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Johnson Street Bridge – Petition against the $42 Million Borrowing Bylaw
Download the Official Petition Form and the Information Sheet
Who can Sign the Petition?
Victoria City Boundary Map
All residents of the City of Victoria can sign the petition form. Municipal Boundary Map
If you live in another municipality and own property within the City of Victoria you may be eligible to sign. Please see the FAQs below.
How to Complete the Form
This is an official petition – forms must be completed correctly or might be invalidated.
- Print the form on a clean 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, with nothing on the back side. The PDF is in colour, but the City has told us that black-and-white printing is acceptable, as long as the detailed wording on the form is clear. Read it carefully.
- Print your full given name (no abbreviations)
- Print your full address: (“1302 Gladstone” is not acceptable; it must say “1302 Gladstone AVENUE”.) Include “Victoria, British Columbia” at the end of the address, so the City knows what municipality you live in. Postal code is not required
- Sign the form
Deadline is Monday January 4th at 4:30 PM
You can drop your forms at Victoria City Hall, or at the Blue Bridge Campaign Office
Unit A – 777 Blanshard St. (Corner of Fairfield and Blanshard)
Forms are available, and can be dropped in Ballot Boxes, at these locations. Look for Canvassers wearing Blue Bridge ‘pinnies’ in your neighbourhood.
We will pick up your completed forms upon request: Phone 250 590 4809 or email petition@johnsonstreetbridge.org
If you don’t have a printer or need a lot of hard copies for your friends, let us know, and we will deliver them to you. If you can’t get to a post office, we will arrange to pick them up.
You can deliver the signed form to City Hall, but we’re asking you to drop them to us instead. Why?
That way, we can verify that the form has been printed and filled out properly. The City will not check them until after January 4, and by then it will be too late if there’s a mistake. This way we can also keep track of the numbers, so we know how close we are to the 6,343 threshold. The City will not count the forms they’ve received until after January 4.
Volunteering
johnsonstreetbridge.ORG Campaign Office
Unit A 777 Blanshard St. (Corner of Blanshard and Fairfield)
Phone 250 590 4809 email: volunteers@johnsonstreetbridge.org
Can you help? Gathering 6400+ petition signatures will be work, and will be fun. Join a dedicated team of over 50 volunteers who are canvassing door to door, staffing tables and helping out in the campaign office. Give us a call or email if you can help.
Businesses, offices and organizations – we have posters, information sheets, petition forms and ‘ballot boxes’ for you to display and provide for your customers and staff. Please call 250 590 4809 or email petition@johnsonstreetbridge.org.
FAQ’s
Who can sign this petition?
You must 18 or older, be a Canadian Citizen, have lived in BC for at least 6 months, and in the municipal borders of the City of Victoria for at least 30 days. ( Map available soon )
Do I need to own property?
No – the counter petition can be signed by all City of Victoria residents. If you rent an apartment, share a house, live in a care home, you are eligible. All family members 18 and older in one household can sign forms.
How do I know if I live in the City of Victoria?
See the Map. If you pay any water bills or property tax to the City of Victoria, then your residence is within the municipal voting boundaries. If you are unsure, please email info@johnsonstreetbridge.org
Can our family sign one form?
Unfortunately No – each person must complete, and submit, a separate form.
Can I use a stamp for the address?
That is unclear from City of Victoria guidelines. We strongly suggest the Name, and address be printed by hand to ensure the petition form is valid.
Can I sign if I don’t live in Victoria but own property there?
If you live elsewhere in British Columbia, you may still be able to sign the petition as a “non-resident property elector”. Click HERE for more information.
Johnson Street Bridge Petition Form
Thanks very much for keeping track of the Johnson Street Bridge ‘counter petition’ numbers!
It might be good to display them prominently on the JohnsonStreetBridge.org site for all to see as they come in, perhaps with graphs, thereby generating daily mounting excitement.
We also now need to more publicly identify who we are as an ad hoc political community, in order to grow our numbers, to effectively win this ‘Alternative Approval Process’ or AAP.
As an unusual new coalition of Johnson Street Bridge preservasionists, fiscal moderates and pro-democracy advocates, we are not publicly funded.
We need to be very creative, encouraging a new higher standard of ongoing accountable transparency in public disclosure of our financing, signature-gathering and membership base while of course working strictly within the law.
This will help us publicize our efforts to gather signatures in favour of a referendum to save the Joseph Strauss heritage bascule bridge.
Ten per cent means, at the very least, we need about 6342 signatures, but let’s aim for at least 10,000 valid signatures in favour of a referendum on the future of the familiar old ‘Blue Bridge,’ to be on the safe side!
This is a David and Goliath situation, but I believe we can slay this giant project of philistinism.
Thanks so much to the hardworking pro-democrats, architectural historians and web-savvy co-directors at this ‘Blue Bridge’ JohnsonStreetBridge.org website, Ross Crockford, Mat Wright and Yule Heibel for leading the opposition on this!
Thanks also to all the new supporters of the referendum from the Liberal business community, including David Anderson, Rob Reid and Barry Hobbis and many others… the list is growing daily!
The opposition to Mayor Dean Fortin’s financial recklessness transcends partisan lines, and this gives me confidence that we will indeed get our justly deserved referendum, and also that we will win in that coming contest …
After all, only 12% of Victoria’s eligible voters voted for Dean Fortin to be Mayor of Victoria in the last municipal election in November 2008.
He has no mandate whatsoever to borrow $42,000,000 to destroy our landmark ‘Joseph Strauss Bridge.’
Greg Hartnell’s post was well scripted and hits the proverbial nail squarely on the head. Well done!
I have downloaded a bunch of forms and am on my way to to talk to friends, relatives and surrounding neighbours.This could be fun!!
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by matvic: Counter Petition – Forms, FAQ, + Submissions. Johnson Street Bridge, Victoria BC http://is.gd/51cap...
Having trouble with our printer, I went to City Hall today to get some of the JSB petition forms.
Without introducing myself or proving that I was an eligible Victoria resident elector, I asked for some, without specifying a number.
‘The limit is 10,’ the lady said.
‘Will the City be sending these forms by mail to the resident electors in Victoria?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ she said.
‘They can always download it from our website…’
I took 10 blank petition forms and headed over to the Cook Street Mocha House…
Just filled out one ‘alternative approval’ petition form myself, stuck it in an envelope, addressed it to johnsonstreetbridge.org, stuck a Christmas stamp on it, and took it directly to the nearest Poste Canada branch, which I believe is the same one on Fort Street where your poste box is located…
You are free to publicize that I have voted for the referendum to save Victoria’s unique ‘Joseph Strauss Bridge,’ if it will do you any good…
I think it is interesting for people to learn about who is supporting our cause, and why, and I hope that others may also feel free to identify themselves as having signed the petition to have a referendum on the future of the Joseph Strauss-designed Johnson Street Bridge.
Next step is to catch up with my hard-working wife, who is also, of course, opposed to the wasteful borrowing on ‘Fortin’s Folly’ when the needs of our homeless are still left unfinished…
I am not happy with the way the City Council is doing this ‘counter petition’ thing so far, and think we really need to encourage them to take it more seriously, and at least send out one form to each eligible voter by mail to inform them that the ‘alternative approval process’ is happening at all.
Increased active participation in democracy needn’t be an exercise in self-punishment, low turn-out or irrelevancy, but it does first require the active participation of the City government itself if this process is to have any real meaning beyond window-dressing.
As it is, if one does not have a good computer with a working printer, it makes it difficult to get a form without having to go all the way down to City Hall to pick one up…
I also think they must get more up-to-date on the technical side.
Having the form available in Pdf format is fine, but hardly seems adequate…
Surely there must be programmes available now that would enable secure online voting?
Gregory,
Thank you for your extensive comments. The counter petition process puts the onus on the community to oppose. In a perfect world the City of Victoria would take this process directly to the voters through a referendum, which is where a winning petition might lead, but for now we have to rely on the incredible efforts of volunteers to staff tables, run events, and canvass door-to-door.
One of the results of this process are some intangibles for those city councillors who voted against holding a referendum. They will be remembered by Blue Bridge volunteers, supporters, campaigners and the media. Come 2011, the next civic election….?
Victoria City Councillors Chris Coleman and Lynn Hunter were absent for the last crucial vote.
Has JohnsonStreetBridge.org heard anything about the reasons for their absences?
Of the two, prior to that vote, it seemed Councillor Hunter was the more adamant in her refusal to look at the less costly repair option.
I believe that Councillor Coleman was at least open-minded enough to have gone to the presentation by the Seattle preservasionist engineer, did he not?
Perhaps it was information gleaned at the 11th hour at the meeting that prompted his absence from the last vote on the Johnson Street Bridge…
Councillor Madoff may very well have just saved herself from certain electoral doom in 2011 by prudently voting with the leader of the opposition, Councillor Geoff Young.
Councillor Chandler also seemed to waver, with questions about the so-called ‘counter petition process,’ but finally voted for what can only be characterised as ‘unsustainable’ replacement anyway… perhaps she is unfamiliar with contemporary practical applications of conservation theory in terms of restoration of heritage architecture?
Pamela Madoff used to pride herself for her many crusades for these kinds of endangered heritage structures, so her votes to demolish the Joseph Strauss bridge must confuse and dismay many of her former fans… thus, this surprise vote against the ‘alternative approval process’ is counterintuitive, and indicates a rebelliousness that must drive the Mayor nuts.
Mayor Fortin thus had to rely on 3 ‘greens’ (Philippe Lucas, Sonya Chandler and John Luton) and 1 liberal (Charlayne Thornton Joe) to impose his irresponsible socialist undemocratic will on the 88% of Victorians who didn’t vote for him.
We will not forget this history in the next election, whatever happens to the Johnson Street Bridge.
I hope that by securing a referendum on the future of the Johnson Street Bridge, we may then go on to vote for it to be designated national heritage in conjunction with the federal monies already promised, and thus saved, and properly maintained for the Canadian people, in perpetuity…
Ross Crockford and his group should be given all the help possible to defeat the building of a new Johnson Street bridge. The questions and alternatives suggestions, make it obvious that City Council has not done their homework. A majority of Council are left-wing NDP supporters. To shuck their responsibility, they simply turned the matter over to the City Engineer, who in turn is preprogrammed to take the easiest and safest (for him) route….thus the recommendation to blow $63,000,000.00 on a new bridge. I note they are saying “it’s ONLY $63.00 a year per household for 20 years”, that’s an old left-wing ploy……what they fail to mention is the $63 is in addition to all the other “ONLY’s” that are added to the Victoria property tax bill every year, which according to a recent Canadian Independent Business Federation study are already completely out of line. In spite of what Mayor Fortin says……the citizens and City Council do not have a responsibility for social housing. It is noted commercial property owners who pay Victoria property taxes, but live outside the boundaries of Victoria City are not permitted to sign the petition……….a right Robin Blencoe and the NDP government took away in the 1970′s……yep…….. “taxation without representation……”……. I urge the residents of Victoria to get out and sign the Johnson Street Bridge organization’s petition before it’s too late.
[...] Official Elector Petition Form (PDF) : Information Sheet (PDF) : FAQs [...]
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Is there someone that I could speak to you regarding the great job that has been done on this petition and how I could contact the organizers . We need to deal with this current effort to INSTALL THE HST .
Thanks for any comments .