Can someone explain to me why it’s OK for the City of Victoria to solve a homeless crisis originating outside this small city of just over 90,000 people, with my savings, not the tax revenue from all British Columbians? Mayor Marianne Alto says she's concerned with equity, so how is this fair?
We’ve known for years people are coming here from elsewhere. I was homeless in Winnipeg as a teenager in the 1980s and moving to Victoria was “a thing” even then. A more generous policy decision by former mayor Helps obviously encouraged the closer communities, at least.
The very expensive proposal to provide services throughout our small city for homeless people coming from anywhere is a bad decision for Victoria on every level. It's just wrong.
Mayor Alto didn’t tell us this was her plan when she was elected. I haven’t been asked my opinion, and haven’t agreed to this. This question has not been discussed in an open, public way. The mayor does not have a mandate to do this.
I don’t have an indexed public pension. In fact, no one has a pension indexed to inflation outside of government/quasi-government in Canada, and Victoria council passes eye-watering budgets well above the inflation rate, without disclosing the actual budget. What measurables can the mayor point to for her to believe the larger community agrees with this, either in priority order or results?
And all this in our exceedingly rare, expensive, selfish, silly (to me) un-amalgamated region of 14 governments, of which we are less than 20% of the population. Enough was a long time ago.
Stop driving the money conveyor belt from our too-long-suffering community. Begin measuring objectives and results in a mature, open way, and involve a diversity of opinions, not just shallow shapes and colours. Embrace disclosure and governance as time-tested ways to make better decisions and get better outcomes.
Stephen Ison
Victoria
