The Week - February 4

Making room at the Inns

After months focussed on trying to sell the replacement of the Johnson Street Bridge to a wary public, it seems Victoria city council is returning to what it said from its swearing-in would be strategic priority number one: trying to resolve the city’s homelessness and affordable-housing crisis.

On Monday it was announced that the City is in the bidding to purchase three properties from the bankrupt Travellers Inn motel chain at 723 Field Street, 710/712 Queen Street and 120 Gorge Road.

“We’ve been meeting on this for a while,” Victoria mayor Dean Fortin told Monday. “A week after the bankruptcy announcement I had assembled a team here at City Hall and we’ve been working on it for six months now.”

Fortin says securing the properties is step one. Figuring out who will run them will come a little later.

“You have to make it work so that the income that comes off will service the mortgage, as well as pay for the support services that are needed, as well as the operating cost,” says Fortin. “That determines how much you have to put down, and so the City of Victoria has said ‘Okay, we’ll come up with that base amount that allows us to secure these,’ knowing that we’ll get the mortgages from BC Housing, and we’ll look to our partners in the CRD to also help with the cash payment down.”

Here’s hoping rooms at these inns prove a fair shake cheaper than those announced in December for the former Hudson Bay building, where the City of Victoria has committed $10,000 to the construction of each unit and apartments that will ultimately rent for between $900 and $1,500 a month. Hey, that’s affordable!

Vantreight plan panned

The Vantreight family’s plan to build an 89-unit development on a parcel of land bordered on three sides by property in the province’s Agricultural Land Reserve got a rough ride at last Thursday’s meeting of the Capital Regional District’s planning and transportation committee. There, CRD directors were asked to ponder whether or not the proposed development was consistent with the CRD Regional Growth Strategy, whether it conformed to the Central Saanich official community plan and, ultimately, whether its construction would require Central Saanich to amend its Regional Context Statement.

Speaker after speaker—including Central Saanich residents, a representative of UVic’s Environmental Law Centre and local food security advocates—took the microphone to describe how the plan constitutes a departure from the district’s rural vision and the CRD’s plan for limiting urban growth to defined pockets.

South Island greenbelt advocate Vicky Husband noted, “Just by creating a new land-use designation and calling it ‘rural’ does not make it so.”

Family farming heir Ryan Vantreight told the committee that in order to preserve the farm, his father Ian paid a steep price to buy out his brother’s share after the death of their father. Residentially developing part of the land, he argued, is the only way to maintain the farm’s viability. If the development is not allowed to proceed, “We would have to start selling the land until that debt is serviced.”

In the end, most committee members were unmoved by Vantreight’s explanation of the family’s financial straits, nor by Central Saanich councillor Ron Kubek’s assertion that the CRD had no business sticking its nose in Central Saanich business.

“Mr. Vantreight’s financial concerns are not germane to the issue before us today,” said Saanich councillor Vic Derman. “It simply must go before the board.”

The meeting ended with a recommendation to Central Saanich staff and council that should it choose to approve the Vantreight plan, the matter would be referred to the CRD board of directors.

Anyone interested in the future of the South Island’s Regional Growth Strategy—now called the Regional Sustainability Strategy—have an opportunity to put in their two cents at a Thursday, February 4 open house at the Laurel Point Inn. Doors open at 5:30 p.m.

School budget blues

As school boards across the province set budgets for the 2010/11 school year, the Victoria Public Education Coalition hopes area residents will encourage the board of School District 61 to follow the lead set by the Cariboo-Chilcotin school district, which recently passed a motion to file a deficit budget, reflecting their conviction that provincial funding is insufficient to meet what they feel is their obligation to the district’s children.

In ads running in the region’s community newspapers this week, VPEC says, “We must tell the School District 61 trustees what we expect them to do for our children.”

In filing a deficit budget, Cariboo-Chilcotin trustees will be in violation of provincial balanced-budget legislation, and the board risks removal by the province.

Last year, District 61 trustee Catherine Alpha put forward a motion to pass a “restoration budget” that reflected the true cost of educating the district’s kids. That motion was defeated by the board.

Arts and minds

We couldn’t help but chuckle (and sigh) at Liberal MLA Ida Chong’s official statement regarding the province “investing” $27,600 in four local arts organizations (the Belfry, Dance Victoria, Intrepid Theatre and Theatre SKAM) via their Legacies Now program. “Our theatre and dance community is what makes our city so vibrant and welcoming,” said Chong.

Ah, now all those arts cuts make perfect sense.