July 9, 2022 Newsletter Correction

The 4rh paragraph of the Newsletter after, “How did this work out?”, should have dated the inaugural Council meeting as November 5, 2018, and obviously not 2022.  As indicated  however, the District’s real priorities were in short supply at that meeting.

They have remained elusive for the rest of this Council’s term. By following the last Council’s lead in the development of single-family neighbourhoods and also their failure to adequately address the issues that residents have repeatedly pointed out, fewer and fewer residents have become engaged since the last election.

Even though residents provided credible evidence, it was not recognized. For example, the factual information in the October 2021 resident’s letter to Council (See Oak Bay Watch June 25, 2022 – Appendix #2) when he explained that Council’s multi-tenant, single-family neighbourhood densification plan will add a lot more “sewage, water use, and road traffic” (to the already failing infrastructure) as well as require many more services e.g. “Fire, Police, Parks and Rec, Garbage and Recycling, Bylaw Enforcement” without any additional taxation to pay for them.

Not only did Council ignore this verifiable, factual information, but continued to spend several hundreds of thousands of dollars for consultant contracts and staff time on densification and many less important issues.

However, the administration and Council considered these to be more important. Given the  impact their planned densification will have on the infrastructure these significant tax dollars would have been better spent (as requested by residents) on addressing Oak Bay’s infrastructure upgrades and improvements.