The Malling of the Saanich Peninsula

There are 23,000 people live in North Saanich and Sidney, a rise of only 1000 people over the last ten years.   There two proposed retail developments west of Highway #17 - Sandown Commons  and the recently proposed Sidney Gateway.

Sandown Commons has been in planning for going on five years now and is expected to eventually be about 160,000 square feet in size

Sidney Gateway has just started the approval process but Sidney seems to be moving quickly on it.   It is planned to be 100,000 square feet.

This is a total of 260,000 square feet of new retail space all to the west of the highway and not close to where anyone lives.    Here are my issues with them:

• The demand to cross Highway #17 at Beacon is going to increase and this will cause traffic backups because of the ferries
• At the moment Sidney has a walkable downtown core.   You can drive there, park your car and do all your business.    These developments disperse the retail environment of Sidney in a bad way
• Sidney already has all the stores that people need.   Three grocery stores for 23,000 people seems more than is really needed   If each new development has a 40,000 square foot grocery store of some sort I really have to wonder where the customers will come from to keep them in business
• Finally, this is a perfect case for joint planning my North Saanich and Sidney.   At the moment the two developments seem to be causing strife between the councils.

I discussed this today on CFAX .

Amalgamation - nothing happening yet

It has been more than 50 days since the new councils have been sworn and close to 70 since election night and nothing has happened with amalgamation.   We had the public in eight municipalities vote on the issue and in seven cases voted in favour.    It seems there is a fairly clear desire to have something happen but nothing has started.

I do not know why the various local governments have not yet started to do anything on it.   I think the public will accept some delay in anything happening, but I do not think it can be delayed for too long.   At some point the public is going to feel disrespected if nothing is happening.  

The mood of the public is clearly open to the idea of amalgamation.  Going against this mood could lead to a backlash at the polling both in 2018.   Councils need to be seen to be doing something on amalgamation.

I could understand if there were bigger issues looming over the councils in the region, but in the last six weeks I have not seen any major municipal issues come forward.    The Saanich soap opera is not about governance or municipal issues.

If action is not taken soon by the councils I suspect there will be angry public ready to vote for new people.   A significant reason people voted against Frank Leonard was how he handled the amalgamation issue.  He at first dismissed it even though there is very high support for the issue in Saanich and then he offered a question to be put on the ballot that avoided asking anything clear about amalgamation.   I know many people who voted against Frank Leonard purely because of the amalgamation issue.

How long can they leave it?   I think another month or two at most before people start complaining.

What I would like to see is some announcements, one from the three Peninsula mayors and another from the mayors of Esquimalt, Saanich and Victoria.    Something public that says "Yes we are going to work on amalgamation".

Just some thoughts on the results of the Mayor's race in Victoria

I have been meaning to write something like this for several weeks but took most of Christmas off

The end result of the race was a very close result and a mayor elected with the lowest percentage of the vote for the mayor since the 1990 election that elected David Turner with only 33.90% of the vote.  David Turner lasted for a single term as mayor.

Lisa Helps     9,200  37.63% (centre left green)
Dean Fortin    9,111  37.27% (NDP)
Ida Chong      3,275  13.40% (centre right business)
Stephen Andrew 2,380   9.74% (centre)
4 others         480   1.96%

The problem Lisa has is that she won in a race where 62.4% of the people did not want her to be mayor.   She has a very weak popular mandate and has to very quickly understand what the majority wants if she wants to be re-elected in 2018.

On the positive side she has a nicely divided council - 4 New Democrats and 4 centre right.   Both sides can achieve their interests if they have the mayor on board.   It puts the mayor in a very powerful place and should make it very easy for her to bring forward most of her issues, but.....

Lisa made several missteps in the first weeks:
The oath to the Queen, which surprisingly is an issue to more people than I ever expected
The attempt to award a direct contract to Domenic Lepore for $55,000
The way the right to a healthy environment declaration was handled - if it had come forward with the support of some of the councilors on the centre right it would be portrayed as a loony left idea.

Many people wanted to dismiss Lisa as a mayor long before she was elected and the events of the first few weeks gave them ample material to reinforce their existing views.   The next election is close to four years away and already some people are thinking about running for mayor.   She has the danger of being viewed as a lame duck by many people and that will reduce her effectiveness.

The powers of a mayor in BC are limited.  The biggest source of power most mayors have is looking and acting like a leader in their position and getting people to follow them.   This is not something that is a law or rule but a combination of  attitude, confidence and respect.   Lisa has lost ground on this.  

When a new mayor is elected most people will give benefit of the doubt as to their ability to be mayor but this has been lost by Lisa.  She now needs a serious plan on how to get the the respect of the public back and allow her to achieve some significant tangible changes to City Hall.

One of the dangers she has now is that there are people who do not want her to succeed and they will allow things to happen that harm Lisa as mayor.   This will not be anything public and so can not be addressed directly.   It leaves her deeper in the hole when trying to regain her status as mayor.

It will be interesting to see how Victoria council plays out over the next couple of years

Susan Brice is requesting Saanich Council support a resolution for the right to a healthy environment.

Interestingly this has been brought forward by Susan Brice.  It should be a good reminder to people that the environment is not a left or right issue.  

It is the exact same motion the City of Victoria council passed on December 18th.   In Victoria because it was brought forward by Jeremy Loveday, Lisa Helps and Ben Isitt it has been attacked from being a Pollyannaish move that will hinder development.  It has hard to attack Susan Brice for being anti-business.

Here is the text of the motion Saanich will be dealing with tonight:

WHEREAS the David Suzuki Foundation Blue Dot Tour has inspired many Canadians to request that the right to a healthy environment be enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedom through support of the following motion;
AND WHEREAS the District of Saanich understands that people are part of the environment, and that a healthy environment is inextricably linked to the well-being of our community;
AND WHEREAS the Saanich Official Community Plan provides a strong policy foundation to pursue actions and initiatives that contribute toward a healthy environment;
AND WHERESAS Saanich has the opportunity to endorse the Declaration of the Right to a Healthy
Environment, joining other Canadian cities in re -affirming our commitment to social, environmental and economic sustainability;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT The District of Saanich endorses the following declaration in principle and forwards it to the next Committee of the Whole to allow for public in-put.

"All people have the right to live in a healthy environment, including:

• The right to breathe clean air;
• The right to drink clean water;
• The right to consume safe food;
• The right to access nature;
• The right to know about pollutants and contaminants released into the local environment;
• The right to participate in decision-making that will affect the environment.

The District of Saanich has the responsibility, within its jurisdiction, to respect, protect, fulfill and promote these rights.

The district of Saanich will apply the precautionary principle: where threats of serious or irreversible damage to human health or the environment exist, Saanich will take cost effective measures to prevent the degradation of the environment and protect the health of its citizens. Lack of full scientific certainty shall not be viewed as sufficient reason for Saanich to postpone such measures.

Saanich shall apply full cost accounting; when evaluating reasonably foreseeable costs of proposed actions and alternatives, Saanich will consider costs to human health and the environment.

By December 31, 2015, Saanich will consider objectives, targets, time lines and actions within its jurisdiction to fulfill residents' rights to a healthy environment, including options to:

• Ensure equitable distribution of environmental benefits and burdens within the municipality;
• Ensure infrastructure and development projects protect the environment, including air quality;
• Address Climate Change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and implementing adaptation measures;
• Responsibly increase density;
• Prioritize walking, cycling and public transit as preferred modes of transportation;
• Ensure adequate infrastructure for the provision of safe and accessible drinking water;
• Promote the availability of safe foods;
• Reduce solid waste and promote recycling and composting;
• Establish and maintain accessible green spaces in all residential neighbourhoods;

The District of Saanich shall review these objectives, targets, timelines and actions every five years, and evaluate progress towards fulfilling this declaration.

The District of Saanich will consult residents as part of this process."

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT Council forward this resolution to the Annual Meeting of the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities, the Union of British Columbia Municipalities, and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, requesting favourable consideration by delegates at the 2015 annual meetings of these Associations.

Core Area Liquid Waste Management Committee changes

The committee is made of the 15 CRD directors that come from the seven municipalities that are part of the Core Area Liquid Waste Management Plan.    With the recent election there are four changes to the committee, possibly five if the new CRD chair is not already on the committee.

Members of the Core Area Liquid Waste Management Committee before and after the recent election
Those in red were most firmly opposed to the old plan

• Alto, Marianne
• Blackwell, Denise
• Brice, Susan
• Brownoff, Judy
• Bryson, Alastair he was on the committee as Chair of the CRD
• Derman, Vic
• Desjardins, Barbara
• Fortin, Dean now Lisa Helps
• Hamilton, Carol
• Hill, Graham now David Screech
• Isitt, Ben
• Jensen, Nils dejure, John Herbert defacto
• Leonard, Frank (defacto Vicki Sanders) now Richard Atwell
• Seaton, Lanny
• Wergeland, Leif now Colin Plant
• Young, Geoff

Assuming all the new members of the CALWMC are opposed to the concept of the old plan, you still have a majority on the committee that supported the old plan.  The old plan is dead it seems, but the people that supported it are still in power.

Current Tenure of Councilors and Mayors in Saanich, Victoria, Langford and Oak Bay running for re-election

I make no judgement about how long some of the people have been on councils, a number of the longest serving ones are people I really like.   If I have time I will do the other municipalities

Saanich
Frank Leonard - 18 years as mayor and 10 years on council
Judy Brownoff - 21 years
Leif Wergeland - 18 years
Vic Derman 12 years
Susan Brice - 9 years
Vicki Sanders - 9 years
Nichola Wade - 7 years
Paul Gerrard - 6 years
Dean Murdock - 6 years

Langford
Stew Young - 22 years as mayor
Denise Blackwell - 22 years
Winnie Siffert - 22 years
Lanny Seaton - 18 years
Lillian Szpak   - 12 years
Matt Sahlstrom - 12 years
Roger Wade - 6 years

Victoria
Goeff Young - 24 years
Pam Maddoff - 21 years
Chris Coleman - 15 years
Charlayne Thorton-Joe - 12 years
Dean Fortin - 6 years as mayor and 6 years as a councilor
Marianne Alto - 4 years
Ben Isitt - 3 years

Oak Bay
Nils Jensen - 3 years as mayor and 15 years as a councilor
Tara Ney - 6 years
Kevin Murdoch - 3 years
Michelle Kirby - 3 years

If not McLoughlin Point, where could one point a sewage treatment plant?

The whole sewage treatment thing is such a mess now that Esquimalt has not approved the rezoning of the McLoughlin Point site.  The CRD will be asking the province to intervene and overrule Esquimalt council.   I think this is preferred route all the local politicians would like to take so that none of them have to own the decision.  I think all of them are holding their breath in hopes the province will force the rezoning.  I am not so sure this government will do that.

So what if the province does not agree for force the situation?  

Here are the options for a way forward:

CRD could make Esquimalt a better offer
The CRD and Esquimalt could come to some agreement on the use of McLoughlin point if there was more on the table.   I am 100% certain there is a number that Esquimalt would accept as compensation for having the sewage treatment plant.  The CRD could offer to cover 100% of the Esquimalt budget for a couple of decades and I suspect Esquimalt would accept.  

Yes, that sounds extreme, but it is just an illustration that all the options have not been considered.   You could argue that this would be an unreasonable extreme, but the negotiation was flawed from the start from the CRD side.  

The reality of the negotiation between the CRD and Esquimalt is that it never came from the approach of not using McLoughlin Point as an option in the negotiation.   It was clear the CRD was unwilling to negotiate in good faith and accept that the site was not set.    If there was a lack of good faith in the negotiations they are with the CRD and not Esquimalt.

The whole situation we are in at the moment is because the CRD seems to have gone ahead with the plans without first getting all their ducks in a row.   Why choose McLoughlin Point and issue RFPs for the work if you do not have the site secured?   Is this because the CRD assumed Esquimalt would kowtow to the CRD or is it because the CRD assumed the province would step in and force the rezoning?

The CRD could try an offer of a large annual sum of money and see how that works.  Using a location elsewhere in the CRD will likely have some significant increased costs.  If it were to add $400,000,000 to the cost, it would save a lot to offer Esquimalt $10,000,000 a year for 20 years.  

The CRD could seek a new location
Yes, the CRD did go through a process to find the best location but there were other sites on the list.   By not securing McLoughlin Point the CRD should be looking at the other locations on the list.   It may cost a lot more money but there are alternative locations outside of Esquimalt that could be used.  

• Clover Point - yes, it would likely mean Dallas road would have to be closed there and some houses would have to purchased and bulldozed
• Off of coast of Uplands - this option would have one major upside, very few people would see any impact since the population density of the Uplands is so low.   
• Thetis Cove - since what is coming out is treated there is no need to have it go far out into the ocean.  The Thetis Cove area is either in View Royal or on reserve
• Off of Finnerty Cove - the advantage of this is that it is in Saanich and the Saanich council seems to be very strongly in favour of the current model of a large single plant and therefore would likely approve the rezoning

There are likely others.

Try with a new sewage treatment plan
The Federal and Provincial governments are not unreasonable.   If the CRD were to try again with a much better plan I suspect that the other levels of government would be willing to allow some deferral.

Core to getting the Feds and province to agree to a new plan is to show there is support for the new plan.

There are options for the way forward but the CRD seems to have locked themselves into one set model

An Idea for More Effective Residential Waste Management

In Saanich the next garbage pick up will be with the new standard bins that they delivered to households in early January.   With this shift to standard sized bins that will be lifted by machine to dump into the trucks there are a few additions that could be done to make waste management cheaper and more efficient.

One the goals in this region is to reduce the amount of landfill waste and the most effective way to get people to reduce their waste is give them a financial incentive.  Up until now there has been no easy and cost effective way to ensure that the people who produce the most waste are charged for that waste.

In the CRD water pricing has been very effective as a way to reduce water use.   With a price for water and not a flat fee per property, there is an incentive to reduce how much water people use.   This same financial incentive could now be done with garbage because of inexpensive technology.  All it would take is the addition of an RFID chip along with a large address label on every bin and a sensor on the truck that can weigh the bin.   I assume the trucks already have GPS on board.  

The RFID chip on the garbage bin would allow the sensor on the lifting mechanism to recognize which bin was being lifted, the weight of the garbage and compost would then logged by residence.   On each municipal utility bill it would now clearly show how much garbage and compost is being produced by the household.  It would now be possible to charge garbage collection based on how much is thrown out.

Charging based on volume is only part of the cost, the very act of having to stop and pick up the bins is a cost as well.   It would only make sense to charge residences based on the number of bins picked up per year.

It is most efficient for the system to only collect bins when they are full but at the moment you get a pick up every two weeks if you need it or not.   The RFID chip would also allow the municipality to charge in part based on how often garbage is picked up and thereby giving people an incentive to only bring out their bins when they are full.   If my bin is not full and it does not need to be picked up, the RFID chip would then record this and my bill would show the weeks when pick ups were not required.

The per pick up charge is one that could be put on the compost bin.   It takes much longer for them to fill up and therefore need fewer pick ups.   By having some charge to the compost pick up those that compost at home would be rewarded.

Reducing the number of partial bins would speed up waste collection and that would save the municipality money.  This alone should be enough to quickly amortize the costs of setting up the program.

Collecting the data would allow the municipality to know what areas produce more waste than the average and therefore where further waste education is most needed.   It should also be possible for the municipality to work out what each garbage route costs to operate.  If denser neighbourhoods have ongoing lower costs to collect waste, those residents should be rewarded with cheaper costs.

The data would collected give us more and detailed information on the waste production habits of the public.  Combining this with census data for neighbourhoods would make it possible to do a detailed analysis of what socio-economic factors impact waste production.

Since this change directly charges back the full costs of waste collection, there is no reason why a household should not be allowed to have as many bins as they would like.

The reason for the large address label on the bin is to ensure no one swaps bins with a neighbour and thereby has them pay for their garbage. 

   

What TLC owes to government

The Land Conservancy is in a creditor protection process and one of the set of creditors are governments.   Governments are not by a long shot the major creditors, but they are the one set that do have an impact on the wider public.   The total owed to the creditors is $6,732,904.96 of which $261,146.31 is owed to government of one sort or another.

 Here is the list of what is owed by TLC to various governments (only amounts over $1,000 are included on the creditor list)

Government	Money owed by TLC
District of Sooke	$79,894.79
District of Saanich	$74,772.86
District of Highlands	$44,895.06
City of Vancouver	$15,482.33
Minister of Environment	$10,000.00
Tsawout First Nation	$9,002.00
CRD - Gonzales & Water Dep't.	$5,837.67
Receiver General of Canada - HST/GST	$4,607.85
City of Burnaby	$3,085.23
District of Tofino	$2,907.83
Ministry of Finance	$2,434.47
District of Squamish	$1,772.75
RD of Okanagan-Similkameen	$1,650.00
Okanagan Falls Irrigation District	$1,326.11
District of West Vancouver	$1,249.72
District of North Cowichan	$1,158.47
City of Victoria	$1,069.17
TOTAL	$261,146.31

What should we expect from councilors? Should Central Saanich have given Terry Siklenka a leave of absence?

As I have said before, in our region there are too many councils dealing with similar issues that it is impossible to keep on to of even part of it.   I missed out on several things in Central Saanich.lately because I can not keep up.  I missed that planner Hope Burns has been let go, which one faction in the community sees as a travesty.   I also missed commenting on the Vantreight cel tower application, which I supported because I can not see any reason to say no.    I also missed that one of the councilors in Central Saanich seemed to suddenly be AWOL.

Ryan Windsor alerted me to the fact that Central Saanich councilor Terry Siklenka has been given a leave of absence by the council because he is currently working abroad.   He seemed to first became aware of this when he noticed Terry had been absent at council meetings since September.   On November 5th the council granted him a six month leave of absence.

I think it is important for people to understand that Terry Siklenka is clearly on one side of the political divide in Central Saanich and Ryan Windsor on the other side.   Certainly the commentary on the Saanich Voice Online website indicates Terry is not a popular man with the "other side".  

The question for me becomes should he resign or not and I do not think resignation should be automatic.    The cost for a by-election is not cheap and if he is returning there not be much point in holding one.   The role of a councilor in Central Saanich is not the same as being a Saanich or Victoria councilor, it is not anywhere close to fulltime.    Central Saanich could easily afford to operate with one less councilor for a number of months, frankly I think they have more than they need as four and a mayor would be more than enough for such a small population.

I do not know how long he will be gone and what his plans are, I think it is important for Terry and the council to explain to the public why he is gone and how long he will be absent.   Given the serious divide in Central Saanich, not answering this is only going to cause the opposition to get upset and see a conspiracy.   It also does them no favours that in the motion for the leave of absence the council did not to explain when the six month clock started    There will be those that read as starting when Terry Siklenka missed his first meeting and others will read it as the council meeting on November 5th when the leave was granted.

Recently the mayor of Tofino resigned because he could no longer be mayor and do his new job in Vancouver, though he tried to for awhile.    He did not immediately resign.

If Terry is not back at the end of the six months I think council erred in giving him the leave of absence.   Much of this could be defused with him giving a date for his return.

Following local government is almost impossible in our city which does no favours for our democracy

One of the biggest problems in this region in trying to keep up on local government is that we have 14 of them.  When you have so many local government meetings it would be more than a full time job just to keep up on the basic meetings of councils let alone on the various committees.

In November we have following number of Council Meetings or Committee of the Whole of each local government:

• CRD - 1 meeting (12 committee meetings)
• Central Saanich - 2 council meetings
• Colwood - 2 council meetings?  The Colwood website if the worst in the region and I have no idea about their media schedule.
• Esquimalt - 3 meetings
• Highlands - 3 meetings
• Langford - 2 meetings (6 committee meetings)
• Metchosin - 2 meetings (4 committee meetings)
• North Saanich - 3 meetings
• Oah Bay - 3 meetings
• Saanich  - 3 council meetings
• Sidney - 4 meetings (this is from October because I can not find any information on November meetings)
• Sooke - 3 meetings (4 committee meetings)
• Victoria - 2 meetings (7 committee meetings)
• View Royal - 3 meetings

We have a total of 36 full council meetings in November.   I only listed some of the committee meetings because many council do not seem to have an easy way to quickly find out about when committees were meeting.

This is way too many meeting for a region with only 330,000 people.   It is a waste of human resources in all the time people spend in meetings.

This many meetings also makes it impossible for the public or the media to keep abreast of what is happening in our city.   Decisions by Saanich or Langford impact me and whole city but with so many meetings we all end up in the dark and councils make decisions without the people of this city.

Without the scrutiny of the media and the public democracy has real trouble functioning well.

I have tried to make a page with links to all the agendas and minutes for the councils in this region.

One solution to Victoria's financial problems - sell off the parkades

What benefits would the City get if it sold off the parkades?

The City of Victoria owns or operates five parkades.   I do not know what the ownership status of the one in the building with the downtown public library and I think there is a strong need for the City to own the Centennial Square parkade but there are three more that are stand alone parking structures.

• View Street Parkade
• Johnson Street Parkade
• Yates Street Parkade

At the moment the City operates them and I assume them make a profit from them but is that profit enough to off set the loss in property taxes that these properties bring in?  Does it really make sense for the City to try and compete with private business in providing parking?

The City could sell the three stand alone parkades and reap a multitude of benefits

• The City would free up money tied up in the land which could be used to pay down some of the infrastructure debt of the City
• The City would get property taxes from these properties
• The City would reduce the size of the permanent staff - there various long term subtle benefits in doing this
• Properties that currently some of the worst eyesores in the City could be redeveloped.
• The pricing for parking Downtown will better reflect the market value of the parking

The Yates Street Parkade is about 100,000 square feet in size.   If this was Class A office space, the building would be paying something like $700,000 a year in property taxes.  If the City were to sell all three parkades and they were developed as offices the city would be collecting $2,000,000 a year or more in property taxes. (the property tax amounts are conservative estimates)

When you look around town, the three stand alone City owned parkades are some of the worst eyesores going.   The Yates Street parkade is a completely out of keeping with Old Town.   The parkade reduces the heritage nature of quick a significant part of the core of the centre of town.

View Larger Map

Johnson Street between Douglas and Blanshard is one the deadest streets in Downtown and a large reason for this is the parkade mid street which is the largest one the City owns.  The parkade is not the only, the backside of the movie theater adds an even more imposing monolith on the south side of the street.   The redevelopment of this site would build a better connection between Old Town through to areas near Harris Green.



View Larger Map

The City of Victoria also owns a number of surface parking lots of which only one strikes me as one that could be sold - 820 Courtney Street.  This property is in the range of 10,000 square feet and could support a four to five story office building on it and bring in around $300,000 in property taxes, significantly more than is collected in parking fees from the site.

I really can not see many down sides to the City selling the parkades and significant numbers of benefits if it were to happen.

Esquimalt Property Tax Increase

Esquimalt has gone ahead with a 2.49% increase in property taxes for 2012/13, which turns out to the lowest in the region.  I am pleasantly surprised at how far down they managed to get it from the initial numbers.

Council had a range of options given to them from 1.75% to 2.49% and chose the highest number to ensure there is a contingency in the budget and an increase in capital project reserve funds.   I do not like property tax increases running above the rate of inflation but better that than starve the future needs of local government.

There is no reason all of our local governments should not have the resources available to deal with all the infrastructure costs.   The only reason municipalities have an infrastructure deficit is because they short changed themselves going back decades.

Better local governance, the main reason why we should amalgate

For a local government jurisdiction to be an effective governance unit it has to be an area that encompasses most of the activities people do every day.  This means people should be able to live, work, shop and play in one municipality.   At the moment in this region very few people accomplish even two of that list.

Why is it good from a governance point of view to have a local government boundary that allows people to live, work, shop and play within it?   For any local government to govern well it has to consider all aspects of the day to day life of the population.  It has to be able to consider the holistic city.  It has to be able to look at the bigger picture and develop a real long term plan.  When you divide up one city into multiple local jurisdictions you end up with governance for the interests of a small part of the city without consideration of the rest of the city.  You also end up effectively governing only for one aspect of need of the public.

At the moment most of our small local governments govern only for the interests of existing residents, they do nothing to think about the bigger picture, they do not consider the environment, they will not take responsiblity for their share of the regional needs, and generally operate from a selfish governance model.

The most complete municipality we have is Victoria, but even then it is much less so than it used to be.   I live and work in Victoria - the advantages of a home office, but I shop in Saanich, Esquimalt or Langford.   My recreation is mainly in Esquimalt and Saanich.   My kids go to school in Saanch and Esquimalt.   My life is like

Langford has all the hallmarks of a complete community, but while it offers a reasonable amount of work, shopping and playing oppurtunities, it falls down because the majority of the people living there do not work there.  In the 2006 census only 16.9% of the Langford residents worked in Langford.

Percentage of people that work in the municipality they live in:

1. Victoria 50.4%
2. Sidney 29.5%
3. Saanich 23.4%
4. Sooke 18.9%
5. Central Saanich 18.5%
6. Esquimalt 18.5%
7. Langford 16.9%
8. Oak Bay 11.3%
9. North Saanich 11.3%
10. Colwood 7.9%
11. View Royal 7.3%
12. Metchosin 7.2%
13. Highlands 5.5%

What happens when the vast majority of the people in a municipality do not work in the municipality?    The local council is elected by people who do not work in the municipality and therefore the council does not consider the development of work spaces important.  It also means you have people spending years on councils and never learning about any sort of holistic or bigger picture governance because all that is important is the cul-de-sac where you live.

Did you know that four of the 13 municipalities in the CRD effectively have no industrial land and one, Oak Bay, does not provide a single square meter of industrial land?  North Saanich, Oak Bay, View Royal and Metchosin expect  the rest of the region to provide the industrial lands that are needed to make the whole city be able to operate.  It is on industrial lands that the bulk of the blue collar jobs in this region are located.

The OCPs for View Royal and Oak Bay have no consideration in them for the needs of the services just to have the city survive.   They have written their OCPs as if providing land for the boring but crucial background services for the city to operate will be provided by someone else.   Neither one of them addresses the issue of ensuring the employment needs of the people, once again they operate as if others will provide it.

These same problems play out as well with shopping.

Did you know that in you live in Oak Bay there is no way for you to buy fuel for your car?    There is no way I can imagine anyone ever getting approval to build a new gas station in Oak Bay, the public would revolt and council would say no.   Someone else can deal with all the problems that come from gas stations.

North Saanich, Metchosin, and Highlands, all have virtually no shopping.  None of them have any plans to fix this and simply assume someone else will provide.    This happens in these three municipalities  because they are governing for a narrow set of interests - the interests of residents and nothing else.   Their neighbourhoods likely should never have shopping, but they have to be part of the bigger picture so that we make the best decision where we shop.  An unintended consequence has been the development of most of our new shopping is not located anywhere close to where most people live and has caused non-work travel miles in this region to rise over the last decade.

As long as the primary concern of most of the local governments in this region is to govern for the interests of residences and nothing else, we end up with everyone passing the buck on development of places where we shop, work and play.   Unbalanced governance like this diminishes us all.   We also end up with many unintended consequences which cause us problems for decades.

What impresses me about Shellie Gudgeon, Lisa Help and Ben Isitt

I am very impressed with the three new city councillors in Victoria.   What impresses me the most is the effort they are putting in to be visible and to communicate with the public.  

It is rare for incumbents to be defeated in the City of Victoria, but in 2011 three incumbents were defeated by Ben Isitt, Lisa Helps and Shellie Gudgeon.   The three of them won because they out campaigned everyone else, they also engaged with the public during the campaign and have not stopped since.  

What I also like about them is that all three also took the campaign seriously enough to spend the money needed to be serious candidates and win.  I do not like it when people do a half ass attempt at council and then say that you need to run a couple of times before you can win.

I like that the three of them are out spoken on council but not in a patronizing way or a grandioseness way.   I like that they seem to pay attention to the details and speak.  It can be difficult for a new councillor to be able to stand up and stand out right away.

There are many issues where I expect I disagree with all three of the new councillors.  It is more important to me that we have good people on council than agree with someone on everything.   The process of governance the quality of people involved is much more important to me than anything else.   On the surface of it few councils have more vision than Langford, but the way Langford council governs itself is not a model that I think will lead to long term sustainable.  

Should the three of them run for re-election in 2014, I will be voting for all them, even Ben Isitt who I am in also complete disagreement on every economic issue.

City Infrastructure

A report is going to City Council detailing two important infrastructure projects for the City - the Crystal Pool and Fire Station #1.   The details and analysis of the report is available via Open Victoria.  I will not go into the details raised there, I have a few other questions:

1. Why are pages missing from the report?   There a full page of discussion that missing from the Crystal Pool section, what is it saying?
2. Why was nothing actively being done about the pool ten years ago?   If the City had budgeted only 2% of revenues for Crystal Pool replacement over the last ten years, we would be sitting on about half the money needed to replace the building.
3. I look the City of Victoria "What's New Page" and there is nothing on there about the pool of fire station, actually there is nothing important about anything on the page other than the list candidates for council in the last three months.
4. How can the current capital plan for the City, which runs to 2030, not include any of the budgeting for either the First Station of the Crystal Pool.  The report outlines a $6.5 to $16.5 million cost for the Fire Station and a $58 million (?) cost of the Crystal Pool that are not in the capital plan.  How can a 20 year plan have no mention of either?  I have to admit the table is not written in a way to make the information easy to understand by the public.
5. Why have the citizens not been involved in determining the future of the Crystal Pool?
6. How sustainable are the City finances?

I am more and more worried that the City of Victoria is not sustainable financially in its current form.  

Paul Brown and Open Victoria have been focusing on these issues.



Yes I am working on Paul's campaign and I am working with Aaron Hall, Linda McGrew and Suhki Lalli on the Open Victoria slate, but they are not the only ones concerned.
Lisa Helps also specifically addresses the pool and the process she would like to see on how address teh future of the pool but I think it may too late.

The other 8 local governments in the core of the CRD

Between Sooke and Sidney there are eight local governments that few people give much thought to when it comes to regional development issues.   These eight are the First Nations.

First Nations are not under any form of CRD bylaws and are not governed by provincial laws either.   These lands are managed by Indian and Northern Affairs for the use and benefit of First Nations.   There is a perverse and paternalistic dance between the Feds and First Nations on lands.

The issue has become one that people are talking about because the Tsartlip First Nation is offering the Peninsula Coop some land to develop given the Coop's difficulty in getting there proposal for a grocery store through the local governments.

How much land in the core of the CRD is under the control of First Nations?  1329.6 hectares.

That is on the same scale as the five smallest muncipalities in the CRD.

• Sidney - 504 ha
• Esquimalt - 704 ha
• Oak Bay - 1038 ha
• View Royal - 1448 ha 
• Colwood - 1776 ha

Here is the list of First Nations and how much land they have in the core of the CRD:

On the Peninsula

• Tseycum - 28 hectares on the peninsula
• Pauquachin - 321.5 hectares
• Tsartlip - 206 hectares
• Tsawout - 237.7 hectares on the peninsula
• Goldtream 13 is shared by 5 first nations and is 4.8 hectares

In the core

• Esquimalt - 18.9 hectares
• Songhees - 137.8 hectares

In the Western Communities

• Scai'new - 307.7 hectares
• T'souke - 67.2 hectares

It seems to me the obvious place for developers to go given the difficulty that the CRD and local governments have been for anyone trying to move forward with developments in this region.   These are enough lands to easily house a lot of people or offer a home to some serious big box stores or industrial developments.    There is no reason WalMart could not make a deal with a First Nation and open a monster store on the peninsula.

Many of the reserves in the CRD have not been developed much at all, there are some reserves that are in a defacto wilderness state.    This land could all be developed without any input from the CRD.

People need to be aware that none of the 13 municipalities or the CRD have ever done their planning with participation or consent of the First Nations.   The reserves are outside of the regional growth strategy - which was created without any consultation with First Nations.   The lack of consultation with the First Nations makes the legal basis of the RGS dubious because it infringes on the Treaty and Aboriginal Rights of local First Nations.

As more development happens on reserves, there will be more and more people that are angry and demand that they have a say over First Nation lands.   That will not happen and should not happen.  First Nation lands are not part of BC and residents of BC have no business interfering with them.  First Nation is not an affection - they are legally recognized as a form of a nation though not as one that is independent.   The term used in the US is "domestically dependent state".

I am personally supportive of First Nations right to make use of their land however they wish.  I have worked on several different First Nation land management codes and I understand how on reserve lands are governed.   Even though they are micro managed by the Feds, First Nations have a set of rights for private property holders that would make most property rights people drool.

Finally, one interesting quirk of the world, until a First Nation passes a property tax bylaw, local governments collect property taxes on reserve from non-aboriginal owners of interest in lands.  At this time, only two of the eight First Nations have property tax powers.   Tsartlip is not one of them meaning Central Saanich would still collect property taxes from the Coop development.

That Chicken and Egg Thing

The more I look at the recommendation for the LRT for the CRD and the more I read the BC Transit Transit Future Victoria Region, and when I look at their planning for neighbourhoods like James Bay or UVic, the more I realize there is a fundamental flaw in how BC Transit is approaching all these plans.   BC Transit is not developing their plans based on the planning of the municipalities, but is effectively trying to develop land use plans.

Local land use and transportation is a function of local government.   They have to develop Official Community Plans and have detailed zoning maps for their city.   Any planning for transit should be being done by the local governments and then implemented by BC Transit.   I am not sure how BC Transit ended up doing any sort of planning at all?

If one looks to page 66 of Transit Future Plan Victoria Region, you get some interesting quotes:

What We Need to SucceedBC Transit has begun to take steps to guide the Transit Future Plan from a vision to a reality. These efforts will only be successful if done in partnership with the Victoria Regional Transit Commission, the
CRD, the region’s 13 municipalities, Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure and the community. A continuous dialogue between these partners is required to ensure strong links between:
• Land use planning and transit planning
• Provincial and regional transportation planning and transit
• Transportation policy and funding availability
How will BC Transit use this plan?• As a tool to communicate the region’s vision for transit to partners, stakeholders, and the public
• To identify where and in what order key transit investments will occur
• To strategically move projects through the capital planning process
• To inform the three year service planning and budgeting process
• To work with partners on integrating transit plans and investments with other major infrastructure plans and projects
• To respond to planning and development proposals
What actions does BC Transit need from local and regional partners to succeed?• Integrate the Transit Future Plan into regional plans, Official Community Plans and transportation plans
• Integrate and consider the Transit Future Plan network when developing local corridor plans or any road infrastructure projects. For example, incorporating transit signal priority measures with an intersection upgrade project
• Integrate and consider the Transit Future Plan network when developing active transportation infrastructure plans and projects. For example, a pedestrian and cycling infrastructure project on a transit corridor could improve access to transit by providing or improving sidewalks
• Ensure that local and major development proposals and projects are received and reviewed by BC Transit to ensure support of the Transit Future Plan
• Implement Travel Demand Management strategies that encourage shifting automobile trips to transit such as, implementing High Occupancy Vehicle lanes, transit priority measures, marketing efforts, restructuring parking fares and reducing parking availability/requirements in areas well served by transit
• Support and encourage Transit Oriented Development
• Work with BC Transit to explore incentives to attract high density and mixed use development to areas well served by transit
• Work with BC Transit to pursue new funding options for transit service and infrastructure (e.g., developer cost contributions (DCCs), cash in lieu of parking, land acquisition through rezoning and subdivision etc.)

I read through the above and it seems like BC Transit wants to control land development in this region, that it wants to control all transportation planning.    BC Transit is way over reaching their mandate.

Decisions on transit service locations, modes and frequency are all the responsibility of elected local government representatives.

It is the 13 local governments and the CRD that decide the form and function of development in this region.   It makes no sense to add a new layer to this from an agency that has no mandate or expertise in zoning, community planning, or general transportation.

The vision that they have for 25 years down the road for Transit has been written as if there is only one local government and that there is currently no OCP in place anywhere because the Transit Plan is the OCP.

Transit exists as a service to improve the quality of life for people in the city, it does not exist as an end in itself.  If we could move everyone with no delays and no greenhouse gases without transit, we would do so.  Transit is a solution to a problem and can only fail when it becomes the goal in itself.

Transit has to be responsive to the needs of communities and not be seeking to make communities conform to the needs of transit.   Transit has to be primarily directed by the planning departments in our local governments and make potential recommendations for service based on the OCPs of the local governments.   This one quote makes me seriously wonder how far out of touch with reality BC Transit has become:

• Ensure that local and major development proposals and projects are received and reviewed by BC Transit to ensure support of the Transit Future Plan

We first have to have the communities decide what they want their future to look like, then we can make plans for transit.   Local councils and planners are the ones with mandate and skills needed to make transit plans.

The Cosmopolitan - proposed new 5 story rental building turned down

The Cosmopolitan was a proposed five story building to go in the 600 block of Fort Street.


View Larger Map

The project would have replaced a number of small retail buildings with one building with high quality ground floor retail and four floors of apartments for rent.   The building is the same height as the neighbouring building on Fort Street.   It would have been much shorter than the Sovereign, which is going in on Broughton behind this location.

For some reason the City of Victoria's Planning and Land Use Committee gave the project a thumbs down.   An issue of height and density apparently.

Seriously?   This would be too dense for this part of Fort Street?   I am stunned at that thought.   As to height, it is not located in a spot that it would be seen from anywhere further afield.  It is the same height at the neighbouring building and the Eaton Bay Centre.  How can it be too tall?

The developer was offering rental units, did they miss out how important that is for the city?

I really can not understand this decision on any level.

Time for Victoria and Saanich to introduce wards for local elections.

The Local Government Act allows for a municipality to create wards or electoral districts for elections to councils.   I think the time has come for Saanich and Victoria to elect the councils by neighbourhood and not at large for the whole city.

At Large Voting is the least representative electoral system out there.   It creates many problems in the process of how people get elected and provides incumbents a huge advantage.   Ultimately as a city grows in size, slates or local political parties have to come into existence and when this occurs you start to get wild swings where from election to election there is a wholesale change on council even though the vote shift is small.

In Victoria we would then have 8 councilors elected from:

1. James Bay
2. Fairfield
3. Gonzales-Rockland-South Jubilee
4. Fernwood
5. Oaklands-North Jubilee
6. Hillside Quadra
7. Downtown-Harris Green-North Park
8. Vic West-Burnside

This list is just an example and should not be seen as something craved in stone.

Victoria could chose to have 10 councilors if it would like by passing a bylaw to that effect.   If there was a desire to have more than 10 or less than 6, then that could only be done through a change to the Letters of Patent for the City.

The relevant section of the Act:
Municipal elections at large unless on a neighbourhood constituency basis
36.1 (1) Unless a bylaw under subsection (2) applies, every council member must be elected from the municipality at large.


(2) A council may, by bylaw, provide that all or some of the councillors be elected on a neighbourhood constituency basis.
(3) A bylaw under subsection (2) must establish the areas that are to be neighbourhood constituencies and provide for an orderly transition to election on this basis.
(4) The authority under subsection (2) applies despite the letters patent of the municipality, but a bylaw under that subsection must be approved by the Lieutenant Governor in Council before it is adopted.
(5) If a neighbourhood constituency is established,
(a) the only persons who may vote as electors of the neighbourhood constituency are
(i) resident electors of the municipality who meet the qualifications of section 50 in relation to the area of the neighbourhood constituency, and
(ii) non-resident property electors of the municipality who meet the qualifications of section 51 in relation to the area of the neighbourhood constituency, and
(b) except as permitted at an additional general voting or a special voting opportunity, the electors of the neighbourhood constituency may only vote on general voting day at the voting places for that neighbourhood constituency.
(6) The notice of election under section 77 for an election on the basis of a neighbourhood constituency must include the following additional information:
(a) the boundaries of the neighbourhood constituency;
(b) the voting place on general voting day for the neighbourhood constituency;
(c) a description of the qualifications established by subsection (5) (a) that entitle an elector to vote for a council member to represent the neighbourhood constituency.