Marianne Alto would prefer to focus on the road ahead than spend too much time staring into the rear-view mirror.
So it caught some by surprise last month, when the mayor of Victoria took 10 minutes to run through council’s greatest hits of the previous 11 months before diving into a full day of work in the council chamber.
Alto talked about the challenges faced by a new, untested council, its priorities and its successes in the first year of its four-year term, and said the confidence she felt when the new group first came together remained intact 11 months later.
In a year-end interview, Alto said she took the time to reflect on the past year because of the sheer weight of change the council chamber had experienced and the new way of doing things she’d hoped to impose in her first year as mayor.
Victoria’s council had a complete makeover on election night last fall with only Alto, a three-term councillor, remaining from the previous term.
Councillors Jeremy Caradonna, Susan Kim, Matt Dell, Krista Loughton, Dave Thompson, Stephen Hammond and Marg Gardiner were all new to the job, while Chris Coleman, who spent 20 years as a Victoria city councillor over six terms, returned to chamber after an absence.
On top of the sweeping personnel changes, Alto said the pandemic forced a dramatic change in what was expected of a city council.
“It really did have a significant impact on how work is done, on how we think of our responsibilities as local government, what demands are made [of us] and how we work together,” she said, noting local governments are now more than ever expected to act on issues like climate change, housing, social services and health care, which used to be the bailiwick of senior governments.
Alto decided to take some time to let the new council ease into the job — call it municipal politics 101 — learn the rules and procedures, relationship-building in the community and with First Nations by keeping agendas relatively light until they got the hang of things.
“I thought it was important for them to all have a baseline before they started being put in the position of having to make very complex and very far reaching decisions,” she said.
Alto hopes that thoughtful approach is part of the reason for another kind of change in Victoria — the extended period of goodwill and patience the city has afforded council, a honeymoon period without the kind of protest and vitriol the previous council and mayor had to deal with.
Alto said that might come down to maintaining council’s focus on its core responsibilities and the even-handed and civil tone she insists upon in the council chamber, though that was tested in the last weeks before the Christmas break as councillors started sniping at each other during budget discussions.
Alto said when there is little drama, and things are functioning as they should, there’s little reason for people to get their noses out of joint.
She also noted she was recently paid the ultimate compliment of people not knowing who she is.
“If you don’t know my name, it may be because things are working as they should, and there’s no need for a lot of extra attention,” she said. “It’s an approach that I think works because it focuses on the utilitarian, on service delivery, on what’s required.
“If those core services fail, we have a problem.”
She said the new council has continued the work started by its predecessor by focusing on approving housing and working on cycling and active transportation infrastructure.
“It has been accelerated without a doubt and certainly has become an extremely high focus of this council, but it does accelerate what was previously there,” Alto said.
Council also moved on some large pieces of work such as enacting the single largest change in the city’s land-use policy when it adopted the missing-middle housing initiative in the spring. That program was characterized as deeply flawed and unworkable by the development community, and council has since sent it back for repairs.
Council also gave final approval to a transformational development that will reinvent the Harris Green neighbourhood, when it approved Starlight Developments’ mixed-use project that will dominate the 900 and 1000 blocks of Yates Street, where it will provide 1,500 rental housing units.
And council is on the cusp of approving another with the 1,800-unit Bayview Roundhouse project scheduled for a public hearing early in the new year.
Alto is proud of that kind of transformational progress, but acknowledged one of the biggest challenges is taking the next step from approval to actual construction, due to rising costs.
Limited resources will also hamstring council when it comes to starting new projects.
Alto said there’s enthusiasm around the council table for tackling things like Crystal Pool, Royal Athletic Park and Ship Point, but they will have to be realistic given the financial reality.
“Ship Point for example may start in this term, but it’s so big that I can’t imagine it could be completed in this term,” she said, adding that competing for time and resources are massive infrastructure projects to improve retaining walls, water and sewer systems, and roads.
They’re also tackling community safety with a panel of community leaders that will report back with options in the fall that are also likely to challenge the budget.
“There are so many things I’d like to do, and it’s hard to pick,” Alto said. “I think you’ll see introduction of some new things, but always in consideration of our ability to pay.”
Alto said that has to be top of mind as city resources are being used more often to cover the cost of what should be provincial programs.
The immediate focus in 2024 will remain housing, but Alto said it can’t be all they do.
“If that’s all you do, then I would argue you’re not creating a livable city,” she said. “You can’t ignore all the corollary pieces that make the city an experientially positive place. That’s what makes a city vibrant, that’s what makes a city a place where you want to be, that you want to come and stay.”
