The Week - June 25

Derman wants ideas

Saanich city councillor Vic Derman says rather than build three large sewage treatment plants as the region appears poised to do, it should build two small “pilot resource-recovery and water-management plants”—one in Saanich East/North Oak Bay and one in the Western Communities as a show of good faith.

Derman will make the suggestion at the CRD’s June 24 core area liquid waste management committee meeting. He says waste management technology is evolving quickly, and new methods will quickly surpass whatever the CRD builds today.

He argues the region should be looking at all infrastructure in a more holistic fashion, not in separate silos. As such, he will ask the CRD board to adopt a motion that reads in part, ““That the core area committee commits to working with the province and other CRD committees and departments to develop an integrated waste management plan for the entire waste stream based around the principles of zero waste and integrated resource recovery.”

He says the CRD will be hard pressed to meet the 2016 provincially imposed sewage treatment deadline anyway, so it may as well work toward the most cutting-edge solutions.

“Coming back from [Federation of Canadian Municipalities AGM] everything we heard there was ‘integrated visionary planning,’ and they are promoting a trip to Sweden to study Sweden’s symbio-cties, which means simply that the Swedes are looking at seven or eight major functions that go on in a city, including transportation and waste, and going through a process of visionary integrated planning. For the moment, we’re doing the opposite, which is planning off in a little corner all by itself.”

Affairs in the Square

The active construction zone in Centennial Square is something of a giveaway that the ongoing redesign of Victoria’s long-underutilized public space won’t be finished by the end-of-June deadline promised when the facelift began.

So when will the new Spirit Square be complete?

“Completion is scheduled for mid July,” city spokesperson Katie Josephson told Monday via e-mail. So what does this mean for JazzFest, the first major summer event in the square that kicks off June 27th?

Well, they’re going to have to make do with the temporary structures that have been used for past summer stage spectaculars. “It’s obviously not our first choice, but we have a festival and people coming and it’s going to be a huge success,” says JazzFest publicity manager Glenn Parfitt.

No-booze buses

The Victoria Police Department and BC Transit took the unusual step this week of encouraging area residents to drink and drive on Canada Day.

In a press release issued June 23 it was announced that customers travelling on BC Transit during operating hours on July 1 would be forbidden from bringing alcohol on the buses.

“Service will be monitored to ensure that customers comply with the new condition,” the release says. “Customers may be asked to demonstrate compliance by BC Transit staff or the local police. No person will be required to submit to a search if they choose not to board the bus.”

Meanwhile, last we checked, it was still legal for adults over the age of 19 to purchase alcohol at any number of private and government-run liquor stores.

Alpha vindicated

In a not-so-surprising decision, Justice Robert Metzger ruled last week that ousted School District 61 trustee Catherine Alpha could return to her seat around the table when the board reconvenes in September.

Alpha says she and the Victoria Coalition for Public Education have yet to decide whether they will seek compensation from the school board to recover the out-of-pocket costs of taking her fight to the supreme court. The question now is how Alpha feels about returning to a table where five members of her own board, supported by the province’s then-minister of education, failed to back her up.

“I have no intention of going in there holding a grudge,” Alpha says. “What’s over is over and there’s a lot that needs to be done. We need to be focused on getting funding from the provincial government that is in some way aligned with the real needs of children in the classroom, and at this point we don’t have that.”

And just in case you thought this marks the end of excitement around the SD 61 table, Alpha warns, “[It] is going to get a lot more interesting because [the board] now has an activist who is actually going to speak out for children in the classroom.”

SD 61 trustee Peg Orcherton had this to say about justice Metzger’s decision:

“Sometimes the law doesn’t give you justice, but this time it gave Catherine and those that supported her position justice. And it was justice peppered with common sense, which too often these days is not so common.”