My Platform

  • One of the major issues facing our city is poor traffic management. As most of us know, going in and out of the city at peak hours is a nightmare. Many solutions have been debated, and that’s just the problem: Debated. Endlessly debated. Debated to death. But the solution has been with us for decades, physically so, in the form of actual rails! And what have countless municipal administrations done about it? Nothing! Not even debated intelligently about it. We don’t seem to see the opportunity of joining a number of forward-looking communities worldwide which have already discovered the advantages of light rail transit. And we can do it with routes already secured by rights-of-way and significant infrastructure already in place! It’s like owning a house and doing nothing with it; just watching it deteriorate in the weather while standing out in the rain, chatting about the need for umbrellas.  You can bet that I will stir up Council about this!
  • Then, there is the public transport that we already have, a good foundation on which to build, but which we seem determined to mismanage. We must focus on, and accelerate, the modernization of buses, improvement of route network and ensuring on-time and reliable service. These are the real issues we should tackle, rather than indulging in half-baked schemes of free tickets for minors that end up on sale on Craig’s List! If you want to ensure that the benefit goes to the intended purpose, issue photo ID’s to minors entitling them to free transportation. They couldn’t sell those!
  • And what can we say about those bike lanes? The issue is not so much their presence, but rather in the way they were conceived and designed. If you start that kind of project, it makes sense that it should be a part of an integrated approach involving improvements in adjacent sidewalks and underground services. No more half-baked jobs!
  • One would think that the relationship between citizens and council should be based on trust. Think of the luxury of being able to believe the charts and statistics issued by your municipal administration. Such trustworthiness is possible and should be taken for granted! Witness instead incidents like that reported in Focus magazine, “City of Victoria Cheats on Emissions Count”, by David Broadland. I have a university degree in Science, and you will be able to count on me as your Councillor to guard against such shenanigans. No more spin or obfuscation to justify dubious policies!
  • Neighbourhood Association are an invaluable resource, for which they are not sufficiently recognized. They are “on the spot” eyes and ears that can promptly identify issues of concern and raise them before Council. I will make sure that Council is fully aware their worth, so that good use can be made of what they can offer. With their involvement, it is only logical that local problems can be addressed and resources allocated to them more efficiently. While it is true that not all proposals from Neighbourhood Associations can be implemented as presented, especially if they conflict with those of other neighbourhoods, possible compromises should always be explored, and Council must NEVER simply ignore or dismiss them. At the very least, Council must always extend the courtesy of a full and factual explanation for any decision taken on their basis.
  • Finally, about the environment in which we live. Victoria used to be Garden City, renowned for its friendliness, floral beauty and above all tidiness. How far we have let things slide since then! The WWF does a big clean up in the fall nationwide, and the biggest collection by far is for cigarette butts: In just one of the collection they gathered about 560,000! This, however, underestimates the problem, since cleanup volunteers cannot do miracles. I have carried out my own informal survey. In a 100-meter stretch of downtown I collected and counted 186 cigarette butts. If we extrapolate to the total street network of Victoria, even reducing the estimate by a factor of 3 to be on the conservative side (some peripheral streets may be cleaner), on any given day the streets and sidewalks of our city are littered with 150,000 cigarette butts! If we could fine the slobs $2000 for every cigarette butt they drop, we could comfortably fund the municipal budget! The idea of such fines is of course not so much for funding, but for deterrence. Promoting and encouraging civic pride will pay off in many ways, and I will strive to restore Victoria to its former premier status among Canadian cities!

2 thoughts on “My Platform

  1. Do you have an opinion about the relationship between neighbourhood associations and City Council? It seems that the current Council views community plans as “Guidelines” and has no qualms about overturning the provisions in a community plan.

    1. Neighbourhood Association are an invaluable resource, for which they are not sufficiently recognized. Thanks to your question, I will raise their importance in my platform. They are “on the spot” eyes and ears that can promptly identify issues of concern and raise them before Council. I will make sure that Council is fully aware their worth, so that good use can be made of what they can offer. With their involvement, it is only logical that local problems can be addressed and resources allocated to them more efficiently. While it is true that not all proposals from Neighbourhood Associations can be implemented as presented, especially if they conflict with those of other neighbourhoods, possible compromises should always be explored, and Council must NEVER simply ignore or dismiss them. At the very least, Council must always extend the courtesy of a full and factual explanation for any decision taken on their basis.

Comments are closed.