Troubled bridge over waters

I attended tonight’s special Council meeting on choosing one of the three options for replacing the Johnson Street Bridge.

The event was anti-climactic as only a few hours before, word came that the anticipated funding was not coming.

Fortin vowed to plow ahead regardless, saying any delay would be costly, using the example of the Burnside Gorge Community Centre.

Councillor Hunter highlighted the maintenance problems with the current bridge, mentioning in particular the “obsolete” electric motors. Folks, those motors were presumably built the year Lenin died. The fact that they have lasted so long is an engineering miracle. They have paid for themselves many times over and the fact that we are debating the hardy motors’ usefulness in the year 2009 is astounding. I do agree they need to be replaced. Now, I don’t know if the motors currently powering the bridge are special but a quick Internet search brings up the fact that ordinary heavy-duty 100 h.p. motors cost well under $10,000. It’s comparable to scrapping a car because the old oil filter is dirty.

Hunter also said that the full $63 million cost of the bridge could be paid for without a tax increase, supposedly because of the City’s borrowing power. But it should be noted that this would come at a profound cost. How would this affect other needed projects like the Crystal Pool or new Central Library? Kudos to Councillor Madoff for pointing out that borrowing will indeed impact other needs.

Councillor Young said the City should enlist an engineer with an interest in preserving the bridge to report to Council. This brought an angry rebuke from Mayor Fortin that City of Victoria engineers are unbiased. However, this will not quell discussion that the current dismal state of the bridge is in part due to deferred maintenance. Was Engineering’s efforts to properly maintain the JSB hamstrung by years of stingy City Councils? Or has Engineering been seduced by the once-in-a-career opportunity to build a true world-class bridge?

Councillor Chandler deserves praise for criticizing the poor quality of the bridge renderings, especially the ones on the web. It was only at tonight’s meeting that a more diverse range of drawings were presented. Still, as they appear on the Internet, the renderings are too small to be of much use.

In the end, Council sided with the Community Advisory Committee and chose the Rolling Bascule version (version 2). I concur. It is the design most sympathetic to the Upper Harbour’s industrial aesthetic.

Urinal finally installed

The long awaited permanent urinal was installed this week in Downtown Victoria at the corner of Pandora and Government Streets. I’ve written about this long saga in earlier posts but in short, the automatic pop-up urinals were deemed impractical and a modernized European-style “pissoir” was installed instead.

Time will tell if they are a success. Are they too exposed? Are they in an area that gets enough traffic?

Is the Johnson Street Bridge a “beater”?

Many of us have owned beater cars. A beater is not necessarily a car that needs a lot of repairs. Heck, a Ferrari needs constant maintenance. A beater is a car that has passed the point where preventative maintenance is cost-effective. The owner of a beater acknowledges that the car is on its last legs and only does enough basic maintenance (fluids, filters etc.) to keep the car running until it’s finally sent to the scrapyard.

Back in April, Mayor Dean Fortin said,

“Do we spend $25-to-$30 million to rehabilitate a bridge that in 40 years we’re going to have to replace and spend another $50 million, or do you spend $35-to-$40 million to have a bridge that lasts 100 years? It’s a difficult place to be.”

Now the figure is $63 million including a healthy contingency fund. But why is the bridge a beater? It was only ten years ago that the City said the newly-refurbished bridge had “several more decades” of useful life left in it (providing follow-up rustproofing and painting was done).

Well, it turns out that crucial maintenance was never done. Why? City Engineers Mike Lai and Peter Sparanese told a special meeting of the DRA Board Monday evening that wrapping the bridge (to protect the waters from lead paint) was too expensive, time-consuming and difficult. The Upper Harbour is host to vital ship repair operations and the bridge itself is an important commuter link that can’t be off limits during the time the bridge is repaired and painted (although it apparently wasn’t problematic to close the bridge for a week to film a Alicia Silverstone movie).

Obviously, at some point in the last decade City Hall (Council, staff or both) decided the bridge was past the point of no return. Tough (and necessary) new environmental regulations meant that the old way of painting the bridge is impossible and the allowable method was impractical. So why was this a surprise in the year 2009? Citizens should have been informed as soon as it became known that the bridge was essentially irreparable in order that replacement funding could be planned and budgeted. Mayor Fortin has been at the Council table since 2002. I would be interested in knowing whether this repainting dilemma was ever brought to Council’s attention during that time.

Is the Johnson Street Bridge a beater? It sure is now.

Johnson Street Bridge

I attended a meeting of the JohnsonStreetBridge.org group tonight. Headed by Ross Crockford, Yule Heibel and Mat Wright, they offer sober second thought regarding the rush to replace the venerable and iconic Johnson Street Bridge. You can read more about the meeting by reading the live blog record at the site:

http://johnsonstreetbridge.org/

Ross brought up some questions the City will need to answer. Like why hasn’t the heritage assessment been made public? Why hasn’t the cost of rehabilitating the existing bridge been broken down separate from the total cost? How realistic is the construction timeline? Will it be completed before March 31, 2011 when the government funding turns into a pumpkin? In that scenario, will Victoria have to pay back the two-thirds cost? Would taxpayers be on the hook for the entire $63+ million? Why wasn’t this payback scenario explained in the Spring when Victoria applied for the grant?

The City is going full-steam-ahead on this project despite the lack of public consultation. Recall that the Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre went to a referendum and that a simple cookie-cutter arena that cost half of what the bridge is supposed to cost. Recall also that the arena went way over budget and was months overdue.

I weigh in on public urination and the opinions flow.

I was asked about the revised urinal idea on C-FAX today (it’s also today’s poll), specifically if I thought it discriminated against women.

I said first that there are devices that would allow women to use a urinal but really it is the fratboy/lager lout crowd that is primarily responsible for the unacceptable behaviour downtown. I was also asked whether this was catering to law-breakers (Murray Langdon’s editorial) but I pointed out that in daytime there are many washroom opportunities but practically nothing at night, so it’s a needed service.

Phillipe Lucas appeared via phone and he thought public toilets should take into account the disabled and parents with babies (but that adds another level of complication in my mind). I don’t think you need any special apparatus to change a baby in public and I seriously doubt any parent would take a baby into a urinal even if it came equipped with a change table.

Taylor Report? What the hell is the Taylor Report?!

I really wanted to use the Interrobang in the title above.

The existence of the heretofore unknown “Taylor Report” has tongues a-wagging amongst the local community Associations. I’ve discussed the Cuff Report in previous posts but we assumed the relationships Victoria’s Community Associations have with City Hall and the development community would have been discussed the the Cuff Report which was released early in March. At that time we were told that CA concerns were addressed in the Cuff Report spinoff. Even the media weren’t aware of this Taylor Report until that morning’s briefing.

We understand the Taylor Report will be released early in April. I look forward to seeing a frank disclosure of the inner workings between the community and the Planning Department.

City Hall Re-orgapalooza!

A substantial reorganization of City Hall process in response to recommendations found in the Cuff Report has just been made public.

Gone are the traditional entities like Committee of the Whole, Advisory Planning Commission and other committees like Cycling and Environment along with the traditional portfolio assignments.

In their place will be a series of standing committees and advisory committees that will do a lot of the detail work, freeing up Council to work on larger issues.

The goal is a more holistic approach to referring projects to the public or Council, breaking down those silos. For instance, instead of a cycling committee, there will be a Public Advisory Committee that meets monthly and deals with environment and infrastructure issues. The other new committee is Community Development. The Advisory Design Panel and Heritage Advisory Committee are the only two entities to survive the reorganization.

The four public advisory committees connect with four Standing Committees, each comprised of three councillors. The Mayor and other Councillors are invited to attend for informational purposes as desired as non-voting attendees. The work of these groups flows through an Agenda Committee that decides what to send to Council meetings or Governance & Priorities Committee (the new name for Committee of the Whole)

The old Mozart lot (Yates St.)

The former Mozart site in the 700 block Yates St. has been an eyesore for years. Currently little more than a drained swamp, the site was supposed to be a mixed use (office/residential/retail) building. Council, in a rare fit of generosity, granted the then-ailing former realtor and long-time arts supporter Eric Charman permission to construct a substantial and unique building. Charman recovered but the economics of the project took a turn for the worse and Charman sold the property to Concert Properties, ending his 20-year dream of constructing a “Mozart tower”.

It appears Concert has done some lot consolidation as they now plan to expand the site all the way to Millie’s Lane (aka Odeon Alley) in order to construct an 11 storey office tower. The businesses that currently occupy the one-storey building along the alley were shocked to receive notice from the City about the DRA-sponsored community meeting regarding this proposal. They were dismayed that they didn’t learn of this through the landlord (many of these businesses have multi-year leases).

The public meeting will be at 1740 Douglas on March 23, 7 pm. This will be an opportunity for neighbours to learn about the proposal and its implications for the neighbourhood.

MetroCascade

MetroCascade is live. This Victoria-based aggregator should be part of your daily read.

Six storey wood frame construction

This topic is turning out to be more controversial that I first thought it might when I learned about it a couple of years ago at a UDI luncheon. In brief, the Province is allowing five and six storey wood frame construction this year. Supposedly it will allow cheaper buildings while supporting the struggling lumber industry.

This morning on C-FAX, UDI Victoria president, Glen Wilson, local consultant, Bruce Johnston of Read Jones Christoffersen and Executive Director of ROMS, AL Kemp talked about the initiative with Joe Easingwood but I missed the segment. If you heard it, please comment.

Meanwhile, Sean Holman of Public Eye Online uncovers the controversy behind six storey wood frame construction.