Better to close the gate at John Dean Park
The disaster that is Jasper has refreshed thoughts of our own potential catastrophe, LAU,WELNEW/John Dean Provincial Park in North Saanich .
Surrounded by 782 residential homes the park is also home to vital communications equipment from airport radar, Coast Guard radar and communications for 911 emergency calls.
With only one access road it is a catastrophe waiting to happen. Admittedly the park does have fire suppression equipment.
Dean Park residents have advised the authorities of the situation over the past few years, even requesting closure of the entrance gate during severe extreme fire risk like we are experiencing.
The response from government departments has been tepid indifference, to say the least. From July 7 to July 28 a total of 11 cigarette butts have been collected and documented from the parking lot and access road.
We must remind ourselves that modern vehicles do not have ashtrays so the only ashtray available is out the window.
Admittedly some fire suppression tactics and controlled burning have taken place, but only after pressure from some residents. If Dean Park erupts into a massive fire ball due to a combination of irresponsible smokers and incompetence by provincial departments then we certainly will have another Jasper.
Unless, that is, common sense prevails by closing the gate to vehicular traffic during periods of extreme high fire risk.
Robin Chown
North Saanich
At Victoria council, the salary fix was in
The naked ambition of Victoria city council on display last week around pay increases won’t be easy to sort out.
But there are four key points for taxpayers.
If the recommendations of the remuneration task force are approved, councillor remuneration will no longer be based on 40% of the mayor’s salary, but hiked to 45%.
That 45% calculation would be the highest in the province and result in a 12.5% salary increase after the next election. It would put Victoria councillor base pay more than the median of all B.C. cities, all-cities and all non-B.C. cities surveyed by the report on remuneration.
It’s outrageous the city is even being compared to much larger jurisdictions of more than a million residents including Ottawa and Edmonton.
The call for reinstating the cost of living hike of four per cent willingly foregone in 2021, along with other increases including cost of living and top-ups for acting mayor, will result in a substantial pay hike of about 20% for the next council.
Secondly, it’s recommended the mayor’s compensation of $156,432 (includes the Capital Regional District position) should be realigned against Canadian capital cities. If that happens in 2026 as recommended (or later), council would also automatically get another pay increase.
After fully reviewing the available data, reports and after concluding all interviews, the task force could not determine if the position of city council is a full-time position.
Lastly, because of the one-of-a-kind governance structure of the CRD, the mayor and three councillors are paid well for sitting on the CRD as directors.
To be kept in mind, CRD directors from Victoria received compensation over and above their council salary ranging from $29,000 to $32,000, according to the Statement of Financial Information in 2023.
Conveniently, this doesn’t seem to be part of the debate when setting council salaries.
Stan Bartlett
Vice chair
Grumpy Taxpayer$ of Greater Victoria
Deal with the impacts of social agencies
It is not hard to understand why the residents of the North Park area have grave concerns about the facility that has been announced for their neighbourhood, especially given the underhanded way in which it was approved and the lack of proper public process.
Look at the chaos and lawlessness on Pandora Avenue, Ellice Street, Queens Avenue, and Pembroke Street, to name a few. What these streets have in common is agencies serving the marginalized community.
Is it so hard to think that all governments and agencies must work together to ensure there are expectations on all parties to ensure the protection of the surrounding residents and businesses?
Queens Avenue, right beside our business, is a prime example of this chaos that gets little coverage.
The sidewalks are strewn with people, their possessions and garbage. The street reeks of urine.
There seems to be no real effort to counter any of this except for periodic bylaw sweeps, sweeps for which the beleaguered bylaw staff receive harsh criticism from some.
I have worked in this block for more than 40 years and have witnessed an incredible deterioration in that time.
I see people daily who lack the ability to care for themselves on the street with nowhere to go and nobody to care for them. As a society we are not on the right course and hard decisions need to be made to right our course.
My heart is filled with empathy for the people who depend on these agencies and it is filled with admiration for those who run these agencies.
However, local businesses and residents are severely impacted and it would seem like much more can and must be done to minimize those impacts.
Everybody’s needs should be important and we should not be attaching labels like “Nimby” or saying that people lack empathy. Plain and simple lawlessness is not acceptable regardless of your personal situation.
Victoria council needs to stop assuring everyone how wonderful things are and perhaps focus on what it can do to protect the needs of all residents and businesses.
David Screech
Gregg’s Furniture and Upholstery
Victoria
Downtown sidewalks are an embarrassment
I have lived in Victoria for more than 80 years and have never seen the sidewalks and roads as dirty and messy as they are now in the downtown core.
Our sidewalks are absolutely the dirtiest I have ever seen in more than 20 countries I have visited. They were once “the Pride of the City,” now they are an embarrassment.
What is wrong with our elected representatives? Are they too busy worrying about their salaries to see what is happening around the city? Even the “street people” are complaining.
Bob Darnell
Victoria
Make primary care a top priority
Re: “It’s up to all of us to push for leadership,” letter, July 22.
Kudos to the writer for encouraging all citizens to hold political leaders accountable for addressing issues in primary health care and access to family physicians.
Citizens should be able to monitor health-care system performance through web-based dashboards reporting near real-time data on access to a breadth of health services by location, quality of care, adverse events, and cost per case adjusted for severity.
Leading examples include Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia. However, Helen Bevan, a renowned healthcare transformation expert and social influencer, reminds us that quantified performance targets and quality standards often fail to deliver their goals. She attributes this to three core concepts:
1. Goodhart’s Law: When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric.
2. Campbell’s Law: The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.
3. The Cobra Effect: Incentives can have undesired and unintended results, potentially harming the very thing they were intended to improve.
While we should demand explicit, open, and transparent reporting on healthcare performance, we must frequently revisit the metrics to ensure they remain fit for purpose, are diverse enough to include a range of measures, and use qualitative, mixed, and quantitative indicators.
Finally, an all-party agreement that prioritizes primary health-care delivery and the security of our citizens is essential, ensuring politicians work collaboratively to improve the health-care system rather than manipulate it within and between election cycles.
This approach would enhance our health-care system and increase trust in our political leadership. Let’s hold our party candidates to account and have them explain how their platform planks improve primary health care.
Don Juzwishin
Adjunct professor at the University of Victoria, University of Alberta, University of Calgary
Bad policies are the root of the problem
Re: “Victoria wants HEART and HEARTH to come to life to help homeless,” July 28.
It is all well and good for the province to enact programs for the unhoused with the municipalities.
But what is it doing – urgently – to end the chaos and crime that has sadly accompanied the housing crisis?
To make not just our downtowns, neighbourhoods, and streets safer but also the shelters and other temporary housing: the dangers inside of which are why many unhoused people are camping out.
In short, why isn’t the province doing what it should have done from the very start? Which is to treat this as the humanitarian crisis it truly is: by using its considerable resources to organize comprehensive triaging, assessment, and treatment: including involuntary fully supervised care.
And at the same time fully exercising its power to crack down on the criminals who are preying on the unhoused and using them as cover for their crimes.
The province also has the ability to seek federal assistance like Operation LENTUS. And if need be, ask Ottawa to invoke the Emergencies Act, and to use the notwithstanding clause to ensure the “peace, order, and good government” of our Constitution.
Provincial governments of all political stripes are responsible for today’s predictable crisis, the foundation of which are the result of decades of mishandled addiction, mental health, housing, and health-care policies.
It is up to the province to fix them before any more people are hurt, or worse.
Brendan Read
Victoria
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