Trouble brewing in Victoria
Proposal certainly doomed to failure if council passes it and it moves to IRAC
It has astonished me since arriving in Victoria-by-the-Sea in 2006, that a mere 70 souls seem to have so much difficulty getting along. We have a town plan and a set of bylaws that looks almost as large as the Oxford Dictionary. Part of the explanation for this could be that we have had several members of the same family on town council for over 20 years, and very much like the situation at the local theatre, they seem to see running the town as their rightful family business.
Perhaps it would be better if there were a rule that only one member of any family could serve on these little town councils at any one time. Wouldn’t that be a more equitable way to run things? That way we could avoid the cabal-like nature which has been an integral part of creating trouble in this town for so long. In fact, this is really an Island problem, isn’t it? Small cliques who often serve at their own pleasure and exclude the participation of outsiders because they can?
But things are changing across the Island of course, including in Victoria, where a new group of working professionals are moving into town, people with fresh ideas and little patience for family shenanigans. The latest scuffle involves my family personally. The Grand Victorian, an events space on Russell Street, which received a $300,000 forgivable loan from the government (I guess you could really call that free money) has decided to collude with an individual who bought a tiny strip of land which abuts my backyard, and put a proposal forward to create a parking lot for their customers. I say collude because we were never consulted beforehand and I had to find out about the idea from my neighbour.
The problems with this idea are numerous: The land is designated residential; the bylaws state clearly that it is residential; and maintaining the unique character of the town and not pushing commercial projects into residential neighbourhoods is essentially at the core of the philosophy of the official town plan.
Further, the owners of the Grand Victorian were told pointedly by the town planner before starting their business that parking would be a serious concern, and that they could not, and should not, count on town council to solve their parking problem for them.
My family worked hard to buy our house and our land. We didn’t receive a handout from the government. And we strongly take issue with the Grand Victorian thinking they can plop their last-minute parking lot beside our house and devalue our property, because they didn’t listen to the town planner in the first place.
And yet here we find ourselves again, several families whose land directly abuts the land where the parking lot is proposed, having to take time out of our working lives, once again, to gather signatures, write letters, and attend meetings that we don’t have time for, in order to fight against a proposal that is almost certainly doomed to failure if council passes it and it moves in to IRAC.
Geez. You know, sometimes you’d think people would find better things to do with their time.