FORTIN’S SEMI- FINAL

10% SOLUTION

An Elector Response Form

for the City of Victoria’s

‘Johnson Street Bridge Replacement Project’s

alternate approval process,’  (AAP)

 or ‘counter petition process’

in pdf format only is found

in the Comments section below.

- Gregory Paul Michael Hartnell, President

Concerned Citizens’ Coalition

CCC

CCC

PLEASE VOTE ‘YES’ FOR A REFERENDUM

TO SAVE OUR JOSEPH STRAUSS HERITAGE

JOHNSON STREET BRIDGE

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CFAX Radio News’ ’stand in’ reporter Stephen Andrew interviewed Victoria Mayor Dean Fortin this morning about the so-called ‘AAP’ (‘alternative approval process’) or ‘counter petition‘ that was endorsed by a slim majority of Victoria City Councillors on Thursday.

Mr. Andrew chastised the socialist mayor, wondering, ’shouldn’t we have gone to referendum right away on this, instead of using your negative billing option?’

‘I’m not calling it a “negative billing option”, you are,’ said the flustered Mayor.

Mr. Andrew pointed out that ‘counter petitions’ rarely work for  oppositional citizens’ groups, that it is usually daunting to reach the required 10% figure to trigger a referendum, and that counter petitions are only used by governments to intimidate these groups.

‘We’ve heard all these assertions before, but the ‘alternative approval process’ is an excellent way to further our extensive consultation already undertaken to move this project forward before interest rates go up…’

‘But, did you not notice that interest rates just went down today?’

Touche, Mr. Andrew.

‘What happens if, near the next election, your costs are over $63,000,000?’

‘We are taking every prudent step to ensure that this project is on time and on budget.’

Mr. Andrew also made sure that the web addresses of both the City of Victoria:

www.johnsonstreetbridge.com

and the main opposition group:

www.johnsonstreetbridge.org

were mentioned.

CCC

CCC  encourages Victorians to votes YES

to have a referendum to 

SAVE JOHNSON STREET BRIDGE

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JOHNSON STREET BRIDGE BY THE NUMBERS:

1 MAYOR, ELECTED BY 12% OF VICTORIA ELECTORS,

WITH FOUR  VICTORIA CITY COUNCILLORS,

VOTED IN SECRET IN VICTORIA COUNCIL CHAMBERS

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 19, 2009

TO BORROW $42,000,000 TO PAY FOR THE DEMOLITION

AND REPLACEMENT OF AN UNUSUAL HERITAGE BRIDGE 

DESIGNED BY A SINGULAR ENGINEERING GENIUS

JOSEPH STRAUSS, DESIGNER OF THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE.

According to a news story at the CFAX website, Councillors Geoff Young and Pam Madoff voted against the borrowing, Young to preserve the existing JOHNSON STREET BRIDGE, and Madoff over a concern that the matter be settled by referendum.

If the CFAX report is accurate, that means that Councillors Luton, Lucas, Chandler and Thornton-Joe all voted to have the Johnson Street Bridge demolished, for the City of Victoria to borrow $42,000,000 to do it, and that they are opposed to having the matter go to referendum.

Councillors Lynn Hunter and  Chris Coleman were strangely absent for this crucial vote and one wonders why?

ONLY 10% OF VICTORIA’S 63,426 ELIGIBLE VOTERS ARE NEEDED

TO PASS OR REJECT THIS. THAT IS 6,342 VOTERS

THESE 10% CAN DICTATE TO THE OTHER 90%:

THIS $42,000,000 BORROWING IS GOING TO HAPPEN.

…or not before we get a referendum on it…. 

The Mayor, Socialist Dean Fortin and four of eight members of

his Socialist-Green-Liberal-dominated Victoria City Council,

voted to approve a so-called ‘Alternate Approval Process’ (AAP)

for the Johnson Street Bridge Borrowing.

They approved Loan Authorization (Johnson Street Bridge)

Bylaw No. 09-057

today, Thursday November 19, 2009

in a Special Council Meeting convened for this purpose.

It should be noted that nowhere in the official notice of this bylaw

does one find the words ‘counter petition.’

The taxpaying public was not able to address Mayor Fortin

or the Victoria Council at this secret meeting.

The required elector response form will be available Friday, November 20 at Victoria City Hall.

It will also be available online:   www.victoria.ca             and       www.johnsonstreetbridge.com

45 day time period for the AAP:

Saturday, November 21, 2009 through to:

Monday, January 4th, 2010, 4:30 p.m.

The elector response forms will be

‘provided to those electors who wish to petition Council

to not adopt the bylaw without a referendum.’

‘Council may adopt the bylaw if the City

does not receive response forms against the bylaw

signed by at least 10% of the 63,426 Victoria electors.’

For more info:

Howard Markson

Communications Director

Johnson Street Bridge Replacement Project

Tel 250 361 02 64

Cell 250 216 98 22

DEMOCRACY LOST IN SEWAGE DEBATE

Greater Victoria is being told, not asked, to put in sewage treatment.

At great cost this will:

* Cause various problems on land

* Cut the flow of valuable nutrients to plankton that will reduce the food supply to large fish and make the fishing worse.

But trucks and noise, headaches and worse fishing are small potatoes.

What we should really be concerned about is that we proudly say we live in a democracy.

This agenda is being forced down our throats in a dictatorial way.

How much do letters to the editor, or demonstrations on the lawn of the legislature accomplish?

Until citizens have the fundamental democratic right to petition and force a referendum on controversial issues so the will of the majority is made known and governs the actions of those we elect to represent us federally, provincially and civically, the most vocal and those pursuing with their own agendas will continue to dominate policy and force their decisions and views on the rest of us, and all we can do is register futile protest.

Craig Carmichael

Esquimalt

SENIOR FACES HUGE CARE COST HIKE

This week, my 90-year-old mother received a letter from the Vancouver Island Health Authority outlining how it was imposing a more “equitable rate structure” on residential care clients to “reduce the burden on low-income seniors.”

In her case, the increase equates to $498 a month or 30.25 per cent.

How can such an extraordinary increase be considered fair and equitable, when her net income has not changed significantly over the past several years?

In the past year she was declared disabled under the federal tax laws, which lowered her tax burden slightly in order to allow her to cover expenses to improve her quality of life in dealing with her disabilities.

So on the one hand, the federal government gives, only to have the health authority (really the provincial government) take away.

How can the officials who are imposing such decisions sleep at night?

Enjoy the Olympics, because those who can least afford it are paying dearly.

Brian A. Belcher

Victoria

CCC BLOG reprint:

Victoria Times Colonist: timescolonist.com

Seniors face huge care cost hike

Page A15, Wednesday, November 18, 2009

CCC ANTI-OLYMPICS PROPAGANDA 2009 – 2010

POOR, SICK AND NEEDY

PAYING FOR THE GAMES

Re: “Torch offered wonderful moments” letter to the Editor, Times Colonist, Nov. 12

I am pleased that the writer enjoyed his Olympic torch run.

At about the same time, I spent rather longer — about four hours — in the overcrowded, overworked, understaffed and underfunded Royal Jubilee Hospital emergency department, waiting for some form of attention for my wife who had suffered an intensely painful fractured vertebra.

Much later, when I objected to the mixed-gender room she had been allocated, I was told it was unavoidable because the hospital had already been instructed to close more beds owing to a budgetary shortfall.

I couldn’t help wondering how much more cummulative damage the societal needs of this province will suffer over the years because of this silly, self-indulgent, $6-billion Olympic ritual of breatbeating tribalism, and the insatiable desire of politicians for kudos.

How many more of the poor, sick, needy, old and underprivileged will pay for this utterly futile jingoistic exercise to see who travels downhill faster on modified barrel staves?

Own The Podium?

Of course we do.

And we’ve paid too damn much for it.

Dick Hainsworth

Victoria

CCC BLOG reprint:

Victoria Times Colonist: timescolonist.com

Poor, sick and needy paying for the Games

Page A13, Tuesday, November 17, 2009

NOVEMBER 19

1253

St. Agnes of Assisi, abbess, whose religious vocation was Saint Clare’s first conquest after her “conversion,” for among the prayers Clare offered at the very beginning of her new way of life was the request that as she and her fifteen-year-old sister had been of one heart and soul in the world, so now they might again be one in the service of God.

Turning aside from a proposed marriage, Agnes stole away from home just sixteen days after Clare’s departure and joined her at the convent of San Angelo di Panzo, three-and-a-half miles from Assisi.

Also in her case the family tried to bring her home by violence, but God answered Clare’s prayers once again.

About six years later St. Francis sent Agnes to be abbess at Monticelli in Florence.

She is credited with several other foundations.

The few facts of her life attest heroism in her love of God, deep affection for Clare and fidelity to the ideals of St. Francis – qualities which help explain her reputation for inculcating the true spirit of the Order.

She returned to Assisi to be at St. Clare’s deathbed and heard from her these parting words:

“It is God’s with, dearest sister, that I go.

“But cry no more, for you will come to the Lord soon after me and before you die the Lord will grant you great consolation.”

Agnes died at Assisi before the year was out.

LIVES OF THE SAINTS

Father Augustine Kalberer, O. S. B.

November 19: Saint Agnes of Assisi, 1253

Pages 422 – 423

CCC – LA ROSA TRANSCULTURAL FRANCISCAN HISTORY 1253 – 2009

Yule Heibel, one of three co-directors of JohnsonStreetBridge.org, exhorts her fellow ‘colonial’ Victorians to wake up, wondering ‘where’s democracy headed in Victoria?’

Referring to an up-coming in camera meeting of a sub-committee of the Committee of the Whole, the former Focus columnist goes into extenuated technical detail, complete with screen shots of webpages that she says suggest the City of Victoria is effectively and purposefully burying the relevant meeting agenda information so deep as to render it practically impossible to navigate the City’s own website on the Johnson Street Bridge.

She suggests that Mayor Dean Fortin doesn’t really want the public to know much about what he is about to do, nor does he want public input on it at this ‘late date.’

This, and other nefarious tactics belie the demise of respect for basic democratic norms of public service under the Dean Fortin regime, says the former Harvard art history professor,  now resident in Rockland.

She encourages her fellow Victorians to wake up and take action, urging the call of a referendum.

- GREGORY PAUL MICHAEL HARTNELL, President

Concerned Citizens’ Coalition

CCC

[For a link to Yule Heibel's article on threatened democracy in Victoria under Dean Fortin and his threats to the heritage Joseph Strauss-designed Johnson Street Bridge, please refer to the Comments section below.]

Chris Shaw is a Canadian citizen, an immigrant, a professor, and a well-respected anti-Olympics author and activist who has been hassled by the police for his well-publicized views.

His blogsite is called Olympics Retort and is found at the Vancouver Observer website.

This blog is one of the best of the growing group of outraged Canadian anti-Olympics writers in the province.

Please refer to the CCC BLOGROLL to the right for a link to Chris Shaw’s Olympics Retort, or go to the Comments section below for a link to the Vancouver Observer website.

- Gregory Paul Michael Hartnell, President

Concerned Citizens’ Coalition

CCC

Mayor Dean Fortin’s revisionist history of the Johnson Street Bridge in this morning’s Times Colonist comes a day before Victoria City Council is about to debate whether to push through a ‘counter petition’ process, in a vain attempt to circumvent a proper referendum on the still contentious issue.

That special pleading is remarkable for the items it omits to mention, primarily the issue of homelessness (which all Councillors promised to address in the November 2008 campaign); the name of Joseph Strauss, designer of the national heritage Johnson Street Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge; the repair option; and the total cost of the amount of funds that the City of Victoria ‘will soon seek permission from Victorians to borrow … to replace the Johnson Street Bridge,’ as Mr. Fortin puts it.

First, it should be noted that the City is certainly not seeking ‘permission from Victorians to borrow the funds,’ contrary to anything this deluded Mayor asserts.  

It already gave itself permission to borrow $42,000,000 a couple of weeks ago, the arbitrary amount left over after  the $21,000,000 federal  grant recently announced is subtracted from $63,000,000, the original amount estimated for a replacement plan, an amount, it should be noted, that was brought forward before any particular replacement design was decided upon.

Secondly, it should be noted that this $63,000,000 figure does not appear anywhere in Dean Fortin’s November 18 article entitled ‘New bridge is right decision for Victoria’ on page A15 of the monopoly daily newspaper.

Thirdly, the City, far from ’seeking permission from Victorians to borrow the funds necessary to replace the Johnson Street Bridge,’ is actually setting up real impediments to seeking that permission.

The so-called ‘counter-petition’ process is not mentioned in the mayor’s disingenuous article, but it is the only provincial legislative device over which the Council will vote whether to implement tomorrow, November 19.

It is effectively an undertaking that forces opposing Concerned Citizens and other Victoria democrats in a most cruel and unusual way to go out into bitter cold weather at this most uncongenial time of year, to collect signatures to force the City of Victoria to do the right and proper thing in the first instance.

That would be to hold a referendum on the matter during the course of the next scheduled municipal election in Victoria, in 2011.

As the main editorial in the Times Colonist by Paul Willcocks noted the other day, only 12% of Victoria’s eligible voters voted for Dean Fortin to be Mayor of Victoria, and with that kind of pathetic mandate, the City should really undertake a democratic referendum.

Mayor Fortin says that ‘over eight months, I have heard from literally thousands of citizens who have expressed support for replacement, decisive action and acting on a plan that considers the needs of today and tomorrow.’

He does not acknowledge receipt of any communications whatsover from all those many Victorians who are bitterly opposed to his plans.

He says that ‘an astounding 5,000 people provided input on the bridge designs,’ but what he doesn’t say is that the City disregarded the recommendations of a majority of those polled.

He even has the audacity to suggest that ‘property taxes will not increase as a result of this project.’

As if that was not unbelievable enough, he even costs the new bridge, which he says ‘equates to $19 per resident per year for 20 years, which is already accounted for within the budget.’

When one considers the omissions, selective history, undemocratic procedures, indifference to constructive criticism, fear-mongering and unbelievable financial prognostications, one has to seriously question the whole agenda of this Mayor, and not just this fabulously depressing tale of the attempted destruction of the Joseph-Strauss designed Johnson Street Bridge. 

Gregory Paul Michael Hartnell, President

Concerned Citizens’ Coalition

CCC