A Bridge Too Far

Pressing for public participation in one-sided bridge debate

One day soon, citizens of Victoria may answer a knock at the door to find someone seeking their signature on a form titled “Alternative Approval Process for Loan Authorization Bylaw No. 09-057.” This work of bureaucratese is the counter-petition to the City of Victoria’s October 29 decision to borrow $42 million to replace the Johnson Street Bridge. That vote by city council marked the largest loan the City has ever requested to complete the single largest infrastructure project in its history, and the counter-petition is the last chance for the public to potentially thwart the deconstruction of an Island landmark.

Victoria mayor Dean Fortin has said repeatedly that replacing the bridge is a “must-do” project. But there are plenty of people who aren’t sold on the mayor’s sales pitch and want a clear explanation of why we can’t just fix the bridge we’ve got and why citizens can’t have a greater opportunity to participate in the discussion of how we’ll be traversing the Gorge in the years to come.

To force the borrowing issue to a referendum, which Victoria city council last week voted 5-2 to forego in favour of testing citizen-led opposition, critics of the City’s hyper-speed replacement plan must now collect signatures from 10 percent of the registered electorate within city limits—about 6,346 signatures—by January 4 to take the borrowing issue to a public vote.

Those behind the counter-petition push say they simply want public input on an issue where citizen consultation has so far been limited to the window dressing.

“This is the biggest project in Victoria’s history,” says Ross Crockford, a founding member of johnsonstreetbridge.org, a citizen’s group demanding greater transparency on the bridge issue. “It is going to change the appearance of the Inner Harbour permanently, it’s the most amount of money the City of Victoria has ever borrowed—we’re talking about a project where they’re borrowing $14 million more than they did to build the [Save-on-Foods Memorial] arena . . . People may not know the ins and outs of bridge engineering and bridge heritage and what’s involved in repairing a bridge and all the rest of that stuff, but it’s a very simple and straightforward question: do you think you should have a vote on borrowing $42 million? And I think people will say you’re damn right we should have a vote on it.”

Over at City Hall, however, our elected officials are sticking to their game plan, claiming due diligence has been done, a referendum is an unnecessary expense and damn it, who wouldn’t want a shiny new bridge to take our city into the future?

“You’re looking at having a $42 million project that will give you a bridge that will provide you with a way to manage your transportation issues for the next 100 years,” Victoria mayor Dean Fortin told Monday. “Bike lanes, commuter rail, an adequate, accessible pedestrian crossing and something that’s going to last for a century.”

The story so far

Bucking the usual plodding pace at City Hall, plans to replace the Johnson Street Bridge have cleared bureaucratic hurdles like hellfire.

In April, Delcan Corporation submitted a condition assessment report to council on the structural and mechanical integrity of the Johnson Street Bridge. (After submitting this report, Delcan later submitted a bid to manage the replacement, too.) That report suggested the bridge needs a significant cash infusion within two years lest its seismic vulnerabilities become a genuine liability and its operating costs increase dramatically. However, the report did not recommend a course of action, instead concluding, “Based on the findings of this study either a repair or a replacement option could be justified from a cost perspective . . . In order to select either a repair or replacement approach, value needs to be placed on elements of the project that are beyond the scope of this study and are not associated with structural engineering.”

Further conversations about those other “elements” among private consultants and City engineering staff subsequently determined that replacement was where the City could achieve the best bang for its buck, putting the wheels in motion to bring down Big Blue.

In its frantic dash to get a cut of the economic stimulus funds being spread around the province and the country, the City voted in principle on April 23 to replace the bridge to meet a May 1 federal stimulus-funding application deadline. With that decision, the option to repair the current structure disappeared from the conversation.

Then came the so-called citizen engagement portion of the affair, which consisted of a chance to vote on one of three pre-determined bridge designs brought forward by the MMM Group, the firm awarded the contract to manage the bridge replacement effort, each at a cost $63 million to complete.

In a recent city council meeting, mayor Fortin said, “Fundamentally, there was huge community engagement that was extensive and unique.” It may have been extensive and unique, but city council ultimately ignored the design chosen by the majority of the 5,000-plus respondents and picked their own favourite instead.

Meanwhile citizens groups used the summer months to build public awareness about the need for greater transparency in the process and the potential to rehabilitate the old bridge

Back at City Hall, with the bridge design picked, but no sign of financial aid from senior levels of government, city council prepared a loan request to cover the full $63 million project price tag on its own. With a current debt load of $53 million and a $350 million line of credit, the City argued it would be well within its spending limits. But then on October 24 federal transportation minister John Baird lumbered onto the scene to announce that the federal government would kick in $21 million from its Building Canada Fund toward bridge replacement. However, even this infusion of federal cash was not enough to persuade the provincial government of the project’s necessity.

“We’re always happy when the federal government provides resources in our province, and we’re pleased about that, and we’re not contemplating at this time providing resources to that project,” provincial transportation and infrastructure minister Shirley Bond told local media.

But not to worry said the City. At present, the cost of the new bridge is about $19 per taxpayer per year over the next 20 years, with the cost accounted for in the budget, so no bridge-related tax increases will be required.

It was around this time that johnsonstreetbridge.org invited noted American heritage bridge engineer Frank Nelson to Victoria, who shook up the conversation with his thoughts on prospects for saving Big Blue.

On November 18 the CRD’s board of directors voted to reserve a decision on making an $8 million contribution to the bridge’s pedestrian components, citing the need for further information, and on November 19 Victoria city council voted to launch the alternative approval process, initiating the current petition push.

Now, prominent citizens are choosing sides, with business owners like Munro’s Books’ Jim Munro and Victoria Harbour Ferries’ boss Barry Hobbis calling for a referendum. Meanwhile, Vic West developers Joe van Belleghem and Ken Mariash have told Monday that a new bridge seems the better choice given what they know about the inevitable cost-escalations associated with repair jobs.

Alternative approach

Critics of the City’s plan to replace the bridge are none too pleased that it falls to them to force a referendum on what they consider an issue that cried out for greater transparency from the outset. It strikes them as unfair that they’re being forced to bring forward the other side of the story in a tale whose ending was basically written before all elements of the plot were explored.

Those critics now hope modern technology will help them succeed where many others have failed in getting the requisite number of signatures.

“We’re going to be relying on the internet a lot,” says Ross Crockford. “I’m hoping that we will be able to send a concise message making our argument to people that we’ve already been in touch with, or people who have expressed an interest in the subject.”

Crockford adds that volunteers will also be hitting the streets to knock on doors and hosting events to further spark interest in the issue.

Langford’s Steven Hurdle was successful last year collecting signatures from more than 10 percent of his municipality’s electorate to prove there was significant opposition to its plans to borrow $9.8 million to construct the now-stalled Bear Mountain interchange.

“I’m very surprised they would go to counter-petition on such a big issue, such a divisive issue, and for such a big amount of money,” says Hurdle of Victoria council’s decision. “My thought is that the counter-petition process is best used on things where [councillors] perceive a great deal of civic support, and therefore they’re saving time and effort and money on a referendum. But when there is a divisive issue, with a lot of opposition, I think it’s an inappropriate use of the counter-petition process; then it just looks like you’re trying to stack the deck against the opposition.”

And such is the primary complaint against the Alternative Approval Process, which has been likened to the negative-option billing of cable companies, where a customer is billed up front for services they never asked for and it’s incumbent on them to discover why they’re being charged— and to find a way to get out of it.

Breaking ranks with her longtime political ally, Dean Fortin, Victoria councillor Pam Madoff voted against going to the alternative approval process for the loan bylaw.

“What I was hoping to do was capture the attention of mayor and council to say ‘Our work is not done. We may feel that we’ve made the right decision, but the public deserves ongoing information, and not just in defence of our decision, but really substantive responses to any questions that come up or further understandings they want about what brought us to this conclusion.’”

Councillor Geoff Young also cast a dissenting vote at the November 19 meeting, causing a noticeable cloud to settle over Dean Fortin’s brow. Young argued council can’t say that refurbishing the current bridge isn’t an option, since little resources have been devoted to comprehensively studying that option.

The Alternative Approval Process was last put to the test in the City of Victoria when residents of the Burnside Gorge neighbourhood lead a campaign to stop the City from removing Ellice Park from its parks inventory. It came up with only 3,000 signatures—half of what was needed to force a referendum.

Noting that a referendum was held in 2002 on whether to borrow money to build the city’s new arena, Fortin has said that referenda are reserved for luxury items, not “need-to-do” infrastructure projects like bridges.

Johnsonstreetbridge.org’s Crockford says that while a successful counter-petition won’t necessarily stop the new bridge from going forward, he hopes it will give the city’s elected officials pause.

“My hope would be that they would re-open the discussions and have some discussions that they should have been having over the last couple of months,” says Crockford.

But comments from mayor Dean Fortin seem to suggest no interest in revisiting the replace versus refurbish debate. Asked what would happen if the replacement critics were successful in a referendum triggered by the counter-petition process, Fortin replied, “Council would go back and take a look at it—but again, you’d be left in a situation where you have to do something, and so it’s a difficult position in which to be placed. Do you put it on property taxes and pay for it over two years? Those are the difficult decisions.”

To repair, to replace?

Unless you’re a structural engineer, the repair versus replace debate looks like a whole lot of math. To hear the City tell it, the state of Big Blue’s decay is so great that even a thorough repair job at $25 million would only give us another 40 years of life before we would have to entertain this same debate again. They trumpet the benefits of a new bridge, including better access for pedestrians and cyclists, improved traffic flow from straightening the S-curve on the Vic West side of the bridge and that most cryptic of motivators—sustainability. But then along comes someone like American engineer Frank Nelson, who looks at our bridge and says it isn’t all so bad.

Of course, as he told those assembled at his November 4 talk on bridge preservation, he comes from a U.S. state where, if a historic structure can be preserved for less than the cost of replacement, there is no debate—you repair.

Ultimately, however, it seems people just want a chance to know more about all possible options.

Mike Kozakowski administers vibrantvictoria.ca. a popular local website where citizens gather to discuss civic matters. He says there is an increasing appetite among visitors to his site for a deeper exploration of the options than has been available to date.

“The sense that I get is that people just want to return to square one and say let’s look at the options, without the restrictions that we had the first time around, with more experts brought in to discuss the options and bring to the public attention detailed design, detailed cost analyses, and things of that sort,” he says. “There’s a lot of people that are for replacement—people see it as one of the best things that could happen, or that has happened in terms of infrastructure investment in Victoria, whereas others see it as an opportunity to restore a historic landmark. But it seems many see it as something that has been flawed from the beginning and want to see the whole project revisited.”

With a seven year window to spend our federal grant, it now seems there’s plenty of time to do just that. Forcing a steadfast city council to do so is a different matter altogether, with little more than a month left for citizens to tell them how they feel about the plan to borrow $42 million. M

Anyone wishing to submit a counter-petition form can pick one up at City Hall, or download it from johnsonstreetbridge.com (that’s the City’s website).

The folks behind johnsonstreetbridge.org are requesting that anyone submitting a counter-petition form send it to them, rather than City Hall. That way, they say, they can verify that the forms have been filled out correctly rather than risk being rejected by City Hall if done wrong. Send completed forms to:

johnsonstreetbridge.org
PO Box 5324
1625 Fort Street, Station B
Victoria
V8R 6S4