Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Letters May 18: Councillors shouldn't ignore their jobs; threats in Beacon Hill Park

Bypassing council’s OK is an outrageous notion Re: “Victoria ponders ways to fast-track housing projects,” May 15.
TC_234492_web_VKA-flag-0359.jpg
Mayor Lisa Helps and Victoria councillors should not consider passing off their administrative duties to city staff, letter-writers suggest. ADRIAN LAM, TIMES COLONIST

Bypassing council’s OK is an outrageous notion

Re: “Victoria ponders ways to fast-track housing projects,” May 15.

Mayor Lisa Helps’ desire to speed up the approval process for affordable housing projects is understandable, but the suggestion that that process be streamlined by delegating their approval to staff is outrageous.

Helps suggests that the “bold” changes would “depoliticize” the process by bypassing the requirement for rezoning and council approval.

That, of course, would eliminate the need for those pesky public hearings that can consume so much of everybody’s time and that add risk and uncertainty to the approval process for some applicants.

The unfortunate reality is that the potential impacts of certain types of social housing on neighbourhoods can be extreme.

Existing residents who will have to live with the long-term consequences of any major land-use change have a right to be heard. If that takes a lot of time, it’s safe to assume there are a lot of concerns.

Handing off such decision-making to some faceless bureaucrat no doubt would be more expedient for the elected mayor and councillors but no policy guideline, however well-crafted, could ever capture the nuance needed for every situation.

Like it or not, being elected to political office sometimes means making political decisions.

In short: IT’S. YOUR. FRIGGIN’. JOB.

Bill Cleverley
Shawnigan Lake

Democratic ways, accountability gone

Re: “Victoria ponders ways to fast-track housing projects,” May 15.

We are informed that the following steps have been recommended by the City of Victoria’s planning staff.

1. City council approval of affordable housing projects is not needed. Approval will be the prerogative of planning staff.

2. There will be no more public meetings about affordable housing projects.

3. There will be no need to rezone land affordable housing for a different use.

So much for any citizen inputs or council responsibility for decisions. So much for council’s commitment to democratic norms and procedures.

Like the Capital Regional District, it’s an effort to abolish any democratic accountability and insulate politicians from electoral consequences.

Packaged under the need for affordable housing and the reduction of time required for approval of projects, these measures could avoid the public attention they deserve.

But the implications of these measures are clear — community character is out the window and planning staff will be able to impose an affordable housing project wherever they want.

Citizens will have no recourse. Clearly, council will have to surrender the commitment to democratic procedures and accountability on the altar of affordability.

William Johnston
Victoria

Facing aggression in Beacon Hill Park

Sunday morning I went for my early morning walk by the seaside. I passed by the gardener’s shed at Finlayson Point.

A homeless man was encamped there on the northern side of the shed. He was laying on the bench with his head covered by his sleeping bag and his presence disguised by two shopping carts.

As I headed to the point along the narrow path, I heard loud shouting and swearing and he threw an empty plastic bottle at me.

It didn’t land near me. It ended up in the bushes.

However, his huge size and mental condition left me out physically shaking and calling 911 who directed me to Victoria Police.

I am 76 and a cancer survivor. I don’t need early morning threats to disturb what I love at Beacon Hill Park: the seaside vista and the birdsong.

I called the police and the dispatcher said he would send an officer out there and “move the man along.”

He reminded me that the policy established by the mayor allowed the homeless into the park.

It is true most of the homeless at Beacon Hill Park are respectful. The man I encountered — angry and aggressive — was the exception.

But some of the encampments are excessively large and really don’t supplant the need for basic housing for the poor and homeless.

What is the endgame? Will the homeless continue to occupy the gem of a public park until they become entitled?

Is this a faux humanitarian gesture avoiding the need to provide housing on a federal, provincial and municipal level?

Stewart Brinton
Victoria

Saanich mayor, council need to trim spending

I am not sure what fanatical financial world the mayor and councillors of Saanich are living in, but it certainly is not my world.

In the midst of a pandemic, creating a federal debt of $1.5 trillion and a provincial debt of billions of dollars, with no plans for balanced budgets, and with cost of living increases for taxpayers skyrocketing, this mayor and council add to taxpayers’ trauma by enforcing a tax increase of almost six per cent.

Who do they think are going to pay for these deficits and debts ? Did your pension or salary increase by six per cent? And these days, you have to be a millionaire to purchase a house in Saanich.

Did they not consider the massive increase in virtually every segment of our cost of living? Home insurance rates undergoing massive increases, gas prices at record highs, shopping for groceries and other essentials, increasing day by day.

This council again mandates major increases to the Saanich budget, such as the cost for salaries and benefits for additional public servants. Is this mayor and council suggesting that the fire department does not have a training officer who could cover their additional training requirement?

And could not current staff cover every single new project mentioned in this budget, including dealing with problem calls? We need to reduce our vehicle fleet, and leave the major expense of climate change to the province.

Please read Lawrie McFarlane’s excellent May 16 column regarding the bankruptcy of Newfoundland. Did council consider that the federal Parliamentary Budget Officer suggested that B.C. does not have a stable financial outlook? Did they look at the big picture rather than their insatiable appetite for additional taxes and spending?

Zero-based budgets are not even a figment of the imagination of this mayor and council. They take the easy way out, hire more public servants at an ongoing annual cost of many millions of dollars.

The province needs to deal with these unnecessary municipal deficits; and more than that, Saanich residents needs to screw up their courage and elect fiscal conservative council members.

Where is former mayor Richard Atwell when we need him?

H.J. Rice
Saanich

Saanich, how about catching some speeders?

Interested but not surprised, by two recent articles about Oak Bay Police nabbing drivers travelling more than 100km/h on Cedar Hill Cross Road.

The speeders’ mistakes? They went east of Gordon Head Road into Oak Bay.

I live on Cedar Hill Cross Road just after it crosses into Saanich.

Every evening I witness cars racing, easily in excess of 100 km/h, on Cedar Hill Cross Road. They all ‘launch’ from the area, as I can hear the wind-up of their engines.

Some launch from the intersection of Gordon Head Road, but most launch from pulling out of Mayfair Drive from Mt. Tolmie park. Hedges in the area have holes from less-skilled drivers.

I have never seen Saanich police doing traffic enforcement in the area at this speed-easy time.

We do regularly see a Saanich officer set up a morning-midday speed trap on the uphill part of Cedar Hill Cross Road, nabbing workers and university students doing 10 over. He’d get about six people per morning.

The contrast of catching the 10-overs, while missing very regular 40-plus-overs is stark.

Saanich Police, please do something about this.

Arthur Taylor
Saanich

Richardson route will be safer and relaxed

I support the city’s Richardson Street bikeway plan.

I will be directly affected by this plan, as my parents live just off Richardson below Government House, and I frequently make trips along Richardson from my home to theirs, both by bike and car.

Despite the convenience Richardson affords for cars going from east to west, there are other roads available to myself and others that are almost as direct, such as Fairfield Road and Fort Street.

As a resident of the Jubilee neighbourhood, I also have experience with the future plans.

Haultain Street was cut off to through traffic at both Shelbourne and Richmond years ago, to calm traffic and allow for a safer bike route, and it has certainly accomplished that, as well as allowing the neighbourhood to have a more relaxed feel to it.

Bay Street has become the dominant commuting path. The traffic calming measures along Richardson will have the same effect, and in five or 10 years, most people will love the more relaxed and safe atmosphere that this traffic calming will foster.

Ultimately, this plan will finally make a truly safe access route for cyclists in the low density neighbourhoods of Oak Bay and Fairfield.

Ethan Smith
Victoria

Pedestrians need a better sense of safety

Re: “Are Victoria’s bikeways really wasteful and unfair?” commentary, May 13.

Todd Litman’s attempt to counter arguments against the chaotic expansion of bikeways in our city conveniently ignores one of the major sources of these complaints: pedestrians.

No evidence is provided in the report he cites to support his claim that these rampant bikeways “provide a very pleasant environment for … walkers.”

On the contrary, many of us who choose to (or must) travel by foot or wheelchair are terrorized by speeding cyclists who arrogantly believe that their carefree rule-breaking behaviour is somehow justified by the imposition of these bikeways onto our neighbourhood streets.

Rather than attacking “selfish” car drivers as out-of-touch Neanderthals in this age of “active modes” of travelling, Litman’s organization should be focussing on how to reduce the jeopardy to pedestrians that the city’s bikeways are creating.

Robin Farquhar
Victoria

SEND US YOUR LETTERS

• Email letters to: letters@timescolonist.com

• Mail: Letters to the editor, Times Colonist, 201-655 Tyee Rd., Victoria, B.C. V9A 6X5

• Submissions should be no more than 250 words; subject to editing for length and clarity. Provide your contact ­information; it will not be published. Avoid sending your letter as an email attachment.