In the latest Times Colonist article about fares going up, there is this line (emphasis mine):
The commission is facing major capital expenditures in coming years, including bus replacement and development of rapid transit involving buses.
And here I was thinking that the decision on mode type hadn’t been made yet. Silly me.
First of all, full disclosure. I come from a family of teachers. My mother was a teacher, my maternal grandfather went from school principal to deputy minister in the Dept. of Education here in BC, both my maternal grandmother and aunt taught nursing and my father has taught university biology classes. Suffice it to say that the likelihood of me ending up in a teaching career is extremely high.
Back to merit pay. The Globe and Mail has a recent article on it, which is what got me thinking. In principle, I like the idea of merit pay, as I suspect most people do. It strikes to the heart of our sense of fairness and reward. Do better and get rewarded for it. Which brings us to the big problem with merit pay for teachers. What the heck do you reward them for?
The most common reward seems to be students marks, either through not having them fail or through getting higher grades. But are grades the be all and end all of teaching? No, schools are important places of social and creative learning, neither of which are especially well tested by any standard method. Nor can whether little Bobby or Sue or Rajinder is going to be a well adjusted person in later life be determined from a multiple choice test.
So if you cannot easily test whether or not a teacher is truly succeeding at all they are supposed to do, not just whether or not their students do well in standardized tests, you cannot fairly apportion merit pay. Because to do so would be to reward those teachers that “teach to the test” and not teach the student, and teaching to the test is precisely what a school should not be doing. Rather than use that money to reward teachers on some arbitrary system, why not use the money to pay for a few school breakfasts and lunches? Well fed students learn better and are more attentive, regardless of whether they are in a Math, English or Drama class.
On the eve of the Olympics, right on the front page of BBC News is a story about Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The story is lovingly titled Vancouver: ‘Drug Central’ of North America and recounts many of the horrors of the DTES including rampant drug use, homelessness, and prostitution. It also brings in the gang wars in the suburbs of Surrey and other places, quite correctly tying those drug wars into what is happening in Vancouver proper. With that little show known as the Olympics coming to town, expect a great deal of stories like this in the near future. And on a hopeful note, the BBC story ends with this little tidbit:
Vancouver’s problems will last long after the Olympic spirit has left.
It occurs to me that if Vancouver were a politician or a sports celebrity, right about now is when they would be making their tearful apology to the world, as we realize they are not so holy than thou after all.
Saanich has recently launched a project to rethink the Shelbourne corridor, or at least the section from the Victoria border to Feltham Rd. in Gordon Head. The project is partial update to the venerable Shelbourne Local Area Plan, last changed in 1997. To kick off the whole thing off, Saanich held an open house to ask for people’s opinions on what they think should be done. I managed to make the last hour of the open house and collected a few notes.
Clearly evident was that Saanich is still very much in the information gathering phase. Of the nearly two dozen large boards spread around the room that showed everything from traffic volumes to population densities and average ages to zoning, only one of them had a recommendation on it. That was the proposed Bowker Creek Greenway project, which confusingly does not follow the path of the now-culverted Bowker Creek beside Shelbourne. Not surprising, this was the board that attracted the most interest and more comments. All of the rest of the boards were about the current state of the corridor today, to help people with context for their suggestions.
To hep run the event, Saanich had invited members of the two community associations that overlap the study area, Mount Tolmie and Camosun. They had also generously given space to a number of community groups including the Bowker Creek Initiative, who have just launched their draft 100-year vision which partially overlaps with the Shelbourne corridor, and the Shelbourne Memorial Tree Project, who seek to remind people that Shelbourne was planted with trees in 1921 as a memorial to the lost soldiers of the First World War, designed to deliberately invoke memories of France’s leafy avenues. Also in in attendance was UVic’s Office of Community Based Research, who have been working with Green Map project around Victoria. OCBR’s Maeve Lyndon, who came to talk to Oak Bay Rotary about the CBR and the Green Map, Theresa, and Ken Josephson, who recently worked on the Oak Bay Green Map, due for launch tomorrow evening were all in attendance.
Beyond providing information, Saanich was also interested in collecting people’s visions for the corridor and thus the questionnaire they handed out not only had a few questions about where you live and how often you use the corridor and how, but had a large map of the corridor on the other side, for free form drawing and collecting of ideas. I don’t envy the planners who now have to decipher hundreds of people’s scribblings and make a coherent report out of it.
One of the groups clearly missing was Hillside Mall. Although they are wholly within the City of Victoria, much of the traffic that comes to the mall drives on Saanich roads. They also recently finished a new plan, although the details of that haven’t been released yet. Their Renovations page still says “Watch this space”. I also understand from talking with the Bowker Creek people I have talked to that their plans don’t involve daylighting the creek, which currently runs on the western edge of the mall, by Doncaster Road and Thrifty Foods.
If you want to give them feedback, they sadly don’t have the PDFs of the boards they had up online yet, but the Shelbourne Corridor page on Saanich’s website lists contact information for the planner in charge of the project.
As I have mentioned here many times, BC Transit is one of the few transit agencies in North America not currently cutting service. How bad are those cuts? Here is a map of US transit cuts compiled by Transportation for America:
View United States of Transit Cutbacks in a larger map
What about Canada? Calgary is cutting service, but that was only the one I could find good information about. Ottawa narrowly avoided cutting services, as did Vancouver & Toronto, while Montreal is staring potential cuts in the face. Those that didn’t cut service often did so by raising fares, which will drive ridership away just as surely as cuts will. Overall 2010 looks to be a pretty grim year, although public outrage will likely not appear, as the Transport Politic points out. Transit cuts that were avoided this year will likely come next year, as rising gas further drives cost up. Get ready for a bumpy ride.
Oak Bay’s allotment gardens are expanding. With the recent clearing of the land on the south side of Bowker Creek, space was created for a dozen new garden plots. Given the expansion, Oak Bay Parks and Rec thought it would be a good time to talk about the future of the allotment gardens with many the existing and wait listed allotment gardeners. The discussion covered a number of possibilities, including standardizing size of the beds, the creation of an association to help govern the gardens and more.
The two most contentious ideas, that of shrinking the beds to a standard size and of a 3-year rotation plan were both roundly rejected by both existing and wait listed plot holders. The benefit of shrinking to a standardized 6.5′ x 17′ is that it would allow 38 plots in the space of the existing 12. Both of these proposals were felt to be disrespectful of existing users who have spent years improving the soil.
In many other municipalities, an association governs the allotment gardens, so the idea was raised of creating something similar in Oak Bay. There was a lot of discussion around the pros and cons of such a scheme with no clear consensus. Regardless of that, the current plot holders will be asked to nominate an informal spokesperson to liaise staff.
When the question of costs came up, it was quickly made clear that the current $15/year was too low to cover the nearly $800/year cost of running the gardens, $340 of which is the water bill alone. With the price set to rise to $30/year, the current plot holders wanted access to year-round washroom in Fireman’s Park and possibly a fence to keep out people and deer.
With the current wait list at 25 and an average wait of 7 years, the question of expanding beyond Monteith St. has come up many times. Many areas of the municipality might be able to host to new allotment gardens, including areas such as Fireman’s Park just across the street to Uplands Park to the green space by the track at Oak Bay High School. All of these are and a few more were raised as possibilities, although there are many obstacles between now and the first shovel hitting the ground.
One of the current plot holders mentioned that the allotment gardens have never really been advertised, so their knowledge has mostly spread through word of mouth. This lack of knowledge is also probably only Councillor Ney and myself were the only spectators as it were. Everybody else at the meeting was either directly involved with Parks, either as staff or on the commission, a current plot holder or on the wait list.
Both the Minutes and Recommendations (both PDF) are available. The next step is for the recommendations to go to the Parks and Recreation Commission, who can make the decisions necessary. They meet next at 7pm on February 3rd, 2010 in the Council Chambers at Oak Bay Municipal Hall.
After I reported that the seventh seat was empty, I emailed Joanna Morton, who works for BC Transit in media relations. When asked about the seat, she replied that:
BC Transit hasn’t heard if a seventh commission member would be added to the Victoria Regional Transit Commission. Members of the Commission are appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council, not BC Transit.
So where exactly in the bureaucracy it is? As the FAQ on the Lieutenant Governors site neatly explains:
Legally, it refers to the Lieutenant Governor acting on and with the advice of the Executive Council or Cabinet.
This probably means that the appointment is waiting on the provincial cabinet to approve it, although why that is I don’t know. And more importantly: Is the current commission not legally empowered to act as a regional transit commission because it lacks a full seven members?
In the Oak Bay News’ Jan 27th Police Brief is this little tidbit:
Police remind motorists who park their vehicles in the bike lane along Henderson Road that doing so is a safety concern, not to mention a violation of municipal bylaws and the Motor Vehicle Act.
Offenders can be towed and ticketed.
I have called in dozens of vehicles parked in the bike lane since it was installed, but anecdotally, the number seems to be shrinking. My hope is also that of John Luton, who says in the notes attached to the picture on the right:
Hopefully, parking will simply disappear as a use along the corridor and the full time bike lane concept realized someday.
Let’s hope that day is coming soon.
GDS Digital, who have a great set of interesting infographics on Flickr, have done this wonderful one on grain use: eating vs biofuel.
Image is licensed Creative Commons By Attribution. Hattip to Urban Cartography.
In the latest round of this saga, Council had received a note from Bill Cochrane, the Chief Administrative Officer of Oak Bay, rehashing history and offering a few new points. They eventually opted to follow Cochrane’s recommendation that Oak Bay Engineering prepare a literature review of all the various plans in the past decade, to be presented to council at a further date. That review will likely include provincially-rejected plans like a storage as getting the provincial Environment Ministry to review options prior isn’t likely, in the words of Cochrane.
Where this leaves the potential $5 million funding is unclear. So it seems are provincial officials as to exactly what Oak Bay is doing, something Mayor Causton reported after he spoke with both the deputy minister of the Environment and the Community Services ministries. With the funding unclear, so is the potential tax burden on the whole municipality. One interesting fact that came to light tonight was that the oft-quoted figure of the Uplands being 30% of Oak Bay’s tax base is likely incorrect. Cochrane did some estimation and calculated it to be around 12%, assuming the average property is assessed at about $1.7 million.
In further joyful news about money, the costs keep rising with regards to a gravity system. Kerr Wood Leidel, the engineering firm contracted to investigate the various options, looked at a deep sanitary sewer more closely and figured that the cost is likely to be 10-25% higher than the $18.5 million previously quoted. Given any new pipe would be running beside the existing joined sewer, it would be longterm cost effective to replace that pipe as well. Although the pipe is in good shape, it is jointed and thus is susceptible to water leakage or INI (see my glossary on sewage terms). This would add about $6 million to the cost, bringing the public cost to about $29 million. That does not include the estimated $7 million+ that private owners still need to foot for their connections.
Councillor Herbert also raised an interesting point tonight after he had looked into the City of Vancouver’s provincially-approved plan for sewage separation. That plan is strikingly similar to the existing Oak Bay plan, for which the bylaw has not been rescinded. Both call for a 2050 ending date, with Vancouver planning 1% being done each year while Oak Bay used the more arbitrary $200,000/year. Full details of the City of Vancouver’s plan can be seen on their Sewer page or Metro Vancouver’s Liquid Waste Management Plan (PDF, page 3).
So we are no closer to getting a solution tonight than we are before the meeting. However, one thing that Mayor Causton asked to be added to the options review is a financial review of the cost of the CRD-mandated 1% replacement of existing separated sewers to prevent INI in those pipes. Maybe once we have that document, we will see just how big of a whole we are in and by that time, it should be clear if the federal or provincial governments want to help dig us out of it or not.