Petulant behaviour from Victoria council
Re: “City of Victoria shuts down comments on social media, citing rise in hate,” Sept. 11.
The move by the City of Victoria to ban comments on their social media posts is just the latest of several authoritarian moves over the past two years — the others including barring public hearings on development proposals and fashioning engagement surveys designed to get the result they required rather than genuinely seeking public input.
And let’s not forget the firefighter who was disciplined for voicing his concerns.
The 2022 MNP LLP Governance Review Report found that 81% respondents were “very dissatisfied” (60%) or “dissatisfied” (21%) with city governance and recommended the mayor and council be subject to a code of conduct.
An August 2023 report by City of Victoria staff recommended that the City’s code of conduct should allow members of the public to make complaints. However, councillors Dave Thompson, Matt Dell, Jeremy Caradonna, Krista Laughton and Susan Kim were able to pass an amendment going against staff advice, to bar the public from making code of conduct complaints.
It’s likely that the public is equally unhappy with most of the council as they were with the previous one. One needs only to look around or read media reports to see how the city has gone from bad to worse.
A more mature, intelligent group of leaders would look at the situation, and the results of the governance report, and ask themselves, “What are we getting wrong? Why are so many of the people we were elected to represent so unhappy with us?”
A more capable group of leaders would be aware that there is more to public life than adulation. Being a politician means taking the good with the bad and taking some responsibility for decisions that cause anger and upset.
It’s not rocket science, but the public deserves leaders with at least a very minimal concept of what leadership means.
Instead we get petulant behaviour – “You’re not allowed to complain about us. We don’t want to hear from you.”
The next election is two years away and the city is heading downhill fast. We can only hope against hope that Victoria voters will have the wisdom to vote in a mature, intelligent and caring group of councillors.
Lee Walters
Victoria
Apologies for those negative thoughts
Please accept my apology for all that I have written in the past, which may have been misconstrued as negatively opinionated. When I write a letter to the editorial page, I am only trying to express another viewpoint, and to induce thought in the reader.
It has been an honour to have your trust.
Unfortunately, one does not have to be a municipal politician to get negative feedback from a comment said … or a published word written.
For the record, I do not loathe or despise anything, or anyone, in Victoria City Hall. As we all remember the past, we can only learn from it.
We have this opportunity to encourage our present mayor and council to try to do their best for the citizens of Victoria. They are guiding our future, whether we like it or lump it. Perhaps the lumps should start liking it?
There is not a place in our world for hate or vitriol toward our elected officials, no matter how misguided or clueless their decisions may be.
It is so important that they shut down a few of their social media accounts, so as not to have any discourse and displeasure be expressed against them.
In this sensitive society we live in, it is a tightrope of emotions and sensibility when it comes to expressing one’s opinion on the editorial page of the Times Colonist.
Therefore, I wholeheartedly say that my further letters to the editor will not be negative, but be toward a more positive note, and I will try to be the Ted Lasso of letter writers.
Mur Meadows
Victoria
Clover Point changes reduced its usage
I lived in Victoria for nine years. In the afternoons or evenings I would often drive the scenic route along the coast through Oak Bay and Victoria and I often parked at Clover Point for 10 or 15 minutes.
Most of the time it was windy or wet so I would park and stay in my car and enjoy the view. There was always a parking space available.
A few years ago I followed the controversial discussion and decision to change the format of Clover Point that resulted in the significant reduction of parking opportunities and the installation of several large picnic tables.
Hmmm, I remembered thinking that there were very few days and evenings in the year when anyone would want to brave the elements to sit in the wind or rain at those tables.
Recently I drove to Clover Point just past noon on a warm, sunny, quiet day. To my surprise, it being such a perfect weekend day, not one person was sitting at the picnic tables.
Also, there were no bikes at the bike racks. And, there were no parking spaces available except for a few handicap parking spaces.
Maybe it’s time for council to reconsider the decision to reformat Clover Point. Obviously it was the wrong thing to do.
Moving and/or installing smaller tables as well as reinstating all, or at least some, of the parking spaces is the right thing to do.
More people, including visitors to Victoria who can only visit Clover Point by car, could enjoy the spectacular setting of Clover Point Park.
Maybe the composition of Victoria city council has changed enough that this can now happen without the controversy of the previous decision.
Tony Pisto
Parksville
What is being done for downtown streets?
I lived in Victoria from 1979 to 2017, after which time I left the city to move up-Island to retire. I was so proud to announce during those years that I lived in such a beautiful and safe city, such as Victoria.
Not now.
Because of family still in Victoria, I travel down several times a year and each time, I am sickened with the mess I see on Pandora Avenue and some of the downtown streets. From what I see and from what I read in the Times Colonist, there seems to be no solution and no end in sight for the poor citizens who live by and have to see this mess and be made to feel uneasy every day.
My son lives in the Cook Street Village (what used to be one of the most sought-after neighbourhoods in Victoria), where rents are more than $2,000 for a one-bedroom suite. We notice folks smoking crack frequently during the day and night outside his apartment building near his garbage cans, which is unsafe and unacceptable.
What are the city officials planning to do once and for all to deal with this longstanding problem?
Susette Larke
Qualicum Beach
Finally, some hope for Victoria streets
I was happy to read that there is a compassionate and proactive plan in place to help with the homeless and other issues on the streets of Victoria.
Offering treatment, housing, and detox will be so important to the success of the long-term plan. However it must be fully funded, sustainable, and effective.
Further, there needs to be harsher judicial measures to jail and penalize drug dealers who don’t seem to experience much in terms of jail time.
It is also important that the issues happening in the Pandora Avenue and Ellice Street areas do not just get displaced to nearby parks and neighbourhoods.
The vision should be for the whole city.
I have great hope that the community efforts in Victoria will finally provide compassionate and effective solutions to the homelessness, addiction, and mental illness issues that are so overwhelmingly rampant in our city, and that the judicial system will also step in and make some much-needed and harsher policy changes to better control the drug dealing that is the root of most of these problems.
Kathleen Hall
Victoria
Remove the drugs from our streets
Re: “Pandora plan moves to tent-removal as police escorts no longer required for paramedics,” Sept. 12.
The statement that I find disconcerting is this one:
“Drug seizures included 330 grams of fentanyl, 191 grams of crack cocaine, 73 grams of powder cocaine, 87 grams of crystal meth, and seven grams of marijuana, as well as $13,500 in cash.”
This is shocking. I think we can all agree that a lot of the homeless would not be on the street if illegal drugs were removed from the local economy.
So where do the drugs come from and how do they get onto the street? And is there any hope of disrupting the supply chain? Are there any answers from anyone involved in removing drug trafficking into our city or into our province or country?
I was shopping this week in Broadmead. A person was lying on the sidewalk on his side. As I approached from my car I saw about six people walk by him. They glanced at him and walked on.
When did it become OK to walk past a person lying on the sidewalk, asleep in the middle of the day, in a fairly affluent community, or anywhere in our city. It’s not OK.
Josie Jones
Saanich
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