Link to letter on the Times Colonist website
Numbers being tortured by Victoria council
The Official Community Plan public hearing provided an opportunity for Victoria council to address the many objections heard through questions to staff.
One objection councillors were quick to refute was the OCP’s inequitable distribution of density among neighbourhoods.
James Bay was the most vocal, claiming it was already the densest neighbourhood and yet was targeted with predominantly “priority growth” zoning.
City staff dismissed these claims by putting James Bay density behind downtown, North Park and Fernwood. But how they measure and determine this is questionable and misleading.
Firstly, while downtown is indeed denser, the comparison is irrelevant. Downtown is not part of the OCP and has its own Downtown Core Plan.
More importantly, in calculating density levels for OCP neighbourhoods, the city included land that is not available for housing.
James Bay is the most disadvantaged by this methodology because it has vast areas of land – like the legislative precinct, Beacon Hill Park and Ogden Point – that are unavailable for housing.
Population cannot be distributed there and instead must be concentrated in remaining areas.
Including these large unavailable tracts of land in density calculations falsely lowers the level of density.
This in turn skews the comparisons with other neighbourhoods that do not have as large areas of unusable land.
I read recently that, in the game of statistics, if you torture numbers long enough, you can make them admit anything. Victoria council is determined to approve this new OCP at all costs.
Clearly that cost includes the torture of numbers.
—Kirk Buhne, Victoria