How's the view from up there?

The week - April 30

BM bullish on BC Liberals

It’s no secret that real-estate developers in British Columbia have done well by eight years of Gordon Campbell’s Liberal government, so it comes as no surprise that they’re rewarding him with hefty political donations heading into the May 12 provincial election.

Elections BC records show that the boys of Bear Mountain seem particularly smitten with the Liberal’s campaign, as players associated with the luxury golf-course development have opened up their wallets.

Bear Mountain Master Partnership sent the Liberals a cheque for $24,900. Les Bjola’s Turner Lane Development Corporation added $10,000 to the BC Libs’ kitty, a sum matched by Bear Mountain’s vice president of corporate and legal affairs Philip LeSeur through a numbered company of which he is sole proprietor. Len Barrie threw in $2,000 of his own cash, and Dale Sproule, the project’s director of real estate, kicked in $335.

A little further down the slope where the South Skirt Mountain project is underway, Russ Trace, through a combination of his Capital City Paving company and personal donations, kicked in $2,300 to the Libs re-election efforts.

Even Langford mayor Stew Young got in on the action, making a $1,500 donation through his Evergreen Industries, the alternate business name of his company Alpine Disposal and Recycling.

With former Colwood mayor and West Shore development aficionado Jody Twa running against the NDP’s John Horgan in the riding, it only makes sense his old friends would help the cause.

Meanwhile, no record could be found in Elections BC’s filings as to whether the Last Tree in Langford had scraped together enough cash to donate to its own preservation.

One down, one to go

The City of Victoria announced last week that it has hired a director of sustainability. Filling the recently created slot is Kim Fowler, currently a senior consultant at Pottinger Gaherty Ltd. Although the job’s responsibilities remain rather nebulous, Fowler’s annual salary will start at $108,581.

And while it took less than two months to fill the sustainability director’s position, Victoria has now been without a city manager since Penny Ballantyne resigned from the role in early January. Monday asked City communications manager Katie Josephson about the hold up.

“Fair question,” she replied via e-mail. “However, the hiring processes are very different as the City Manager is a hire of Mayor and Council and we retained a recruitment firm to do a nationwide search. We received a high level of interest from across the country and the recruitment has now closed. We expected that the entire process would take three or four months and the process is on track and almost complete.”

Hobbis abandons ship

Local property developer Bob Evans’ plan to build a parking lot for the boats of the mega-rich has been springing leaks of late.

The latest comes in the form of Victoria Harbour Ferry CEO Barry Hobbis, who will go before Victoria city council on Thursday night to share what he believes to be significant safety risks posed by the Victoria International Marina and Yacht Club.

“That development on the harbour’s North shore, for us and our business, would represent a plus, economically,” he told Monday. “It makes absolute sense for us to say ‘Wow, we’re going to have another stop, we’re going to be picking people up and dropping them off, we’ll increase our passenger load,’ so there’s nothing but good news from a commerce point of view. But from a safety point of view, which is our number-one concern, it is not good news.”

Hobbis says his company accounts for 51 percent of all movements in Victoria Harbour, and as such, his pilots have likely the best understanding of what the marina would mean for traffic patterns and safety.

“When you put six-and-a-half acres of vessels and marina on that foreshore, in our view, it will choke off the harbour for all users,” he says. “It will set up circumstances that in our opinion will cause—during stormy periods or heavy winds—wave refractions that will essentially create a boil in the harbour and therefore make it unsafe for aircraft and marine operators.”

Hobbis says a letter of support with his signature, published on several occasions by the VIM proponents, has since been removed from promotional at his request, as it was predicated on outdated plans for the water lot in question.

Get in line for the government dime

Statistics Canada reported this week what many already know—British Columbia is shedding jobs at a rapid pace and Victoria is not insulated from the trend.

The latest data shows the number of employment insurance beneficiaries in Victoria increased 88.8 percent between February 2007 and February 2008, from 1,870 to 3,530.