Victoria’s Community Plan is a strategic plan. Risk management is a big part of organizational strategic plans, but I was surprised to see it so explicitly in the climate change session.

Risk management says there are four ways to respond to a threat that may occur:

• Accept: do nothing
• Transfer: make it someone else’s problem (insurance is the most straightforward example)
• Avoid: change your plan to reduce the impact (called “Adaptation” in a climate change context)
• Mitigate: reduce the probability that the threat occurs

Most emissions happen in urban areas, but the City of Victoria is just one municipality in the region and just one city in the world, so mitigation is more about setting a good example and doing our part. Victoria’s emissions are divided about 50-50 between building heating & cooling and transportation (solid waste is insignificant and reducing it is a distraction from the real problems).

For heating & cooling, it’s more important to retrofit old buildings than set standards for new ones (most of Victoria’s buildings that will be standing in 30 years have already been built). I didn’t get a chance to ask if we have a potential for deep water cooling, but there are a few geothermal heritage-retrofit projects in Victoria.

The Capital Region per capita transportation emissions are 0.6 tonnes higher than the City’s per capita emissions, so the most important thing is supporting regional transportation plans (like keeping rail on the Johnson Street Bridge, hmm?). It turns out that not that many people are commuting directly downtown, so sticks like reducing parking may not be as effective as carrots. But there’s also lots of opportunity to reduce transportation emissions within the City.

Given that some climate change is inevitable, we also have to avoid the impacts. Victoria is well above sea level. We need emergency management to deal with increasingly weird weather. Our biggest problem is water security:

• water supply
• water-borne disease
• handling wastewater

The Galloping Goose trail in Victoria is built on an old railbed. That means it’s pretty flat but not necessarily in the optimal location. I used to commute to Royal Roads University by bike using the Goose, so I know it quite well.

Some people have misread this article as suggesting that the Galloping Goose trail would be “turned into a road” in the Colwood Corners area. I actually read the fucking article, so this blog post is to set the record straight.

Every morning I’d pop out of the trail here, dodging around the construction sign:

There’s a sign telling you to walk your bike down to the intersection at Nob Hill Road and wait for the light – but I hate breaking flow, especially when it means leaving for work 5 minutes earlier. So instead, I’d dash across the highway (to those three rocks) like Frogger:

Turner Lane Development is proposing to exchange the trail and highway, swapping the blue and green lines turn the green trail into a road and give bikes some of the blue road:

Unlike all townward municipalities, Colwood hasn’t paid to have their portion of the Goose paved, so I guess it’s reasonable to jump to the conclusion that council hates it. I think there’s a big potential for Colwood Corners to be a bicycle tourism destination, since it’s the only commercial cluster the Goose passes directly through. It has a Pig and a Serious Coffee, so it’s already a good place to stop, but paving the trail and dealing with the highway crossing would make cyclists feel welcome.

I went to the kick-off event for the City of Victoria’s community planning process. It turns out the community plan has a theme of “sustainability” (I didn’t see this in any of the lead-up material, maybe it goes without saying these days?). It started off with pep-talks from speakers telling us we could be the greenest city with the greenest businesses and the best culture and the best urban design. Then we broke into tables to discuss a topic of the table’s choosing.

We chose food security, as in: we need to grow our own food; not as in: we need to feed the homeless or decrease our food’s carbon footprint. I hate food security. I think it’s a self-indulgent fantasy and a distraction from real issues. But I went along with the discussion because I’m nice.

It’s environmentally irresponsible and totally unrealistic. Dan, our table’s moderator, cited the food system discussion paper prepared by city staff: it would take 20 times the land mass of the City of Victoria to feed all its current residents. This lead one of our table members to have the insight that we’d be better off supporting outer municipalities to keep the agricultural land they currently have rather than put hog farms on the roofs of office buildings.

Our table, like most of the others, produced a fluffy statement (“we’d like our city covered in bees“). The one exception was Gene Miller’s table. Miller is the founder of Victoria’s alternative weekly and an ex-real-estate-developer. He currently writes a killer column for Focus magazine on urban planning and was nearly drafted to be mayor last election. His table came up with three very specific zoning proposals – gee, I wonder who at the table thought those up?

… are up at http://www.ltgov.bc.ca.

Thanks, all involved. Totally awesome.

That’s the Victoria Police. Shouldn’t they be investigating those bodies?

In the latest issue of Boulevard (fragile link), Ross Crockford talks about leading the initiative to put replacing the Johnson Street Bridge to a referendum. This stood out to me:

Downtown turned out to be one of the hardest places to canvass, because many pedestrians there suffered from panhandler fatigue and refused all solicitations.

The canvassers were wearing blue smocks with a logo on the front and holding a clipboard with petition sheets. Crockford can’t mean that they were mistaken for panhandling street people? No, the canvassers looked like street fundraisers, known in Britain as charity-muggers = chuggers.

Chuggers are paid, sometimes on commission, to solicit donations to private corporations. After the corporation’s shareholders have been paid, any money left over goes to the charity.

Panhandlers use a direct opening: “spare a little change?” “sorry”. Chuggers usually use an indirect opening, which requires more effort to deflect: “how are you today?” “fine” “got time to talk about…” “no”. I find chuggers significantly more annoying than street people, but just because I haven’t resorted to telling them to “fuck off”.

Occasionally I approach people on the street to compliment their clothes or or to ask for assistance or whatever. Since chuggers came to Victoria, I’ve actually been asked if I’m selling something in response to a compliment. Chuggers are poisoning our public spaces.

But Crockford points out something even worse: chuggers are poisoning democracy. Provincial initiatives and the local government alternate approval process rely on volunteer citizens being able to approach others on the street. Representatives of politicians and parties should be able to make a pitch on the street, against apathy if not for their candidates.

I’d like to see an amendment to the Safe Streets Act to ban chuggers or at least a local bylaw.

Very few people care about municipal issues. Local governments have a real problem just getting a mandate from an election, never mind consulting their residents on ongoing issues. Sure, the vocal minority is happy to give the mayor a piece of their mind, but that’s not a representative sample.

The planning department for the City of Victoria has a micro survey with just two questions, in the hopes of getting as many responses as possible. They’ve identified twelve issues, from affordable housing to heritage protection. For each issue, you specify how well it’s currently being addressed. Then you get 10 points to allocate between the issues to advise them how to spread their attention. It’s quick, elegant and it gets my stamp of approval as a voting system.

Dan, who is apparently an honorary member of the planning department, has come up with another micro survey tool. On Twitter, post a tweet how you imagine Victoria in 30 years (add the #VicOCP hashtag). If you don’t have a Twitter account, add a comment to this post with few enough characters and I’ll retweet it (eg: “RT Jack:[125 characters]#VicOCP”). Here’s mine:

Distinct. Dense: 200,000 people. Bike & pedestrian oriented. Diverse industries; most of CRD’s jobs. Amalgamated. #VicOCP

Prove Yule Heibel wrong that we have no vision for our city.

Transporting groceries from the store to households is a huge portion of food’s carbon footprint. Grocery stores make neighbourhoods feel like communities because they get people walking around and bumping into their neighbours. I’d say if you need to plan to pick-up groceries or get them delivered, then you don’t have food security – never mind how far the food took to get to the store.

500 metres is commonly used in urban planning because it’s the distance the average person walks in 5 minutes (I’ve previously used 400). For groceries, it’s the distance that old people can transport a few days worth of food on foot and young people are willing to “run out” to. Beyond 500 metres people start taking a car.

Alison recently asked me to comment on the viability of a permanent food market in Victoria. I say that’s putting the cart before the horse: many people in Victoria can’t even get to a regular grocery store! Council should figure out how to solve that key environmental, social and security issue before they start worrying about fancy markets.

Here are the 500-metre radii around full-service grocery stores in the municipality of Victoria:

There are food stores that are less than full service. They don’t have butchers, so carnivores who like fresh meat will have to shop somewhere else frequently. They have uneven produce quality and selection. I believe most people who live by these stores will regularly make a trip to a full-service grocery store. You can select the checkbox to display each store on the map:

I’ve been looking for apartments in Victoria lately and run into a few property management companies that aren’t following the Residential Tenancy Act. In the hopes of informing other tenants of their rights and punishing bad companies, I’m putting this here so Google picks it up:

• Apartments R Us Property Management Ltd attempted to get me to pay a non-refundable application deposit for 976 Humboldt St. When I explained that was in violation of s. 15 of the Residential Tenancy Act, he “waived” the deposit.
• Cornerstone Properties Ltd refused to process my rental application for 835 View St unless I provided my social insurance number for a credit check. Although I explained that a SIN is not necessary for a credit check and that I cannot be required to provide it, they refused to process my application. Interestingly, the Better Business Bureau refused to accept my complaint on this, despite the fact that the government strongly recommends against collecting SINs.

I didn’t end up renting either of these places, so I’m not going to go through the Residential Tenancy Branch’s official dispute process (although I did email a complain). The fact that property management companies act like this tells me that most tenants don’t know their rights. I think it should be illegal to request a social insurance number for non-employment, non-tax purposes.

Every individual landlord I’ve dealt with in BC knows and follows the law better than the employees of the companies above. I can also recommend Duttons in Victoria.

I first went to Solomon’s because Solomon and I have mutual friends. To me it was “the only place in town where I will drink gin martinis”. (I don’t really like juniper so normally I order vodka martinis.)

After that I went probably more than anything else because my friend Dan lived upstairs. Around this stage of my life, Manhattans became my signature drink at bars that had things like vermouth. I drank a lot of Manhattans and Old Fashioned at Solomon’s, although I was usually too busy talking to notice the craftsmanship.

Solomon always sucked as promotion, particularly using social networking. Somehow I heard about an introduction to cocktails class. The class got cancelled for lack of interest but there was a martini class coming up: I went despite my distaste for gin.

The class was a lecture on the evolution of the martini from Manhattan through the martinez combined with a tasting of gin, vermouth and bitters. It created the abstract mental structures I needed to learn about other cocktails. Solomon says he’s going to focus on education in the future: I can’t wait for the next class.

Then I went to the Art of the Cocktail festival, where Solomon and his protege Katie competed in the mixing competition. I learned that Sean at Clives was “the other bartender” in town – he’s not quite as good as Solomon but knowing there were two made me think that artisan cocktails were a movement in Victoria.

Right after the festival I went on a trip to Portland and Seattle that included pilgrimages to some artisan bars: Teardrop, Zig Zag and Vessel. I got exposed to much more challenging cocktails than what I had been ordering at Solomon’s and chatted up bartenders to learn more about the artisan cocktail scene.

By this point, every time I went to Solomon’s I had a list of things I wanted to try. I don’t go out drinking very often and I don’t drink that much when I do, so it took me a long time to work things through. Most recently I came home from amazing service by David at West, eager to order some new experiences at Solomon’s.

It feels like a blow to Victoria to lose such a hip place. I blame city council for their overpriced liquor license addiction and the lack of population density near Herald Street. Solomon’s didn’t have great food or promotion, but I think the prices and the service time for drinks were reasonable for the care that went into them. My biggest regret is that I didn’t spend more time sitting at Solomon’s bar.