This is a letter I wrote May 4, 2006 to theVictoria News, which was published, and which I wrote because I was soooo angry at the silly way the press was reporting on City Council meetings:

Dear Editor,

While Rudy Haugeneder's headlines ("Councillors fall for developer's gift" and "Streetcars not desired," May 3, 2006) indicate a sharpish sense of wordplay, they really fail to do justice to the conversation residents need to have around Victoria's development. I was at the Committee of the Whole meeting covered by Haugeneder's reports: reading his articles, I find myself caught not in a "Streetcar Named Desire" scenario, but in "Rashomon."

Haugeneder wastes few words on The WaterFall's design, which maximizes views for neighbouring buildings (Chateau Victoria) and uses established architectural iterations at street-level to knit the building into the urban fabric. No words wasted on the nearly 30 minutes of council deliberations as to whether the architect should have to submit new renderings that answer Chateau Victoria's request to increase height in one of the towers while lowering it in the other, and no mention at all that Chateau Victoria is the taller neighbour to begin with. No mention, of course, that The WaterFall will help mask our view of Chateau Victoria, which is at best an unattractive building, or that it will finally rid us of an eyesore surface parking lot. Instead, the article leads with a polarizing sentence around "cash gifts" that "bend" regulations, which most people will read as code for graft and corruption ("councillors fall for...").

In the "streetcars" article, your reporter fails to mention that Irwin Henderson's presentation focussed on initially creating a downtown loop, one that costs far less than the "up to $120 million" cited by Haugeneder. Yet, speaking of dollars, he also fails to note that Geoff Young's point about federal and provincial funding was that a recent CRD meeting attended by Young made clear that there are approximately $600million on the agenda for transportation, and that the vast majority of that money is suppposed to go for highway construction and improvement. Young's point was that with budgets this big focussed on cars, it doesn't seem unreasonable at all to spend some money on LRT.

The press makes hay of the idea that we live in Eden here, and that we're in danger of "falling" from grace if we fool around with forbidden fruit, whether urban development or forward-thinking ideas like downtown LRT. In this passion play, the developers are devils, or at least snakes in the grass. But isn't it time we grew up and talked like adults? Victoria is a city, not a fairytale. Instead of lost sanctuaries and evil snakes as leitmotif, how about this observation, from Aristotle's The Politics: "A city is composed of different kinds of men [and women]. Similar people cannot bring a city into existence." Not all pro-development people are evil snakes, nor do status quo angels deserve to monopolize the conversation. A thriving city recognizes diversity not just in its ethnic make-up, but in terms of how it lets different kinds of people bring the city (its economy, its built environment, etc.) into existence.

Sincerely,
Yule Heibel