"Sparge" Hearing Reveals How to Get the Ear of Current Council
During a land use zoning variance hearing we heard nothing but spin and talking points
Sometimes in politics the most revealing moments come when you least expect it. For example, last night during our second Council Meeting of the year when an item on the agenda was a land use zoning variance request from a company seeking to develop a barge-spa at Ship Point. As per the Community Charter, these variance requests have strict procedures on hearings and motions that need to move forward through council, and last night was the final phase with a public hearing and planned third reading.
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The business in question is seeking to take an old WWII barge and convert it into a spa that would be located at Ship Point where there is presently only mooring slips. The company requires a zoning variance because currently the area where they would like to tie up is zoned for park and so some variances to the plan are needed.
And I want to mention here that these are pretty mundane requests. It was council (not this one but a previous one) who would have made the plan in the first place. Variances are merely venues for businesses or citizens to petition council to change the plan they made initially. This could be because the plan was not adequate enough at the time but more often than not is just because business and people outside of government tend to move faster than government, and new ideas and proposals are generated and brought before council for consideration.
I support these hearings. I support them for the same reason I oppose missing middle. Because people have a right to get up and speak their minds about what is happening in their communities and neighbourhoods. People have a right to have a say in the places they live. And that really is the basis of the hearing requirements in the Community Charter…to give people a chance to speak. A chance to at the very least have their say.
You would think that something like this would be a pretty simple matter before council. It is a zoning variance request for a change of land use, so really just a matter of confirming from their own judgement and after listening to that of the public coming forward during public hearing, that the proposal does not grossly violate the overall plan of the community or city. Beyond that nothing about the viability of the business itself, the materials being used to build the facility or how waste will be disposed during normal operations is relevant to the request. But that is not what we got last night.
I won’t touch on the public hearing. People can get up to the podium and say what they want. There isn’t much of a point in going after private citizens who actually bothered to show up to a council meeting to participate in democracy. If anything they deserve to be lauded. But we have expectations of our elected politicians and what we saw last night was a disgusting display of who has the ears of this council and what sort of things they are hyper focused on as a collective entity.
While questioning the developer of the project, Councillor Caradonna focused in on environmental issues, asking about sewage connections, garbage removal and air quality within the inner harbour. Councillor Loughton spoke about the discounts being proposed by the business and applauded them for including people of low-income (the starting rate for the example spa from Montreal used by the company proposing the project has a base of $120/hr for a treatment).
Councillor Thompson made it seem like Victoria has never been a home for pilot projects and half-baked ideas supported from the highest positions of power within the region. Councillor Gardiner focused on accessibility issues, which again have nothing to do with the company and what they came before council to request. The only councillor who I am willing to cast in a positive light after last night (with the exception of the mayor herself) is Councillor Hammond who when it was his turn to speak simply said, “I just have no reason to oppose this.” Boom! He seems to have understood why we were there last night.
But nothing topped the absolutely off of the mark closing from Councillor Kim who specifically requested that her remarks be left until the start of third reading (by this point a technicality as it was going to pass) to commend the company for being such a perfect example of green development for our city. She boldly said she was proud to support this project just before the vote was held.
This was a zoning variance land use change request. We didn’t end world hunger or even really do anything as a society and government to make this happen. Because of a legal technicality of how land is planned and allocated in our city, this particular business had to come before council to request a change. If the lot was already zoned for their use, we would have never even heard from this company.
The spin around the environmental claims and the facilities use as a public amenity came directly from the company itself. And this makes sense, companies are supposed to have glitzy spin for their projects. But what we saw last night was councillors line up one after the other to advance and regurgitate the very same talking points. I would expect this from the hoards of people the company successfully lined up to support their business during the public hearing, but I think we all expect our politicians to be above this sort of thing. To understand that this was a zoning variance request and the matter is not a question of support but rather only about whether you see the variance as an issue or not.
If you have anything you ever want to bring before this council, remember to wrap it in environmentalism with some plan to make it accessible to low-income citizens and disabled people and talk about your private business that is based on generate profits as a community amenity that will connect people wherever it is you decide to operate. That is the extend of the interest of this council. That is what we learned and saw last night.
Not surprising given the nature and tone of the conversations I had with two of "the slate", JC and DT. In both cases it became clear there was a narrative, and any thoughts outside the narrative were invalid. More proof to me that ideology outside of academia is a caricature, at best and, at worst, just intellectually lazy, selfish, justification for bad decisions.
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