Author: corey.burger

Come help end polio with Rotary tomorrow

The time to end polio is now and the Rotary Club of Oak Bay invites you to come help us out in this quest. Tomorrow between 11am and 2pm, we are holding a hotdog BBQ on the front lawn of the Oak Bay Municipal Hall in the Oak Bay Village. The hot dogs and coffee are all “sold” by donation, with all proceeds going to the PolioPlus project of Rotary International. Thanks to our generous sponsors: COBS Bakery for the buns, Fairway Markets for the wieners and condiments, and Level Ground Trading for coffee. Also thanks to the Municipality of Oak Bay for declaring February 23rd Rotary Day, letting us the lawn of the municipal hall’s lawn, and raising the Rotary flag, as well as to the Inter-Cultural Association of Greater Victoria for providing us with a tent in the case of inclement weather. Hope to see you there!

Planners say one thing, developers hear another

As a follow-up to my Planning to plan the plan for the long range plan, I have What Planners mean when they say . . ., which contains such gems as:

What the planner says What the planner thinks What the developer thinks
“What do you think?” You don’t like it either, do you? We’re in trouble, they’re thinking.
“Is the applicant here?” Can we talk, or do we have to be diplomatic? No! After spending all of this energy, to say nothing or a King’s ransom in fees, the applicant has decided to go to the racetrack where the odds are better.

FCM Sustainable Communites wrap-up

The FCM’s 2011 Sustainable Communities Conference is over and all the delegates have gone home. I thought I would post a few more thoughts about the conference:

  • I had a great “corridor conference” with a number of people, including Nicole Tomes, from the City of Cochrane, AB. I met her at Gaining Ground 2010 (a conference which got volunteering right – see below), so it was great to run into her again. She is doing great things with the Cochrane Sustainability Plan, a well-written and well-designed piece of work.
  • I went to the session on the Green Municipal Fund and I was pleased to see that the FCM is now taking implementation seriously. They have a push to actually fund projects with shovels and all that, not just creating additional places for dust to collect.
  • It was amusing to hear discussions of how to fund sewage via a user-pay method. It had never occurred to me that this wasn’t the norm now. (For context, Oak Bay just changed so that 80% of the sewage bill is per-unit and 20% a fixed cost per household)
  • The recent push by the big disease-specific charities to target the causes of their specific illness was out in evidence here: Heart & Stroke Foundation has a big campaign about changing community design to keep kids and communities healthy. Their session on Thursday was packed and filled with great info. (This ties in well with the recent push by the Canadian Cancer Society to advocate for cosmetic pesticide bans.)

And now the bad: volunteer management. I have volunteered for a lot conferences, festivals, and organizations. While I was working for Luminara, my production coordinator duties meant helping manage volunteers. So it is with this knowledge that I say that this amongst the least-well organized conference for volunteers that I have seen.

An example: When we arrived, we were told we weren’t going to get into the conference for free, the usual reward for providing free work. They later relented and “offered” us one free day, “a value of $300”. Apparently they had no experience with actual volunteers. FCM thought we were municipal staff who were getting paid to be there. Sorry, but no. All I can say is that I truly hope that this wasn’t anybody’s first conference they had volunteered at. One bad experience could put them off for life. Overall, I got the impression that FCM had very little experience dealing with volunteers.

Still, even with the issues with the volunteer management,  this was a great conference. It was a great mix of people from the public and private sector. And the energy was great.

FCM Sustainable Conference mini-update

I have been having a great deal of fun attending the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ Sustainable Communities Conference this week, talking with all sorts of people from Nunavut to Newfoundland.

  • Registering people, despite being a largely dull job, was actually fairly interesting, because you get little 30-sec bios of where they are from, something that happening there, etc.
  • A great highlight was a bike tour of various rain gardens and low-impact developments — including the CRD Building and the Atrium — with the Fraser Basin Council‘s Angela Evans and the CRD along with 11 people from across Canada all at various skill levels with bicycling. It was interesting see some of our infrastructure from a new cyclist’s eyes, especially the abysmal Johnson St. Bridge (it just can’t go fast enough) and just how good some of it is, including the superlative Galloping Goose (although they tended to right two abreast, not realizing that this wasn’t just a recreational cycling path).
  • Talking funding of active transportation with the FCM’s Green Municipal Fund people, Transport Canada, and Infrastructure Canada.
  • Listening to CropLife Canada spin that they are not an evil GMO-pushing multinational-front that hates pesticide bans. Honest! They just want “science-based” decision-making. Preferably at the federal level where they can buy the votes to prevent pesticide/herbicide bans like Oak Bay’s from ever seeing the light of day.

I am off today to see more, if the 12-hour days don’t get me first.

Angry crowd push council to reject secondary suites

Last night’s council was packed as expected given secondary suites were on the agenda. Also expected, the speakers were nearly all against secondary suites, probably out in forced because of the new anti-secondary suites group, Friends of Oak Bay Neighbourhoods. But what hasn’t happened since we had a little discussion about crap in the Uplands last year, we had hecklers in the crowd. It got so bad that Councillor Cassidy was visibly angry while he told off somebody for speaking out of turn, and Mayor Causton was forced to speak up as well.

Ultimately council decided, in a split vote, to move forward with more consultation, likely in early April. This will probably take the form of an informational fair and an invitation-only “stakeholders” meeting. More details later.

Saanich Police gets windshield perspective

A truck recently crashed into Green Party leader and Saanich-Gulf Island candidate Elizabeth May’s constituency office on Quadra and the Saanich Police had this to say:

Saanich police spokesman Sgt. Dean Jantzen said May’s office and the adjacent storefronts are close to the road, with no barriers to protect them from traffic.

Umm, what? This is classic deflection of blame. The issue is cars travelling too fast, yet the blame gets passed from the driver, who was speeding, to the property owner, who “failed to protect their buildings from traffic.” If we need to build barriers to protect ourselves and our buildings from the traffic on the adjacent road, we are utterly failing to build a city for people.

Secondary suites up for discussion tonight

Secondary suites are back on the agenda of the Oak Bay Council this Monday at the Committee of the Whole Meeting at 7:30pm. There is a new note from Mark Brennan, Chief Municipal Administrative Officer, likely about the public engagement the Mayor asked for at his January address. Should be interesting, given the founding of a new, issues-driven Friends of Oak Bay Neighbourhoods. Come by the municipal hall and see the fun (or join it, depending).

OakBay coucil doesn’t reject sewage mitigation

Despite what Oak Bay News reported, Oak Bay Council did not reject mitigation of the proposed sewage treatment plant at McLoughlin Point in Esquimalt, rather they rejected the “community benefits agreement” which would have built things like bike lanes. What they didn’t reject was mitigation, much like what they did at the Currie Road pump station near Windsor Park wherein they hid it as a residential house. Mildly ironic that it is a picture of that very pump station that Oak Bay News used to illustrate their article.

Oak Bay posts Active Transportation Plan RFP

Want to help change the face of transportation in Oak Bay? The municipality is looking for a team to put together an active transportation plan. What should this plan address?

The main goal of the Active Transportation Plan is to enhance choices and opportunities and improve the usage of human-powered forms of travel and recreation within Oak Bay. It should also promote physical activity and healthy lifestyles for all ages and support green initiatives within the community.

What do you need to enter? Three hard copies of proposal marked “Active Transportation Plan Proposal” addressed to Loranne Hilton, Municipal Clerk, District of Oak Bay, 2167 Oak Bay Avenue, Victoria, B.C. V8R 1G2 on or before Friday, February 18, 2011 at 4:00 p.m. local time.

The full RFP can be download here: [download id=”6″ format=”1″] (PDF).

(Full disclosure: As a member of the Community Initiatives Committee that will be overseeing this plan, you cannot contact me with any details of any bid. To do so would be a bad thing and illegal.)