Sound the alarm!
The following is a letter to City of Victoria councillors, calling on them to demand answers from the mayor and City manager about delays in releasing the Crystal Pool and Fire Hall #1 reports – along with a Seismic Risk Assessment of City-Owned Buildings, which was completed on December 2010 but has not been released.
If you agree with this letter, and you are a resident of the City of Victoria or do business in the City, please put your full name in a comment at the bottom. We will include all names on the letter when we formally send it to the councillors on Thursday, October 27, at 9:00 am.
We will also speak to this matter at the council meeting on Thursday evening, starting at 7:00 pm at City Hall. If you wish to address the council yourself, you can sign up to speak HERE, as long as you do so by 11:00 am on Wednesday.
Dear Victoria Councillors,
Re: Delayed Assessments of City Facilities
We are residents and businesspeople of the City of Victoria.
On October 20, you received a presentation from the director of engineering about two reports, on the condition of Fire Hall #1 and the Crystal Pool.
We are deeply concerned that City managers have delayed presenting these and other reports to you, even though they deal with urgent matters of public safety.
Fire Hall #1 Needs Analysis. As you know from the excerpts included in the October 20 presentation, this report says the City’s main fire hall would be inoperational after a major seismic event, because collapsed entranceways would prevent fire trucks from leaving the building. However, the director of engineering did not cite the date of the report. The full report indicates on its cover that it was issued on March 10, 2010 – a year and a half ago.
We note that in the months immediately following that date, instead of releasing the report to council and the public, the City was busy promoting a new, seismically secure Johnson Street Bridge as the City’s number-one infrastructure priority, leading up to the November 2010 referendum.
The director of engineering’s explanation on October 20 that this report was delayed because of alterations to the report, and a change of fire chiefs, does not make sense. There is nothing in the report to indicate any alterations to it after March 2010. Former chief Angrove retired at the end of July 2011, a full year and four months after the report was issued. There is no credible excuse for the delay in releasing it.
Crystal Pool and Fitness Centre Evaluation Report. This report identifies several problems with the facility, including a non-compliant fire alarm system, delaminating concrete walls next to the children’s pool, and two drain covers that enable finger entrapment and have been subject to product recall. This last item was tagged by the report’s authors as a “life safety” issue that the City should address immediately.
Again, the excerpts provided to you on October 20 did not indicate the date of the report. Page 3 of a Request For Offers, dated August 23 of this year, says the pool report was dated July 14, 2011.
Although there was only three months’ delay in presenting this report to you, we believe greater urgency was required because it identified potential liabilities for the City. Comments by the City’s director of parks and recreation on October 20 suggest these issues will not be resolved until the pool is closed for maintenance on December 5. You should ask the City’s solicitors if it is legally prudent to keep the pool open between now and then.
Seismic Risk Assessment for City Buildings. In March of this year, David Broadland, the publisher of Focus magazine, initiated a freedom of information request with the City to see its seismic evaluations of City properties. In May, Mr. Broadland was advised that such a report was issued in December of 2010:
From: [Name omitted by jsb.org to protect privacy]
Date: May 11, 2011 4:09:23 PM PDT (CA)
To: “David at Focus Magazine”
Subject: RE: FOI Request 2011-03-27 – Seismic Risk AssessmentsHello -
The first two reports as mentioned in the letter, Seismic Risk Assessment for City Owned Buildings (December, 2010) and Fire Hall Needs Analysis (March, 2010) are complete.
The third, a Crystal Pool report, is not complete.
I’m keeping an eye on when these reports go to Council and will advise further.
[Name omitted by jsb.org to protect privacy]
Two months later, when it was apparent that the Seismic Risk Assessment would not be presented to council quickly, Mr. Broadland and City staff had further exchanges, resulting in a letter dated July 20, 2011. In it, City staff reply that “a decision has been made to defer release of the reports pending review by Council.”
Therefore, we call on you to:
1) Direct the City Manager to provide council and the public with full and complete explanations for the delays in releasing the Fire Hall and Crystal Pool reports; and
2) Direct the City Manager to immediately release the Seismic Risk Assessment of City properties, so that residents can better understand the risks facing City facilities, and the possible financial implications.
With kind regards,
Ross Crockford
Director, johnsonstreetbridge.org
and ….
I agree these reports should have been presented.
Please add my name to this as a City of Victoria elector.
Please add my name to the list, urging a full and open discussion of this matter.
Please add my name as a Victoria elector.
It is essential to look at the whole picture especially when one particular pet project- the replacement of the bridge, is being justified on the basis of risk.
Secondly, be aware of the risk of retaining an engineering consultant- the consultant is part of the construction industry and he has liability concerns- he is not likely to recommend the least cost solution. As well, the consultant is retained to look at the asset in isolation not holistically. Stop using consultants- use and develop the resources in-house.
Please add my name to the list. Not only was the 19-month release delay excessive, but that is the very period which could have been used to gain public feedback.
I work, live and pay property taxes in the municipality of Victoria. I didn’t think I could be surprised by any further skullduggery committed by the council and city staff, but prioritizing the bridge over the firehall is madness. Sitting on the report for 19 months is beyond the pale. For the safety of the city’s citizens and our finiancial future, Dean Fortin and his cadre of incompetent yes-councillors need to be removed from office next month at election time.
Please add my name to the list; we deserve and need to know what’s going on with our civic properties.
Please add my name to this as a City of Victoria elector.
Please add my name to the list.
The entrance to City Hall should have a prominent sign declaring “This Building is Ethics Free.” It’s a sad state for Victoria. Our City deserves better.
Please add my name to this as a City of Victoria elector.
Please add my name to the letter as a City of Victoria resident and voter.
This is simply inexcusable!
Please add my name as a concerned citizen amd voter.
I support the demands for more explanations. I am a Victoria resident.
Please add my name as a City of Victoria resident and voter.
Absolutely, these are primary concerns and I as a voter, demand immediate public explanations
Please include me in the list. I really have to wonder sometimes, who council and city staff are meant to serve and whose best interests they have in mind. They don’t seem to be accountable to anyone!
These infrastructure/seismic issues should have been considered before the city declared the bridge to be the #1 infrastructure priority. Now all of our “eggs” are in one blue bridge basket and there is little left to cover the other projects.
Shame on this council. We did not vote for this. It is very demoralizing. Please add all of our names to the list.
Please add my name to the letter. Thank you! I support this request to provide the public with explanations for the delays in releasing the Fire Hall and Crystal Pool reports and to release the Seismic Risk Assessment of City properties.
I want to see an honest Canada as it once was and I particularly want to see decency return in my home town — Victoria.
The delay in releasing the Crystal Pool, the Fire Hall #1 and the Seismic Risk Assessment of City Owned-Buildings is due to the ad-hoc management system in place at city hall. Consequently, without the contextual information in the reports, the Blue Bridge decision was made without a transparent priority setting decision process. The public therefore voted for replacing the Blue Bridge with incomplete information. Moreover, Council made an indispensable decision with insufficient information. The City urgently needs a modern management system to avoid future ad-hoc decisions on major projects.
At the time of discussions regarding the by-election and bridge referendum, there were many questions from the public regarding other necessary expenditures on the horizon. If the fire-hall report was in it should have been on the table. There is a sad trail of apparent attempts to mislead the public which this Council must take responsibility for. Please add my name to this letter.
It’s unacceptable that the release of these reports were (and in some cases still are) delayed. The public deserves the real explanation, especially prior to the election. Thank you for your efforts.
Please add my name as a concerned citizen and taxpayer.
Once again I am shocked and disgusted by the way in which vital information is being deliberately withheld from the public by the self-interest of individuals at City Hall. And this latest escapade is sadly consistent with your conduct so far: after spending hundreds of thousands of our dollars persuading us to let you replace the city’s only train link, it turns out that you’re not actually replacing the train bridge at all, as you promised, but only destroying it (after negligently failing to maintain it). Shame on you — not only for your incompetence, but your mendacity about it.
Please add my name. Good work to identify these issues. I live in the City of Victoria and I am ashamed of the way that my municipal representatives have neglected the city’s infrastructure in favour of a vanity project – an overpriced, unnecessary replacement bridge for the Blue Bridge.
Please add my name to the list.
This is a very sad state of affairs. The public deserves a explanation, especially prior to the election (not in 19 months!). Thank you for remaining vigilante about these matters.
Please add my name to your letter. I am disappointed that one more time the Mayor, Council and administrative staff have left the public in the dark. We could have saved ourselves the expenditure of the referendum if a proper administrative process had been followed. Heads should roll for that blunder.I sincerely hope that a believable explanation will be available to the public prior to next election.It is time that transparency and intellectual honesty returns to City Hall and its staff and that deliberations,priority settings and publication of the same are introduced and followed.
I endorse this letter and urge Mayor and Council to cease the secrecy with which it has surrounded all the planning issues regarding the Traveller’s Inns, the Bridge replacement, and seismic reports on Victoria’s vital infrastructure.
Short term expediency has replaced vision, hence there is no rail-link, no transportation plan, and instead the spending of tax-payer’s money on messaging how to think.
Public assets need maintenance, witness the sorry spectacle of the Bridge,
unpainted for a decade while generously salaried city managers come and go,
leaving the problems for the next manager, the next mayor and council.
The neglicence is there for all to see–in the Bridge in its upright position, and the decaying low-income housing, the pool, all of which could have been faced earlier had our civic government not obfuscated, hid its reports and conducted its meetings “in-camera,” and relied on perception management rather than honestly anticipating the needs of our community and overseeing the orderly maintenance of our public assets.
Andy Sinats
Victoria, BC
As a voter I demand immediate public accountability on this issue, and am once again disappointed by the Dean Machine’s playing politics with public safety.
Nothing would surprise me going on at the KREMLIN. Add me to the list. Pity the media is all but gagged on any of the details.