Tag Archives: victoria

Victoria’s Right-Wing Council

I’m sorry I ever suggested that Victoria’s City Council was NDPish. Clearly their playbook is actually the federal Liberals: “run on the left and govern on the right”.

Council recently prioritized their work for the next three years. The top 6:

  1. Develop Budget Reduction Strategy
  2. Examine public transportation options
  3. Increase revenues
  4. Implement Enhanced Business Processes (Permits & Inspection, Land Development)
  5. Conduct Services and Organizational Review
  6. Implement Economic Development Strategy

Affordable housing isn’t explicitly mentioned, although #37 might involve that: “Update the Comprehensive Housing Strategy”. #38, “Develop and Implement Sustainability Action Plan”, #57, “Develop Sustainability Indicators”, and #93, “Develop Community Climate and Energy Resiliency Plan”, give you an idea of how important the environment is.

To be fair, the councillors that weren’t re-elected had more explicit green credentials and yet always sided with business when the chips fell. The new councillors have small business backgrounds and so perhaps we’re getting exactly what we voted for. But I thought downtown businesses were on-side with the idea that getting people off the streets would help their bottom line too?

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Chrome Plating the Johnson Street Bridge

Councilors Ben Isitt and Lisa Helps are asking for public input on whether the replacement Johnson Street Bridge design should be changed so that one of the three car lanes could be upgraded to rail in the future. They have no idea how much this would cost, which makes it kind of like asking the public “do you like puppies?”

Mayor Dean Fortin has warned that switching to a rail-upgradable design will waste some of the $2 million spent on design work so far and jeopardize the $12 million in federal funding contingent on completion by March 2012. Given that everything Fortin said about the Bridge before the election was spin, I’m not sure his election win is enough that we should listen to him.

One argument against spending a dime on rail-upgradability is that rail would be used entirely by people living in other municipalities, so Victoria taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for it. But mass transit to downtown would increase the value of downtown for offices and shopping that will result in increased taxes and prevent sprawl (like Uptown).

My argument is that we have absolutely no evidence that there will be demand for mass transit over the Bridge in the next 100 years. BC Transit has said that their first priority is the Douglas Street corridor, followed by mass transit to UVic. Only after that is built would a transit line running through Esquimalt be considered.

Ben Isitt says that we’ll need rail on the bridge after Peak Oil. But there is no regional strategic plan for mitigating Peak Oil. He shouldn’t just be coming up with this plan in his head as potential mitigation strategies occur to him.

Victoria has an infrastructure deficit. That means that every dollar invested in future infrastructure is a dollar that isn’t spent to keep the infrastructure we currently have.

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Community Griping Maps

I recently went to a community mapping workshop for the Fernwood neighbourhood in Victoria. The project is affiliated with UVic’s Community Mapping Initiative, which includes links to a bunch of community maps around Victoria. A community map is supposed to be a map that includes whatever the mappers consider important. The Green Map iconography they use makes their ideological commitments pretty obvious, although they haven’t yet matured to the point of using base layers that aren’t part of the modern ideology.

Another project I heard about was Prince George crowdsourcing a map of idling hotspots using a tool called SeeClickFix. The idea is that PG doesn’t have the resources to do blanket enforcement of their idling bylaw, so a crowdsourced map could lead to enforcement prioritization, moral persuasion or a grassroots campaign like those against plastic bags. Unfortunately, it looks like after the campaign died down nobody kept using the site.

The interesting thing about using SeeClickFix is that it’s a totally open crowdsourcing map. I can go to Prince George’s part of the world and enter any kind of issue I want. Then people can vote and comment on it. I went to Victoria and entered a couple of my pet urban design issues and a City staffer responded within minutes. That’s faster than the City’s online service request form, and gives an opportunity to post and discuss issues that don’t have an obvious fix by the maintenance department.

I think this has a lot of potential for local public engagement. I recommend that local politicians forward citizens to SeeClickFix and subscribe to new issues in their jurisdiction.

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Victoria 2011 Election Recap

I was waiting for Bernard von Schulmann to explain why his party, Open Victoria, lost. But apparently this is all he’s going to say, so here’s my analysis:

2008 2011
Count % Count %
Total votes 16839 100.00% 16676 100.00%
Fortin 7706 45.76% 10080 60.45%
Reid/Brown 7105 42.19% 4229 25.36%
Filipovic 1411 8.38% 2206 13.23%
Other 617 3.66% 161 0.97%

In 2008 there was no incumbent mayor and it was a pretty close race between NDP-affiliated Dean Fortin and business candidate Rob Reid. In 2011, Fortin had an overwhelming victory over business candidate Paul Brown. I think most of this can be attributed to the incumbency advantage for a mayor, who is in the media much more than an incumbent councilor. Brown was a weaker candidate than Reid and I guess people weren’t as disappointed in Fortin’s first term as I was. Filipovic picked up votes as the stricter nomination requirements kept the mostly left-wing crackpots out of the race.

2008 2011
Count % Count %
Total votes 102536 100.00% 102945 100.00%
Young 7276 7.10% 8940 8.68%
Thornton-Joe 9887 9.64% 8803 8.55%
Helps 8523 8.28%
Isitt 8419 8.18%
Alto 7493 7.28%
Madoff 9017 8.79% 7321 7.11%
Gudgeon 6904 6.71%
Coleman 6102 5.95% 6793 6.60%
Luton 6002 5.85% 6343 6.16%
Hunter 7926 7.73% 6101 5.93%
Lucas 7042 6.87% 5719 5.56%
Henry 3372 3.29% 4866 4.73%

There were fewer council candidates so votes were more concentrated (meaning you needed more to win). Notably, John Luton lost even though he increased his vote percentage. Geoff Young obviously did so well due to his opposition to the Johnson Street Bridge process, but given the mayor’s high votes I’m not convinced that his slate did poorly because of their performance. Although the incumbency advantage should never be discounted, the pattern is too random to read a strong voice into the electorate. I think I might have to concede that Ben Isitt, Lisa Helps and Shellie Gudeon simply ran better campaigns, as lame of an explanation as that is. It’s hard to understand Philippe Lucas’ fall in particular: I assume most voters knew that he was a vocal representative of the left, even if he usually ended up voting with the center.

I’m hoping that Isitt will pick up blogging about council now that Luton is gone.

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Endorsements for Victoria

I’ve already endorsed incumbents John Luton and Geoff Young. I will be voting for Steve Filipovic to send Dean Fortin a message (I would vote for Fortin if I thought Paul Brown had a chance of winning). Here are my top picks for councillors:

Rose Henry

Having a member of the street community on council (rather than just councillors who don’t hate homeless people, like we’ve had in the past) is a risk worth taking. There’s a potential that she could provide radical solutions to a lot of Victoria’s most pressing problems.

Lisa Helps

She was the vice-chair of Fernwood’s Cornerstone project. She runs a community microlending organization. And she’s working on a PhD in the History of Homelessness in Victoria! Unlike just about everyone else in this race, she has specific, measurable, good platform ideas.

Ben Isitt

He’s young and progressive but also definitely qualified. He ran for mayor in the past and came off as a punk, but he’s realized that he should spend some time in council and he’s been doing his time in the community the last three years. I’d like to give him a chance to show us what he can do.

Shellie Gudgeon

I like her pragmatism. In particular, her reluctance to jump into light rail seems prudent. She seems like a good voice for small business on council.

No one else has captured my attention. I might vote for Marianne Alto just because she hasn’t really had a chance, and an open data motion isn’t the worst way to leave your mark. I might vote for Philippe Lucas, because he seems like one of the more effective progressive incumbents, even if that’s not saying much. Or I might save my votes: the less you vote, the more your votes are worth in this screwed-up electoral system.

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What is Open Victoria?

Open Victoria is a “slate”, which is kind of like the municipal equivalent of a political party except it is a much looser organization. They’ve “endorsed” Paul Brown for mayor, and Linda Lisa McGrew, Aaron Hall and Sukhi Lalli for council. Ross Crockford, one of the main forces behind saving the Johnson Street Bridge, is their communications advisor (it was widely speculated that he would run for mayor if the borrowing referendum failed). Bernard von Schulmann, who writes the Victoria Vision blog, is Paul Brown’s campaign manager.

As a slate, the candidates can have whatever policies they want, but they’ve decided to emphasize the theme of open government. I’m a big supporter of open government. But it appears that these four candidates, and therefore the slate, is right wing:

  • Paul Brown is obviously the right-wing candidate for mayor. He’s an accountant and his main messaging is about cutting expenses.
  • Although I love to read Bernard von Schulmann’s blog, his posts show an obvious right-wing bias.
  • All three candidates for council are small business owners, which tend to only run for council when they think things have gone too far left (otherwise they’re busy running their businesses).
  • Linda Lisa McGrew appears to be one of those financially-conservative Greens.

It appears that their idea of open government is opening up the budget so they can find all that waste. Just like Rob Ford in Toronto. I won’t be voting for any of them.

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Evaluating Victoria Council

In my mind, the two most significant things Victoria Council has done in the last three years are:

  1. React to the court ruling that homeless people are allowed to camp in parks if there are insufficient shelter beds
  2. Secure funding to replace the Johnson Street Bridge

Having tent cities in parks would spur people to action about homelessness. Council couldn’t have that, so they appealed the ruling and passed a law requiring tents to be removed during the day. Because council votes are secret, it’s hard to tell whether everyone voted for it, but Philippe Lucas, the most left-wing councillor, is on record in support of the bylaw.

I want radical solutions to homelessness, not just buying a motel to house a handful of Victoria’s hundreds of homeless. So I won’t be voting for any incumbents based on their advocacy for the homeless.

Replacing the bridge was a good decision, but Council’s gross disregard for civic engagement or even basic public relations will cost the City millions of dollars due to the borrowing referendum. Council themselves have not yet been punished and I don’t see any evidence that they’ve learned a lesson. Geoff Young was the sole opponent on Council to the bridge process. Although I don’t agree with Young on many issues, I respect his courage to go against the groupthink and value his role as a dissenter so he has my vote.

I will vote for John Luton because his blog is the only way I get any idea what’s going on in the extremely secretive Council. I also like have an anti-car advocate on Council, although it’s hard to tell how effective he is at this role. Plus he always shows up at downtown events.

My impression is that no one else on Council has done much of anything, so I’m going to vote for non-incumbents in the hopes that they’ll do something.

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Who Should Pay for Affordable Housing?

Dean Murdock is running for reelection as a Saanich Councillor. He has proposed that Saanich require all new developments to sell or rent 10% of their units below the market value. This will have two side-effects:

  • More development will happen in other municipalities, which don’t have affordable or sustainable transportation options.
  • The price of new units in Saanich will rise.

Some of the rise in prices will come out of developer profits, but some of the increase will also be passed on to purchasers. Since new developments tend to be condos, townhouses and infill housing, they are mostly purchased by members of the middle-middle class. This is taking from the middle to give to the poor while the rich stay rich.

A better solution is to subsidize the creation of affordable housing units in both new and renovated development (like adding a non-market basement suite) using property tax refunds. The City of Victoria has been quite successful using property tax refunds to encourage restoration of heritage buildings.

The refunds should be paid for by raising the property tax rate for the municipality as a whole. Property tax is just about the only major policy level that local governments have, but it’s a good one because it’s progressive: mansions pay more than condos. The current owners’ houses have increased in value because of the scarcity of housing, so it’s time that they pay back the benefits of old policies.

Of course Murdoch can’t propose raising property tax to help the poor, because land owners are the only people who bother to vote in municipal elections. I’m not saying you shouldn’t vote for Murdoch, because this is better than Saanich’s current policy, fuck the poor. But is it not just to ask the middle to suffer for the good of the poor while taking nothing from the rich.

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The Empire Strikes Back in BC

The Occupations of Vancouver and Victoria could be evicted any day now, as the previously supportive municipal governments are changing their tune. Although legally the mayor throughout the election period, the mayors have no moral authority to make decisions like this right before an election. But the mayors do have responsibility. Every public servant at every level of government is told to maintain the status quo until a new government is sworn in (November 28) – and the status quo is Occupied.

But I’m amazed that the two centre-left mayors would come down against a progressive movement right before an election. I suppose this signals that their more serious electoral threats are from the right (Paul Brown in Victoria and Suzanne Anton in Vancouver), but both mayoral seats are considered quite safe. It just goes to show that the centre-left in BC is more centre than left. (Gregor Robertson is an ex-NDP MLA; Dean Fortin is associated with the NDP.)

In Victoria the mayor has gone so far as to say that the Occupation needs to be evicted to make space for Christian-consumerist activities in Centennial Square. I guess democracy only gets one month of the year?

The Occupations are requiring larger amounts of police and other emergency responder time, but it is far from an emergency situation. The authorities should work with the Occupation General Assemblies to establish collaborative solutions. If the Occupation requires a continual police presence, so be it: the government has no right to constrain freedoms because they’re inconvenient or expensive.

The incumbent mayors are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Based on this, I am endorsing Steve Filipovic for Mayor of Victoria and Randy Helten for Mayor of Vancouver.

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Other Peoples’ Comments on Victoria’s Official Community Plan

I got overwhelmed when the City of Victoria’s draft Official Community Plan came out, so I didn’t write any blog posts about it (I’ll be talking about those issues for the next 30 years, anyway). However, the city just published the collection of all the long-form correspondence they received in response to the draft. It’s over 9000 pages long, but I skimmed it and picked out a few choice quotes:

Note surprisingly, the neighbourhood associations were all against their lack of explicit power in the planning process. This was best summarized by the City’s patronage Public Planning Advisory Committee:

It is vital that the role of neighbourhood associations be made explicit in the OCP…Residents who are already engaged in volunteer activity related to neighbourhood quality of life issues are the most likely to be knowledgeable about area planning issues.

Except the Downtown Residents’ Association, who had no problems with the planning process but questioned the whole thing:

Does the OCP actually provide any ‘teeth’ in terms of guiding how the principles and strategic directions are applied? There seems to be very little language that actually quantifies/measures how the policies are implemented and applied. Reviewing the document, the OCP provides only vague, innocuous descriptors without specific meaning…

The neighbourhood association and private citizen submissions mostly worried about the idea of letting more people live in Victoria. But the Urban Development Institute, which is a developers industry association, pointed out that the plan doesn’t go far enough:

Increased density is noted as something that is desirable to ‘achieve the development objectives of this plan’ but is still being considered something for which applicants must pay significantly. The provision of amenity contributions may add to the cost of new housing, something that runs contrary to the stated objectives of this plan.

Finally, Deborah Curran of the UVic Environmental Law Centre noted a glaring omission:

The City of Victoria is located in the traditional territory of the Songhees/Coast Salish First Nations and that the City rests within the context of the rich history of the Coast Salish. I recommend that this be the first page in the OCP before the introduction in recognition of that Constitutional context.

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