Author: corey.burger

Quick note from the Bowker Creek forum

Public comments at Bowker Creek forum
Public comments at Bowker Creek forum on Jan. 23, 2010

The Bowker Creek Initiative held an open house on Saturday to unveil their 100-year plan (PDF, 6.5mb) to the public and collect comments on it. They setup in an empty storefront in Hillside Mall, maximizing accidental discovery of the event and thus more feedback. Going to where people already are is a great way to reach more of them and I would love to see the bigger malls in town setup a semi-permanent place for such events.

On the plan itself, I haven’t had a good chance to pick through it, so I will leave commenting on that to another day but at first glance it looks very bold and thought-provoking.

Wall of Fame and Community Initiatives Committee looking for people

The Wall of Fame selection committee is looking for people to add to the wall in 2010. The Wall of Fame is:

a means to honour individuals who have been instrumental in the development of Oak Bay’s parks, facilities, and programs and who have exercised extraordinary commitment to the community of Oak Bay or performed voluntary services deemed to have been of great importance to the community.

The nomination form (PDF) must be submitted to Director of Parks & Recreation, currently Lorna Curtis, by Februrary 28th of this year. Winners will have their photo and information posted on the wall in the Social Lounge at the Oak Bay Recreation Centre.

Also looking for people is the newly expanded Community Initiatives Committee. The committee has not only gained new responsibilities, such as creating an Oak Bay Village plan and active transportation initiatives, but also a new councillor, Nils Jensen. As I mentioned previously, the next meeting of the committee is the 5th of February (see the calendar in the sidebar for more details), so with the closing date of February 16th for nominations there will be at least one more meeting of the old committee. Details about nominations can be found in the announcement (PDF).

Pesticides and your lawn

As Oak Bay debates the merits of a cosmetic pesticide ban, the recent Victoria premiere of A Chemical Reaction could not have come at a better time. The film charts the course of pesticide bans across Canada, from tiny Hudson, Quebec to full province-wide bans in Ontario and Quebec. It is a US-focused film, so it presents an outsiders viewpoint, which is always refreshing. Often we can’t see how successful we have been until somebody from outside points it out to us and this one of those cases.

The premiere, held at UVic’s David Lam Auditorium, was put on the Canadian Cancer Society’s BC & Yukon section, whose Prevention division has been pushing for a province-wide ban and the UVic Environment Law Centre. It was fairly well attended, including by a few local politicians: MP Denise Savoie, Victoria-Swan Lake MLA Rob Fleming and two councillors, Oak Bay’s Tara Ney and the City of Victoria’s Lucas Phillipe. I was a little disappointed there were not more municipal politicians there, given that the issue is still being debated across the region.

As for the potential Oak Bay bylaw, that is currently still in committee, as it were. A sub-group of the Parks and Recreation Commission are looking at the Saanich bylaw right now and should report back shortly. This is after the commission started to look into it April of last year (PDF). I expect to see recommendations before council probably within two months and here’s hoping council will see the light and ban cosmetic pesticides.

Oak Bay Council debates Uplands sewage again tomorrow night

The latest round of debate about the Uplands Sewage Separation project will happen during tomorrow night’s council meeting (PDF). This is the last meeting that Council can decide to move forward with the low-pressure system to respond to the federal and provincial funding deadline of Jan. 29th. The directors of the Oak Bay Community Association have also released a statement asking council to consider the financial impacts on the entire municipality when making a decision. Expect a packed room, so arrive before the 7:30pm start time.

Also up for tomorrow night is the public hearing and last reading (PDF) of the proposed greenhouse gas reduction amendment to the Official Community Plan (PDF). It is not available online, but you can view it at the Oak Bay Municipal Hall tomorrow until 4:30pm. As of Friday there were only a few written submissions, but some people may speak to the issue at the meeting itself. I have previously expressed disgust at the lack of binding targets, but that is a debate for another day.

Globe and Mail: electric cars will not save the world

The Globe and Mail had an excellent article yesterday about a panelist at the Detroit Auto Show daring to go against the conventional wisdom and point out that electric cars will not save the world. Nor will cars running on hydrogen, hybrids or even recycled bovine flatulence. Why not? Cars causes many ills for society, including urban sprawl, air pollution, high costs of road construction and maintenance, and health problems due to sedentary life styles.

Notice that exactly one of those problems is solved by alternative fuel cars: air pollution. The rest are all caused by the inherent nature of the car and they will only be solved by returning our cities to a more balanced mix of travel choices. This doesn’t mean that cars are going to go away anytime soon, rather that again they will merely be one of many choices. And despite what the car-shilling Frontier Policy Institute tells you (Globe and Mail article, original paper), this will be a good thing for poor people.

How do we get from here to there? We need to start investing in improvements for biking, walking and transit and some of that will require giving exclusive road space to transit and bikes, which is not very politically popular. Cities need to be bold and try and get ahead of the curve, as Vancouver and Portland did with their streetcars, both of which were funded by the city rather than the local transit agency. For bikes we need to move beyond bike lanes, to protected paths and bike boulevards. Pedestrians need wider sidewalks and shorter crosswalks. None of this will be cheap, but then again nor is the status quo.

Where is the seventh Transit Commission member?

Why has the Victoria Regional Transit Commission only currently have six members on it? Since the 2008, the seventh seat has sat empty. According to the BC Transit Act, “A regional transit commission consists of not fewer than 7 members”, yet the commission currently only has six. The act then goes on to state:

The following persons must be appointed under subsection (4) as members of the regional transit commission for the greater Victoria metropolitan area:

(a) the Mayor of Victoria;
(b) a Victoria councillor;
(c) the Mayor of Esquimalt or Oak Bay;
(d) the Mayor of Saanich;
(e) a Saanich councillor;
(f) one of the following:
(i)  the Mayor of Sidney;
(ii)  the Mayor of North Saanich;
(iii)  the Mayor of Central Saanich;
(g) one of the following:
(i)  the Mayor of Colwood;
(ii)  the Mayor of Metchosin;
(iii)  the Mayor of View Royal;
(iv)  the Mayor of Langford;
(v)  the Mayor of the Highlands;
(vi)  the Mayor of Sooke;
(vii)  the electoral area director of the Juan de Fuca electoral area.

As the current commission consists of Oak Bay Mayor Chris Causton as Chair, Saanich Mayor Frank Leonard, Sooke Mayor Janet Evans, Central Saanich Mayor Jack Mar, Victoria Mayor Dean Fortin, and Saanich Councillor Susan Brice, by my reckoning we are merely missing from the list above (b) a Victoria Councillor.

According to the Sept 24th, 2009 Victoria Council meeting minutes, the following motion was carried:

It was moved by Councillor Coleman, seconded by Councillor Thornton-Joe, that Council rescind
Councillor Geoff Young’s nomination to the Victoria Regional Transit Commission and nominate
Councillor John Luton to the Commission.

Yet, there is no record that Geoff Young ever sat on the Transit Commission prior to this date. The 2008 annual report (PDF) makes no mention of any of the councillors sitting on the commission, only Mayor Fortin. I have emailed BC Transit a few weeks back but as of yet have not yet received a response.

Further thoughts from the Uplands sewage meeting

As I (and others) have reported, Oak Bay Council ultimately rejected the low-pressure gravity system, but unlike the Oak Bay News and Times Colonist inferred, many of the councillors didn’t so much reject the low-pressure system as defer the question until further consultation with the residents, both in and out of the Uplands, could be done.

Specifically Councillors Braithwaite, Copley and Ney never mentioned what system they preferred, with Ney saying they need to “lead by following” and Braithwaite having the lovely quote about gas lights being the gold standard once, which she followed with “to me the question is not if we abandon gravity systems but when.” She even noted that when electric lights came in, people protested the removal of the gas lights, despite the electric system being a clear improvement.

So where does that leave Oak Bay? On the books is still the approved plan for a 50-year phased roll-out of a new storm sewer (page 3 of this backgrounder – PDF). Beyond that, the giant unknown right now is the fate of the federal and provincial governments funding for the low-pressure system. Residents of Oak Bay need to keep asking council some hard questions about how the coming Uplands system is going to be funded and what sort of system it is going to be. As for whether or not we will get a referendum, as Councillor Jensen suggested in the a Times Colonist story, I suspect that depends on if we get a few champions of such a vote, much as the City of Victoria had with the johnsonstreetbridge.org people.

Want to help lead Oak Bay? New Chief Administrative Officer sought

With the pending retirement of Oak Bay’s Chief Administrative Officer William Cochrane, Oak Bay Council now has the task of finding somebody to fill his rather large shoes. Bill, who has worked for the municipality for 30 years, 18 of them as Chief Administrative Officer, has been a major factor in how the municipality has operated over those 18 years, given his longevity.

The posting on CivicJobs contains this interesting phrase:

Candidates must have demonstrated an exceptional ability to provide measured, well-considered advice under pressure in a public setting.

I think this sentence quite neatly sums up what is the likely the most challenging part of the job: providing advice to council at committee of the whole and council meetings. The number of times I have seen council ask Bill a tough question in the past year must number in the dozens and while I have been frustrated with the compromises he comes with, he never fails to give a reasoned answer.

So I wish the Mayor and Councillors Jensen and Herbert (Update: Braithwaite will be sitting on this committee, not Herbert) luck in finding somebody to fill Bill’s shoes. They don’t have much time, as these things are counted, as Bill plans to retire in May after the budget comes down.

Tinto rocks to stay for now

After a great deal of discussion today around the council table and with the members of public that showed up, including the Monterey Middle School Principal Brenda Simmons, council ultimately opted not to remove the rocks on Tinto. Nor did they opt for new parking bays.

During the questioning, a few things very quickly became clear; that the residents that wanted the rocks gone didn’t particularly care if the parking was there or not, just that the rocks were unsightly. Secondly the problem traffic at the Monterey Ave end was due to the entrance being there. Not unsurprisingly, the lone resident of Tinto St. who opposed the removal of the rocks lives at the corner of Tinto and Monterey. Lastly, the problem traffic was not school traffic anymore, it was now evening and weekend users of the fields, primarily sports teams. One of the residents pointed out that this isn’t exactly a new issue, demand was high back in 1990.

Principal Simmons provided some information that had been lacking from teh debate previously. Firstly, the school needs the Tinto Street entrance as that is where they marshal their students in case of evacuation from the school. Second, almost half of the students already walk, bike or take transit to school, which far exceeds the working populations 1/5. And lastly, the school has a very defined traffic pattern, one that discourages use of Tinto St. at all. Despite this discouragement, one resident reported traffic on Tinto St. being a problem around school pickup and drop-off times before the rocks were placed there.

One of the better quotes of the night came from the Mayor:

This looks easy compared to bicycle lanes on Henderson

Ultimately council opted to ask the school board for the following two items:

  1. A second entrance on Tinto St., on the Oliver end to help spread out the traffic.
  2. To let a community member have keys to the school parking lot, which is currently locked from 11pm Friday night until early Monday morning to prevent vandalism.

They hoped that then they wouldn’t have to spend large amounts of money on parking bays or stalls, estimated in the $20,000 to $60,000 range, depending on choice of surface. The Mayor was also asked by council to play mediator once again, talking with the local residents, the school and at the suggestion of a Tinto St. resident, a member of Oak Bay Parks and Rec to represent the various sports teams that use the Monterey fields on the weekends.

Finally, amusingly, I leave you with this quote:

It looked like East Berlin

A Tinto St. resident describing his reaction after seeing the rocks along the boulevard.