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More housing, more crowding

Victoria council recently approved another unwanted and unsuitable development, this time in James Bay, and once again shows little regard for the citizens of Victoria.

The usual justification? “We need more housing.”

According to Statistics sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½, Victoria already has more housing for its size than almost every other city in sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½, and hundreds of homes are available to be purchased. Why do we need more?

If having more housing made housing affordable Victoria would already be cheap, so adding more won’t change that.

More traffic and more crowding is what we’ll get, and that won’t make Victoria better, so it seems that council really only cares about developers and people who have money to move here.

Raymond Fischer

Victoria

Saanich’s plan would change communities

Saanich mayor and council quietly adopted a new Official Community, Plan and just as quietly rolled out the Quadra-McKenzie Draft Plan.

The plan pre-zones great swathes of neighbourhoods, not just on the corridors, allowing for mid-rise buildings throughout. Most residents are blissfully unaware that should this plan be adopted, their neighbourhoods will be changed forever.

This has been proposed with the justification that single family homes are really not a viable form of accommodation anymore, and housing is needed.

I agree that housing is needed, but affordable housing is what is needed, not just more buildings with micro units at market rents, which at the end of the day only benefits the developer.

The plan will chase long-time residents out of their neighbourhoods as more and more density is allowed, adding to the uglification of these neighbourhoods and leaving a disconnected community living in tower buildings, which are being sold to us as 15-minute communities.

Even though the true “missing middle” in Saanich is town housing for families, this is not a profitable venture, so hence the “need” for multi stories. The Quadra-McKenzie Draft Plan is very much driven by the potential for profit.

As this plan is going to mayor and council at the end of January for a decision, it is time to speak up.

Nancy Di Castri

Saanich

We have a right to speak on land use

The province and municipalities should return the right of citizens to provide comment on real-estate developments in their communities.

Municipal councillors should first and foremost represent the citizens who elected them, not profit-driven developers.

Homeowners are required to pay taxes, maintain their properties, obey the bylaws — including those concerning tree preservation — and we generally understand the collective and environmental value of those rules.

When developers are excused from respecting setbacks, site-coverage, zoning, and from providing amenities such as sidewalks and on-site parking, and, for example, when city officials turn a blind eye to the loss of much-valued trees which provide shade, offer food and shelter for wildlife, and which absorb water in heavy rain events, thus mitigating overwhelming our urban draining system — those valued elements are lost forever.

While elected councillors may enjoy their diminished responsibilities for development oversight, community members are rendered mute, and are left to bear the brunt of decisions made by unelected city staff.

Monique Genton

Victoria

Judging by weather, winter starts earlier

I don’t understand why the Times ­Colonist and many other media outlets seem to focus on the astronomical seasons when they have stories about the first day of winter, etc.

If you Google the definition of winter, the first two definitions (from Oxford and Merriam-Webster), both define winter in the Northern Hemisphere as Dec. 1 to Feb. 28, also known as meteorological winter.

I think most people consider December to be a winter month, rather than a primarily fall month that it would be using the astronomical definition.

For Victoria, using astronomical winter is particularly misleading. On average, the coldest three-month period in Victoria is from late November to late February — a full month earlier than astronomical winter.

Steven Murray

Victoria

Heads should roll at sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ Post

The total incompetency of the brass heading sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ Post should cause those heads to roll. That they should try to fill the financial hole they have dug with the bodies of their workers is beyond the pale, and should be met with scorn, derision and dismissal.

If sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ Post was an actual independent business body, those responsible would get marching papers, not bonuses.

It is well and good to improve infrastructure with modern facilities, and reduce carbon footprints with electric vehicles, but proper planning and balance sheet management makes certain there is income and business opportunities to finance those endeavours.

Knowing that you have a wage negotiation liability that is being punted down the road and then used as a bargaining tool is pretty despicable.

Delaying a badly needed price increase to worsen your bottom line speaks to malevolence or mismanagement.

Either is bad for healthy business, and should be punished accordingly, not rewarded. For a spokesperson for corporate to dissemble to the press during negotiations about how well-off postal workers are (aren’t actually) while taking home a third of a million dollars or more in executive salary plus bonuses is, well … fill in a derogatory term here.

Postal worker jobs have fallen in compensation and security to the point where they can barely survive, let alone contribute to society in the many ways that a stable and fair income allows.

Bradley W. Cunnin

Victoria

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