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“<br />
I DON’T BELIEVE IN THE MAXIM of ‘growth at any cost.’ Citizens and<br />
public office holders have to push back against that mentality and ensure<br />
future growth happens in existing built-up areas, because once we pave<br />
over our paradise, it’s very hard to get it back.” —Councillor Ben Isitt<br />
are being distributed or not distributed to keep<br />
the good life out of reach for people.”<br />
For Isitt (who was nicknamed “Che” by one<br />
reporter in 2005), the good life is one in which<br />
we take care of each other and the environment.<br />
Isitt sums it up in the platform he ran<br />
on: a “fair, safe and green” Victoria.<br />
One of his first steps toward fairness will<br />
be convincing his council colleagues to support<br />
a $25 housing levy at the CRD level similar<br />
to the ten-dollar-per-year parks levy implemented<br />
ten years ago. It would spread the<br />
burden beyond the City of Victoria and “raise<br />
about four million dollars annually, which<br />
could then be used to leverage federal and<br />
provincial money to build everything from<br />
new co-op housing to supportive housing for<br />
the hardest to house,” he explains.<br />
The latter includes those dealing with addictions,<br />
and a safe injection site is a must to<br />
mitigate health and safety concerns for them<br />
and their neighbours. “Victoria needs to apply<br />
very quickly for an exemption from Health<br />
Canada to open a safe consumption site like<br />
Vancouver’s InSite,” he insists. “We have to<br />
treat addiction as a health issue, rather than a<br />
policing issue,” he says, adding, “I know many<br />
police officers share my view.”<br />
Urban sprawl is another problem Isitt intends<br />
to tackle. In 2007 he wrote a 32-page report<br />
on the Bear Mountain development that<br />
provided a history of how the controversial<br />
project had come into being. That report subsequently<br />
helped gel opposition to the hilltop<br />
development. In 2008 he took an active role<br />
in protests to stop the Spencer Road Interchange,<br />
which has now been sitting unfinished for over<br />
three years.<br />
While many share his concerns on sprawl,<br />
he warns, “There are groups in this community<br />
who would like to pursue more Bear<br />
Mountains. One of my major priorities at the<br />
CRD level is to prevent that from happening…If<br />
you look at all of the low-lying buildings<br />
and parking lots between Downtown and<br />
Uptown, there is a huge area there where<br />
we could densify with low-rise buildings<br />
and mixed-use development. We could house<br />
tens of thousands of people without going one<br />
inch further into our farmlands or forested<br />
lands. That’s just a policy choice.”<br />
If this drives some business away, he says,<br />
“so be it. Other, more forward-thinking developers<br />
will fill their boots. I don’t believe in the<br />
maxim of ‘growth at any cost.’ Citizens and<br />
public office holders have to push back against<br />
that mentality and ensure future growth happens<br />
in existing built-up areas, because once we<br />
pave over our paradise, it’s very hard to get it<br />
back. I sat in a CRD meeting the other day,<br />
and some of the other directors and planners<br />
do these gymnastics trying to justify why the<br />
development makes sense. I want to bring a<br />
common-sense approach to it. There’s more<br />
than enough land to build on without having<br />
to destroy these finite natural attributes and<br />
undermine food security,” says Isitt.<br />
On transportation issues, Isitt has recently<br />
written that he supports “commuter rail between<br />
downtown Victoria and the Western<br />
Communities (and eventually Cobble<br />
Hill/Duncan). I think the best location for<br />
resuming rail operations quickly is to use<br />
the existing E & N corridor, which would help<br />
to contain costs while avoiding the issue of<br />
cars vs trains (as is the case with the proposal<br />
for LRT along Douglas and the Trans-Canadian<br />
Highway).” He also wants the new Johnson<br />
Street Bridge to be “structurally capable of<br />
accommodating track and passenger trains.”<br />
As one of three new faces at the council table<br />
this term, Isitt feels the tide shifting toward<br />
policies like these. That’s partly why he’s hit<br />
the ground running. “There’s a real window<br />
of opportunity we can seize to start making<br />
some substantive changes in how the City and<br />
Region operate,” he says. “I certainly don’t<br />
want to miss this opportunity.”<br />
Aaren Madden salutes all<br />
councillors, new and returning,<br />
for their commitment to our<br />
city. She also hopes, next<br />
time, there will be more than<br />
26 percent of eligible voters<br />
at the polls!<br />
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www.focusonline.ca • January <strong>2012</strong><br />
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