Transcript: Council - 2026-05-25

Sam.

Welcome everyone to council meeting on May 25, 2026. I will call this meeting to order and as you can see, we have full bench strength up here at council table. And it's been a while. So, so glad to have everybody back. Council, there is one late item to add to the agenda and that is under 9. 1 and its correspondence from the district of Central Saanich. So I would look for a motion to approve.

So move approval agenda with the addition.

Second.

Thank you. All those in favor? Any opposed? None opposed. Motions carried. I'm going to, with the CAO's permission, just let people know that he did have a bit of an accident last week and he will be away for a period of time and we wish him speedy recovery. But I did ask him if it would be all right to let people know and he indicated that would be okay. Just in case you wonder why, there's going to be revolving people and Mr. Knoke has taken up the torch this week. All right. And I have Councillor Bram for the acknowledgement. Please.

I'd like to begin by acknowledging that we are gathered on the traditional territory of the Lekwungen people represented today by the Sanghis and Cosapsan nations. I'm grateful to live, work and serve in this community and to recognize the deep history, stewardship and connection these nations have to the land.

Thank you. All right, we have minutes of the regular council meeting held on April 27th and regular council meeting held on May 4th. Motion to adopt. Second. Thank you. Any errors, omissions or changes? Seeing none. All those in favor? Any opposed? None opposed. Motions carried. We're down to bylaws for adoption or first, second and second reading. And first up we have deer fencing, zoning bylaw amendment. And who will be speaking to this?

Good evening, council and councillors. Jacob Lisowski, planner with Development Services. Before you is a change to the zoning bylaw to allow deer fencing. We researched bylaws in the area in Greater Victoria, especially Saanich and Oak Bay. And we received direction from council in January to use the Saanich bylaw as a guide, but also allowing for deer fencing in front yards. We went to Advisory Planning Commission APC in April they approved it with no amendments. I'll go over briefly what the bylaw contains. So on the one hand we're defining, we have two new definitions, one for deer fence, one for deer fence extension. And now I'll go over some of the design elements of these deer fences. So they limit the height to 2. 5 meters. They're only in residential zones with six or fewer dwelling units.

They're made of woven wire mesh that has openings of 5 x 10 cm or smaller. And there are no elements that could impale deer such as finials or protrusions above 1. 2 meters in height. That concludes my presentation. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there questions for staff Councillor Cavan?

Yeah, I just wanted to ask about a few of the elements that are in there. My understanding is this only allows for a mesh as opposed to what we see other. Some of the residents have already put in horizontal wires across and also put solid wood on the top. And I was just curious why the thinking was of not allowing that and why to require the mesh.

So this is a bit of an involved answer. I'll start with the horizontal wire aspect of it. The reason we're doing a grid instead of a horizontal wire is because baby deer may be able to fit through a horizontal wire. Another thing is hoof or leg entanglement is possible with a horizontal wire. And head and muzzle can sometimes go through. So the head of the deer can go through that horizontal wire. Whereas if you have a mesh, all those things are impossible. To your second point, we do see this wooden horizontal bar at the top of these fences sometimes throughout Esquire Malt there are versions of this. There is no scientific, necessarily scientific reason for outlawing it.

What has been suggested that if a deer does attempt to jump, then it hits something very hard at the top of that wood. So deer may be calculating that, hey, I'm going to try this jump anyway, even though it looks kind of high. And deer can better judge the height of the fence if they can see this solid wooden horizontal bar. The other thing is from a streetscape perspective, it does provide present a bit of a solid wall of a fence. And in front yards we want that to be as transparent to see through as possible. So both the streetscape aspect and the potential for deer injury.

And one more follow up was around the wire mesh versus plastic netting. And I'm just curious if what's the thinking behind that? Is it so it's a material and not just the mesh size is what's being specified?

Yes. We are proposing only metal wire mesh, not plastic, not wood. The things like plastic are more flimsy, they're not as durable, they're not as long lasting. Deer may actually want to chew on it and they could potentially chew or break plastic, whereas that's much less possible with a metal material. So while it is more costly, it lasts longer and it's more durable. The metal Aspect. If the deer do chew on a plastic fence, then they may actually become entangled in it. Also is another aspect, one of the, the intentions of all this deer fencing is to prevent entanglement or deer getting trapped and getting those calls from the public and also just harm to the deer. We don't want that.

Thank you, Councillor Hallowell.

Thank you very much. We've been talking about deer and deer fencing since I was first on council. So it's nice to have a draft bylaw in front of us. I have a deer general question and a very specific question. My specific question is in the staff report it talks about part of the intent is not to have sort of an institutional look in nature, but in reading the actual bylaw language, it doesn't sort of make any reference to that. So I guess the question is, is the intent of having posts and woven wire mesh itself not creating that institutional look, or is there an actual compliance thing there with the bylaw?

Unless I missed it, but it's one page. I don't think I did.

Sorry, I don't think I understand the question. What do you mean by.

Let me bring it a level up. In the staff report it was talking about how the intent of the bylaw is to allow frontier fences so that they're see through and have transparency, but that they're not institutional in nature. Institutional is the word. Right, sorry, now I'm second guessing myself.

Let me just find the wording.

Apologies. Industrial. Sorry, industrial look in nature. Institutional, industrial look. And I was wondering how that translates into the wording of the bylaw itself. That doesn't make any sort of mention to like an industrial look.

There is no mention of an industrial look. You're correct. We wanted a clean, neat type of fence that's repeatable, understandable, and that isn't ugly. Industrial fences, like for example, chain link fences are what we mean by say an industrial look. And chain link fences are not the same as a wire mesh. I think that's where we were going with that.

Okay, so the thought being that the mesh sizes as written in the bylaw are enough, that it wouldn't allow for something that was more of an industrial look.

Yes. If you look at the examples of wire meshes in Esquimalt, they do not look industrial like say in an industrial

park, or

we think they're more attractive and more residential in nature than those.

Okay, thank you. And then so my second question is, if you can just remind me, over the last few years we've obviously had a lot of correspondence from the public on deer fencing. I think there's a lot of support for finding ways to mitigate the impacts of deer. But have we done any like survey or community engagement or anything sort of soliciting opinions on these or has it been more just received as they've come in from residents?

Received as they've come in. And that was five years ago. So we haven't had anything since and we haven't done public engagement on this. There will be an opportunity for a public hearing.

Thank you, Councillor Boardman. Thank you. You may not have the answer to this question, but are we anticipating that any of any existing structure could be grandfathered in any way or will this be sort of a fresh state and everybody starting from scratch?

Your worship to Councilor Boardman. Grandfathering only occurs when zoning changes. So those fences still technically could be illegal. We probably will not enforce on those for anything existing. But. Yeah. So grandfathering as a term doesn't actually

apply in this case.

Okay. But everything moving forward will.

I have to. I have to conform. Yeah. And unless we get like really stringent complaints about somebody's fence, we'll probably just.

Okay, let it go.

Councillor Morrison, that was my same question. So it sounds like there's going to be an unofficial grandfathering, but still complaint driven. So you're saying that if we were to pass this bylaw, it would be a bylaw in place, but would only be enforced for existing properties if there was a complaint.

Yeah. We're not going to go to everybody with a dear friends and say you now must comply with this. That's. We could, but we're not going to unless directed so by council.

Okay. And roughly, do we know just in terms of numbers, like do we ever actually count how many? Because they're mostly just. You can find them quite simply because they are mostly all single family homes. Do we know roughly how many numbers of existing. When we talk about unofficially grandfathering or different types of non compliant existing fences?

No.

That would be a really interesting pattern on a map because you might find out where the deer. There's a correspondence between deer fences and deer, but no, we haven't.

Okay. And just I think a lot of us spend a lot of time walking around Esquimald and you just notice particular ones and it doesn't seem like there's a large number that are already in place. But we'll see what happens if this bylaw were to go in and that changes.

Thank you, Councillor Armour. Thank you.

And this is. Well, it could be a question for staff or for apc liaisons such as Councillor Morrison. I notice the APC did recommend first, second, third readings be granted. I'm just curious. Was there much discussion at AEPC on this matter?

Don't recall a lot of discussion. I don't know if Mr. Brown was present or not but. Or Mr. Like.

There was very little discussion.

That's what I seem to recall.

There was. There was a talk about fences at the. At the visibility triangle and whether these deer fences would be encroaching into the visibility triangle for traffic safety, but that's not a concern.

Was that the corner lots you're talking about?

Yes.

Yeah, I see. I recall something about corner lots.

Obviously these would not be allowed in coroner lots within that visibility triangle.

Right. Yeah.

Thank you.

Any further questions? Councillor Kevin. Okay, please do.

I'm just going to move the staff recommendation that Council give first and second readings to the Zoning Bylaw Amendment Bylaw 2026 Number 3183 to incorporate regulations for deer fencing and authorize staff to hold a public hearing at a later council date.

Second.

Thank you. Do you wish to speak to it Just.

I want to reiterate what Councillor Helliwell said. Just. We've been talking this for a long time. It's great to see it coming forward. I also like the fact that it's simple and very short and so it's very clear what is allowed and on. So that's. I think that's a great example of a bylaw that is going to be easy to comply with for people. So I appreciate that and thank you guys for the work.

Councillor Brain?

Yes. The person who brought this forward as a notice of motion many moons ago. I'm really happy to see that this is now moving forward.

So.

Excellent. Thank you.

Further discussion Seeing none. All those in favor? Any opposed? None opposed. Motions carried. We now move down to public input. And this is on agenda item 7 and 8. 7 being the E&N storm sewer replacement and 8 being the committee of the whole resolution. So are there any members of the public that wish to speak? Any members of the public that wish to speak? I'll call a third time. Seeing none. We'll move on. And the first staff report is ENN storm sewer replacement. Mr. Clary.

Thank you, your worship. Before you is a request to award a construction contract for the replacement of a failed storm main that travels underneath the E railway and discharges through the Esquimo engraving dock site. Staff are recommending a contract be awarded to the low bidder for this work. I'm here to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you. Questions, Councillor Cavins, I'm just curious about.

This has been going on since December, January. Just curious, do we have a sense of how much the interim solutions have cost? We talk a lot about putting aside money to replace storm trains proactively and I'm just curious so that we understand what happens when we don't. Both from a. Yeah.

Through the chair. The costs to date to address the problem in the interim are around $100,000 so far. A lot of those costs are the bypass pumping. We had to rent very large pumps that were needed to bypass the water over and above the ENN railway. So we had to go under the CRD trail and then underneath the railway and then back over to the graving dock side. So that was a large portion of it. As with before we had those pumps in place, we had to hire contractors using vacuum trucks to suck water during rain events. So in all that's about $100,000.

And my understanding was there was some damage to residents homes around this. And I'm just curious, aside from the trauma that happens when someone's basement floods, are we as a municipality liable for that damage and is that included in that or how do we figure out what the value of that is

through the chair? Those costs that I just mentioned aren't part of any damage to private property. There certainly was damage in this case, but that is all processed through our insurance through MIA bc. So should the township be found at fault, that would be processed through insurance and we wouldn't pay directly but processed again through insurance except our premiums would go up in that case.

Thank you, Councillor Armour. Thank you.

As I understand it, the townships and CRD and various regional cuts contribute money every year to the maintenance of the E railway. Is this in any way connected with the fact that the ENN railway is there on that site or where this could have happened with any sort of

ground cover through the chair, I would say it's not connected. There is some drain infrastructure for the E N trail, so they have catch basins that tie into this main. During time of construction there was a piece of the main that was actually replaced with pvc. So it's unlikely that it's related in any way.

Councillor Morrison, just under communications, it talks about like the contractor is not responsible for the communications that'll be done by the municipality. But does the contractor have control over the disruptions and what you know, like. Because it'll be pretty significant. It's as you know, widely used bike, cycling and pedestrian trail if we're talking about the actual CRD trail being disrupted and detours having to be in place, is that, is that entirely controlled by the contractor or is just the municipality have some sort of, you can't shut it down for a month straight or whatever, you know, I mean there will be expectations for the public to have, have it as managed as best as possible in terms of impacts to the users.

So thank you through the chair. It's a good question. So that's managed through the crd. So in order for the contractor to actually do any of that work, they need a permit from the crd. So we put that on the contractor to obtain. There are certain expectations in order to receive that permit that you have a traffic management plan in place that provides a AAA all age and ability detour of the, of the path and proper notice would have to go out. And so it's something that they would look to minimize the cost of traffic control to manage. That detour isn't cheap. So it's the type of work that they do on a very limited basis, but it is the contractor's responsibility to coordinate.

But we did provide some examples of a traffic management plan that they, that they could use, but they need to work with the CRD on that story.

Through the chair. Do you roughly have an approximate estimate of how much disruption there would be like in terms of days or weeks or like just at a higher level of what you think would be involved for this project

through the chair? In terms of the actual detour of

the

trail, the pathway, it might be around a week. I would guess at this time they're trying to minimize that work. This is work that doesn't involve a lot of open cut trenching. It's happening underground. So there's a lot of work that would happen leading up to that in terms of pits on each end of the railways right away. But then when they're actually working within that zone, they'll try to minimize it and do it as fast as they can. I guess it's around a week, it could be two weeks, but it's certainly not months that we're looking at.

That's good to know. I think that the public would be okay with this, but although we're getting into the season, of course when it gets really popular to cycle and take the long walks along the trail. But I think that time period that you estimate is, is going to be very manageable for the public. Thank you.

Any further questions for staff? Seeing none. You do have a recommendation in front of you.

I'LL move the staff recommendation.

Okay. Do you wish to read it into the.

Oh,

I'll let the seconder read it.

If he wishes that council award a construction contract to Altera Construction Limited for 2,885 $726 excluding GST and future change orders within the approved budget funded from the storm sewer infrastructure and sanitary sewer infrastructure programs to replace a storm sewer main that crosses underneath the E and N railway as described in staff report EPW 2604.

Thank you. Do you wish to speak to it? Mover. Seconder. Any further discussion? All right, seeing none. All those in favor? Any opposed? None opposed. Motions carry. We move down and we're at reports and minutes from committee and we have the committee of the whole resolutions to be ratified and there are three. But council I'm looking for a motion

all three recommendations.

Thank you seconder. Thank you. Do you wish to speak to any of you?

Lots of conversation.

Seconder? No. Wow, we're a quiet bunch tonight. I will call the question. All those in favor? Any opposed? None opposed. Motions carried. We do have the late item which is the letter from Central Saanich. All right. And that was on correspondence so we are now down to public comment period. Are there any members of the public that wish to speak? Any members of the public that wish to speak? And a third opportunity flies by and so I will look for a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Second.

All those in favor? Any opposed? None opposed. Thanks everybody and thanks for coming. Well done staff.