Day: February 8, 2011

Angry crowd push council to reject secondary suites

Last night’s council was packed as expected given secondary suites were on the agenda. Also expected, the speakers were nearly all against secondary suites, probably out in forced because of the new anti-secondary suites group, Friends of Oak Bay Neighbourhoods. But what hasn’t happened since we had a little discussion about crap in the Uplands last year, we had hecklers in the crowd. It got so bad that Councillor Cassidy was visibly angry while he told off somebody for speaking out of turn, and Mayor Causton was forced to speak up as well.

Ultimately council decided, in a split vote, to move forward with more consultation, likely in early April. This will probably take the form of an informational fair and an invitation-only “stakeholders” meeting. More details later.

Saanich Police gets windshield perspective

A truck recently crashed into Green Party leader and Saanich-Gulf Island candidate Elizabeth May’s constituency office on Quadra and the Saanich Police had this to say:

Saanich police spokesman Sgt. Dean Jantzen said May’s office and the adjacent storefronts are close to the road, with no barriers to protect them from traffic.

Umm, what? This is classic deflection of blame. The issue is cars travelling too fast, yet the blame gets passed from the driver, who was speeding, to the property owner, who “failed to protect their buildings from traffic.” If we need to build barriers to protect ourselves and our buildings from the traffic on the adjacent road, we are utterly failing to build a city for people.