Victoria to bid for 2014 Juno awards?

A dozen or so local biz-types are discussing the possibility of putting together a bid to host the 2014 Junos. Vancouver hosted them this year and it was a great success by all accounts.

Not merely an awards show, these days the Junos are a week-long celebration of Canadian music where national acts and local musicians find audiences at the numerous stages and venues while insiders and spectators take in the party atmosphere. This year’s celebration included the Westjet Party Tent–a block-long covered street closed to traffic and open to revelers.

Can Victoria pull it off? St. John’s will and they also have a relatively small arena for the awards. It’s true that it is usually held in larger sports stadiums like GM Place and the Saddledome but word is that the Vancouver show was far from a sell-out even at reduced prices. So Victoria can promise an intimate venue packed with enthusiastic fans. The loss of potential ticket revenue will have to be made up in other ways. Perhaps more second stage venues.

How much cash do we need to round up to get the ball rolling? Probably up to two million dollars.

I believe Victoria can pull this off and it will be a success. We have fond memories of the ‘94 Commonwealth Games as well as the numerous concerts on the Legislature lawn over the years that drew thousands. It will be something to anticipate following the inevitable post-Olympic letdown. I want to make sure this great opportunity doesn’t pass us by.

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.

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.

Rob on C-FAX

Thursday, April 9 from 12:30 to 1 p.m., I’ll be a panelist on the Ryan Price show on C-FAX 1070 AM talking about random Downtown things. Click the link to listen live.

Social issues meeting follow-up

UPDATE April 2, 2009: More impressions by Yule Heibel and Davin Greenwell

Our Monday night event, On The Front Lines: Community Solutions for Homelessness and Social Issues, was a great success. A good sized crowd attended to hear the latest on policing, justice and social issues from Police Chief Jamie Graham, Councillor Charlayne Thornton-Joe, GV Coalition to End Homelessness director Jill Clements and the DVBA’s Ken Kelly.

Ken gave us an update on Downtown initiatives from the business standpoint, including the Clean Team, Con-Air, Retail C.O.P. and the Clean and Safe Committee. Charlayne and Jill got us up to speed with the Mayor’s Task Force and the Coalition including how they’ve reached the first year goal of housing 200 people.

But it was Chief Graham who received the most interest, with residents wanting answers on a diverse range of topics including jaywalking, camping in parks, open drug use and calling 911.

On the latter topic, Graham was clear: don’t hesitate to call 911 if you see something illegal or you feel someone’s safety is in question. It’s true your call will be queued and you might not get an immediate response, especially if it’s a busy time. But you need to call because this information is needed to track crime hotspots. And the Chief said, even if he were to be driving by the area by chance when the call came in he wouldn’t hesitate to investigate it himself.

Graham gave no opinion on the topic of safe injection sites, saying he would let politicians decide and he will enforce whatever law is in place.

The Times Colonist follows up on our meeting here “Police Chief: Victoria’s Drug Problem Not as Big as Some Say“:

“From experts in the field that go undercover, and trust me they are undercover to try to buy drugs, they are not there in the kind of volume you might think. When over a period of two weeks or so we end up with only 12 or 15 arrests, those numbers are really small,” Graham said.

Overall, Graham said, Victoria has a small group of hard-core drug users.

“It’s not widespread. It’s small. They’re disruptive and we know they create difficulties.”

The Times Colonist further expands on Graham’s comments in this editorial “The Real Downtown Problem“:

“Many of the issues our officers are sent to, they act almost as referees,” Graham said, adding the most common calls city police respond to are reports of alcohol-related disorder — people yelling or screaming, arguments, doors being slammed or pushing and shoving.

By comparison, a recently completed undercover operation in Victoria was hard-pressed to turn up any drugs or arrests at all. Over the course of two weeks, police made only about a dozen arrests, and undercover officers reported surprise at how difficult it was to buy illegal drugs.

This is not to downplay the need to deal with the illegal drug trade in downtown Victoria: One need only look at the numbers from needle exchanges and social agencies to be assured the problem is very real. And those addicted to illegal drugs should have every opportunity to seek help and get the treatment they need.

But alcohol is just a different kind of drug — the only difference is that it’s legal. That doesn’t make the fallout from its abuse any less harmful to individuals, families and communities.

The DRA is happy to have sponsored this talk which has spurred some thoughtful dialogue in the community. We look forward to talking to our guests in the future and look forward to hearing about more progress.U

TC: Urban Safety on Town Hall Agenda

Urban safety on town-hall agenda

Times Colonist
March 30, 2009

Victoria police Chief Jamie Graham will address the forum, which will also include representatives from city council, the Downtown Victoria Business Association and the Coalition to End Homelessness. “We’re going to have an opportunity for these people to get up … and just talk about what the issues are and how they’re handling them,” said Robert Randall, chair of the Downtown Residents Association.

Victoria’s downtown is much like a huge “dysfunctional” family with many competing interests, Randall said.

“It’s really complex. In some ways it’s getting a lot better. We’re seeing a lot of really positive work from some of angles. We’re seeing more residents in the downtown and lot of good businesses opening up so a lot of the dead parts of downtown that you really didn’t want to go to are now walkable.

“The needle exchange is gone, so Cormorant Street is now a place you no longer avoid, but at the same time, Pandora’s getting a bit dicey although it’s still safe,” Randall said.

On the down side, Randall said, the downtown is beginning to see the emergence of a new breed of more aggressive drug dealers.

“That’s a bit worrying. So [the downtown] is going in both directions,” he said. “Overall I’m optimistic but I’m troubled about these continuing trends.

Event: On The Front Lines: Community Solutions for Homelessness and Social Issues

The Downtown Residents’ Association is presenting a special event for all residents of Downtown:

On The Front Lines: Community Solutions for Homelessness and Social Issues

Monday, March 30, 7 p.m – 9 p.m.
City Hall Antechamber, Centennial Square

A meeting for residents of Downtown/Harris Green to hear about some ground-breaking solutions for homelessness, crime, safety and other social issues that concern us all. We’ve gathered the experts who will be able to answer your questions. Join us for Silk Road Tea and snacks and an evening of informative discussion. Open to all DRA members. Please bring a neighbour!

Schedule:

Introduction by Robert Randall, DRA

Vic PD Chief Jamie Graham and Inspector Jamie Pearce on Downtown Security

Councillor Charlayne Thornton-Joe on the Mayor’s Task Force and our homeless population

Jill Clements of the Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness on the Coalition, its goals and achievements

Ken Kelly of the Downtown Victoria Business Association on the Clean and Safe Team, Con Air and the Community Court Program

Question and answer session follows

I hope to see you there! This event is free and no pre-registration is required.

No crackdown on homeless for 2010 Games: police

Vancouver story from the CBC. Of interest because some are predicting an influx of homeless in Victoria in the months leading up to the Vancouver Olympic Games.

Deputy Chief Steve Sweeney of the Vancouver Police Department said homeless people will be moved if they are too close to official Games venues and security zones

“The City of Vancouver and the Vancouver police will work with them to either help them to find shelter, or if they don’t wish to be sheltered, to help them relocate somewhere else.

Those who refuse to move may be arrested, Sweeney said.

“I’m not going to lie to you and tell you there won’t be an impact,” he said. There will also be protest areas, but protesters have nothing to worry about, unless they break the law, said Sweeney.

MetroCascade

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