to spend time on that, instead just write about the man I met with.

Hugh is well spoken, well dressed and strongly involved with the community.   He is also outgoing, but I think he is by nature an introvert that has learned how to be gregarious in public.

He knows what one should do to get elected but is running against that from an idealistic stance.   He has been to the Manning Centre and taken a course on campaign management.  He did not want to campaign before his papers were filed.  He wants people to choose someone for council because they are the best person and have been involved with community in an ongoing way.  He has some idealized images of what the campaign should be.  

If I were to use one short phrase to describe Hugh, that would be an optimistic idealist.  He feels uncomfortable that his community involvement could be a political benefit in a campaign.  He has no team, he is not spending a bunch of money, all he is doing is letting people in his several Rolodexes know he is running and letting word of mouth work.  Part of his idealism that I strongly agree with is that people should only run for office in the jurisdictions where they can vote.

I find it interesting that he is choosing to run this way with an Anti-Campaign.  He is not like most people that run for council that have no idea how to campaign and end up running a campaign much the same has his.

On personal level Hugh and I have a lot in common, I am not certain, but I think we are in a very broad agreement on almost major political issues.  Certainly we both have that same drive to be involved with the community and we both seem to see the world as a place that can and will get better.

Wold Hugh make a good city councilor?   I am certain he would because he has a passion of the city.   I think he would cause less of a confrontation with the Mayor than Barry Hobbis or Paul Brown, by this I mean who the Mayor will see as an alpha male in opposition to him.

Can he get elected?  Short of divine intervention, nope.  This does not mean you should not vote for him because you should vote for the person you like best and not vote for a person that is more likely to defeat someone else.   There is no one that can usefully handicap who will win this by-election.  I have one vote and my vote is still going to go to Sue Woods, not because there is anything wrong with Hugh, but because I am still convinced that Sue is the right person to be elected to this council.

I would really like to see Hugh run in 2011 and run with a serious major campaign to get elected.  If he does, I will be offering to help him.

In the meantime Hugh and I are looking for an evening after the 18th to get together and share some bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau.

Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce site about by-election

The chamber is giving candidates a space to answer questions in relation to the by-election.   As of now Paul Brown, Susan Woods and Rose Henry have their answer up.

There is also page dedicated to the Bridge Referendum, well it is only of a pro new bridge poster you can print.

There is nothing on the website about the candidates running for North Saanich council

North Saanich All Candidates Meetings

I got this notice from the North Saanich Residents Association

The North Saanich Residents Association will be hosting two All Candidates Meetings to give residents an opportunity to meet and learn more about the candidates that are running in the upcoming by-election. There are two Council seats to be filled as a result of resignations on September 1st, 2010.

The first meeting will be held on Tuesday November 9th, at the Presbyterian Church, SW corner of East Saanich and Willingdon Roads; the second will be Wednesday November 17th at the Wain Road Firehall, NW corner of West Saanich and Wain Roads. Please note that the Firehall meeting room is on the second floor and access is by way of a full flight of stairs.

Both meetings will run from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.

The six candidates running are Dunstan Browne, Wally Du Temple, Jan Fellenius, Heather Goulet, Robin Herlinveaux and Craig Mearns.

Please consider attending one of these meetings in order to learn more about the candidates before you head to the polls on Saturday November 20th.

The North Saanich Residents Association was created in 1948 to promote public interest and participation in the affairs of the District of North Saanich.

For further information, please contact President Geoff Orr at 250-656-4562.