Transcript: Committee of the Whole - 2026/05/21

And welcome to the Thursday, May 21st Committee of the Whole Meeting of Victoria City Council. This morning we have for our consideration two land use matters, two staff reports and two council member motions. But of course before we begin, we always take a moment to reflect on the remarkable opportunities that we have here to make these decisions and have these discussions and conversations and debates. Do primarily to the remarkable stewardship over so many generations of the two nations on whose territories are city sits in its entirety, the La Quangqin people of the Songhees Nation and the Coase Absorb Nation. They have, as I say, for so many generations centuries taken care to preserve and nurture and care for the land and the waters that surround Vancouver Island, and in particular here locally in greater Victoria.

And the City of Victory itself has occupied some remarkable lands for the last 160 plus years. I had the opportunity yesterday to meet with a group of visiting ambassadors from Europe, from the EU. And as part of their welcome, they learned a great deal from one of the local elders about the indigenous lands that are here. And what struck me about that was how remarkable they found it, that in all of their important work, their host agency took the time to provide about 25 minutes at the opening of a very compressed day to allow this storyteller to tell some important stories about the lands that these people were visiting. And in observing them, as I had a chance to join them at the same time, they were quite struck by the fact that this was so important and that the city in particular had developed over some years this very rich relationship that we enjoy.

I mentioned that because I think it is important for us occasionally to reflect on the value of the relationship that we have with the two nations and how extraordinary it is. And in doing so, I urge all of us, as I always do, to take a moment in each day and just think about how extraordinary that is. And to observe or hear or taste or do or see something that brings that home to us each individually. When we do that, I hope that we think of the small words that we have taken into our own language. And that is to reflect their language to say thank you and to say hi chica - CMNU - Quilia. And in so doing for that instant, give yourself an opportunity to reflect to yourself, but to those around you, how important it is for us to understand and learn and continue to nurture those relationships. Hitch Yamdakulia. I do have not to have any remarks to share today

than what we will do during the day, and so we will move on to late items, none of which I'm aware need to be added to today's agenda. And so we have a consent agenda that is proposed. It's only two items. It's item G2, the technical high angle rope Rescue Program. An item H1, the Council Member Motion with regard to the Cumberland BC, miner's Memorial Graveside Vigil. I am aware that there is a question actually about G2, the technical high angle rope Rescue Program. And so I'm going to remove that from the consent agenda to provide an opportunity for that question to be asked. When we arrive at that item on the agenda. That would leave only item H1 on the consent agenda. Does anyone wish to either remove that or add anything else. Councillor Cammington. I'd like to add F1 Mayor. F1. I'm going to object to that, having to be able to propose an amendment to that. Sorry, I shouldn't have laughed. That's

entirely appropriate for you to suggest that. But we also have a custom, when we ask that if anyone liked to rub anything or add anything, if anyone wishes to object. We always allow the opportunity for discussion. So another thing else then, I'm going to suggest that are considered agenda is compromised only of the one item H1. So I would like to move that, please. Councillor Coleman is moving, Councillor Kim is seconding all those in favor. Anyone opposed. That is unanimous. Thank you very much for that. Just a heads up for our fire chief. There will be a question about G2 when we get to that point on the agenda just so the heat is making himself available for that. That does take us on two item F1, and this is in fact the Rezoning application and development permit with variances application for the properties at 829 through 899 4th Street and 846 through 856 Broton Street. I believe there is a presentation. Yes, we have

a bevy of staff here to help us understand this. Take your time to get yourself comfortable. And when you're ready, we'll send it over to you. And please do remind us who you are for the record and for the public. Good morning, Mayor Alto and members of council. My name is Rob Bateman, senior planner with Development Services. Today I will be presenting a rezoning and development permit variances application. For 829 to 899 4th Street, an 8460 56 Brighton Street. The proposal is to rezone from the CA2 zone, the CHPOB zone. And the CHP CR zone, uh, to a new zone in order to increase the density and allow multi - unit residential uses at this location. The proposal is to construct three mixed use buildings at 2711 and 10 stories with an overall density of 6. 46th one FSR. There is a concurrent development permit with variances. Application as well. Here are the relevant sections of the local government Act. The properties located in the downtown core. You can see the

4th Street Corridor on this image. Which includes primarily low - rise buildings. Adjacent properties include pioneer square at the bottom right, which is heritage designated. And 11th Store Mixed - Use building at 825 Fort Street and a nine - story mixed - use building at 838 Broughton Street. The subject property is presently used as various stores, offices, and services, along with the pay parking lot. Here are photos of the subject property. These slides show various views from Fort Street. The existing adjacent buildings can also be seen in the bottom right photo. Here, more photos of the subject property. These photos were taken from the other side of the site on Broughton Street. This slide shows adjacent properties. These were all taken from the intersection of Fort and Quadr Streets. The top left photo on this slide is where the Y used to be unbroten Street.

The pioneer squares at the bottom. The bottom left slide shows some examples of historic facades of heritage buildings, which are typical the Fort Street corridor. I'm first going to speak to the rezoning application in relation to the OCP and the downtown core area plan. And then I'll speak to the development permit with variances application and show you the plans. The site is located in the downtown core where the star is on this image. The proposals generally consistent with the broad objectives of the OCP by providing more housing and commercial space downtown. It includes approximately 329 dwelling units, of which 66 percent are seniors rental housing.

14 Affordable rental units in the seniors residents would be secured for a period of 10 years. At the City's meeting income affordable rental rates. The proposal also meets the minimum number of required. Family housing units. The voluntary public benefits and associate legal agreements have not been determined yet. But the applicant is currently proposing to secure public plaza. Public art and childcare facility through legal agreements. I'll show you these on the plans in the minute. The proposal does not, however, align with aspects of the downtown core urban structure guidance related to the overall scale of the building and the downtown urban form. The OCPs urban structure concept for the downtown core envisions in urban form with larger scale buildings along Blanchard in Yaat Streets, which then taper off to the edge of the downtown core. To the smaller scale buildings in the surrounding neighbourhoods beyond. Such as the Fairfield neighbourhood at lower right on this map.

The proposal for a 27 - story building in this location, therefore undermines the overall urban structure concept by proposing a larger scale building in the location that should be providing a transition to the smaller scale buildings adjacent to the downtown core. For comparison, the tallest existing building of the City is currently 25 stories. And that building is the Hudson Development, which is located on Harold Street, between Douglas and Blanchard Streets. The OCP is implemented through the more detailed policies found in the downtown core area plan. And other policy documents that were developed in close collaboration with the community. In this case, the downtown core area plan reinforces the urban structure concept of the OCP by locating the tallest buildings. Up to a maximum height of 24 stories and a maximum density of 6 to 1 FSR. Between Blanchard and Douglas Streets. That is the dark brown colour above and to the left of the subject site on this map. The proposal not only significantly exceeds

the envision tights and densities for the site's location. It also exceeds the maximum heightened density envisioned for the largest scale buildings in the downtown overall. The proposed height is 222 percent taller than the envisione tight. And 29 percent more dense. It proposes 80 metres in 27 stories, whereas the policy envisions only 36 metres and 12 stories. And it proposes 6. 46 to 1 FSR, whereas the policy envisions only 5 to 1 FSR. With a base of 220 FSR. Maintaining the cities intended urban form fosters of predictable investment in development ecosystem. Add certainty to infrastructure investments and helps to manage land speculation. Approving a proposal that is this far ahead of alignment with the heightened scale policy may detract from these goals. It's also worth noting that as part of the recent OCP adoption, council provide the direction to update the downtown core area plan. Proceeding with this application, while that broader planning initiative is underway, could be problematic because it would likely presuppose outcomes for

the area. It could also raise confusion for stakeholders in the road trust in the City's Planning processes. Given these policies, policy inconsistencies, the recommendation is to decline the application and no alternative recommendation has been provided to proceed with the application in its current form. If council still chooses to move the application forward, they recommended that the per overall scale be reduced to improve alignment with city policy. After which a more detailed review would be completed before the application goes to the advisory design panel and then returns to Committee of the Whole Meathing. And now I will speak to the development permute variances application. Overall, the revised proposal is not considered sufficiently consistent with the development permit area objectives and guidelines. This analysis focuses on the broad design themes of massing. Heritage context, and separation space between the towers. Because it has anticipated that the overall scale of the prosyl will need to be revised for alignment with the OCP. And decap. I'm first going to

summarize these three themes before walking you through the plans. So I'll start with amassing on this slide in front of you here. The massing should complement adjacent heritage buildings and provide access to sunlight and views. To help achieve this, the towers should be set back from the street so that the base is the primary defining element for the site. The base along Fort Street should be approximately nine metres to 14 metres in height to achieve a comfortable street enclosure and to relate to the height of the heritage street walls nearby. This diagram illustrates this concept of having a base with the tarries above. Although the proposed seniors rental building does have a break in the facade, the majority of the street wild would be 34 metres in height. Well above the envisioned maximum. The two straw the residential buildings do not have bases in our approximately 80 metres and 31 metres, respectively. I'll show this to you on the plans in the moment. The second

broad design themes, the heritage context. New buildings should reflect the spatial organisation and elements of the historic facades of adjacent heritage buildings. Including the General Proportions, rhythm of structural bays, window wall ratios, and composition. The proposal's lack of an appropriate base, along with the ground floor material choice of glazing and aluminum composite panel, uh, does not achieve this. The proposed will also lacks the appearance of small - scale frontages with regular insight entrances, which is characteristic of the Fort Street corridor. This diagram illustrates some of these elements of nearby historic facades, which the proposal should be designed to reflect. And the last design theme that I'll highlight is the separation space between buildings. When multiple towers are located on one site, such as with this proposal, they should be located at least 20 metres apart to provide access to sun and help achieve livability and privacy for individual residential units. As illustrate in this diagram.

I'll show you on an upcoming slide how the proposal is substantially smaller separation spaces. And they'll show you the plans. Starting with the underground parking. The applicant is proposing variances to reduce the number of parking spaces from 318 - 2089 to reduce the number of accessible parking spaces from 10 to 9 into decrease the minimum percentage of ground - mounted bike spaces from 51 percent The proposed transportation demand management measures. However, are considered insufficient mitigation for the proposed reduction in parking spaces and the variances therefore not supported. This is the proposed site plan. And level 1 floor plan. At the top left is the senior's rental housing, which is 11 stories tall. You can see the commercial uses on the ground floor. An indoor amenity space is also located on this floor for the residents above. At top right is the 27 stray stradder residential building. Which also has commercial on the ground floor. And it includes a cafe. These two buildings both have main

residential entrances off of 4t Street. At the bottom is the other strata residential building, which is 10 stories. This building also has commercial on the ground floor and the main entrance is off of quadrt Street. Access to the underground parking is from Broughton Street at the bottom of the image. This image also shows the proposed public plaza, which provides a pedestrian connection between Fort and Quadr Streets. This is the second floor. The child care facilities and the seniors rental building with access to an outdoor play area. The strata building at top right has an indoor mayor D space and patio. And the strata building at the bottom also has a shared outdoor may of these space access from level 2. Here's a typical floor plan for the three proposed buildings. This image also shows how the proposal does not meet the envisioned 20 metre separation space between buildings. They're proposed 27 - story tower is only 9. 09 metres apart from the rental building. And

only 13. 83 metres apart from the other strata building. The rental building is only 3. 34 metres from the side property line. Which provides insufficient separation to the existing adjacent tower. Tower should be located 10 metres from side and rear property lines. This impacts access to sun, livability and privacy for the residential units. Here's the 4th Street elevation, exterior finishes include aluminum composite panel. Brick veneer window wall, curtain wall glazing, and concrete. This image shows how the proposal does not provide the base and the tower. Which reduces access sunlight and sky views from the public street. You can also see the lack of separation space between buildings on site. And the insufficient setback at the right of the image. Here's the quadrus 3 elevation. This image shows how the bases of the proposed buildings do not reflect the spatial organisation and elements of the historic facades of the adjacent heritage buildings. Such as the General Proportions, rhythm of structural bays, window wall ratios and composition.

Here's the Brown Street elevation, the existing adjacent building is not shown in this image so that you can see the South side of the rental building beyond it. This slide shows the proposal with the existing adjacent building on Bruten Street. The 10 to 12 story buildings that you can see in this image are examples of the approximate height that is envisioned for this location. In order to transition from the tallest buildings in downtown out towards the lower buildings in the Fairfield neighbourhood. The buildings and the priority growth area along the edge of downtown are envisioned to be up to six stories. And this slide. Shows the proposal of the existing adjacent building on Fort Street.

Again, you can see out does not provide the base below the towers as well as the insufficient separation space. Here's the shadow study. And here is the landscape plan. Landscaping materials include hard and soft surfaces, including concrete paving, unit pavers, trees and shrubs. As well as benches and rain gardens. In this image, you can see how the proposal includes green roofs. And here are renderings of the proposal. In summary, while generally consistent with the objectives of the OCP related to providing housing and commercial space, the proposal for a development at the density of 6. 461 FSR with three buildings at 2, 11, and 10 stories is inconsistent with the envisioned urban form for this area of downtown. And greatly exceeds the heightened density and visioned in the decap. Which undermines overarching city policy and exacerbates land speculation concerns. The proposed design also does not meet the broad objectives and key guidelines of the development perma area related to massing, tarot separation, setbacks, and the response

to the diverse heritage character along Fort Street. Furthermore, proceeding with this application, while the broader initiative to update the DCAP is underway, could be problematic because it could presuppose outcomes for the area caused confusion for stakeholders and the road trust in the city's planning processes. It's there for recommended for council's consideration at the application be declined. Thank you, and I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much, Mr. Bateman. We'll start with questions. We would like to start. I have some questions if no one else does. Councillor Loughton, you have some questions? Go ahead. Why don't you start it? Good morning. Thanks and through you, Mayor. Thanks for the presentation. Um, I'm just, I'm curious about the overall, um, overview of this project I read in some of the documents that the initial rezoning happened in 2017. And I'm wondering if you could just give me a background on. Why this has been nine years in the making. Through the mayor, uh, sure

I can provide some background. There was a previous application. I believe, uh, it was around applied for in 2017. And, uh, it ended up being retired in 2024. And that was for a 10 story mixed use building. I believe that one did go to the Committee of the Whole, uh, but it was, it didn't proceed beyond that. And so, uh, yeah, so the application ended at that point in time. It was not rezoned at that point in time. Was that the same proponent. Or through the math, shallot way in manager of neighbourhood development planning? I do have some context on the previous proposals and the ownership is the same, um, from the previous proposals. The reason why it was paused, um, from the, from the previous submission was at the applicant's choice. Um, I believe they were reevaluating whether to proceed when the application got to the legal agreement stage. Okay. And if you don't mind, can you remind me there's a, I believe there's

a project happening at the YMCA site. Do we know the height of that building that would be right adjacent to this one. Is we? Thank you, Souther Mayor. Those proposals, I believe, um, are still in the pre - application stage. Okay. Um, so they actually, the material that's been presented to the local CALAC, the downtown residence association, but that has lapsed. Um, so should that propose or go forward. There will be expected to proceed with another CALAC meeting presenting whether they're proposal has changed or not. Okay. Um, thanks for that. When is the update to DECAP expected. Mr. Johnson. Thank you through the mayor, Alec Johnston acting director of planning and development. Um, we have direction from council following the OCP adoption to proceed with, um, work on updating the DCAP and staff have been working since then on scoping that work. And we'll be bringing forward, uh, report, um, in the coming months for council. That will outline sort of the scope of the decap review and the timing associated with it.

But, um, it is a longer term, uh, long range policy, um, work that will take some time to complete several months. Through the mayor. So in the report, which we'll be coming forward likely before the summer break, uh, council break, um, that will provide an update on what would be in scope for DCAP and sort of timelines associated with DCAP as well as some other, um, recommended actions that we're looking at providing to support, um, economic vibrancy in the city. Um, and so that those would be both short term actions as well as long term actions, uh, through updated policy. Okay. Um. Assuming, I'm just making an assumption here that council chooses the alternate motion today. How long, what's the estimated timeline to see this back at Committee of the Whole. Does Wayne. Thank you through the mayor. Um, I think it's a difficult question to answer because a lot of that would depend on, um, how fast the applicant can move to revise the

proposal. Um, but, um, yeah, I think it's really, uh, there are many factors at play that would determine the timeline. Okay. Um. The, in just one final question, Mayor, in the presentation and the report, there's mention of that the heritage building on this site. What's the actual plan for the heritage building. Raven? Uh, through the mayor apologies, there's some confusion there, but the site is not actually heritage registered or designated. Okay. Sorry. I thought you said that. Okay. So the idea would be to somehow along Fort Street make it compatible with the other heritage buildings. Is that am I understanding that correctly? Through the mayor, that's correct. So the design guidelines, uh, speak to how the building should be designed to fit with the heritage context of the fourth street corridor overall. Okay. Thank you.

That's it for me. Thank you. Anybody else? Councillor Gardner and then Councillor Coleman. Thank you. Um, okay. So building the northwest corner. Part of the properties, which is proposed or suggested to be a senior building. It would have been designated 55 plus. Of the details of those legal agreements have not been fully worked out with the applicant yet. At this point in time, we have discussed with the applicant that the applicant is proposed to curing the building as rental, uh, for the life of the building. I believe typically we would not secure the actual age bracket through legal agreements. We would leave that for it to be more flexible in the future. Uh, however, I believe that the applicant has mentioned 55 plus is something that they were aiming for. Yeah. Thank you. And I think you said a 10 year rental guarantee were normally we see like a lot longer than use states 10 in your presentation. It's Raven. Uh, through the mayor, uh,

the applicant is said the rental would be for the life of the building. And I believe the, for the ability. Oh, the affordability is 10 years. Is that it? Okay. Got it. Got it. The rental is for the lengthy billing. Got it. Thank you very much. I got that off. Do we have anything, any schematics at all that would show any issues to do with sight lines for Christ church cathedral. Superman. Through the mayor, excuse me, we don't have specific diagrams of that. Could you explain maybe which angles you're thinking of? Your site? I'm thinking about tall tower. When you're looking from elsewhere, because right now Christ Church Cathedral is visible from different places and directly to the north, it would be visible. And that would be, I would think hidden when you get that tower. I'm not sure. I don't have the schematics. And so I was just somewhat concerned about it. So it's very. I had someone who wasn't used to Victoria. We drove up. We were walking up there

to take the grandkids to that playground. And the man was, he was European was just stunned to see Christ Cathedral. It was just so impactful. And so I'm just worried I want to make sure that's looked at. It may be probably not be. I just don't. I just think that we should be looking at that too. Okay. Um, last question is for now, um, the increase in building height is a 222 percent increase over decal. Correct. That's what, okay. And so I have to ask this question given that it's a 222 percent increase over the decal. Is this proposal actually consistent with the OCP? I understand what you said about the development permit guidelines is not. But how can something that's 222 percent above anything be considered consistent. Mr. Bateman. Through the mayor. So there are aspects of the OCP that the application is consistent with. The overall providing housing provided commercial space in the downtown. However, there are aspects that it's not consistent with

which are relayed to the urban form. And so that is related to these diagrams here. The urban amphitheater concept and having the taller buildings and certainly location in downtown. Excuse me. Desi. So. Is there a point when a variance of density or height is significant enough to result in a proposal not being consistent with the OCP. Mr. Bateman. Yes. Through the Milora attempt chance of that question. The new OCP that council adopted in October is much broader in its nature. Um, the OCP that it replaced did have policies containing density and height provisions, but the new OCP does not, um, so it's much broader in its nature and therefore, um, the policies are primarily related to land use sustainability climate change. And the use provisions and what is being proposed here is Mr. Bateman's pointed out are consistent with the OCP. But the OCP does refer to the design guidelines for more specific details, which the proposal is not consistent with. Okay. So, so there

is, do I interpret that to me? There is no limit. To variance that would make in the way of density that would make a proposal inconsistent with the OCP. Is there no limit. I see Steph looking at Mr. Johnston. Through the mayor. Um, I guess technically there is no limit in terms of a density figure. Um, however, there are a range of objectives and different policies within the OCP that may be challenging to meet as a building gets larger in scale. Um, so for example, there can be impacts that, you know, broader impacts beyond the site in terms of, you know, the working harbour essentially, um, and the functioning of different activities within the harbour.

That was something we touched on, um, uh, I guess a couple of months ago with another application that was proposing a much taller building than what, uh, was envisioned for downtown. So while the density figure itself may not be something that, um, challenges the OCP, the scale of a building as it gets larger may make it very challenging to align with other, um, OCP objectives. And I just, sorry, one another thing I just wanted to add in terms of the, the, uh, alignment with the OCP. The OCP does envision, you know, the tallest buildings in the city being in the downtown. This is the area where we anticipate seeing, you know, the highest density and tallest buildings. Um, so in that way, this proposal is consistent as well with that aspect of the OCP. Although the, the, there is, as shown on the screen here, a sort of envisioned urban form, uh, that's illustrated in this diagram. Uh, but there are no heights sort of

specifically attached to this. It's just showing a transition in height. Um, and that is detailed in the, in the downtown corps area plan. And that's where this project then is, uh, is quite clearly inconsistent with the decap in terms of building height and density. Thank you, Mayor. I may have more questions since we hear others. Thank you. Very good. Councillor Coleman. Thank you. And through your worship, thank you for moving to this screen because that's what I was going to ask for. Um, if I read this properly across the street, the building could be 15 stories. Is that correct? Directly across from the star. Going across on force. Uh, through the mayor across, because of.

The street, you mean? On the north side. Yeah. That would be 15 stories. That is a category up. To the west would be 20 stories. Yes. The purple colour on the diagram. Thank you. Um, I mean, this, this has been a long process for this applicant and for this particular piece of property. If I remember, um, when it was last in front of council, it was a much lower building. And I don't think it was a direction, but it was, um, Obhiter. It was opinion from council that the building could be taller. Am I correct in that memory. That's certainly my recollection, that's. Through the mayor. I was actually the, uh, the senior planner handling that application at the time. So I'd probably have the most institutional knowledge of that one. Uh, glad I asked then. But yes, I think there was some, I recall some discussion about potentially, uh, you know, a taller building, um, could be suitable, uh, for this site. The site

was large enough and given its location. It could accommodate a taller building. Um, and I think staff have also continued to have those discussions with the applicant about, you know, potentially a somewhat taller than the 12 story building could be supportable here. Um, it's just a matter of what's considered sort of within sort of, uh, reasonable, um, range of what the policy envisions. But that was under a different OCP and a different decap. Through the mayor. That's correct. Yes. And that, that application did advance through Committee of the Whole. And we were working on legal agreements with the applicant at the time. Um, and then in 2020, uh, they had to shift their focus to some other, uh, urgent priorities. And this, this application was sort of placed on hold for a time. Um, but was still an active application until 2024 when it was closed out. So is this then a particularly unusual partly because of the length of time. Is this a particularly

unusual application with respect to being caught in the variance between changing OCPs and changing decaps. Mr. Johnson. Through the mayor. This, yeah, this is like an active application that was, has sort of, uh, carried on through some transitional periods in terms of policy. Um, however, we have, uh, continue to communicate early and often with applicants to make them aware of the, uh, the changes that are coming so they can adjust or respond. And we also look to take a very, um, reasonable approach when we're handling people's applications that were made under a different context. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? I have a couple of questions, but I'll look always first to counsel. Let's see anybody else. A couple of questions. What is the height of the kitty cornered view towers. Through the mayor, I believe that's 19 stories. That's getting nodding from grid.

Great. And the recently endorsed my council Harris Green compound, I guess you call it or multiple spaces. What are the, what is the tallest building in those two sites, those adjacent sites, which are a few blocks away through you, Mary, the current zoning permits up to 20 stories. What am I not correct in believing that they intend to have something much taller and at least one of the buildings? My understanding is there is one DP that was approved for 21 stories, but no other DPs have been approved. And so, uh, I'm not sure if my colleagues know what the applicants intending to apply for, but they haven't been approved yet. Yes, please, Ms. Wayne, because I think that there was discussion when it came forward of something much taller, at least one of the buildings.

Thank you through you, Mayor. And I'll claim institutional knowledge on this one as I was a senior planner, handing that file. The council has approved a rezoning, as Mr Bateman pointed out that that rezoning does cap the height at the OCP consistent policies. There was always the expectation from stuff that, um, the tallest towers that were proposed in the 900 block, um, that would be, that were proposed to be up to 32 stories would come forward as part of a future development with various application. Um, because we didn't have the details of the form and massing at that time. Right. And that was the approach that staff took, um, ensure that there'd be an opportunity for council to consider those toiler buildings in the future.

Great. Thank you for that. That was my understanding as well. Um, you referenced earlier, a number of you referenced that the, um, expectation is that you will be doing new work on the decap soon. And that will hear more about that later in the summer. Uh, I know that you can't specify or even speculate on how long that will take. I guess my question is what happens in the meantime. If you're talking about doing a thorough review and that's likely to take more than months, I suspect at least a year. Are we expecting nothing to be proposed between now and then that could in fact be in conflict with the existing policies. Mr. Johnston. Thank you. Um, excuse me. Um, much as like we did with the OCP. Uh, project, we would, um, continue to accept applications. We would work with applicants to make them aware of current policies, uh, and as well as, you know, the emerging work as, uh, as that proceeds. Um,

so, uh, I expect that we would be able to continue to, um, accept, review and bring forward, uh, supportable applications, uh, while that work is underway. Um. Yeah, I guess I would just, uh, maybe signal that, um, we have active applications right now that currently align with, with DCAP. Um, or at least are generally in alignment to the point where they are considered supportable applications. Um, and we look at the full suite of policies as well. So not just DCAP, but also, um, you know, the design guidelines for downtown. Our zoning regulations, our OCP, most importantly. So council may recall we had an act of publication that was brought forward, um, on Yaets and cook quite recently. And that was, um, proposing a building that exceeded the decap policies in terms of density and height.

Uh, but on balance looking at, um, the many ways in which it met policy, other policies as well as the OCP staff recommended support for that application and council house advanced it. So that's just an example of how we try to take a flexible approach, especially during these transitional times. Thank you for that. That might be in fact an answer to the earlier question as to why you could note that it's generally an okay with the OCP, but there are concerns. Okay. Uh, those were my questions. I had a couple of others that were already asked and answers. So I won't bother repeating myself. Yes.

Councillor Del question is. Thank you for this through the mayor. I'm wondering if staff, the lot of information presented to us in a, in a relatively short time frame, I'm wondering if you could summarize maybe the three things you're going to be asking for if this application is sent back to work. I think I know what they are, but I want to know like what are the main issues that staff are going to be asking to kind of highlight that need to be changed. Mr Redman. Through the mayor. So the main areas, the main inconsistencies with the policies, the OCP and DCAP, which are relayed to the height density as we've been speaking about, uh, and then the design guidelines. And at a broad level, the three main areas that we were pointing out, uh, were the heritage context. And then the massing and the tower, um, tower and base, uh, is the second one.

And the third one being separation space between buildings. And so inconsistencies with the design guidelines, uh, and then there would other, be details that would need to be worked out with the applicant. Okay. Thank you. So, um, do the mayor. I know you can't give pre - approval, but if those three things were addressed by the applicant, they would be in a better position to receive staff approval, ideally, through the mayor definitely in the better position. It would be improved. Okay. Thank you. Through the mayor, I don't know if you might have able to answer this question, but this process has been a bit, um, confusing to me and a bit, I think it just doesn't seem like an ideal process. This came to us last Friday. We have six day three view. This huge application, uh, that's recommended to decline a massive investment in our city. Have those conversations not been happening? Have they just not been listening or have those conversations not been

happening? Like where has the breakdown been between pretty clearly you're asking for three things. It pretty clearly wasn't done. And now we're recommending to be rejected. What happened there? I'm just, it does not make sense to me, honestly. Mr. Bateman through the mayor. So when the application was first submitted, uh, because of the extent, the degree that it is outside the height and massing policies, uh, those are what staff or folks, what staff we're focusing on trying to get the applicant to bring it in line overall, the big picture, uh, policies afterwards the design details would be worked out where the other details will be worked out to follow that, uh, but the applicant, so multiple times, staff asked the applicant to make those changes and the applicant decided not to and they decided they'd like to proceed with this current proposal. Councillor Dell. Oh, Ms. Marine, go ahead. Thank you through the mayor. Just one further point just to add that it is not,

um, staff always have the objective as Mr. Bateman pointed out to work with applicants, um, bring proposals in line with policy. Um, so there is lots of conversation that happens before an application gets to this point. Um, but ultimately it is the applicant's decision about whether they want to proceed to the, to committee of the whole, um, but, um, yeah, this is always our preference to, and recommendation to applicants that, um, a proposal that meets the policy. Is the easiest path forward. And I believe Mr. Johnston has anything, Chad. Mr. Johnson, go. Just, just one more thing to add. Um, we, we, we are always looking to collaborate with applicants and make ourselves available early, uh, to have those discussions, uh, even before they're making an application so that they haven't understanding of, you know, or we can help to ensure they have an understanding of what the city's expectations are in terms of policy and regulations for a property. And I understand there were

even conversations prior to the application being made where staff had been communicating to the applicant, you know, what would be considered a supportable application. And to Ms. Wayne's point, the applicant has chosen to proceed with this proposal. Um, for their own reasons. And, uh, ultimately it's our job to process that and bring it to council for your consideration. Councillor D. Okay, I would be ready to move the alternative recommendation in absence of anyone else. Are there any other questions. Yes. Hang on. Mr. Bateman, did you have something to add. And I know what you're going to say, so I'll just hang on. Do something else you'd like to have? I'm sorry. Uh, through you, Mayor, I just wanted to clarify in case it wasn't clear an earlier question from Councillor Gardner about views of Christ Cathedral. There are a number of views in the plan package. Uh, I just wasn't sure if those directly addressed what you were looking for. So in the plan package

attached to the report, there are a number of renderings and views, uh, of the proposal. They're just not in the presentation. Thank you. I tried to see them and wasn't clear on, especially when schematics don't have street names on them sometimes. So, so I wasn't clear what was proposed because they had somebody schematic showed other billings that hypothetically might be put in. Etc. And so that's why I wasn't clear on it. So if it comes forward to us again, perhaps simplify that part so we can actually see it. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. I am aware because of our earlier, uh, opening of the meeting that Councillor Hammond wished to actually move the staff recommendation. I am presuming that you would like to do so. Yes, Mayor. So good. And Councillor Gardner is seconding. Uh, that is our convention by all means. And so let's start with that. So Councillor Hammond, you're moving. The staff recommendation to decline over to you. Thanks, Mayor. I see positive

elements in this proposal additional rental housing housing for seniors, especially when Victoria seniors population is about 22 percent higher than the rest of Canada. 14 affordable units out of 329, but those are only for 10 years. A good housing mix of two and three bedroom units, child care spaces, public art recognising indigenous history and culture. And efforts to support multimodal transportations are positive, although even staff have identified shortcomings there. However, I worry about creating a precedent where a handful of public benefits effectively becomes a blank check for excessive height and density. This proposed development is far outside the scope of what is required in this part of the city. And don't take my word for it, of course. This is coming from a professional staff.

Following council's direction. This is the second time in a very short, uh, while that our planning staff has told us told us not to just reject a proposal, but for the second time, they have not given us a detailed alternative motion because this proposal is so far off the mark. I think we also need to think carefully about the signal we send when proposals this far outside our planning framework continue moving deep into the process. This consumes substantial staff time. It consumes counsel time. And it also consumes proponent resources, pursuing something that was unlikely to align with our stated requirements from the beginning. If council repeatedly entertains proposals that are dramatically beyond what our plans contemplate, we risk creating the impression that the real negotiation simply starts at the extreme. This isn't fair to residents trying to understand what the rules are. It's not fair to staff, tasked with applying the rules set by council.

In a professional and consistent manner. And ultimately, it's not even fair to applicants trying to understand what this council is realistically prepared to support. I support housing. I support additional rental housing. And I support density that is appropriate. But planning rules only retain public trust. If they actually mean something. And if every proposal starts way beyond what our policies and vision eventually our policies stop functioning as guidance and start functioning as mere suggestions. In this proposal, one of the buildings is 220 percent over our building height limits in 29 percent over our density limits. My vote to accept the staff recommendation to reject this proposal will be on the side of telling developers they need to bring us building plans that are reasonable. Unfortunately on so many levels, this isn't anywhere near reasonable. Thank you, councillor. Councillor Gardner is a secondary. Thank you. Again. Thank you to Staff for the report and presentation and thank you to the residents who wrote emails to us last

year. Uh, there were some very thoughtful and insightful comments in those emails. This area the city does need to redo. I walked it a couple of days ago. The land assembly of this project allows for something beyond a tower structure. There is much to be commended on this proposed development and several reasons to want changes made to it. The daycare on the second floor of the daycare deck is really welcome. My granddaughter, uh, was in one of those on a second floor, they actually work very well. Especially for very young children. The plaza area and mid block walkthrough is also desirable and open hour should be generous, but lock off will be needed. Mixed use is welcome in this area. An architectural feature that can be used as a theatre or entertainment stage. It's also exciting. On the problem side, heightened massing and respect or not for heritage character 4th Street, our major issues. The OCP envisioned base of 3. 1 with consideration of 5.

5 to 1 with bonus density. The ask here is even more at 6. 5 to 1. Far too much for the site. We need reduced height and massing. Perhaps 11 to 15 stories off the northeast tower. Parking while car share and some institutional park you may suffice for the senior's building, the parking requirement of 318 is needed. 189 is too few for this level of residential and commercial complex. Reading staff comments from their report, they're very important statements within it. That is maintaining the city's intended form urban form fosters are predictable investment and development ecosystem. At certainty to infrastructure investments and helps to manage land speculation. Approving your proposal that is this far out of alignment with building heightened scale policy may detract from these goals. And further the report states. The proposed design does not meet the broad objectus. In response to the vs Heritage character along four street is very important. The proposal as this is really not supportable. Mention has been made

of trust with the city. Within, I mean our population within our community. The OCP really is not totally accepted now. Breaking form with the OCP 2050 in this extreme way. Will not be acceptable to the General public. It simply will not be. And I worry again that something like this going forward that is so extreme. Will cause even greater division in the city which we already have. So thank you again to staff and I believe that this should be declined. Thank you very much. Councillor Kim on the motion to deploy. Through the chair. Thanks questions actually. Um the currently existing commercial tenants. Did you happen to have a new conversations with the applicant about them.

Mr. Bateman through the mayor I know we actually did not that. Um. This seems like a lotal question. Bear with me. Um, has the City ever explored anything like a writer first refusal for commercial tenants returning. Not unlike what we are seeing with the hair is green commercial tenants. I'm going to suggest that that is in fact not at all material to the discussion before us. You're always welcome to venture an opinion. Should you choose to do so? Uh, but that as I understand it is in fact not at all a consideration for the proposal that's sitting in front of us. Sorry councillor. Oh, that's okay. If they don't want to answer just let me know. Through the mehr, I actually don't have that information. I'm not sure if my colleagues have anything to add. When do you know of any of that? Thank you through the mayor. We don't have any policies that do what you're suggesting for commercial tenants.

It's really up to the proponent as to determine how to incorporate existing tenants into the future proposal. Is existing commercial tenants? Do you have any sense of how long the currently existing commercial tenants have been leasing that space. I'm seeing, uh, no from the staff. Okay. That's it for me. Thanks. Thank you. How's your Thompson. Thanks Mayor. I'll be brief. Sorry, Councillor Thompson. I misspoke. It should be Councillor Loughton first and then answer Tonic. Thanks to you, Marit. Yeah. I'm just going to briefly speak against the recommendation to decline and simply because the issues that have been outlined around that are addressed in the alternate motion to review back for staff, um, for revisions. So that includes, um, to revise the proposal for consistency with city policy and applicable guidelines, including reducing the height and density to approve alignment with the OCP and decap. So the alternate motion, um, addresses the concerns to decline. So that is my rationale for opposing this. Thank you. Thank

you. And the councillor Thompson. Thanks Mayor. I'll be even briefer now. Just echo those comments and say that I think it's incumbent on council to express what it actually wants with applications. Um, and I've said this on a couple of recent applications, uh, rather than just saying no. Thanks. Thank you, council. Anyone else on the motion? Did a client councillor car donor? Uh, thanks very much, Mayor. On this one, I've been someone on the fence between declining and the alternate motion. And I actually agree with a lot of what was said by the mover and seconder. And I know that there's been different messages coming from around this table for the development community. And that's just how it goes in a democracy of getting nine different people with nine different points of view. But for what it's worth, my point of view is what I want to be seeing is the development community colouring inside the lines. That is my message. Colour inside the lines.

Prior to the new OCP and zoning regulation by law, I was willing to be more flexible because I believed that the OCP was out of date. But the OCP is not out of date now. This is ROCP. I voted for it. The majority of council voted for it. I voted for the new zoning regulation bylaw. Of course, the new DCAP work is not done. That's ongoing. But I'll likely support that as well because I'm, I trust in the work of our staff. So for me, it's not okay for us to approve an OCP and a zoning regulation bylaw. Set her aside for something else. For me, it's not on staff that this project took so long. There's only so much you can do with a proposal that's 222 percent above the height limit. That's not staff's fault. So let's, let's, let's let's be a little bit clear - eyed here. That said, I don't want this just to die. I do think there's an opportunity

to do something really spectacular on this location. And that's why I'm likely to support the alternate motion because the ultimate motion essentially says go back and work with the proponent. Bring this back into compliance with our rules and regulations. I think if this were to be declined, that's probably what would happen anyway. So for me, the alternate motion is probably the one that's supportable. But I want to make it clear, at least just speaking only for myself. And that's all I can do. Is my message for the development community for the next six months is going to be colour inside the lines. And I want to see proposals that align with the DCAP, the align with the OCP that aligned with the zoning regulation by - law that I stand behind. Thanks, Mayor. Thank you very much. Anybody else. Councillor Coleman. Thank you. Um, this is always a conundrum. The applicant has gone through nine years of trying to make something work here. Um, I

think the comments put forward by the mover in the second are absolutely valid. But I don't wish to see the application die. I think if we're going to choose not to support this motion and go with the alternate, it's also up to us to give some guidance to, um, staff of what we might expect that to look like. Let's start with the design of the tall building, the 27, it's building two. It's the 27 stories. I love the design of it. I think it's a great looking building. I think it's too tall. Um, and I think that that's one of the things that staff will, we will have to signal to staff that, um. We like that if you agree with me, we like that articulation, but it needs to be brought down to something closer to the two other blocks that I referenced in the decap. Either 15 or 20 stories. The adjacent blocks.

Um, that will have an impact on the other two buildings. Buildings one and three. I also think the comments about the lowering of the parking, uh, supportable, because the, um, transportation demand management amenities don't actually feel the gap from my perspective. So I think you need to be able to equilibrate that as you carry on with the discussions. I don't wish to see this die. So I will, uh, not support the motion to decline and will have the discussion about the alternate. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councillor Kim, you want to subsequent question. Comment? Yeah. Another question. Thanks. Um, through the chair, uh, if, if we were to go with the alternate motion, um, and you were to go back to the applicant and talk about particularly height. Keep that in mind. My big concern is actually the longer term impact that you've raised around, um, land speculation, because that will have the real ripple effects that we're not seeing at the moment. What

changes to the design are at an acceptable threshold for you to mitigate concerns around land speculation. Is that an answer you can provide at this point. Ms. Wayne. Through the moral, I'll attempt to provide some commentary around that. Um, I think the key thing that was mentioned in the staff report was really consistency with policy is the best pass forward for everyone, for staff for the development community in terms of, um, predictable outcomes. Um, I don't really think that we can comment on, um, yeah, how that may impact, you know, the land value, but with the alternate motion does include, um, provision of a landlift analysis that would evaluate any proposed increase in density above the policy. Okay. Um, again, bear with me. Systems thinker here. And so with, um, other projects in the downtown area that have, um, been approved outside of their variances.

Were there any similar concerns about land speculation there too then. Is Wayne. I point to you only because you seem to be answering the land speculation questions. Feel free to defer to your colleagues if you wish. Thank you through the mayor. I think I may have to. I think I believe, you know, there may have been some commentary on taller buildings before in the past, but I think, um. For example, the Harris Green proposal was a company with the landlift analysis as per City policy. And that was probably one of the reasons why Stafford took the approach to defer the height variances to a future application. But ultimately, um, any application would follow the City approved policy in regards to requiring landlift analysis, which is where, which is where the experts come in. And they often do attend some of the proposals for taller buildings to provide more, um, uh, expertise on that matter. And to be clear, that would be done with the alternative

motion as well. Yeah. Through the man, that's correct. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anybody else. Okay. I believe, uh, everyone that wishes to speak on this has done so. So it is properly on the floor. And that is the staff recommendation to decline this rezoning application. All those in favor of declining. Councillor Hemmond and Councillor Gardner in opposition to declining. Councillor Dell, Councillor Kim, Conselhocrania, Councillor Loughton, myself, Councillor Coleman and Councillor Thompson. So that is defeated. There is an alternate recommendation, which was included in the report. I will signal to you that I have an amendment to make to that, but I would look for anyone else to move that particularly council dollar's moving. I'm happy to second. Or do you, Councillor Dell.

Um, before I speak to it, I think I can just wait and let you do your amendment. Sure. Absolutely. I did send an amendment earlier to staff. If you'd like to put that up on the screen, I'm happy to move the amendment. And if someone's seconds it, we can deal with that first and then deal with the overall motion, if the amendment is passed or not. Staff will wait for you to get that up.

Uh, don't you love technology. That's part of it. Yep. There you go. That's the whole thing. So the amendment is the addition of the word greater, which is in bold and the deletion of the bolded language that has a strike through. Is there a second over that amendment? Councillor Thompson is seconding. So just on the amendment, I was fascinating. I would just say that, uh, based on the earlier conversations, obviously the assumption here is that I'm supporting the alternative recommendation. Uh, I do think that, uh, including the proposal for consistency limits the conversation with the applicant too greatly, uh, and then including the word greater, obviously aims us in the same direction that there is greater consistency with the policies, uh, but that it need not be exactly consistent with the policies. And can I believe that allows us for a greater conversation. Removing the structural language, including reduced the height and density to improve alignment with the OCP and decap, I think is unnecessary

given that the previous sentence says greater consistency with city policy and applicable guidelines. Uh, I think again, that that conversation needs to be as open as possible. And therefore including anything in particular that says this is the absolute does not encourage us to have that broader conversation. Quite comfortable with the rest of it. But I think either adding that word and deleting that phrase, uh, creates the greater opportunity for us to have a conversation with the applicant to try and get closer to what I believe most of council wants. Councillor Thompson, you second, did the amendment anything to add. Thanks Mayor. Not much. Um, I, I agree with all your comments there. I do think that, uh, it's better to go into these conversations with, uh, increased flexibility rather than restrictions. And, um, who knows what the architects might come up with, uh, they might come up with something that preserves the level of density, uh, but meets other, um, policies better, uh, and I

wouldn't want to count that out. Uh, I wouldn't want to eliminate housing effectively when we don't really have to. Thanks. Thank you. Just for staff, um, I believe that there's a, under the complete land, there needs to be a space. And the word missing from the original one, which I believe should be complete a land, left analysis. I'm not going to suggest that requires an amendment. That's just a grammatical, um, oversight. Thank you very much. So on the amendment, the comments, councillor Loughton, Councillor Dell. Thanks. And through you, Mayor, I really like this because what it does is gives flexibility, as you've mentioned, but also vision. It creates the ability to blue sky a bit more around this project that has so many positive things going for it at a time when decap is in flux. We need some kind of transition way of making sure that proponents are able to dream a little within the scope of their projects. And I just want to

add that this area, um, there's also the Christ church cathedral project. And the potential project at the YMCA that the whole area, um, there needs to be consideration around how that it's looking as a group. And I think this kind of helps to inform that. And I just, I just want it to give a little bit of freedom with also, you know, thinking about that entire area. And I'll comment a little bit more upon that in my General comments, but for this amendment, um, I'm in full support. Thank you, Councillor Dell on the amendment. Sure. I just had a question for you. Height and density, I'm okay with. Um, I am interested in amendments to do some of the tower separation, uh, that staff of recommendation and some of the podium and tower. Are you commenting on that at all? Or is that? No, my intention here was just to remove any specificity on what needed to be included in the conversation. Okay. So staff

completing that specific requirement, in my view, still provides the opportunity for that requirement to come back to us. Absolutely. But it isn't a threshold that has to be met before it comes back to us. Okay. Then, then I can support this. Thank you very much. Councillor Caradon on the amendment. Thanks Mayor. I do not support this amendment. And for me, it sort of feels like the declined motion coming in through the back door because the height and density are exactly what the issues are. Um, the fact that it's 220 percent, 220 percent above those height limits is the, is the problem. So if we erase that clause, we're back to a sort of arms race on height. And that's the issue that at least I am trying to address. And is the reason I voted against the 35 story building a couple of weeks ago is that to reiterate my earlier point, if we were unhappy with the provisions in the OCP and the zoning

regulation bylaw, then we should have approved different OCP into different zoning regulation by a lot, but we didn't. We approved the one that we approved. I'll just read two of the bullets from the staff report on page two. Here's the second bullet. The proposal is inconsistent with some aspects of the OCP's urban structure concept. For the downtown core, which envisions an urban form with larger scale buildings along blancher and Yates, which then taper off to the edge of downtown core and to the smaller scale buildings in the surrounding neighbourhoods beyond, such as the Fairfield neighbourhood to the Southeast. And here's the fourth bullet. The proposal for 27 story building in this location undermines the OCP vision of a balanced city density pattern with projected residential growth spread across the city instead of concentrating it within the court. So if we were to approve this amendment, we're in a sense sort of overruling those bullets that acknowledge that the intention of our OCP is a taper

off heightened density as we move eastward from downtown. So I don't want to have to tie Staff's hands because if we erase this, they're not allowed to have a conversation about heightened density, which is precisely the reason why they've proposed to client. So for me, it's not good enough to just say greater consistency. And maybe I'm sounding overly cautious, but I want to act in alignment with the policies that we just approve last year. And for me, this is not it. Thank you, Councillor Thompson for a second time. On the amendment. Thanks, Mayor. Yeah. I just wanted to speak to those comments. Um, uh, removing those words does not eliminate staff's ability to discuss heightened density with the, uh, applicant. What it does is it says you can discuss anything you want, including heightened density.

But, um, you're not barred from coming back to us. Uh, if you haven't, uh, achieved something there. So, um, I have to completely disagree with those, those remarks. I think this is just about providing flexibility around the discussion. Um, and, uh, I would also note that, uh, the decap is 15 years old. It isn't the thing that we approved, uh, back when we, um, approved the OCP and zoning regulation. Thanks. Thank you on the amendment. Councillor Kim. Through the chair. Thanks. I, given that it's funny how efficient some words can be. Just the word greater manages to encapsulate everything, including heightened density. I can support that. However, I do want to speak up at this moment to signal that, um, I feel similarly about colouring within lines. And while the conversation can be blue sky and all of these things, um, I encourage creativity and lateral thinking. And I hope that the applicant hears that.

Thanks. Thank you very much. On the amendment. Councillor Coleman. It's funny, we talk about colouring within the lines and following the OCP. I actually voted against the OCP. On a procedural factor. When we first asked, this council asked, Staff, how long it would take to do the OCP properly. They said it would be a five year process. We said we want it back in three years. The province interceded made it to and a quarter years. Um, and staff did magnificent work. But the lines weren't particularly clear in all instances. We then layer on top of that the decap or in many cases local area plans.

The OCP acts as the skeletal underpinning for the way we want to build our city. Decap, um, local area plans add the flesh. Because the lines weren't particularly clear in all instances in the OCP. I'm not sure colouring within the lines is a fair direction. I think actually getting rid of this and saying greater consistency with what we want. And I said earlier, um, I think it's up to us to give some of those articulated things we expect for me. It's height. And the parking or the TDM measures. I think that's up to us. I'm quite willing to support this because I think the greater consistency actually does address a number of things where the colouring book isn't complete at the moment. I think we might have to get colouring books. There you go. Uh, anyone else on the amendment, Councillor Hammond. Mayor, I think you'd probably still be walking on all fours. If you can't figure out if this amendment goes ahead, that that

is saying you come to us with anything you want as high and as dense as you want. If I can come to that conclusion, you know that when this passes and it will pass this striking this out with his amendment, uh, after all, your mantra is build, build, build, you're consistent about that. But you will have developers drooling over this. So we are being very deliberately of anything in there that we're taken out. We're saying, don't worry about the height and density. Oh, sure. We want to make sure it's within other, other areas. But if we want to talk about signals and what counsel is saying when we deliberately remove the one aspect, which is the worst part of this, it is saying do your worst and they will. Thank you. Anyone else on the amendment. Not seeing anyone else in the amendment. So all those in favor of the amendment, which is the inclusion of the word greater and the deletion of the bolded

language with the strike through all those in favor. Councillor Dell, councillor Kim, councillor loughton, myself, councillor Coleman and Councillor Thompson in opposition. Councillor Caradot, Councillor Hammond and Councillor Gardner. Noting three in opposition, that amendment is carried. So we'll just let stuff clean that up. So that we know what we're discussing. This is now the amended main motion. Uh, I will reserve comments on the main motion because I was the secondary and I will turn back to the mover, which is Councillor Dell. I'm sure. I'm happy to speak in favor the alternative motion. This is probably one of the biggest projects in the top five anyway that's come to our council this term. It's kind of up there with the Bayview and Harris green and capital irons. It's a massive project that, um, I'm a bit disappointed. I only heard about it six days ago and, and we didn't have more time to consider this and to hear about the background, um, it's a big decision

to make. And I'm just not comfortable rejecting this type of investment in our city. For me, I'm actually, would be fine largely moving this forward. The biggest consideration is investment in our downtown, which I think many of us have talked about, um, we're going to, we're going to get a position where a lot of government workers and why not are working from home. Downtown is short on people. And we simply need residents downtown and any building that's going to put people downtown, just a word, our coffee shops to support our stores downtown, um, is, is badly, badly needed. And I'm disappointed to hear how, how harsh some of us are speaking on, on investment in our downtown. And more people downtown, when that's exactly what we need, um, I don't think workers work from home workers are coming back. So this is the kind of thing that's going to solve that problem. This can help provide vitalize upper street, an area with a lot of

small businesses and needing more people. Um, and I think by being too critical on these investments, we've risk losing them. I've definitely am reading the news as we all are. Developers who are getting, uh, grounded down by councils or just going elsewhere. They're like, why would why would we come to Victoria when we can go to Kelowna and buy sites. Kelowna the tallest building is 42 stories. And here we're sort of talking like 27 is going to be the end of our city, which has been a bit of a theme, uh, in this city's history. 27 is really not that tall compared to what other places are doing. It's not going to destroy downtown. It's not going to destroy your sight lines. Things will be okay. I actually like the design. I actually saw the design first before I read the report. And I went, wow, that's awesome. What an awesome building. And then I read the report and went, Oh, we're supposed to reject

it. Crap. Uh, I think the design's really beautiful compared to what's there. If we think on what's on Fort Street, sorry, on, um, on quadr street in between Fort and Browden, I think it's just like big concrete wall. I've actually never interacted with that site at all. There's a parking lot and in many ways, it's one of the most unsightly areas kind of of the downtown course. This is a huge improvement. Um, I would appreciate some work on the podiums and the separation. I do think staffs recommendations for the podium tower. I think could improve things a little bit and allow some of that heritage context. So I like that. I like to tower separation.

I think the design right now does have a bit of a large wall feel, which I never completely appreciate. Maybe it could be done well. I don't know. I would like to see more commercial tenants on the ground floor just knowing this is going to be a really active spot of our downtown, but that's fine. I mean, there's been some talk about land speculation. My entire time running for council has been people scolding me about land speculation. I remember when missing middle and everyone said it's going to double the price of land all across the city. And it's going to destroy fair field with bulldozers.

And of course what happened is the land price has actually went down. Houses are cheaper now than before. And when we were discussing the OCP of when came back and said land speculation, the OCP everything's going to double. No one can afford everything. Developers are going to buy it. Of course price has even went down further since then. So I'm not quite sure how long we're going to keep talking about the sphere of land speculation. When in my time it just hasn't happened here. And it's that balance between how do we approve homes for people, which we need in war homes. And there obviously will be a little speculation, but is it enough to reject buildings that are going to be adding to downtown? And maybe it's just a necessary evil. I don't know. Um, but more so I just want to make sure that this is moving forward. So I think I want to give a signal to the developer that I would like

to see this project in the city. I think it's going to be a huge addition to Ford Street and quadrice street in that Harris Green neighbourhood. Um, I love the aspect of the senior's housing. And I think it's going to be a wonderful spot for, for seniors to, to live with the church there and beaconhill just down the road and great walkability and whatnot. So I'm hoping we can send this forward today. And I would hope that staff can, you know, work with the applicant in good faith. And I would love to see something back before the end of council's term on this. Thank you, councillor. Uh, I did take the opportunity to second that I will be brief. Uh, I'm not going to comment particularly on anything that I would like to see here because my purpose in actually deleting the specific reference to height and density was to allow there to be a very far - ranging conversation with the applicant. Uh, I

think the applicant has heard not just today, but over many years, comments from council and public about what might be preferred at this location. And so I'm content to support this in the General Terms that it has. And I believe that it's important for us to signal that there is an appetite for the majority of council for something to be here. Uh, that it should be a landmark and that the lot more conversation to have. My only real hope is that it does not take a very long time. Uh, I have been here through the length of this conversation for nine years. And at different times, um, councils have directed staff who have then acted on council direction to do different things with a design.

It is my recollection that it was in fact council's direction that they were unhappy with a smaller building that actually informed the applicant's decision to pull the application and look to something taller. That may or may not be the current council's position, but I think it's important for us to remember that there have been several councils who have given perhaps different directions over the years about what should be here, but it is consistently always been build something and build something notable. So I urge staff and the applicant to work quickly together so that something can finally come forward for this. On the main motion, Councillor Loughton, Councillor Gardner. Thanks and through you, Mayor. I want to echo those comments. This project, the biggest issue for me here is that this project has been in the pipeline for almost a decade. And in many ways, it's a visionary project. And it needs to come to fruition, in my opinion, as quickly as possible. So I hope

that, um, the conversations that happen don't take a long time. I hope this can be moved forward. Um, as quickly as possible. There is so much going on here that is good for the community. The seniors housing with 14 affordable units. I will note that in the last point in time count for greater Victoria, So anything we can do for affordability around seniors is critical. I love the idea of seniors housing with a daycare in it, intergenerational living is really positive for everyone. And in particularly for the mental health of senior citizens. And the family housing policy is met. And the plaza also will be a great addition to downtown in that area. So really this is a vision for good living. And in many ways it aligns with our objectives in the community safety and well - being plan. My only other comment is, although I understand that the vision of the amphitheater urban structure, and I know we're not, um, decap is still

in the works, but there is also the secondary hair screen skyline. So we have moved from beyond that. And there is going to be a lot of activity in this neighbourhood that I touched on with the, with the amendment, Christ Church Cathedral Project is coming, the possibility of the why, what, um, you know, the provincial, um, uh, the courthouse land, if there happening there, there's, there's a lot in flux going on here. And it's a complicated time for this area. And that also makes it complicated for in - stream projects. And so we need to be cognizant of that and thoughtful about how we're going to move forward with these projects. And this time. So I just want to, I wanted to add that as a note and just, um, finally, and I'm just going to echo that I think the podium structure could be some kind of solution here. If you're wanting something from council, or for me, um, I think that could be

one way to distribute the density in a better way and make this project work. So I hope that the conversation's going forward between the proponent and staff are really met with, you know, this, this is a, this is a great visionary project. How are we going to make this happen? How are we going to get to yes? That's what I'd love to see happen. And I'm happy to support the alternative motion. Thanks. Thank you. Before I go to Councillor Gardner, are there other councillors who wish to comment beyond Councillor Birdner. Yes. Okay. So I suspect that there would, I'm going to suggest we take a brief break because we have been sitting for an hour and a half. And when we come back, we'll go to Concert Gardner, Councillor Coleman and Councillor Thompson. So let's return at 1040.

Go ahead, please. Thank you, Mayor. My final comment. The disregard for the OCP 2050 NDCAP comes clearly through with this amended motion. Contrary assertions made earlier this morning. I did state what I would need to see changed to support this project. Changes in density. Going from 3. 1 to considering 6. 5 to one is unacceptable for me. Far too much for this site. We need reduced height and massing. Perhaps 11 to 15 stories. Off that huge tower. But we also really need respect for the heritage context for that. That's critical. And as mentioned parking for this dense mix - use complex is needed, far more than suggested by the proponent. I had intended to support the alternate motion. However, with the amendment to the alternate motion, anything goes with height, density. I can't support this version. It makes a farce of planning principles as articulated in the OCP 2050. This is beyond build, build, build.

It's castaway. The principles and values. Of the city. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much. Up next is Councillor Coleman. Thank you. Let's first talk about land speculation. It's not actually germane to the discussion, but it's being infused into this. The reality is land values have doubled in worth every nine to 10 years for about 140 years in this area. There will always be an escalation of cost for land over time. It will, it's not a straight line seven and a half percent a year, but it varies. So it's always going to be part of the equation as we want development and we see greater density. So I put that aside for the moment. Um, and talk about what we want from this particular site.

And in some cases, this protector applicant. It's gone on for nine years. It's very been very difficult discussion. I suspect the landscape administratively has changed with OCPs and decaps changing. Direction from this table. Not being entirely clear, I suppose. I do think that what is being proposed here is too tall. Um, I do think that there needs to be some assessment of the TDM measures if you're going to go with that parking reduction. I don't happen to like the entire notion of the parking reduction. I think it's too deep. Um, but if you're going to go there, then the TDM measures must need to be much higher. The area is, uh, adjacent to downtown and high scores, high oil and walkability. It's also next to a transit corridor. So those, there's some mitigating factors. I still think they're taking out too much parking. Um, that said, it's been a difficult task for our staff in this. Because the landscape administratively has changed over time. And

we always ask the question, are you enablers or gatekeepers? And in fact, staff and this table are both. We do, we try and find that balancing point. And so it means you're both, I want to see something happen here. I think what's, well, I like the design of, uh, building two, the 27 story building. I think it's fabulous. I think the overall, uh, concept is great. But it's too big and too dense. So the discussion that we'll carry on between staff and the applicant will be if they confined something that actually fits. And fits with our perspective as it comes back. I've focused on two areas that I think need to be, uh, addressed. If it comes back and we're all still sitting here, um, and get to make that decision. That said, I'm quite willing to support this because I think it does put the discussion back where it should be. It doesn't decline the application. Which puts an end to it. And I

suspect that might see development go away for another decade, which I don't think we want. So I'm quite willing to support this. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Thompson. Thanks Mayor. I'm happy to support this. Um, I think it's going to bring much needed, uh, rental housing for seniors with some affordability. Uh, and much other housing. Uh, and we need all the housing. As my colleagues have mentioned, it's going to bring a plaza. It's going to bring childcare. These are valuable things in our downtown. And as downtown liaison, I speak with, um, downtown businesses all the time. Many of them tell me that they're on a knife edge. And I believe them. Work from home is killing them. Uh, we don't have the number of office workers downtown that we used to have. And the office workers are the ones that are giving a big boost to businesses, um, restaurants, cafes, retail, other businesses. So we need people living downtown. And I would note that we

all received letters of support from the downtown Victoria business association and from destination greater Victoria supporting this project going ahead. Uh, I would point out that when the decap, uh, was passed, which is the thing that this is 220 percent above, that was 15 years ago. That was before the pandemic. That was before work from home, uh, it was when office vacancy rates were very low. Uh, those office vacancy rates are now rising. Uh, we expect several hundred thousand square feet of office space to be available, uh, over the next few years. Uh, but the workers are already not here. Um, a lot of them are just working from home. So we need more housing.

We need more people downtown. Height. Has been a big topic of discussion today. And it's a big focus for some, but it is not a big focus for everyone. Uh, I know that that might be surprising to some of the folks who, uh, who are very concerned about height. To me, the apather concept of downtown makes sense because, uh, you want to have people being able to see the harbour, uh, and you want the view from the harbour to be nice. But, um, the notion of the skyline is much less compelling generally. In fact, I asked AI how many people care about skylines. And it described skyline interest as a niche hobby. I think the average person cares a lot. About the housing shortage. But I cannot believe that the average person is going to walk on the other side of the harbour and say, ooh, look that building is poking up above the others.

That's bad. They are saying that the housing shortage is bad, that it's terrible. When it comes to the context of height for this building, uh, we've heard that the view towers across the street is 19 stories. This council approved a building right next to that at 23 stories. We approved Harris Green. We anticipated up to 32 stories. The cathedral development will come to us. It'll be tall. The YMCA building will eventually come to us. It'll be tall. The context for this, the height context for this project is not going to be, uh, one to two story retail, uh, as, as we saw in some of the images, the context in the future is going to be tall buildings all around. So I don't think that this, uh, if it comes to us with the, uh, the FSR that's anticipated and the buildings may look different.

The buildings may have a bigger podium that can absorb some of the density. And they could have a different arrangement of towers that provides more spacing between them. Um, but in any event, it's going to fit into a context that's fairly similar, much more similar to what's being proposed here. I also agree that the commentary on land speculation has been overblown for several years now. Uh, it hasn't happened despite warnings that the sky would fall, uh, when we approve missing middle and when we have approved the OCP, it is a favored hobby horse for people who oppose housing, uh, we just haven't seen it. And I'm not worried particularly about this as the, uh, motion notes we're going to get a land lift analysis, uh, we're going to make sure that, uh, for the, uh, for this property, there is a balance of other interests in the OCP that are taken into account, uh, for whatever land left there is on this project. So I'm

quite happy to see staff go ahead. And I'll just point out, it says revised the proposal for greater consistency with city policy and applicable guidelines. That doesn't say, uh, do whatever you want. You know, everything goes. It clearly doesn't say that. Uh, and I hope staff and hope the applicant, uh, realise that. Thanks very much. Thank you, councillor. Anyone else. On the main motion as amended. Not seeing any other comments. It's been properly moved, amended and is before us now for consideration. All those in favor. Councillor Dell. Councillor Kim. Councillor Cardonat. Councillor Loughton, myself, Councillor Coleman and Councillor Thompson and opposition. Councillor Hammond and Councillor Gardner. Noting to an opposition, that motion as amended is adopted and that concludes that manner. Thank you very much, staff. And thank you very much for those in the gallery who are here for that matter. That moves us on to item F2. This is with regard to the development variance permit for 749 Douglas Street. And again, we'll

give staff an opportunity to get themselves settled and then we'll turn it over to them for their presentation. And please do remind the public who you are. Once you are settled. Good morning. My name is Brady Shields. I'm the Chief Building and Plumbing Inspector. That means I get to call you inspector. And I do recall the last time you were here, do pull your mic in. You're quite soft - spoken, which is lovely. But it was just a chance to hear you better. Yes, thank you. Over to you. Sorry. About that. Good morning, Mayor and Council. This presentation provides an overview of the Committee of the Whole report regarding development variants. Permit application 00293 for 749 Douglas Street.

It is regarding variances to the signed by - law and staff are recommending that council approve the issuance of the permit. Here we can see an aerial image of the site fronting humble street to the north and Douglas Street to the west. Uh, the application proposes the installation of signage for the new TELUS Ocean office building and request variances to the city signed by - law to allow increased individual sign sizes, increased cumulative sign allowances and signage above the second story on both frontages. The subject property is located in the downtown buffer sign zone seen in brown on the map here. It is bordered by the old town sign zone scene in blue and the arterial commercial sign zone in green. It is surrounded by a number of residential and commercial buildings, including the Victoria Conference Centre and press hotel and Double Tree Hotel. And here you can see photos of the building under construction.

Uh, this slide just outlines the legislative authority for processing variances to the sign by law. And the project is located within the General Urban Design Development Permit area and is zone ZAOV, excuse me, Olympic View District. And I will touch on the downtown core air design guidelines shortly. So here we can see the site plan for the project. I know it is a bit small. Um, the main variance proposed is for two large telesigns, one on the Humboldt Street frontage at approximately the 11th floor and one on the Douglas Street frontage at approximately the third floor. These are shown in purple on this, uh, slide here. To accommodate the large fascia signs. Variances are also requested to increase the cumulative sign allowance on both frontages.

Uh, this allows the streamlining of future applications for, um, businesses and staff. So that individual tenants don't have to come back through the sine variance process. And the last variance, um, is for what is called TS3, a suspended sign in the signed package. Um, and that is just to increase the area of the sign and the dimensions. And that one is the very bottom, um, pink sign on this at the corner of the building. And the other two pink suspended signs will not require variances. Here we can see, um, close up of the science proposed. So the telesfacier signs are approximately 15. 4 metres wide and 2. 9 metres tall with a display area of roughly 45 metre squared, which exceeds the 4. 5 metre squared permitted in the downtown buffer sign zone. The suspended sign TS3 is proposed to be 2. 3 metres wide by 0. 72 metres tall. And this succeeds the maximum of 0. 55 metre squared in that, um, sine zone,

as well as the General Restriction to a vertical dimension of 0. 3 metres. Just a note for the suspended sign. It will still be well over the 2. 4 3 metre minimum clearance below the sign. So the 3. 98 metres from the ground to the bottom of the sign. So there should be sufficient clearance for safe passage. Um, here we can see the Southern elevation with the, uh, TS3 suspended sign in pink down at the bottom there. And here we have the West elevation on Douglas Street. So the downtown core aeroplane sets an expectation that signage be limited in size number and location so that it doesn't detract from billing design or create visual clutter.

In particular, signage on upper stories is generally discouraged. In this case, uh, council previously considered the telesfacier signs during earlier approvals of the project in 2020 and 2021 and directed that signage on the west frontage, um, lowered. So it wouldn't be visible above the Empress hotel. So the current proposal reflects that direction. Um, with the sign scene here in purple around the third floor. So it's no longer, uh, visible from the harbour above the Empress hotel. However, under the sign by law, that location still requires a variance in this particular sign zone. And here we can see the proposed sign for the humbolt Street near the 11th Story. And so while upper story signage is typically discouraged, um, there has been some precedent for exceptions for major corporate headquarters and hotels in the downtown area.

In this context, the proposed variances are considered to balance support for significant employment opportunity in downtown while still respecting the broader urban design objectives and the character of the inner harbour. This slide just shows us some examples of existing, um, buildings with upper story signage downtown. So the bottom two here are two hotels adjacent to the site in the same downtown buffer sign zone. It is kind of difficult to see the signs there, but they do have their hotel signs at the top. And the top two photos are of the CIBC and TD bank towers further up Douglas Street. And these are in the Archeo commercial sign zone. So they don't actually have a restriction under the sign by law on the placement of the signs. And here we have some renderings of the completed building showing the new signs as well as a blow up of the ground floor elevation. And you can see TS3 that proposed suspended sign there. Um, so in conclusion,

the development variants permit considers the insulation of signage for the new commercial office building at 749 Douglas Street. The request variances relate primarily to exceeding the maximum individual size and cumulative sign allowances as well as the location of signage in the downtown buffer sign zone. The proposal reflects the scale and roll of the building while maintaining a coordinated controlled approach to signage on both street frontages. Although the proposal exceeds typical sign size and location limits, these elements were previously considered as part of the building's design and have been refined to address previous counsel direction and policy intent. Overall, the variances support downtown economic objectives, excuse me, are appropriate to the site context and will help reduce future variants requests for businesses by establishing a clear framework for tendon signage. I'm open for questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Inspector Shields. Any questions. Kim. Uh, through the chair. Thank you for this. If the sign were to be updated should tell us undergo branding refresh. Does this need to come back to us. Through the mayor, typically know if it is the same size, we would typically process them as what we call a face change through a normal sign permit. Um, application. What do you mean by same size? You mean same square area? Yes. Okay. Surface area. Okay. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. The other questions. You're looking. Just a question of clarity. So this also is a permit for whatever commercial businesses go in on the ground floor for their sign. So they won't have to come back for permitting for that. It covers signage for the whole building with this through the mayor. Um, this will help. It's won't provide the permits for them, but this will provide sort of the framework for it.

So we request the additional variance for the sign cumulative sine allowance. So that basically we won't count the big telescience towards that. So the individual businesses will come in and apply for their own sign permits as they normally would. So rather than each business tenant having to come and then ask for additional, um, cumulative sign allowance through a variance. We're hoping to approve that now. So we're basically calculate how much lineage they would normally be allowed under the sign bylaw. And then we've added the large signs to that. Okay. So they would not need a variant. So the process will just be a little bit more. Yes. So they smoother for them. Yes. They'll come through the normal sign variants. So we'll still review it for the signed bylaw. The design guidelines and the actual copy of the image or of the signs. Um, that's also why the TS3 sign doesn't actually have any specific logos or anything on it because the actual sign itself

will be approved through the signed permit. We're just looking more at the area and the size, the variances to the byla. Okay. Great. Thank you for that. Any other questions. Not seeing any other questions. Some would like to move the recommendation. Councillor Kim is moving. Councillor Coleman is second. Councillor King, many comments. Council Coleman. I would only comment that, uh, I recall when we had the conversation originally about the giant Telesign that was on the west facing side at the very top. And the images at the time did indeed show that if you were in the harbour, that's the first thing that you saw when you looked towards the Empress as it was illuminated. So I appreciate that that is not what we're discussing today.

Happy to support this. Any comments? Yes. Councillor Thompson, go ahead. Thanks Mayor. Yeah. I'll, I'll be brief. Thanks first off for the, uh, the report and the presentation. I will support the recommendation here. Um, I have to say I have taken people by that building as it's gone up. And people are wowed by it. They're very impressed by the, um, the shape of it, the windows, the little carvings in the window frames, uh, people are talking about that it's beautiful. I hope the applicant is listening. I think that people are going to see a huge corporate logo and branding slapped on the building and be turned off. Honestly, uh, and it's possible that some tenants aren't even going to like it. I think it's way too big. Uh, that said, it's not my building. Um, so I'm not going to oppose the staff recommendation, but I hope the, uh, the applicant will consider the impression that they will make, uh, on the public and on

tenants, uh, slapping a massive, uh, advertisement on a beautiful building. Thanks. Thank you very much. Anybody else. Yeah. Councillor. Thanks through you, Mayor. I just, I want to add on to the last comment. It's something I wasn't going to mention it, but I did think about it when I was looking at this application and just, it might be worth tell us speaking with the artist, the indigenous artist that did, because it's a gorgeous. It's an outstanding piece of architecture. Let's be honest. Like we all should be very, very proud that this, this building is in our downtown, but it might be worth having some conversations with the indigenous artists involved just to make sure that it kind of aligns with the whole look and beauty of the building. But again, um, I'm, I'm going to vote in favor of this because it's not really my business. It's just a suggestion, but I do do want to note that it is an outstanding architectural achievement for

our city. And it's also an economic boon. It's going to bring high quality tech jobs to Victoria. And we, we really need the people right now. Like we already have talked about this morning. We need people downtown. And this is going to do that. And I just want to note that, um, I'm, I'm happy that Tell us worked and listened to the last council about, um, making sure that it didn't take away from the, uh, the views of, of the Empress Hotel, which is, of course, another, um, just most beautiful piece of architecture for our city, too. So, um, so happy to support this. Thank you very much. Anybody else. Yes, I'm sure that, uh, those members of the previous council who voted in favor of this or please to see finally coming to permission.

It certainly includes me. With that. All those in favor. Does anyone opposed. That is unanimous? Thank you very much for that inspector. Have a good day. And you too, Mr. Markheart. All right. That takes us up to staff reports, which there are two. The first one is with regard to the General Local Election Preparations, Mr. Kingsley, I believe this is you and your staff. Once again, please make yourself comfortable. And when you're ready to go over to you. I suggest that is a terrifying thing to see on the screen. The drama. Mr. Kingsley. Thank you, Mayor. Good morning, Council. Kurt Kingsley City Clerk Director of Legislative Services. I'm joined by my colleague Sheldon Johnson, Director of Communication and Engagement. And shortly, I also have a, oh, she's running us now, Monica Federicowski, who's one of her policy analysts and legislative services and who is a key part of our team in planning elections. Mr. Kingsley, before you start, may I just clarify that although there is much in

your report that the only decision council is making is in fact appointing yourself and Ms. Roder and attendant staff as the, both the CEO, the chief election officer and the various deputies, is that correct? That's correct, Mayor. The key decision point that we are requesting council consider today is appointment of the chief election officer, the intention of the presentation is just to give a brief quick overview for council of what we have planned as well as, uh, with particular focus on engagement activities that we understand council anticipates for every election that we do. Very good. Thank you. Just wanted to clarify what our decision point was. Over to you. Okay. Just quickly and briefly, as I know most members of councillor are probably well aware, um, the city is responsible for conducting the municipal election as well as the school trustee election for school district 61 and our jurisdiction. And, uh, as the mayor asked briefly quickly, uh, the key decision point in council's role

at this point, uh, that we are asking for is to appoint the chief election officer, Deputy Chief election officers who administer the election at arm's length. Elections are administered in accordance. We do administer them accordance with provincial law as well as our applicable bylaws and council policies that are in place. And, uh, just for clarity as well is in past elections. Elections BC still is has a role to play in the campaign financing and advertising rules that apply to the election under the local elections campaign financing act. As for voting opportunities. We have a mix that we are planning for a mix that we've done very, very similar in past voting past elections in referenda.

Uh, we are planning for four advanced voting opportunities, including one at the University of Victoria, which, um, we understand has been a past practice that we do as well as the district of Sanich on the same day. We also have plans for special voting opportunities again at participating CARE facilities. Mail ballot voting as well will be done in past elections. And General voting day, we are planning for 12 voting locations across the city, selected in accordance with councils. Policy guidelines. Voting operations for council's information involves us recruiting over 200 election officials to support us in all of our activities. We do plan again to use the same voters list software for an electronic live updating voters book that we've used in our past opportunities. We also plan to use the same ballot tabulators and technology that we've used in our most recent voting opportunities, as well as the mix of accessible voting that we offer.

With a slight enhancement this time around, in providing more assistance to individuals who may need extra help or assistance accessing our polling stations. And with that, I think I will pass it over to, um, Mr. Johnson, who will go over the engagement, the plan engagement enhancement activities for the election. Thank you very much, Mr. Johnson. Good afternoon. Uh, again, Sheldon Johnson, director of communications and engagement for the city. As with every election, we like to set ourselves a stretch goal, uh, like in the previous referenda. We wanted to surpass the previous by - election turnout. And so with this, uh, this advertising plan and branding, we want to surpass the last General Election, which was a 43. 5 percent voter turnout. So our entire plan provides a comprehensive campaign. We're going to have a mix of print online radio advertising in addition to brand recognition wherever we can get it, uh, because with the ultimate goal of ensuring every resident knows where and when, uh,

they can vote. This includes, uh, print advertising. Uh, it does cost more, but we do know that these are opportunities where we can get information directly in front of people at their homes, hopefully as well. So we have 11 ads planned in both the times colonists. And Vic news. There will be postcard, uh, male dropped approximately three weeks before the advanced voting day. And then we'll include what's on the ballot, advanced voting information in general voting day locations. And then we have a special edition of the Connect newsletter. We'll also be mail dropped two weeks before advanced voting and three weeks before for the General Voting Day. In addition, we'll have transit ads such as the ones you see here on 10 different buses for a four week campaign. There'll be signage and postering throughout the community, uh, in playground, City Hall, crystal pool fitness centre, um, all again with that, uh, idea to really create like a brand recognition across the city. We've updated

our, uh, I voted stickers along with the all popular future voter, uh, as for those of us with young children often have to take them along to, to vote. We will of course be doing a fair bit of online advertising, getting people on their phones, uh, as well as boosted Facebook events and voting day assets and five different languages. Social media obviously allows us to do very quick updates and reminders, but also target those, uh, low voter demographics between 18 and 35. This is an example of our, uh, times colonist homepage takeover. We did a similar for the, uh, for the referendum as well. And there'll be two of those for right before the General Vowing Day. And then one day of. We're continuing our extension into online advertising using Spotify ads as well as Reddit ads. Hoping to capture some of those people on their commute on their way into work and whatnot. And then of course, uh, earn media using all of our

assets so we can. So we'll have obviously content on our web page, our events calendar. There's an election video that we do each time. Digital RE news as well that goes straight directly into residents inboxes. And then the City Hall slideshow that you see when you enter the foyer, we'll also have information about, uh, voting. And then probably the most fun part for some of our staff is the colouring contest. Uh, that we do, uh, so children ages 12 and under. It's just another way to increase awareness of that, but also give, uh, three randomly selected, uh, participants a chance to be mayor for a day, uh, which I recall was quite fun for, for you mayor, uh, and quite fun for all of our stuff as well. Four different news releases will be released one for nomination period for the candidates declared. And then what you need to know to vote, uh, where and when. And then obviously the preliminary results. I think all

of this shows that across all of our platforms, all of our tools we're using, everything we have to have a visible, very engaging, simple, uh, and the most important part, driving that voter turnout. So everyone in the city knows where and when to vote. And, uh, with that, we're happy to take your questions. Thank you very much. You are correct, mayor for the day was one of the most fun parts of this job this year, this term. They were great kids. Let's start with questions. Questions councillor caroradona, counselorman, councillor gardener. Uh, thanks Mayor. I have really only one question, which does come up in the staff report, which is about the long lines that we experienced in 2022. So I just want to get a better sense of what we could do to mitigate that.

It doesn't mean that we're proposed to host additional voting places, but I wonder if there is an opportunity to message more assertively around early voting and get people to come out and spread out the votes so that we're not looking at long lines on election day. Mr. Kingsley? Or other strategies you guys are thinking about? Um, through you mayor, I think I'll start and then there's parts of that question I think Mr. Johnson would be better to answer. Um, council may recall that after every voting opportunity, we do a lessons learned report and we bring that to council, um, based on what we've determined and what we learn about our experiences. The long lines that we experienced in 2022, one of the key, a variety of variables that we believe caused that one of which, um, was one of the key ones, I should say is the facility of the actual location in question. So a good example is we did our advanced pools at

City Hall. And just due to the building, the structure of the building and the uses and the space available for us to use for that polling station. We just learned that it's not a very good location and it results in large cueing outside the building. So part of our considerations and selecting polling stations now, one of the key ones is actually really being mindful of the facility itself. How big is it? What is its actual capacity? How large could we scale it up? We learned in 2022 that there were some polling stations that actually were very big that were underutilized because of the total number that we'd selected and the amount of staff that were available to us and how we had to assign them to polling stations. So one of the key strategies we're going to use just operationally is to try and scale up locations more increase their capacity. Be more mindful of the capacity of available at each point station. And then

additionally as noted in the report, we are doing as a result of those lessons learned council authorized us to do all advanced polls at the Victoria Conference Centre, which has facilities just far bigger than what we had available to us in 2022 for our advance poles, for example. And based on our past experiences using their facilities, we don't anticipate extremely long lines at all. In past voting opportunities, our engagement staff were very helpful to us in getting the word around. And so I guess I will pass that over to Mr. Johnson to see if you can expand on that for council. Mr. Johnson. Thanks very much and thanks for the question through the mayor. Uh, yeah, we do have a number of opportunities outlined already.

We can certainly circle back and make sure we've taken advantage of all those to let people know in advance of the advanced voting opportunities. Um, the other thing we've done in the past is stayed in contact with our ledge services, colleagues to find out if there are large line day of. We can always do some social media to recommend maybe people go to other locations that are nearby. What's your credit on that suit? All right. Councillor Hammond. Thanks Mayor. My question was about the long lines as well. And, and so I'm pleased about the changes that were recognised for the advanced pooling. There's two things because one, when I asked you the Mr. Kingsley ahead of time for this meeting and he said it out to all councillors, you mentioned the advanced pole. Um, on election day somewhere between 45 and 60 minutes at various times. And so it's of course it's one thing to want to get more people to come out. It's another

thing to not want to drive away people who have made the effort to come out and they just don't have 45 minutes or 60 minutes. I can appreciate the social media, um, that might help people if they're into that. And I remember when I voted eight years ago, um, that there was something that I was trying to find out where there was shorter lineups for. Is there any opportunity actually at the polling stations if there are lineups to actually put up a sign of some kind or indicate to people that not far away, uh, that has less lines. It presumably it'd have to be substantially less lines. Otherwise, people will just make up the difference in travelling there. Kingsley. Through you, Mayor, the long lines are definitely something that was on our mind from 2022.

We are going to be doing more things behind the scenes to try and track and do a better job of proactively tracking lineups and the amount of traffic that we're getting and pulling stations. There are certainly those activities that we're planning are in their early stages. So I don't necessarily want to over commit to what we may be able to deliver, but there is definitely opportunity for us to try and explore using tactics similar to that to try and, um, let get the word out and let people know more if they're either out of pulling station or as Mr. Johnson says in other means to just let them know where the shorter lines are. If in the event that we experience long lines, I did want to, they'll flag just for counsel because I may not have been as clear before a key part of from our lessons learned about our selection of polling stations and being very mindful of not only the total number

based on the staffing recruitment that we can secure, but also our ability to scale them up. That's a key difference. That wasn't there in 2022. So 2022, we had polling stations that were very, very busy. And we just unfortunately did not have the staff or ability to scale up the operation to increase its capacity in the buildings that were big enough to do so. So that's another thing we're going to be doing as well for this election where we have cautiously high hopes that we will be able to actually process a higher number of people at some of those key locations where there were size and space available to us if we get the right amount of staff that we need to also have an impact as well on the total amount of time people will experience visiting our polling stations. Thanks Mayor. And through you then either in this reporter and the lessons learned, I was reading where you said some of the difficulties

is that you just didn't have the staff. I'm guessing that people, because these are, these are not contracts, but these are temporary staffs. That right the city employees through you mayor. That's correct. There's, there are some constraints that we experience and they seem to vary depending on the elections that we've done for reasons that we're not entirely sure, but there are, there is a definite pool of people locally that have a lot of experience and are some of the key people that we rely on to hire to help us do elections. And council may be aware of course every other jurisdiction is having an election at the exact same time during a General. And so this can create constraints on the number that we were able to recruit. In the last General Election, one of the key lessons learned that we took from that was really that relationship between picking a number of polling stations.

And especially doing that before we finish our recruitment activities because we found ourselves in a position very quickly that we had committed to a certain number of polling stations, but we had a finite number of staff. And so that led to exacerbating that phenomenon that I was trying to describe earlier where we seeoretically could scale up up pulling station. That was very busy. There were at least a couple that I visited where we could have easily have done it at space wise, but we didn't have the people. We just did not have enough people to scale up from those locations without taking from others. Take a number from others, which would have led to a decline at longer late time, excuse me, at those locations.

So it's kind of a mix of, of what we experienced, but so far I can at least tell counsel that we are optimistic that we will get the number that we need for the pulling stations, the number of polling stations that we're planning for. Thanks Mayor. And through you, um, cause I know you have as much interest in getting as, as many people as possible as any candidate does. Because that is your goal to, to get as many people as you can. But just so that I have an understanding when you're saying you can sort of adjust. Would that mean that within that building, you could suddenly put up another polling station if you had the staff? Or does it mean that all of that adjustment would have to be done ahead of time in anticipating the numbers? Seriously? Three mirror, we are actually planning right now, it's a slight mix of those two tactics, but more heavily weighted. And we just want to staff

them up at full capacity. So on election day, we utilise the spaces that the pulling station spaces that we've chosen and use them to their full capacity. So that's really the goal. So that we have the full capacity online so that it minimizes the amount that we have to redeploy or shift around over the course of the day because it can be very challenging on a busy day to do that. That said, we do, we are also planning to. Secure the number of staff needed and to go about planning our operations in a way where we can at least respond to unforeseen long lineups, if any occur. We're trying to build in some capacity for us to respond to that in real time and to try and resource certain locations more or allocate them slightly differently to try and deal with the problem in real time, uh, for lack of a better way of describing it. Thank you, Councillor Gardner. Thank you. Um, got a

lot of questions. I don't know how I'll get them in the right order. So please bear with. Do we have yet any dates for the advance, uh, voting. So I believe that was in the presentation, Councillor Guardian. Was the actual dates there? Yes. Uh, three of you, Mary. Yeah. We had the slide up earlier in the presentation, but just for, uh, just for, uh, I have it at my fingertips here. So October 7th. October 13th and October 14th of the actual days. Would you pull up the slide just so the public? Yeah, cause it wasn't in the printed material, was it? That we had earlier.

I mean. We may not have had it in the report. No. Okay. That's what I, that's why I asked it. So my questions are from more of the report rather than flipping through these slides. So thank you. And the slides will be posted today. Three mayor. We usually have all the materials that are presented on a council meeting up at least by, uh, before the end of Friday. Okay. Thank you very much. Um, okay. That was the first question. Um, one of your advanced polls is outside the city. I don't know if that's a training experience for some of the many people you're going to be hiring. Or what is the cost of materials and do you have to rent the space and, uh, staff time, et cetera for one of the advanced voting outside the city. And I think you politely, very nicely sent me some of the data. It was quite low. It seems to me two or three hundred. Who actually voted

there last time. Mr. Caesar? Um, three, Mayor, we need a little bit of time to pull up exact numbers if you're interested in exact numbers. But what I can, what I can't say at this, at this time, is it is one of our, uh, least expensive pulling locations. We share the costs 50 - 50 with the district of Sanich. They do a polling station at the same location at the same time, right next door. So we're able to rent the same room and divide the room in half. And we each occupy half. And in terms of turnout, it's relatively low compared to other, um, advanced pools that we do. So it's not a particularly high turnout. But in terms of the cost that it costs us to conduct that pulling station, the price per vote, I guess we could say is relatively low, very low compared to all the other opportunities that we're very much.

Um, when will we get the map? Now I understand you haven't got all the polling stations because you don't, you want to have to do that balance of getting staff, et cetera. I get that. When do you expect we will get the maps of the polling places. Uh, three mayor. I do have information on where they are today of council wishes to see that today. I could try bring that up and show you some of the places that we're planning and what it looks like. In terms of finalization, as I mentioned before, is a function of how our recruitment goes. And the local government act requires us to give formal notice of where and when voting is to take place. And we will have that, uh, secured and finalised before that we have to give notice. So it's hard for me to say right now because we're still conducting recruitment. But I can, I do have information on the planned sites if you want more

information at this time. Yeah, I'd like to see the map of that, even though I realise it's planned. And what is the date that you must disclose by. I'm just having, uh, staff bring up the map that we have for council. And if I, if you don't mind through, you may or may circling back to the question about the uvek poll, I have more precise information. The cost of the actual room for us, the renting it for that poll is 575 dollars and the amount of votes that we received in the last General Election at that location was 375. There was an embedded question in Councillor Gardner's previous question, which was with regard to when you need to have this finalised as to location.

Three, Mayor, we have to finalise it before the formal legislative deadline for giving notice. When's update? That is, uh, just give me one moment. I'll look up the precise state for you.

Uh, three, Mayor. Sorry. I have that date now the exact date is September 17th. So we need to absolutely finalise our locations before then because that's our first opportunity for giving formal notice under the local government act of where people can vote. So what we, this won't be final. I should September 17th, perhaps. I mean, uh, three mayor. We hope to have it finalised before then. We, we have, we're working to secure all these locations. We mostly have them all secured and it is more just a question now of how our recruitment goes and making sure that we get the staffing levels that we need to, uh, operate the locations that we have planned and operate them in the way we plan to do so.

Okay. Um. How many locations do we have before? Like I see the ones we have here now. And I'm seeing gaps, but of course gaps don't mean that the people living where the gaps. So I'm not necessarily concerned about that. So how many did we have before. You're in 2022? We had 13 total of 13 voting locations throughout the city. So now we've eliminated two. We've made a couple of changes through you, Mayor, just in terms of, as I was mentioning before, the council actually as a result of our lessons learned in 2022 past policy guidelines to guide the chief election officer and selection amongst other things in selection of polling stations. And so really our selection of them is adhering to those guidelines as many as possible when we, in choosing the precise locations, one of the guidelines, of course, is geographic proximity, a good reasonable spread across the city. But as I tried to mention before, we're trying to be more mindful and

it is in the guidelines to be mindful of what kind of facility does that location have to offer. And so we're trying to balance as many of those variables as we can to pick locations that we think will, um, capture as many of the guidelines as possible. Yeah. Thank you. No, I was just looking at the jubilee area, but of course realise a big chunk of that is the hospital itself as opposed to a residential. Cause that just looks like gaps, but I realised that may not be reality. If you just look at a map. Okay. Other questions. Um, I found it kind of amusing.

We just saw now that they, uh, mail - in balance going to have prepaid postage. I guess that's just for within Canada. Anyway, um, do we have any idea when you, the mailing balance don't have the names of the candidates on it or do they and what will be, I've already people say, I'm going to be on vacation. How do I get one? And I thought, Oh my goodness. It's early for them to be thinking about that. I keep saying you better have a million address to receive something. So what is the deadlines or what do you, what is the process really for mailing. Uh, through you, Mayor. The question, um, council might be aware of some constraints that we've experienced in the past at all. I'll answer it as best I can. The process for requesting mail ballot, we will have information on our website. As well as an online portal for individuals to essentially sign up for one and request that service. The

precise dates we're looking them up for right now. You mean the date for one, it'll be posted. Yeah, apologies mayor for the pause. Um, we offer the sign up for mail ballots as soon as we can. We offer far before the end of the nomination period. And when the, when the candidates will be known. So individuals in the community can actually start asking us for, uh, signing up for the male ballot service, uh, well in advance. The ballot, if I remember that part of your question, the ballot that I'm a male, uh, a male ballot service we'll get is the exact same ballot that is used in the election. It's identical. There is no difference. It is the only difference is they either pick it up at municipal hall, a city hall here, or we mail it to them. And of course, they have to mail it back to us, uh, before the deadlines designated in the act. Okay. So I want to make sure I captured all the, you'll have an email

address for that that they can. I shouldn't tell them all to send it to Kurt Kingsley. Well, you certainly, you certainly can if you wish to the mirror, what we will, we will have more of a formal system set up a portal where they can actually sign up and request. And we design it that way on purpose so that it gives them the fields they need to give us all the information that we need to provide them with the service with, without having to, uh, without them having to liaise with us too much. Kings, glad to hear about priority lines. And I recall when you briefed us after the last election, we had that session with you. And I know I raised one particular situation where there was real problem. Well, there can be real problems anywhere with a lot of elderly who just couldn't, who were too frail to be able to stand there for a long time. And you actually had a volunteer

came along, uh, who assisted at the time. Uh, and fetch chairs, et cetera. So in some of these places where you anticipate, perhaps that you might have very elderly or frail people who may not be able to stand for 20 minutes or a half an hour. Will there be backup kind of seating somewhere or something. And I realise you said there's going to be priority lines, which is greatly. Through you, Mary, yes, that is part of what we were, or what I was referring to when we were trying to offer some more enhanced accessibility assistance to individuals who need to access our polling stations. What we're calling the priority line is a service that we learned of from the City of Vancouver and they've done it at least once. And this is for individuals, uh, that may need more assistance and just cannot stand in a line due to variety of factors and just need to, they just need more help and faster service. So

we've learned of this from the City of Vancouver and what we learned from the City Vancouver was this was actually really successful. But we are doing it because to respond to feedback that we did receive. We receive very similar feedback that there were individuals that really experienced, um, more difficulty than others, um, waiting for access to the polling station. So we are going to try to have things such as seeding. And of course, the priority lines. And we're going to train our, our staff a little differently to try and handle those situations to help them and assist them in a better way than we did last time. Okay. Thank you. And just a couple more questions. Page four and you had it in one of your slides. I don't remember which slide. You had, um, low vote demographics and demographics. And you showed age groups, et cetera. Were those demographics from the 2022 election or from the pool referendum. Mr. Johnson.

Sorry. Can you repeat the question? Oh, on that page four of the report where you gave demographics, uh, ones who did not vote as much as you expected by population base. That one, where those was a data or were the information there. Was that what she obtained from the 2022 election? Or was it obtained from the pool referendum. Because we've seen a shift, I believe. I don't have data, but. Through the mayor, it is from the 2022 General. Yeah. So do we have any demographics from the pool referendum. Any demographics from the crystal pool referendum. Uh, through the mayor, not at my fingertips, but I would have to, uh, confer with ledge sleeve sources staff as they would have their compilation of voter information. Yeah.

And the reason I'm asking is for my next question, because I think we've seen a shift. And, um, I'm quite worried about the radio station choices. Most people I know listen to CBC or CFACs, for example. And they have not been included, uh, in fact, there's two that I, you know, a long people don't. So I'm very concerned about that. And, um, is there not a reason why we could not include CBC and CFACs. Mr. Kingsley or Mr. Johnson. Through the mayor. There's, there's no reason why we can't look at that. Absolutely. We have relationships with all advertisers. So this would have been, uh, preliminary scan of who we had opportunities with. So we can certainly, uh, look at some other partners. Okay. And Mayor, do I need a director or anything on that? Or cause that's very important, I believe. Okay. So that's obtained.

Okay. That's great. Thank you very much. I may have some more questions, but that I think I've done a lot now. Okay. So Councillor Loughton. Thanks and through you, Mayor. Um, so the goal for this election is 2018, the 2018 voter turnout, which is 43. 5. Can you remind me what it was in 2022. Senator, Mr. Johnson or Mr. Kingsley question? 2022 3 Marine percentage was roughly 37. 9, I believe. And is that broken out into demographics. Exiling through you, Mayor. We do have some information about that, but it's limited just due to, um, the secrecy of the ballot and privacy aspects of it. So I, we can try and provide some information, but it is limited in the amount that we do have. Okay.

In the reason for that question is just, for example, the youth vote is typically low. And I'm wondering if there's anything we can, and we can do to encourage youth voting. Let's just use that as the prime example here. Mr. Android, uh, it is why we have chosen some of the advertising partners that we do have, like, like Reddit and Spotify, um, but certainly I'm more than happy to go back to my team and just see if we have any other partners that we can use that would target that youth vote. It is certainly, like I said, why we have made some choices the way we have, uh, but, uh, you'll see in the cost breakdown within the report digital advertising is quite a bit more affordable than print. And it is those digital assets that we know that we're going to get those lower, uh, voter turnout. So definitely having to look at that.

Oh yeah. I think, I think that would be, um, really a good use of time just because it was 300 and some odd votes at YVC. Like it's just not enough. You know? Thanks for the report. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Councillor Kim. Uh, thanks to the chair. Is there an option for people to call in to ask for a mail - in ballot. She Kingsley. Uh, three mirror legislative services staff do assist individuals when they experience any trouble, um, requesting a male ballot. So we're always there to assist anyone to help them find the way the best way for them to vote. Um.

Is it possible to consider making these spaces a little more fun, like colouring books for the kids? Things that will keep the kids entertained. And bring more families out. Mr. Kingsley. Mr. Johnson. I can start and through the mayor. So we do have the colouring contest that we're going to have for, but we also have some recent, um, uh, other colouring things that we've developed for kids. Plus, um, when we did our OCP engagements, we had kids tables with colouring and blocks and things like that. Definitely more than happy to look at some options for some locations. Okay. Thanks. Um, yeah, I was particularly noticing some locations are right next to playgrounds. And that's great, but not all of them do. With respect to the dynamic transit ads on the buses, um, I used to work somewhere where we did put ads on buses and the thing is you don't control where they go, right?

The roots are regional. Have you considered partnering with neighbouring municipalities to split the cost of these ads to make it like a regional, just know that you're voting on this day. Mr. Johnson. Uh, through the mayor, uh, we have done that with, uh, some print ads that we do, um, for a number of elections back where we partner with CRD as well as our partner municipalities. We have not looked at that for a transit, but it might be a good thing for us to discuss with a couple of our partners. We have a good relationship with trans and we've booked a number of ads with them over the years. And so I think we've just leveraged that relationship thus far. And why not bust shelter ads. Mr. Johnson. Uh, we are in the early stages of, um, a new agreement with bus shelters. And so we will be looking at that fairly soon actually. Uh, so some more updates on that to come. Okay. Um,

okay. And speaking of youth, uh, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, all the things the Gen Zs are using, uh, I didn't see listed necessarily. That said, I don't know their reach with the youth, but has that been considered? Why not? Mr. Johnson. Uh, three of the mayor, we, we always look at Instagram is a very popular one for the youth, uh, as well as those Reddit and Spotify ones as well. Um, I don't believe we've looked at YouTube for this round, uh, but Instagram for sure, but we can definitely look at, uh, YouTube ads as well. Um. Braille ballots. Kingsley, is that possible. Uh, three mayor. Just want to make sure I heard correctly. Braille ballots. Braille ballots. Bellots printed with braille. O braille. Oh, I'm sorry.

I missed you. Um. We don't currently have that to my knowledge. That, sorry, that is partly because we have an accessible voting machine. Always during any advanced poll. Or, uh, on election day. So we always have at least one. And it can enable someone who is either fully, has full site impairment or full hearing impairment is still a vote. Okay. Um, is it, uh, possible as well to think about, uh, communication strategy that integrates preexisting, um, potential, uh, preexisting city engagement opportunities like events, uh, that the city is hosting or sponsoring throughout September and October. Through the mayor, certainly, uh, anytime where we have sort of, um, pop up events or things where we just have staff, you know, ready to engage with, we typically bring a suite of things that the city is doing, including if there is an election, we would certainly have information available. Absolutely. Okay. Two more questions. Um, did you know Costco has a parking lot camera. So you can see how busy it is. So could we

do something similar. To show the cues. You don't, something for you to think about. Mr. Johnson or Mr. Kingsley. Is that three Mayor Weekendly consider doing that? We would have to look at it a little more closely to see if there'd be additional costs. And requirements that we currently don't have budgeted or selected, but it's certainly something we could look into doing or if council wishes that service established, uh, we certainly can do it if council wishes to establish that and direct us to do so. They're not also be some privacy issues. I think that was three mirror. That's correct. But we can also adjust resolution of cameras to, um, we can offer different resolutions that can meet different privacy requirements. Councillor Kim. I'm just.

Uh, we are just so you know, through the mayor, we are, when I mentioned we are thinking about doing more tracking of wait times and lines at pulling stations. It's very similar to what we're doing except we didn't contemplate a camera due to some of the logistical and cost. But we are looking at tracking more information and life updating that to our engagement staff instead of it being more of a reactionary situation. So we're, we are cautiously optimistic that with these changes, we're trying to do, it will be, it won't impose too much extra work on election staff at those locations. But it will enable us to get more data, more live data to better understand what our capacity is and what the traffic is it between pulling locations and to better work with engagement staff to live update individuals, including, we hope that this could, if this goes well, we could actually use it to potentially launch different types of services in the future

where we have more live information available for voters as to which locations are busy and which ones are not. I'm smiling because it's funny that figuring out parking spaces available in parquets is actually like easier now than figuring out how long these lines are going to be. Um, my last question is, um, for recruitment, uh, knowing that you can hire, uh, youth under the age of 18 would you consider, uh, letting our youth council know that there are employment opportunities. Three, Mary. Yeah. We have actually, as part of our recruitment, we do reach out to our youth coordinator at the city and rely on them to get the word out to all interested in parties and individuals who may want to experience working elections. Does that include, um, like, uh, I D - pad welcoming City other committees of very municipal engaged folks. Uh, three, Mayor, we've been working with high schools and universities directly. I can find out for you if that, if the reach has been out

to those groups. And I can certainly try and find that out and follow up. Okay. Thank you for your patience. And you've got a great angel on your shoulder there. Mr. Kingsley. Thank you very much. I have one question just before you go to Councillor Coleman. In our, um, procedures, it references the fact that we need to have at least four advanced voting days. But by my look on your presentation, there were actually only three days of the one of the days has two locations. Uh, I'm actually looking at the appendix that you provided. And under the General Policy Guidelines. And number six, it says that there will be at least two advanced pulling locations and at least four advanced voting days. So do the two on the one day the one at Euvekin has one at the VCC. Is that counting as two different days. That's a good question. Mayor. I know part of our planned advance voting days did change because one of

them, of course, was based on Yuvic availability and when in Sanich was planning to do. So, uh, we'll have a closer look at that and make sure that we're abiding by all of the required bylaws on before we finalise the date. Thank you for that. Councillor Coleman. Thank you. A couple of questions through you. Could you pull back the map of the polling stations that projected polling stations, please? These are the traditional ones. You said there were 13 before. Was it the City Hall that was no longer the polling station in the core? Yes, I believe it was. Uh, three, Mayor, the couple of changes that I think council will see from what we were plant the locations we're planning to use this time. And from, uh, what we did in 2022, one of those changes is City Hall is in advance bowl location. So that is, um, not a location that we're interested in using anymore. And we instead, we use the Victoria Conference

Centre of facilities instead. And then. Place. One. Okay. This. Okay, and, uh, more specifically, we are, there are some smaller locations that council may recall that we used in 2022 that we are not planning to use this time. So a couple of examples is the James Bade New Horizon Centre, the Cook Street Village Activity Centre. We use those locations in 2022, but they're very small locations, very limited in the capacity. And we experienced a lot of problems with lines and wait times and other issues that those locations. So instead, we've shifted to using other locations. Larger ones, uh, an example of one of the larger ones we're using is the Victoria High School. We didn't use that last time in 2022.

I can certainly provide counsel with a full accounting of the differences between what we're planning and what we did in 2022, if you'd like for, if you like more detailed information. Thank you. Um. Many years ago, I was trained as an international electoral observer for a state election in Mexico. Um, one of the highest turnout areas, um, were a series of polling stations in commercial malls because it had great parking and it had already addressed the accessibility issues. Have we considered those. Three mayor. I recall you mentioning this before. And, uh, we have been exploring and tried to explore this quite a bit for the 2025 crystal pool referendum and then including the election. One of the key issues that we've encountered in doing so is just the facilities that the malls would be able to provide us. A lot of them were very inadequate for ballot secrecy, privacy needs. And as well as just, they were in an adequate space. So we, we've so

far have been unsuccessful in securing a big enough space. The mall in question that would give us probably the most opportunity at the moment is very, very close to the Victoria Conference Centre. So we actually have better larger space security, the Victoria Conference Centre instead. So that's one of the key issues that we're running into is just what the malls are able to provide us, the most that we've spoken to. And what we need. Thank you. But the moles all have parking space that they quite often allocate and tent off for a day specific use. So there is that opportunity. You might want to explore it. The next question goes back to the radio advertising.

Um, we're targeting two stations. There are more. But the ad buy is very low. It's 3, 100 dollars. So if we're going to go into radio and we want it to be broader, what should that actually be? Because that is that ad buy is lower than I suspect many of the candidates. Running for office. Mr. Kingsley. I'm sorry, Mayor. I didn't quite catch the second one. Mr. Johnson, I think who would want to answer that? Mr. Johnson. Given the feedback today through the Mayor apologies, um, we'll go back and re - look at all of our radio spend and where we can be a little bit more deliberate on some of the other stations you mentioned. And then, yeah, we would just maybe trim back on some of the other areas. Also, we would confer with our, with our colleagues and allege services is like, uh, do we have a little bit more we can put towards this? I think it is a, uh, actual

value to tax dollars to making sure that everyone knows that this is happening and that we're increasing our, our voter turnout. Thank you. And one of the things that we have done, I think exceptionally well and never marketed properly. Is the drive up opportunity for people with ambulatory issues. So if quite often we will drive perhaps a senior who can't move very well and a returning officer will come out to the car and allow them to process that. Is that available in all our pedaling stations? For one. And if it is, could we market it better. Two ports, I think to that question. Both Mr.

King's name, Mr. Johnson? Uh, three Mayor. If I heard the question correctly, it was about the CURB side voting. Yes, we offer curbside voting at each and every polling location and all voting opportunities. And as for the promotion of it, I will turn to Mr. Johnson for that. Mr. Johnson. Through the mayor, the short answer would be absolutely, uh, and we have a number of opportunities, not just through our marketing through radio and advertising, but we have, you know, those opportunities that go directly to every home, that postcard, the Connect newsletter, those types of things where we can promote those, uh, those opportunities for people that aren't always listening to the radio or on social media. Thank you through the mayor. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Any final questions? Councillor Kim, can you be brief so we don't go too far into lunch? Oh, I was, I was going to move. Oh, absolutely. Yes. There's a colleague with the hand up. Council Johnson? Extremely brief. I can't recall where their QR codes on the ads or are they listed so tiny? I can't see them. Through the mayor, our posters will have QR codes. Yeah. And, and the cool thing about QR codes is we can track where we get the most action where people are scanning them the most. We can say actually let's not bother putting a poster at X because no one ever touches it or whatever. Good. Councillor Kim, you'd like to move the recommendation. Is there a second or Councillor Coleman? Councillor Kim any comments. Oh, Councillor Coleman. Anybody else any comments on the motion. It is essentially as we discussed at the beginning appointments. I brought the chief election officer and a variety of deputies. All those in

favor. Anybody opposed. That is unanimous. Well timed. Thank you very much for all of that work and all you're about to do for the next few months. Uh, it is noon. I am going to suggest and request for council that we reconvene at 115 to accommodate commitment that I have with provincial government minister. Thank you. So a little bit longer luncheon. And so we'll be back here at 115. Thank you. And we'll continue on then with the balance of our committee agenda. Korea City Council's May 21st Committee of the Whole meeting. Before we took our slightly extended lunch break, we had reached G2 on our Committee agenda. This is the technical high angle rope Rescue Program, which was originally placed on the Consent Agenda, but was pulled because there is a question that needs to be asked. So I believe Councillor Gardner, that was you who would ask, wanted to ask a question, so why don't I toss it over to you and I believe

ChiefApp gets in the yes, he's online. And so why don't you pose your question to him? Thank you. Do we have to move exceptions first? Because I'm fine with that too. I'm not objecting to any. Sure, why don't you move the motion? Yeah, just to speed things a little. Move the motion, and if someone likes to second the motion, Councillor Coleman secondic, so go ahead, Councillor Gardner questions and comments. Yeah, thank you very much. And I found this very interesting, and I realised that the City Victoria is very different from Sydney. And therefore, this equipment would be more properly, should we say, how is in Victoria with Sydney having use of it when it needs it? So that all made sense. But then it encouraged me, of course. Our city has changed so much in the last 10, 20, 30 years. In the 70s, we had a big build with a few high buildings, most in Jane Spain, and a couple other speckled throughout the

city. Now we have a lot of can 20 and higher, you know, coming buildings. So my real question was, is whether or not we have any kind of, not we, but especially the chief, has any kind of record or what kind of data there is to show? How many high buildings there are? And perhaps if sometime, if not today, another time, we could hear about the whole tower crane rescue and fire suppression systems for high buildings and the limitations. Because I think it's something that we would all benefit from. And the General Public would too. And as I said, there's an even changes in our term, which is of course the same term as chief Atkinson, since he was appointed when we were here. And so I just wondering if the chief could just speak about that for a couple of minutes is to kind of what the situation is in this city. And I don't know if he's on now, is he? Yes, yes,

he is. Right. Chief, did you heard this question, I think. So why don't you talk a little bit about what you can off the top of your head. And then I think that I heard a request there for you to at some future date come and give us some more sort of fulsome overview, uh, of how this works. Uh, thank you, Mayor. And thank you for the question, councillor. Uh, through the mayor. Um, perhaps I'll start with the Tower Crane agreement specifically just to provide a little context around that. Um, so, uh, as we know when tall buildings go up around the City of Victoria, we see, uh, lots of cranes, tower cranes go up around the city. Uh, and they usually have operators, uh, that are contained within them, usually at elevation. Uh, as I'm sure you can appreciate that, um, the technical requirements around trying to provide rescue to someone who may be in distress at elevation, uh, is very complex and very

technical in nature. Uh, it's not an endeavour that every municipality can take on, uh, to be properly equipped and properly trained in order to provide that service. Um, they certainly have the opportunity to reach out to other providers that are capable of providing that service and enter into an agreement for that service with them, as is the case here. Uh, so for this particular agreement, uh, we do have a fully trained and fully outfitted, uh, technical rescued team, uh, that can provide this service to the town of Sydney. They've requested that through council resolution, uh, and so that's what I'm asking for today is, is council endorsement to, to move forward with that, uh, with respect to firefight and capacity and tall buildings and the tall building stock in Victoria, uh, Councillor Gardner is correct.

I do not have, uh, in exact number of tall buildings in our, uh, in our community, uh, right before me right now, but I can certainly get that information, uh, really quickly. And I would be happy to present, uh, on any topic related to tall buildings, firefighting, fire protection, uh, councils, uh, council's direction anytime. Thank you, Councillor Ger. Thank you, Chiefs. And so I hope that someone can schedule that in because I think it would be very valuable for all of us. Thank you, Chief. Great. Thank you. Councillor Coleman, you were the secondary. Yes. Thank you. I fully support this. However, there is a word missing in the printed document in front of us as opposed to the paper one. It's actually a five year term. Oh, yes. The word year is missing. Very good.

Thank you for catching that. Any other comments? No. Anyone else have any other comments? Uh, seeing none, all those in favor. Anyone opposed. That is unanimous. Thank you, Chief. And I will just note that, um, Councillor Loughten had indicated she was going to be late as she was attending a memorial over the lunch hour. So she'll join us when she's able. That does take us on then to two items of new business. The first of which was on the consent agenda. That was item H1. The council member motion with regard to the Cumberland BC miners Memorial Grosslide Vigil. So that, uh, actually has been approved to proceed on to daytime council. I don't think it's coming today, but it will attend to us, uh, at the next available spot on our date home council agendas.

We just move on to item H2 and that is another council member motion. This is about graffiti prevention options for age restrictions retail access and storage controls of spray paint. That is, I believe, council hammon. You'd like to move that. Yes. And Councillor Gardner is seconding. Councillor Hammond, over you. Thanks, Mayor. If people had been to Minidoso, Manitoba, many years ago, you'd go to the lyric theatre. And when I was a kid living in Minedosa, I went to the theatre and one of the trailers was about the movie MAME starring, um. Not Roslin Russell. I'm not that old. Um, Lucille Ball. But the interesting thing is they said two years in the making and, you know, what a spectacular thing this would be. Well, I found out when I was older for some strange reason that she had broken her leg. And the reason why it took two years is because she took a buddy a year to recover before they could get into filming.

I just want to say this, that for me, this motion has been three years in the making. And it is just something in which I have to credit. I haven't got her permission. So I'll just use her first name PAM, who was involved in Victoria in removing graffiti. And she would send counsel all these pictures. I then started talking to her and wanted to bring something forward. And she volunteered, um, to actually do some of the research. And so she actually found out and called around to some different places throughout Canada and then gave me an opportunity to follow up on it. And so there was some objections and some other things that were going on. And I thought this is crazy. And I also thought what's crazy is how much the city spends on removing graffiti. And it took quite a bit. And I have to ultimately thank our director of finance where she put it all together for me. But I'm also finding

that the other things that for sure we pay the City of Victoria taxpayers pay up too close to 500, 000 dollars a year. And then the, um, another, um, another pot of money that's worth 100, 000 dollars which goes into other aspects of trying to sort of reclaim some of these areas in which there has been graffiti or the idea is if you put up something nice, there's less graffiti that goes on it. So it's closer to about or an excessive about 600, 000 dollars a year that the taxpayers spend on this. Since my motion has come forward, um, I and perhaps other councillors as well have gotten information about the amount of people who do things, um, that I didn't even consider. Uh, one of them I got from, um, she gave me her permission to say this. Rachel Westman, she's the chairperson of the burnside gorgeous group. Did anyone know there was a burnside gorgeous group? Okay. Chris knew. I didn't know that.

And she said for the last four years, they had been removing graffiti with paint from the city so that she gets, uh, they get paid from the city. And they have about 12 volunteers who spend between 450 and 500 hours. Removing graffiti. And so, uh, I know that she is only one of a number of people because the other people who are involved in this process. And basically this is a, this is a blight. It's, um, you know, the fact is it's vandalism. And so it's the kind of thing that are people trying to get rid of as quickly as they can. I know in the city, if it's really objectionable, then the city tries their best to get on that as quickly as possible and have that removed. But that's also an ongoing concern.

There was some of the things that stalled me and I'll just comment on it. I put it in the background information about, you know, some of the things that some people would say, for example, which is, well, you can buy spray paint online. And what you can, um, but if you're a minor, let's say, and I'm not suggesting by any means that the, the vast majority of, of those who do the destructive spray painting, our kids, um, but for those who are, if that means you got to go and get it online, then you got to get a credit card from your parent, presumably. And this is going to have to be delivered to your, your home. So hopefully that can cut down on some things. Some of the other things that I have found out, and this was in my discussions with the City of Winnipeg and the City of London, Ontario, um, and there must be other sources on this as well, that

a certain amount of spray paint is actually stolen from people's garages and back decks and all those kind of things. So that's even something as opposed to just giving up on doing something like this. We could also make it aware for people on this. Um, another one is just one more thing for merchants to do. And I get that. But there are already a number of merchants who are restricting these in the same way that we restrict the sales of, um, all kinds of other products. Um, in different areas. I was remembering when I was going to the states, uh, when I went to New York and I had a cold and just trying to buy normal antihistamine, those things were locked up because apparently I guess you can use those for other purposes. Uh, anyway, so there's lots of reasons why when it's good public policy, we can have this. So the big ones are asking staff. I don't want to pretend to know

this. But asking staff to look into a number of things. The big ones are about restricting miners from being able to buy paints. Uh, and then the other one is where we would have more restrictions for retailers, just making sure that it's locked up or it's in a safer place or maybe behind the till or something along those lines when people are going to be getting spray paint so they can't steal it. And again, I know a number of people do this already. Within this motion there, I really want and encourage staff to where they can talk to anyone and everyone who might be affected by this. And also to give thoughts where we would have exemptions for parents or guardian schools employers, trades, artists and other legitimate users, um, how, how would we implement something like this? So the idea is I'm hoping we can do something. And I just have one question if I could ask that, um, staff, um, and I'm not

sure who asked this too. But are there any requirements that we could impose on third parties other than homeowners and business owners to get rid of graffiti such as tell us or hydro. That's an interesting question. I'm not sure to whom that would be posed. Is that an infrastructure, yes, Mr. Doyle. Through the, uh, there are, uh, numerous opportunities when tele or other utility providers are installing, maintaining, replacing infrastructure where we're interacting with them. And, uh, we, we do notify these utility owners when there are instances of offensive graffiti. Often when members of the public are reporting it, they don't know necessarily who owns the infrastructure. And if we're not the owner, we still ensure that the message gets passed through to the appropriate infrastructure owner. Thanks. And through you, Mayor, can I ask if we were to put in a bylaw, uh, or sorry, could we put in a bylaw that we would have the authority to require those any third parties to remove

any spray paint. And if not, that we, let's say, would do it and would build them. Is there any opportunity for that. Mr. Doyle, do you know that? That sounds a bit more like a legal question. To the bear, I've not couldn't answer that precisely. So I'd have to get back to you in consultation with colleagues. Okay. Thanks for that. And the only reason I was asking that is that yet another person emailed me their last night or this morning, uh, with comments about that. And he actually got something back from staff, but I didn't, I wasn't, I wasn't clear whether it was the authorization.

I know that there's before you go on. I think Mr. Kingsley might have something to offer. Uh, sorry, thank you Mayor just in relation to that last question. Generally speaking, we have the legislative authority to regulate in relation to business, but there are conditions. So Staff would have to look at that very carefully to give you a fullsame answer as to the extent of what we could do to impose regulations and requirements on a third party. Right. Okay. Thanks. So that might be something that I might just want to add an amendment to look into or, yeah, maybe that will. I won't, I won't write it this moment, but I'll see if we can do it as we go along. One of the things that I read, um, I believe it was in this morning's paper. And it was about CN. And Cn is putting 100 million dollars towards helping out with homelessness across Canada.

And I took this, um, snapshot of this from the Times colonists. And it was from the representative for CN. And he said this. We know it is a huge, he's talking about homelessness. We know it is a huge problem. And we know it takes more than our investment to solve it. But I would say if we don't start somewhere, you'll never solve it. And where we started is actually pretty meaningful. And that jumped out for me because I thought about this motion this morning where I can appreciate that there might be all kinds of things in which we could say, well, how much is this going to impact. And I'd like to think with how much money we spend, how much effort citizens put in to actually, um, trying to remove the graffiti or paint over it. I figure we got to do something. Very much. Councillor Gardner is the secondary. Thank you. Graffiti is a problem. A problem that even becomes more damaging when

it goes beyond tagging. Because most people can't even read what's been tagged. For a few years, JBNA worked with residents who had a graffiti clean team. They worked daily at time flower man was putting up tulips faster than they could be harvested. Targets and messages change over time. As councillors, we have received many, many emails about graffiti. More, sorry. My computer shifted just a second here. As countless, we received many, many emails about graffiti. More recent hotspots areas have been in the brunside gorge area along the galloping goose trail. And it is frequently, most often, placed in public places. And sometimes damages public property. I recall at the start of a long weekend period, earlier this year, scrubbing away as much as I could, offensive graffiti on City Outdoor seating. A difficult problem, one of the city is limited in dealing with it is when graffiti is on private property. That's been somewhat mentioned already.

I recall at the start of a long weekend last year, scrubbing a problem where there was very offensive graffiti. However, the owner didn't know it, because he only didn't see it. And properly happened to be switching hands. And at that time I was able to get hold of them such that the owner found out about it and dealt with it almost to immediately, as quickly as they could. And that's great. And when I think about the Galloping goose, we've had a lot of complaints there where it was on private property. But that doesn't mean the owner is even knew about it. If it's on the side of the fence, they don't see from their property.

And so we do have this on usual situation where private property owners may not even be aware of it. And so as staff looks about just trying perhaps grasp this issue, I would hope that you would also look at something about notifying private properties. That does not mean taking enforcement or action, asking for action. But just so they're aware of it. Because a lot of private property owners who end up hosting this and don't know it. The average person going by won't know who owns it. They're not going to necessarily go knock on doors. That's not always a safe situation. So it's just something I think that we could be looking at just as a try and find a simple way. Again, not enforcement, not taking real action of asking someone to remove something, but at least informing people that it's there. Because I think that might go a long way to perhaps cleaning up some of the more problematic ones. Um, so if this

motion receives the consent, uh, that's what I mean, I would ask you off to at least look at some kind of notification system. And I was pleased to see on a newscast earlier this week in response to this motion, a retailer explaining how they already secure spray paint. Without regulation. And I think it was castle hardware. So thank you for that. And so I welcome this motion which asks staff to explore. To see if we can find out something that fits our city. So I was pleased to second this motion. Thank you very much. Anybody else on this motion. Uh - oh. Councillor Coleman. Do you need help? Getting some assistance. Hang on just a sec council, Coleman. Right. We've got to help coming. Yes, we do. All right. Councillor Coleman, why don't you proceed?

Yes. I'm in the shoreline just next to the tidal wave. Um, this is, this comes in waves at us. The issue of graffiti. And we need to differentiate between street art, which is sometimes very good. That is allowed on property. And tagging and other graffiti that is not allowed by the property order. It doesn't actually matter whether it's public property or private property. Um, historically we have paid over half a million dollars a year for both, uh, painted particularly tags in the downtown core or acid etching windows that we've seen at the commercial level, which is not something that the city has paid for. It's the business owner or the lessee that has taken that on. In 2011, it got so bad that the City of Langford actually sued the parents took the parents to court of somebody who had been found guilty of 150 tags and a cost of 27, 000 dollars. In 15 years ago. The self - described artist was find 750

dollars and I think 150 hours of community service. And that's so annoyed that Council of the Day that they then sued the parents successfully, not for the 27, 000 dollars, but it was a contribution to the local food bank, I believe. But these tend to come in waves. And for those of us, some members of the council were, uh, involved in the cleanup of Chinatown, the spring cleaning for Chinatown just recently. We were all out scrubbing some windows with, uh, those, the number of tags that had gone on in the upper levels. And what we did that day was largely, um, cosmetic, but we weren't able to address the upper story, uh, graffiti that was being dealt with two days later, um, at a fairly significant cost, much of it donated. But it is something that caused society. And we have better places to put that 500, 000 dollars a year Anything we can do to constrain unregulated non - permitted tags murals, whatever, um,

is a good thing. I support this. Thank you very much. Anybody else. Council or Dell, councillor Kim, councillor Cardinal. Thank you. This is this is very interesting. I enjoyed thinking about this over the last week My assumption is that this a lot of this is actually the work under the authority of the Victoria police department and I recall an early briefing where the previous police chief mentioned they actually have staff who are dedicated to this who Track tags work through tags You know locate folks who are doing this. Have you have the movers to die in any consultation with Vic PD or understood the work that they're doing on this given that in many cases This is a criminal in nature. Cause you're humming, go ahead No. There are different people in the city. It took a lot to track down exactly where it's coming from and I don't believe with what I've got in the background It even covers everything, but I thought it

was bad enough to go with that So no, I have not. Mined a couple questions. The part about the miners was interesting because I know often we like to blame things on minors going around and doing things obviously Um, I don't know if it's always true and I know a lot of the actual Mural artists who many of them kind of come from the graffiti world and Victoria and then you have a mural artist in that world are definitely not minors Some are their 20s and 30s Is there data that shows a lot of this is kind of 12 to 18 year olds running around spraying things Like I assume it's actually mostly folks that are a bit older. Would any of your research kind of get into is this an actual issue with minors or are we singling out the wrong people. Thanks and through you mayor No, I'm not interested in singling out a group and as a matter of fact that's why

I made reference to this is just that it's one element I remember when I was young doing stupid things and then after several decades I got smarter Um, and so it is just one element that is also in I can't remember I count honestly I can't remember whether it's in Winnipeg's in London or both Um, but that's one of the one of the restrictions that they've got So the vast majority of kids just like the vast majority of adults don't do this But it's just to say if staff comes back and says where this has been done It actually helps out I think then we can go with that. Okay, I'll leave my questions there for now and continue to listen. Councillor Kim. Thanks through the chair Uh, similarly this was really interesting I appreciated the comments about having to distinguish between different kinds of graffiti Um, I support this motion Uh, because it is asking for a port back and frankly I'm just curious

to know what is doable and what isn't But I do want to colour this conversation with an anecdote where my childhood home The walls were covered in my graffiti My childhood graffiti But that's because I lived in a home where the needs of the child were pretty secondary Uh, two other considerations Um, and I remember as a kid not knowing how to ask my parents for paper to draw and colour on It's something we just automatically think to do for children But it wasn't something that was considered by my parents at the time And so the walls became my canvas And then my younger brother took that up as well Um, apparently trying to get rid of, to move the house along and paint over It was a challenge But my point being though Is that Um, it's a piece of expression And I think about Uh, folks who use graffiti as a way to express where other circumstances in their life Prohibit that kind

of, um, artistic expression and need And so Uh, I'm keen to see where this goes But I do want to make note of, um, the social need for art and how graffiti could be an expression of. An artistic Um. I guess abulence that has no other place to go. And I'll leave it at that Thank you very much Councillor Caradona. Uh, thanks very much Mayor I do agree that graffiti is a problem. However, I'm not convinced that this is the solution to it And what I'm seeing here is potentially quite a lot of staff time and regulatory work for potentially no payoff whatsoever I mean, I'm not going to have staff pull up on the screen because I think it would be a waste of time But I'm just looking at Amazon. ca right now It's very easy to buy spray paint It costs about 13 dollars in 97 cents for a canister And the fastest delivery would be Sunday, May 24th So if one

wanted to get up to miss shift with online spray paint They could do so by the end of the weekend So I'm a little bit uncertain about how this would solve the problem As noted in the motion's backgrounder People could still buy spray pain and neighbouring jurisdictions if we somehow regulated it They can buy it online I'm also not convinced that miners are the issue here We've been presented with zero evidence that Uh, miners are in fact Uh, committing these vandalistic crimes I don't know if there's any arrest data or find data on youth But I don't think it's fair to pinpoint it on them.

I'm also very concerned about the staff time And I'd like to put it through the mayor to staff I assume that this work would fall to Community safety and well - being team and maybe also legal. Uh... How's your workload looking? Do you feel like you have sufficient amount of work from previous council direction. I think this is intended probably for Mr. Rentucci, and I don't know that we have legal staff on top. Mr. Antucci. Any thoughts. Through the mayor. You know our workloads are very solid Um, you know It would depend on the timing I would say. If this was something that you were looking at over the next 3 - 4 months I don't think it's something we could prioritize with the... Especially the engagement side of this. Uh... Which is... There's somewhat consuming part I can't speak for legal Um... There is review that would have to be done to ensure that we remain in the Constitutional jurisdiction of a city and

not moving into other areas Um... But thank you. Councillor And I recognise that this is only a report back But if the report back Uh... were to suggest a path ahead I think it would imply an extraordinary amount of work I mean The consultation with affected retailers DVBA Songs in Kosapsum User serving organisation to becomes just a massive engagement undertaking on one issue only Which is spray paint And I don't think that's worth it I can see I can Envision a scenario in which we're doing a consultation with the nations Who are extraordinarily busy and have limited capacity On a broader range of community safety and well - being issues And maybe... Graffiti is one of the things that is brought up in that consultation I don't see a rationale For phoning up the nations who are extraordinary busy And saying can we speak to you just about graffiti? I don't think that's a good use of time So I'm not... I'm not convinced that

this is the right path ahead I gather that people are frustrated with graffiti It obviously costs the city a lot I'm just not sure that this points is in the direction of any solutions I would be much more interested in a systemic or a holistic approach I mean How about stepdad? What could SEPTED be done? What other community safety principles can be brought to bear. How do we... Get at the upstream causes of this sort of vandalism? I'm personally more interested in those things And maybe learning from other cities that have had a chance to reduce vandalism I don't think that just creating a whole regular TORI regime for small business owners and operators. Is gonna solve the issue I think if people really want to do graffiti They're gonna get a Sharpie pen They're gonna buy spray paint online So honing it in just on like spray paint in the city To me is just a bit in myopic And not going to solve

anything So at this point I can't support this I could support maybe another approach to thinking about vandalism and graffiti But this one for me is y to the mark. Thanks Mayor Thank you Councillor Thompson. Thanks Mayor Uh... And thanks to my colleague who were earlier mentioned The Chinatown cleanup I was one of the people out there. Um... scraping things off. And I should mention that... Former councillors Charlane Thornton Joe who organised it is out there every morning doing that work Um... So I'm grateful to her for that Um... I also don't like tagging I don't like low effort tags especially over Nice mural art Which I have seen. Um... I'm interested to hear more I've been following along with the discussion I'm interested here more about whether these measures would likely make a difference Whether the other measures that might be more Uh... Useful or achieve more or be more cost - effective Um...

I'm... I don't think anyone here at this table is under the illusion that what we do with this motion is going to eliminate all graffiti in the city And I don't think that that's the intention Uh... Based on assuming not. Um... What effect it will have with... Would remain to be seen Um... I would Would have been very grateful for Vic PD to have been able to comment on this Uh... As we've discussed it Uh... I'll listen to my colleagues for any further comments. Thank you very much I'll let everyone who's here has had a chance to speak once We'll go for a second round Councillor Gardner. It's amazing how things can be blown up.

I remember years ago. I Know that we have a different director of parks Probably two different directions with parks And this is when James Bay got involved with trying to remove Um... A lot of the graffiti Because I think we had a very high level at that time It's not the highest now So I'm not suggesting that But at that time There was someone at City Hall who wasn't in Committee Safety Wellbeing But with another area He's still around And he would provide people with some information And also Um... Some materials so that Different neighbourhoods could start moving graffiti If they had work teams And that was great And it worked really actually quite wild Didn't take it down But I'm thinking of the broken windows Effect Is that New York? Was it New York guys Broken windows The more you let things go The more is accepted and normal And therefore the problem grows Because a lot of people don't think it's that normal

To have graffiti everywhere. And so it is a problem I think by This doesn't have to be quite as big as people are thinking it may be But when we look at the work And I'm not talking about the volunteers But even of the money here that's been 600, 000 dollars really And that's not really touching it So I think we also need a bit more of an Attitudental change too Perhaps But I don't think it has to be something that's a killer dealer That goes to community safety and well - being It becomes a major effort for them I really don't. And I think that it could be handled much more subtly by staff Uh... In a way Even looking to the staff Lakers Because at the time When I was dealing with Citystaff again This is... Before the pandemic In different staff too They knew exactly... Not exactly They knew nicknames for some of their major Tigers They kind of knew they were

and they know how they float around They could even tell that one of them... Move to different part of the City Because all of a sudden the tags change And another part of the city So there is some of this going on And it's no one and people don't always know who they are The odd times someone's caught And something happens. And nowhere Did I rethink that I was teenagers or necessarily even younger kids? It doesn't matter who it is. It matters that they are defacing public property and private property. And I think that we should do something about it And this is an attempt This one is a starting point of Let's look at a bit more holistically And see what we can do And I'm not expecting Community Safety and well - being to go and take all some staff Office with legal and do something else Let's explore and see what is being done in some other areas of the country To

address this. That would be a nice simple starting point to see if there's A way we can go. And so that's why I support this Thank You very much Anybody else. Ankym Um Thanks Question to either the mover or staff Whoever might have an answer Was there a thought given to sticker tagging as well. That's rounded Any thoughts? No. No? Okay Um. I wonder if. Okay I'm just gonna go ahead and say it Is there an openness to postponing this conversation to Beef It up to consider sticker tags as well So that any consultation also just Is expanded Or am I making a mountain out of a mole Hill? And the reason I ask this is because Um... There are stickers that I've seen around town that are suspected to be affiliated with very problematic Um... Folks. Um... Supremacist groups. And... I see this as a potential Potential way to maybe Um... Look into that as well Or maybe it's completely out of line I'm not sure But yeah Would there be an

openness to postponing this to see if this could be... Lumped in Or is it very much streamlined And it's focused on spray paint. COU You are always Of course any member council is well within the rights to suggest a postponement motion or without directions But perhaps we'll go first to the mover to see if there is a comment on that. Was this originally intended just for paint? I would suggest that if... Mayor of staff Come back saying By the way A huge gigantic problem On this as well Is with stickers Then I presume our staff are going to come back and say And tell us about that Okay great Which point you could then add something in your motion Okay that's the answer I needed Thank you That's it. Thank you very much Anybody else on this. Just... Yep Go ahead goes round. Thanks Mayor Oh I'll just at least wrap up from my point Not necessarily be the last person Under no circumstances Is

this going to solve the problem So to speak The other thing is I don't pretend as a councillor to speak on behalf of nations as to what they have time or what they want to put their resources towards So we'll let them decide that Vic PD They don't deal with most of this stuff It's the city that does That being said It is a criminal code Violation under mischief And there's property damage Over 5, under 5, 000 There are municipal bylaw penalties for this Which can be fines of 750 dollars And I believe property owners not removing their graffiti So there's already Um... Things that are in place I And on the issue I don't expect suddenly that our city staff are going to give up what they're doing Lately This has been getting a lot of media of attention. And so I've been asked about this and been asked some of these Similar questions I do not expect our staff to drop everything As a matter of fact One of the suggestions I

said is It might actually be something that comes before the next Council I don't expect it to be done immediately All I know is that for one reason or another And some of it was just things that came our way Or sometimes we were told Hey we got a lot on our plate I kept putting this off. And I don't want to put this off any further We hear so much about people who are so disgusted by how much is going on that I would just like us to try something Anything to see if it works If our staff come back and say You will get this much benefit for this much cost and effort Uh... Then chances are I'm going to say that's not worth it But if they come back and say Actually we have found done properly This can have a huge impact and maybe even just some of it can be on education for retailers Education for people who have spray

painter on their house Whatever it is I'm not the expert I'm not the one who I'm not the one who's expected to know everything on this. I want to turn it over to staff and say What do you think? Thanks so much Count Secure Dona. Thanks Mayor I just want to clarify In my reading of this motion It says Including consideration of da da da da da So my presumption is that no actual consultation would occur with all the groups mentioned there in advance of a staff report. It could be the outcome of a step after a staff report But I'm not to presume that a whole bunch of consultation is going to take place in preparation to write a report Is that correct? I would read that as saying that these are suggestions for stuff to consider in their analysis of options And so if other selection of the other one through seven points Provided sufficient information for there to be advice to council

on options That would be up to staff. I would personally like to clarify though That they're not going to go out and spend a huge amount of staff capacity on a consultation Prior to council making a decision if there is a decision So I would like some clarification that a staff report does not involve a bunch of consultation. At this point Ms. Jenkins Would you like to weigh in on that more generally since this is not yet determined as to which staff would be doing this work Thank you through mayor through you mayor Yes I believe we would take kind of a light touch approach to how we could address this prior to coming back Okay in that case I won't I won't attempt to amend it Thanks Thank you very much. Anybody else. Not seeing any other speakers all those in favor. I'll be Councillor Kim that would be myself That would become Sir Coleman Councillor Hammond Councillor Gardner Count - Sur Thompson in

opposition Ponsor Dell and Councillor Caradon I just noting that Councillor Loughton has not yet been able to rejoin us So that is adopted. Noting to an opposition. That would take us on to a closed meeting But none is required at committee today And so I would look for a motion to adjourn Thanks Councillor Coleman Second My Councillor Kim always in favor Anyone opposed That's unanimous Uh we'll just we won't take a long break We'll just wait long enough for stuff to convert us into our daytime council meeting And then we'll begin again.