Charlayne Thornton-Joe | Victoria | Council - VV Endorsed

Just released:

Hi everyone,

After many months of serious consideration, I am excited to tell you that I will be seeking another term as a Victoria City Councillor. I have had the honour of serving for two terms, and am pleased about what we, as a Council, have been able to achieve, and the projects that I have been able to be a part of. There are still significant challenges facing Victoria---such as housing affordability, homelessness, sewage treatment, transforming our downtown, transportation and many others. I am committed to running for re-election so I can see these projects through to completion. I believe my experience over the past six years will be helpful to continuing our progress to making Victoria the most liveable City in Canada!

I look forward to working with all of you in the coming months, and I appreciate any support you may be able to provide.

Sincerely,
Charlayne

Glad to hear it. She's one of the good guys.

She was on CFAX early this morning. She stated that indeed she had a pact with Coleman, and he gave her the green-light to make the first move.

Funny enough, later this morning Joe Easingwood said he had been having serious discussions with some type of group about running too, but decided not to as late as last week.

CCC

The news that Mrs. Thornton-Joe is seeking re-election is bad for all Victorians concerned to see effective change in the governance of the City of Victoria.

She voted, as did the rest of the Victoria City Council, to allow residential property taxes to go up every year she was in office, with no appreciable amelioration of services. That is not in the public interest of residential property taxpayers, the main constituency of the Concerned Citizens.

She voted just recently, along with the whole of the rest of the sold-out Council, to allow 24 storey high rises along Douglas and Yates Streets in the so-called 'Cross Town Plan.' That was an aesthetic mistake which will radically alter the look of Victoria's downtown for years to come.

She voted, along with the rest of the foolish Council, not 'to seek to regulate location of needle exhange services through zoning amendments,' according to an article in the Victoria News of August 20, 2008. That decision was completely reckless and irresponsible.

Effectively, this laissez-faire atttitude of the Council will still allow existing zoning to remain in place with respect to any future siting of the so-called 'needle exchange.'

That means that there is nothing to stop the Vancouver Island Health Authority from placing the the damned thing practically right across the street from the Saint Andrew's Elementary and Preschool on Pandora Avenuel.

Because of the miserable failure of this Lowe Liberal administration to address the ever-growing real needs of the poorest of the poor on our downtown streets, because of the reasons listed above and for numerous other disappointing instances of what can only be called six years of dereliction of duty, Mrs. Thornton-Joe and all her incumbent councillor friends should be trounced by informed citizen-voters this fall.

The news that CFAX's bullying Joe Easingwood is not going to run is a great relief to all those interested in civility of discourse in Victoria.

- Gregory Hartnell, President
Concerned Citizens' Coalition

CCC

Will an additional 4-5 stories along douglas really be of notice, and even if it was would this be a bad change? Not everyone shares your aesthetic sense. It's absolutely a valid opinion you have, but you state it like some objective fact and example of corruption.

From my view council is mired in nimby interests that keep hight at an aesthetically unappealing LOW height. I think buildings look best when they follow the golden ratio rather than the usual fat-scraper proportions.

Perhaps we have different tastes in architecture? Perhaps there is no 'right' answer to the question so we should allow a mix of heights and sizes determined by architect's artistic visions rather than politics? I'd really like to see some examples of this laissez-faire attitude you allude to. If the city really had a laissez-faire policy buildings would not need years to be approved while seeing their heights and densities chopped down. Maybe we define the term differently, but the city spending years to approve or reject a project while making significant demands and changes does not seem to fit the "laissez-faire" label.

I'm far more concerned at council's obsessive focus on height that borders on metal illness, while ignoring the street level details of many projects.

CCC

This is not merely a matter of aesthetics, or of differing tastes in architectural form.

I would argue that the extraordinary concentration of new brutalist high rise condo buildings in the Humboldt Valley is a prime example of the type of laissez-faire so-called 'planning' that is accommodated by the Council merely for the sake of the expansion of the City's coffers, and the placating of the ever-pushy real-estate development cabal that his ruining this lovely city, turning it into a place that is certainly congenial for absentee speculators, but that practically tries to ignore or deny the significance of growing problems like homelessness and overt hard-drug abuse in the streets.

The two phenomena have grown apace under the Lowe Liberal regime, and therefor I see a direct co-relation between the amount of energy the Council has spent placating the developer-speculators (which is historically unprecedented), and the contrasting paucity of time and energy spent effectively ignoring the legitimate social and health needs of poorest of the poor already among us.

More than being merely offensive in terms of height and density, these new out-of-scale high-rises thus become symbolic of the arrogance and insensitivity of this materialistic Council.

Although I have alleged corruption in the mayoral-police chief scandal, I am not suggesting I see instances of corruption in these zoning decisions, but certainly they are unseemly.

-G. P. M. Hartnell
CCC

Brutalism is a specific architectural form. The Humbolt Valley additions are not brutalist.

I wonder at your nerve ... are you seriously suggesting that Charlayne Thornton-Joe ignores homelessness? You realize we are talking about a woman who rode around with police all night personally waking up homeless people during a snowstorm and getting them to shelters? The woman who put her career on the line by opening up the first extreme weather shelter in the Silver Threads building during one particularly hard winter? I'd love to know what YOU have personally done that even begins to measure up.

What disgusts me about your posts is how you opportunistically use the homeless and vulnerable in order to profit politically from their plight while at the same time undermining people who genuinely work toward positive change.

Thanks, Caramia. There's little in Mr. Hartnell's post that matches up with the real situation. It's like he's talking about two different cities.

CCC

Mayor Alan Lowe has had almost nine years to get his Council's act together in terms of the homelessness issues. It is only in the last year that they did anything tangible by setting up the so-called Homelessness Task Force.

We don't hear much about that body anymore, except that Mr. Ted Hughes wants more moolah to expand his little bureaucracy.

As for Mrs. Thornton-Joe, I am sure she is sincere in her concern for the poor. She did, after all, attend to a collapsed man who was being ignored by the revelers in Centennial Square recently. That is to her credit.

She can't be held responsible for the first three years of dereliction of duty by the Lowe Liberal regime, as she was not there. But, presumably, she saw room for improvement, otherwise she would not have stood for office herself after that.

I don't question her motives in this regard at all, but rather her obvious general ineffectiveness, and that of the rest of the tired Council. Notwithstanding her outing one night to see how the other half lives, she has been very weak attending to her file.

Trying to remain modest, I won't bore your readers bragging about the various philanthropic endeavours with which I have been associated over the years, except to say that my concerns, which one far-from-impartial moderator here finds so disgusting, have been published since 1988 through letters to the editors of various publications, prior to my first run for elected office. That body of writing is a matter of public record and is my gift to my fellow Concerned Citizens and all other Victorians.

As such, I consider myself to be an informed citizen-commentator, well-versed in the art of politics, grateful for the opportunity of living in a democracy that affords all of us opportunities for offering critical analysis and policy alternatives to the decadent status quo.

-Hartnell
CCC President

This thread is about Councillor Thornton-Joe. There are plenty of other threads to post general observations about Victoria's built form. I've been privileged to have had Charlayne as the DRA's Council Liaison and have been greatly impressed by the sincere effort she has put into the thankless task of solving our social problems. Charlayne took on this portfolio knowing it was practically going to be career suicide. I've personally witnessed her on the receiving end of hateful accusations that would have made lesser politicians fold. I've also seen her vote on issues because it was the right thing to do, not to appease interest groups or boost her popularity. I wish other politicians had values like that. She truly loves this city and that guides her actions.

We don't hear much about that body anymore, except that Mr. Ted Hughes wants more moolah to expand his little bureaucracy.

Much is done every day. Just because it doesn't make headlines doesn't mean it isn't happening. People are being helped as fast as the resources can be allocated. A lot of work is happening under the radar and much of it is comprised of small pieces of the whole puzzle. This is what happens when a community solves problems without the media glare of fanfare and ribbon-cutting.

Trying to remain modest, I won't bore your readers bragging about the various philanthropic endeavours with which I have been associated over the years...

Actually, instead of pretending to modesty (in the same sentence as you proclaim your mud-slinging letters as a gift to the city lol) why don't you start telling us about your various philanthropic endeavours. Not on this thread though. Take it to your own election thread.

Sometimes the CCC almost has a point, but the ridiculous hyperbole drowns it out in stupid. Don't be so dramatic and over the top in your announcements and people might take you a little more seriously (or seriously at all I guess)

*shakes head*

I will be voting for Charlayne this fall and hope most other people will as well

Absolutely.

I will be voting for Charlayne this fall and hope most other people will as well

Me, too. Er, I mean, I also! :-)