Committee of the Whole

Welcome Bureau and everyone attending this meeting.

This is the first Committee of the Whole meeting, first gathering of this council for 2026.

So welcome.

Happy New Year.

I'm Councillor Gery Lemon and Council Council members chair alternate chairing for each of the Committee of the Whole meetings.

So it's my turn to start off this year.

I will begin with territorial.

Recognition.

We have three of our counselors who are off ill, I believe, but devoted to their positions, and they're online.

So there's we actually do have a full full body of council here tonight.

And can we have a motion to approve the agenda?

Moved by Councillor Mattson, seconded by Councillor Agenda.

Counselor attended Councillor MacKenzie.

All those in favor.

It's passed.

And uh motion to adopt the minutes of this meeting.

So moved.

Moved by Councillor McKenzie and seconded by Councillor Mattson.

All those in favor.

Motion passed.

Public participation period.

Is there anyone in this room that would like to come up to the podium and speak to Committee of the Whole?

Just make your way up to the podium, sir.

And you should you'll be shown, I would think, where to how to turn the mic on if you don't see it automatically.

And please give your name and your street, please.

I'm speaking to uh agenda item 6 uh.1A, the rezoning for 258 Helmcken Road.

And I just want to make some comments on that.

Um my name is Dr.

Greg Searan.

I'm a resident of Margaret Lane uh in View Royal in uh Gibraltar Bay Estates.

And um I've lived in uh View Royal for since 19 or since uh 2005 for 21 years.

Um I'm a family physician with a focused practice in chronic pain and mobility impairment.

And um I'm also the developer of a pain care methodology that focuses on non-pharmaceutical treatment of pain, uh that um focuses on treating the source of pain, not just treating symptoms.

And this methodology is uh covered by MSP entirely.

Um with that background, I have um developed four uh uh healthcare businesses in in the last 20 years while living in Victoria.

Uh the Mile Clinic in View in VIC West from 2010 to uh 2023, uh the um Mile Clinic in Vancouver for one year in 2012, which then morphed into a um a clinic called Change Pain which is a very large clinic in um uh vancouver of which i was a co-founder and was there until 2018 um currently i'm the director of the anatomic medicine foundation uh and which is based here in view royal uh so i've i've got extensive experience in running healthcare practices um i've uh the uh um notably in those practices they have all uh changed their location due to the cost of running a business so the mile clinic uh has moved to brentwood bay uh change pain moved from um oak ridge area of vancouver to burnaby um and currently i though i live in view royal i practice in lake cowichan um just because of the cost of a business so uh what's important to appreciate here is that um the uh the cost of running a business in healthcare is uh is appreciable and that the overhead of a business is a determinant of health care access if there's no physicians or healthcare practitioners in a community uh because the the cost of running a business then citizens don't have access to healthcare um so in this disregard, I'm um i i want to speak to the the the uh passion that i bring to healthcare, but also the uh passion that the uh perfective purchaser of 258 Helmican would bring to the healthcare practice that they bring.

And in that respect, uh I want to um note that uh that the prospect of running a business out of that location where the zoning requirement will be for that healthcare business to share space with a cafe is just not a viable um uh business um uh plan for a space to um uh for the the uh uh healthcare practitioner to have a focus uh on the excellence of care that they provide, uh having to share that with focusing on a cafe business of which they know nothing about, even though they might enjoy coffee, it's not going to improve their ability to serve patients.

Also, I think that the College of Family Physicians, College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC might not feel too comfortable with uh having a cafe within the midst of a uh clinic setting where they have stringent requirements on what is required of a facility space to treat um patients with a surgical uh with surgical care.

Um also I think it's important for the council to consider the impact of uh requiring a zoning requirement that a cafe be present in that uh location you're essentially um creating a the the death knell of extreme coffee uh an existing business that has been in in view royal for several years would uh surely go bankrupt with um promoting a cafe in a better location across the street and that's an existing business that that will suffer from a decision to require a cafe in that location so i i hope that um that the skills i bring in the treatment of chronic pain may be able to be practiced in this new clinic setting um i'm sure some of you uh who have live with pain daily will might benefit from my care if you appreciate uh the treatment of of pain without medications uh and um i hope that perhaps uh in the coming year i might move my practice from lake cowichan to my neighborhood so thank you for your time thank you very much anyone else like to address council on or the committee on an issue that is on the agenda.

No one else in the room um carl, is there anyone online that wishes to speak?

Chair Lemon, we have uh no messages so far this evening.

Okay, that's great.

Thank you very much.

Okay, so I'm gonna move on to petitions and delegations.

And first up, we have Insp. Saran from the West Shore RCMP.

And uh welcome, sir.

This is your you're new to the detachment, and you're certainly new to our meeting.

Yes, uh thank you very much uh for inviting me tonight to uh uh to present our uh quarterly stats for uh West Shore RCMP.

Uh before I start, uh just wanted to uh just take a second to acknowledge uh Superintendent Todd Preston, who is the uh officer in charge of uh West Shore detachment uh until his uh until his retirement in the in the summer.

We had uh Inspector Steve Rose acting uh in the interim.

Uh I've taken over until uh Superintendent Terry Gillespie will be taking over starting uh first week of February.

So but uh just coming in here uh for the temporary for the last few months.

Uh just wanna say what a remarkable job uh the previous OIC and the operations officer did uh running that detachment and uh maintaining the morale and uh providing that uh first class service to the uh residents of uh West Shore detachment or Western communities.

So uh going into our quarterly stats.

Uh I'm gonna start off with some good news.

Uh starting off in November of 2025, uh we've had a um uh 15% uh change uh in file counts uh from last year, which is uh which is great.

And then crawling into uh uh December, um we've actually seen a change of uh 38%.

So we've had uh uh a decrease in crime when in our view royal community, which has been uh fantastic.

Um going into uh additional stats, uh we've actually have had an increase of uh impaired uh impaired uh traffic checks all throughout uh November, December.

Uh for example, December we uh did approximately one, two, three, four, five, six, seven uh road uh roadblocks throughout uh the Wesher community, including View Royal.

Um tickets we've written for uh for December alone was 18 with seven warnings, uh three school zone patrols and uh investigation of uh 18 uh uh collision files um just in the view royal area.

So uh for the December in terms of community engagement efforts uh through the Workshop community.

Uh I'll just go through a couple of things that we worked on.

Uh we did uh total of 25 food hampers uh for families in need for the Christmas season.

Uh we also did a restorative justice uh event at the Crystal View Elementary School to discuss empathy and crime impacts uh within the community.

We also did a staff volunteered to serve lunch at the RCMP veterans luncheon at the Langford Legion, which was uh very well attended uh by our uh veteran uh uh members.

Uh also the uh the truck and uh truck parade in the Langford light up.

Uh we had our uh members there doing uh scene security and uh traffic management uh we also presented a check for 105 thousand dollars to the Canadian Cancer Society for funds raised during the Shea McKenzie Tour de Rock efforts in the fall as well so excellent uh community engagement efforts uh uh by the part of our members so files of note that uh would be of uh um well would be of a good uh a good story in sense of out of a bad uh uh bad incident we had a uh sex assault stranger sex assault back uh going back into the summer that uh we did a extensive investigation uh working with our crime reduction unit and our serious crimes team uh we were able to identify the suspect and uh uh working with uh our crown counsel uh we were able to actually uh get a charge approval so this individual is now uh he's in front of the courts uh so this is a uh full-on sexual assault charge uh charges were uh recommended and uh they were approved by the courts so that's moving forward and again that's very rare to see uh these type of stranger sex assaults in a community like us such as ours here but uh nonetheless they do happen and uh due to the great work and the time it took for just to do the paperwork the investigation the disclosure uh we had some uh significant success so far so that is before the courts so uh no further safety concerns to our community here it was a uh yeah it was a one-off uh and that's all gonna be dealt with through the courts now uh for the last month now for December I've had my uh my bike squad my community response team out and uh doing uh foot patrols in in the uh in the community uh we've also been doing uh uh uh bike patrols as well throughout the weeks uh one of the good one uh success we've had this uh happened a couple weeks ago is picked up a uh person on an outstanding warrant that was out in our community here so uh that's as a result of our uh our bike patrols and our foot patrol efforts so we've had a lot of community engagement as a result we've had a lot of positive feedback from our community partners so that's been good um and I'll finish up with um uh the body worn camera program so that's something that we had uh it's been ongoing uh Vancouver Island district uh we're still finishing up uh the remaining detachments throughout the north north end of the island including the Naimo uh Powell River areas uh however we're fully set up we've been uh we've been live now we're just working on getting the additional uh members uh there on the plain closed side trained up as well uh but uh the great benefit is we've getting a lot of uh great uh body cam footage it's helping out in our investigations and our uh our disclosure and our and our trials um where you've yet to see uh what kind of impacts it's had in terms of uh uh community response uh public complaints.

So those numbers, uh, it's we'll start seeing some of those numbers uh in the in the next little while.

Um, but uh one of the things we are finding the time, the disclosure.

So it takes on average about 30 minutes or more for the admin side of that uh of pulling that video, having it available, disclosure.

Um so depending on the type of nature of the file, the investigation, that could that could add hours uh of investigative administrative time to the uh the frontline officers as well.

Um so those are some of the challenges that we are seeing uh with the body warm camera program, but it's fantastic.

It's uh it's definitely uh uh makes our job a lot more transparent and a lot more easier because people are behaving themselves a lot more with when they see that body worn camera.

So um, but it's also very effective in in the courts now.

So that's it for me.

Thank you very much.

Uh counsel, and um I'm looking at you online.

Any questions?

Counselor Brown.

Yeah, welcome uh to View Royal Inspector.

And uh I don't know if this is gonna make me feel old or you feel young, but I'm a retired member and my regimental number 29152.

And no Jerry Potts was not in my troop.

And are we just borrowing you?

Are you are we keeping you or or sorry?

I didn't quite get that at the start.

Are we we just you're just on loan to us now?

No, sir.

Yeah, I'm on loan.

I uh belong to uh Vancouver Island headquarters uh district office.

I'm the uh Vancouver Island District Operations Officer is my substantive role.

So I uh oversee the 26 attachments um with respect to the budgeting, the uh some of the operations side, the client services, and um so yeah, I'm just here helping out and uh holding the fort down until uh until Superintendent Gillespie uh makes his way, transitions over to uh Victoria here.

Okay, well great, thank you very much, and again, uh welcome to View Raw.

Very good report.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Uh that's uh that's a very old reg number, by the way.

So you know my reg number is uh and I got 20 years in the service, and mine is uh 53381 was my reg' number.

So that's what we tell them.

Counselor Rogers.

Yes, thank you.

Uh you should hear Councillor Brown's CS number.

Um correctional service number.

At any rate, um, thank you very much for the report.

And uh I'm I'm particularly pleased that you um have uh now introduced us to the uh impacts, if you like the early impacts of the uh body camera.

And I look forward to hearing um ongoing updates of uh that effectiveness and as well as um the various challenges and um you know costs that maybe occurred uh incurring to for this program.

So thank you for bringing that to our attention.

No, and you know what?

We'll learn more.

Uh when I get back to my regular role, that's the other thing I oversee is the uh the transition of the body worn camera or the implementation of that program throughout the island district.

So and you know, as we are progressing, or iron out some of the little kinks uh and that whole Axion program itself, the things uh the technology and the uh the options that it has in terms of language translation, real life transcription, um you know it's even got an AI uh generative AI piece where you can ask uh questions, it'll do the research for you.

So there's a lot of uh a lot of great uses for that technology and just in terms of what's gonna cost uh the taxpayers uh is always gonna be the issue.

So, but with what we're using it for now, it's absolutely amazing.

So Metson.

Yes, thank you.

Uh I too enjoyed your presentation.

So thank you, and welcome to View Royal and the Western sure here.

So my question is it's good to hear about the body cameras and the potential effectiveness.

Years ago we used to have cameras on the streets to uh catch speeders.

And since you're in central office era, have you heard anything?

Are we we're looking at sort of putting that program back in place from what I understand it was uh once they took it off, accidents etc increased and and nobody politically it's just too painful to try to put that program back in place.

But I just wondered if uh from your perspective, there's a is was it a good idea, and B, is there any possibility of it coming back?

Just clarify, you are you referring to the uh the photo radar program?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I don't I don't think it's gonna be coming back.

I haven't heard anything.

Um I know the uh the provincial government was adding the uh speed on green.

That's that's been uh that's but that's been live.

It's I've seen it all throughout the lower mainland.

Uh um I haven't really seen it here on the island very much.

But uh yeah, I don't I don't know if uh the province would be entertaining that option of uh bringing back the photo radar.

So I I'm just curious, what is speed on green?

Uh that's when you're actually running through the intersection at a uh at a high rate of speed.

So if you're in excess of the post-limit, I think they give you some variance and uh um so if you get caught in and you know doing say 20 over, I'm just throwing that number out.

Uh I'll take a picture and I'll send you a ticket.

Just like if you run a red light, uh same thing.

So good to know.

Uh anyone else?

We're good.

Inspectress Heron, thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

And next up, we have Mr.

Brown.

The presentation from the West Shore Parks and Recreations.

And I believe you're going to be talking to us about budget.

Yes, thank you.

Back again for another year to see how things are going.

Thank you for inviting me to uh present the West Shore Parks Rec 2026 to 2030 financial plan and the 2026 requisition.

Next slide.

Today I'm going to cover a few highlights from 2025, which will then take us into the financial projections for the year.

I'll then move into the overview of the 2026 budget considerations and how these played out for the proposed budget for 2026 with an overview of the capital projects slated for 2026 and over the next five years and how that affects our capital reserve funds.

And then I'll conclude with some high-level step usage statistics as they pertain specifically to view our all so you get a picture of how your residents are using our facilities.

We still continue to see high demand.

They're pretty much full in all those peak hours, but with the increase of uh hockey academies that keep growing, we're now seeing most of our daytime ice also booked up.

And so they still can uh saw an increase of 173 hours booked last year versus the previous year.

And one of the big areas, which I'm gonna hit on another slide as well, is just our court rentals.

So, with the changeover from the outdoor reach volleyball courts to the outdoor pickleball courts on the West Shore, brought a great new resource to the West Shore, and as well as we've seen as what we expected, which is quite a bit more usage and also revenue generation, which helps, but a lot more usage as compared to that previous um asset on the West Shore.

Next slide.

We're also very pleased to have been voted the best place for fitness on the West Shore in 2025.

Uh, the demand for the weight room and fitness classes continues to grow, which does come with its challenges.

We've had to increase staffing levels to manage some of the varying patron personalities that we see with that.

Uh the weight room experienced growth of nearly 17,000 more visits in 2025, and those total visits there based on the the days that were open.

It's roughly 765 visits a day that we've got going through that center, which I can confidently say will be if if not the business busiest, certainly one of the busiest uh fitness centers on uh in Greater Victoria.

Uh the staff continue to make adjustments to the equipment layout and add equipment as possible where space permits, just trying to ensure that we've got a good flow in there when we're seeing those numbers.

We actually just looked at tracking yesterday, and we had 1200 people in a single day actually go through the fitness center yesterday.

So big numbers going through that center.

The the New Year's resolution rush hit instantly this year, and uh staff are scrambling to stay on top of that.

Next slide.

And lastly, um, to mention for 2025, as far as some of the big highlights, the major addition to the site was in the West Shore community was the before mentioned outdoor pickleball courts.

Um, from the day it opened until the weather started to turn in the late fall.

The courts were heavily used by both reserved court usage as well as people who just dropped in.

And we also offered programs through the summer for people who were learning to who wanted to pick up the sport and uh start taking advantage.

The grand opening was in June.

So far, or for last year, we saw just under 3200 hours booked as compared to the previous volleyball courts, were about 700 in an average year.

We saw close to 26,000 in revenue depths just from the booking side.

And there's also many, many more hours of drop in use, which would be the more significant use of those courts, which doesn't is free based on first come, first serve, which isn't even part of those calculations there as we don't are unable to track without having somebody out there to count those as people come in.

So that's been a fantastic addition and certainly been very successful.

With that, on the first weekend in July, we offered the inaugural Paddle Royale, which was a tournament held, and staff plan to have this every year for a nice fun social competition.

There were five divisions with 30 teams of two, and courtside sports was the tournament sponsor and provided prizes for the winner of each division.

So that went really well.

We plan on doing that.

And we actually did hold an indoor tournament for our regular users of the indoor courts in the indoor sports complex in December.

It was much smaller numbers, of course, but that was also really successful.

Next slide.

Better than budgeted for revenue.

We'll see also that does drive up some costs.

We have costs in some of the areas in the programs and so on, where as we're adding those are added by putting in more courses, more lessons, and so on, which then we've got higher staffing costs and supply costs that go up with that.

We do unfortunately continue to struggle with filling filling ticketed full-time maintenance roles.

That's been an ongoing problem for our industry.

We do partially cover these with auxiliary staff, though that staff tends to be less trained as far as the tickets go, and it's not able to take care of some of the more complex projects, which resulted in us doing a lot more contract for services work this year, dealing with some of the uh issues that came up.

We had a few unexpected issues, such as that we had a water tank leak in the 55 plus um center auditorium, which resulted in having the entire floor replaced.

We had contracted that out as well as we had a few significant mechanical issues with the pool air handling unit and both ice plants that required specialized trades that we had to bring in, and that's a lion share of that uh increase there in the maintenance cost for the year.

Some of the additional program revenue as mentioned, then drives up some of the cost that goes with that.

Overall, we're looking at uh our projected just over $300,000 surplus from last year, which we'll carry forward into surpluses go into the reserve account for capital projects in future years.

Next slide.

Though at a still at a high level, here's a more itemized breakdown of the before-mentioned revenue and expenses.

So we saw improvement, both some grant revenue that was unbudgeted for and licensed care.

That's our practice for the most part with grant revenue because it's never guaranteed as we don't budget for that.

Um so when those come through, that um adds some adds um uh some increased revenue to reduce some of the overall expense.

Um, we had better program performance, food and beverage, we've higher concession revenue.

Um, the both in the shamrock season and the grizzly season season, we've seen high the shamrocks have always been fairly highly attended, but we've had high much better attendance at Grizzlies Games since the new ownership came in, and we're actually seeing that relationship has been really strong.

And as a result, we're getting a lot more concession use out of that as well.

And so that concession revenue has grown, as mentioned, the facility bookings as well as rentals of ice in the JDF and Q center.

With those, then we've got some of the costs that go up as associated.

As mentioned, we had some vacant roles and we continue to struggle with that in maintenance.

We had to use more contract service work to deal with that.

And then, of course, some of the expenses that go up with the increased revenue on the other side down below.

Next slide.

So as we move into the 2026 budget, some of the more significant areas we had to consider going into it are where the current approved five-year financial plan includes a 3.9% lift for 2026.

Our collective agreement ended at the end of last year.

And as I've mentioned before, wages are our number one expense by by quite a bit.

So 1% wage increase as a value of 98,000 for our overall budget, which works out to uh just about a 1.6 requisition increase.

So that's kind of our the challenge we're always dealing with moving from year to year.

We added an additional cleaner position as a result of that increased foot track traffic as mentioned.

We were noticing the cleanliness cleanliness of the of the facility was starting to deteriorate with having so much more foot volume.

So we added that in.

The second phase of the surveillance equipment upgrade and expansion.

However, that's more on the capital side.

Asset management requirements include the annual lift of 60,000, which started was established in 2021 to the reserve plan contributions, and as well the youth engagement program, which has been funded since it began in 2022, or 2023 is its first partial year, which was funded by the Building Safety Communities Grant in partnership with Callwood.

That has ended at the end of the last year.

So we've added that into after discussions with the board and with ownership.

I've added that into the budget, and then we've got annual uh utility rate increases that we deal with on an annual basis.

Next slide.

So how that wrapped up into major expense increases for moving into 2026.

Um we had a one or the collective agreement last year had a 1% increase in in as of July 1st last year, which affects wages from January to June for this year.

Return utility rate increases as mentioned, the increased cash capital reserve contribution, uh, the new the value of the new cleaner position that we've added, uh additional scope to the upcoming strategic plan process.

So our strategic plan expires at the end of this year, so there'll be work done this year to build the next five years.

Um we've increased the scope of that with the anticipation of the completion of the facility master plan that's being worked on and how that may affect that, and needing to tie that into our into our strategic plan.

Um, the continuation of the success successful youth engagement program, as well as a contingent contingency established in preparation for a collective agreement bargaining, of which we're still the region is still uh working through that, and so we're behind we're behind the CRD and some of the other uh negotiations that are going on as their contracts all expired at the end of 2024.

So we're hoping that we'll start that in the next few months.

Next slide.

So total expenses increased by just over a million or seven percent, um, which includes the 104,000 for the youth engagement program.

Uh fees, program offerings and expectations were increased by 8.1 percent.

That includes an average fee increase of four percent overall that provided a breakdown within the slide we try we've been doing this for a number of years now where we try to match whatever the operat um operating increases on the track uh tax requisition with what we chart charge on our fees so at the 3.9 percent for regular operating we kept that at 4% for the fee increase this results in a requisition increase of 5.56 or 349000 to compensate for the difference this is made up of the 3.9% for operations which matches the five year plan as well as the additional 1.66 that's uh uh for the youth engagement program was mentioned and just uh last year's increase was 3.9 next slide as we move into revenue over the next five years um we we move forward with that average 4% rate increase as we go uh into year over year as well as 3.9 on some of the other areas and so the study um increase in revenue expectations moving forward next slide and we use those same values to predict what what we expect to happen over the next five years within expenses running into what we're expecting to be 3.9 and 3.8% requisition increases year over year as we go forward over the next five years.

Next slide uh we have quite a few capital projects that we're working on into um 2026 there's a few big ones um we did note in the in the list there some of those items are were originally approved for 2025 and unfortunately weren't able to be done.

One of those is the uh pool boilers.

That actually was put on hold because we did receive a grant to expand the heat recovery we have out of the JDF ice plant, which will be used to actually to preheat some of the water in the pool.

So we held off on doing that project while we wait wait for confirmation on the receiving of that grant, which we have received through BC Hydro.

So that'll be a project for this year making use of the of that recovered heat which currently heats the admission or administration area as well as the child care center.

So that whole area is heat is heated by the recovery heat from the ice plant.

It's been a very very successful project.

And then we note in there where their funding is from the majority is through capital reserve.

Any of the library work is from a lot library capital reserve and then we have a some um system server hosts that need to be replaced this year which is covered again by a reserve next slide.

Five year capital plan to give you a picture what we're doing on these pieces is just to to also to emphasize the work that continues to happen to maintain replace the existing infrastructure that is all under the ownership of the five members which is in 2024 at an appraised value of just over 150 million.

We had the appraisal gets done every December so we haven't had the most recent report yet we should see that shortly a couple of the big projects coming up in 2027 all the seating is scheduled to be replaced in the Q center so that's a 5000 ticket item as well as all the rubber flooring and based on the facility a lot of that is all coming up on age around the same time that's another 3000 we also have a bus being replaced is due to be replaced that year but there is a reserve for that.

In 2028, one of the roofs, the flat roof on the 55 plus activity center is due for replacement, which is uh 450,000, as well as fitness equipment is being replaced, and the last propane Zamboni will be replaced with an electric Zamboni in 2029 2028.

And then we've got some other big projects as the JDF Arena Chiller and the re-finishing of the tennis courts also are due coming in 2029 and 2030.

Next slide.

Still pleased to say we've that is nice and healthy as it wasn't five years ago as running into some of those issues.

We are seeing a steady decrease in the amount in the capital reserve, but that was to be expected as these projects were coming.

That was some of the concern five years ago when it wasn't we weren't fully funded.

And we're still not there, but uh to show when we get to 2030, the amount that we're now contributing to the reserve and the planned expenditure are very close.

So we are very, very close to that the goal of the capital asset plan, which is to have be contributing the same amount as as um what is coming out of the reserve each year.

So, in essence, having that fully funded.

So we're very close to getting to that point, which is great.

Next slide.

And so how this works into two requisition amounts, and so um we used some population statistics in the report that you received to aid in comparing years and then the impact on municipal taxes, just to help you evaluate it.

However, proportioning of the tax requisition is solely based on the converted assessments which we receive from each of the members' financial departments.

And so for 2025's um assessment, or it was using 2024's or 2025's value, sorry, the average increase in assessment for the region was 3.88, while as View Royals was 1.73.

Since V Royals was less than the average, View Royal's proportion reduced of owner of ownership reduced by 0.26% moving into this year.

So that moves all the time.

So that we've had times I've been in here where yours has increased.

Sometimes it goes down, it's kind of all over the place based on that how it uh proportionates against uh the other four owners.

Next slide.

So moving into the requisition, so that results in an increase of View Royal of 3.38% or 26,000 versus last year as compared to the overall increase of 5.56.

So as mentioned, there um Langford's hit as higher as a percentage increase due to their their portion of the overall SS value increase was greater.

So the increase is 5.56 overall, uh 349,000, 2.94 or 185,000 is related to operating, 0.95 is for the additional annual capital reserve contribution of 60,000, 1.66 is related to the youth engagement program, and the requisite and the requisition increase for the operating outside of the youth engagement program is in line with what was presented last year.

Next slide.2% on municipal taxes.

And next slide.

So your ownership is now 12.32% of the society, 13.6% of our clients are from View Royal, 14.9% of our memberships are from View Royal, 10.8% of our registrations, 17% of our drop-ins, 13.4% of our life clients, 17.8% of our visit passes, and 13.1% of our overall transactions are made by VRL residents.

Next slide.

And thank you very much.

We'll play it in rush to that too too quickly.

Any questions?

Very good.

Thank you, Grant.

Yeah, with my colleagues.

Mayor Tobias, you have a question.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Grant.

Good to see you again.

I'll skip over you and ask my financial officer.

Uh just to confirm because I'm getting older.

Our method of paying for the West Shore Parks and Rec.

Is that through requisition or is that casino fund?

Uh through the chair, it's 100% casino funded.

Thank you.

That's the only question I had.

Thanks, Grant.

Anyone else?

Counselor Brown.

Yeah, thank you, uh Graham for your presentation.

Um, when I went to a meeting there a couple months ago, um, you were talking or thinking about another uh ice skating service.

And I know um they're in there they're in demand for sure, and if you build it, they'll come, that's for sure.

And I believe probably next year we'll be losing an ice service at Gordon Head for student housing.

But so no matter where you build it, people are gonna come.

Is that still a plan?

Uh I don't I didn't see it in your capital uh future expenses uh for a second uh ice skating service.

Uh through the chair.

Uh it's not it hasn't anything in in concrete.

It's been it's part of that master plan process where they're looking at facilities as a whole in the West Shore.

So we haven't put anything there until that works its way through, which is part of where we increase the expenses related to the strategic plan work that will happen because we expect whatever's going to come out of that, we're going to need to work into the strategic plan, which is when we'll start to see that um come through.

The definitely, I would agree the demand is there.

We're going to lose at some point that rink um up at UVIC.

And once that happens, we're going to have certainly some concerns.

Um, we've already, it's the same thing with um with what's going to happen with Crystal Pool as far as pools go.

There's going to be some very big stressors on the region on uh recreation and sport infrastructure.

Um, we've had a number of user groups already reach out trying to get into our spaces now.

We've always prioritized the West Shore, and so that has always been the case.

We've tried to be creative in the pool.

We're now on weekends.

We actually opened it earlier specifically to a couple rental groups, um, not to drop in to try to to accommodate some of that.

But our arenas right now are pretty much booked solid from 6 a.m.

to 1 a.m.

So there's not a lot of room to uh to to move there.

So that is definitely going to be something that the entire region's going to be battling with shortly.

Thank you.

Councillor Manson.

Yes.

I'm not sure if I should give all the credit for this to Councillor McKenzie, but uh I was really pleased to see that the requisition projected requisition increases are under four percent for each of the next four years.

So I I would like to congratulate you for sharpening your pencils to to get those numbers down and give something for our staff to sort of hope for too.

Anyways, I I just wanted to compliment you on that.

And uh again, great services, and I hear nothing but good things, so I just wanted to thank you and and Councillor McKenzie for the great work that's happening there.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Councillor Rogers?

Yes, thank you.

Yes, excellent presentation.

Really appreciate all the good work that's been accomplished in 2025 and the and the budget reflections and the surplus that's come in.

Very pleased to see that the there are plans to continue the youth program and the funding for that.

And I also was pleased to see the overview on the last slide that you provided for View Royal.

And it really shows that V Will is participating as much as we're contributing.

So I'm glad to see there's that that use.

Thank you for your help.

Good.

Thank you, Grant.

Appreciate it.

Nice to see you every year.

And now we have Greater Creator Victoria Public Library in full force.

And I I see uh Metchosin Councillor and Board Trustee Carl Rosing is first up.

And are you going to introduce?

Yes, I certainly will.

Super.

Okay, good evening, Mayor and Council, Chair Lemon.

Thank you very much for the invitation.

My name is Carl Rusing.

I am the chair of the Finance Committee and Highlands representative on the on the library board.

And as you well know, Highlands and View Royal have long shared an undefended and tariff-free border.

And let me assure you that territorial dispute of 1994 is long forgotten.

So this evening I'm with the library CEO Maureen Sawa and our assistant director of finance, uh Melina Barnes.

Duncan Cavens, who is the vice chair sends regrets for being unable to join you.

So I'll cut this short because our time is limited, but uh I'd like to uh recognize your counselor Jerry Lemon for her stellar work on the board uh and the commitment of our councillor trustee members to represent their constituents is greatly appreciated.

Um we are committed to uh working with our municipal partners so that we can build communities by providing citizens with equitable access to information services and resources to grow and learn.

As one of the few free accessible public spaces available for everyone, public libraries are relied upon not only as trusted sources of information and learning, but vital community hubs.

On behalf of the board, I'd like to express my thanks to the town of Ural for your continued support.

And I'll turn things over for the really hard questions over to Maureen and Melina.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Carl and good evening, Mayor Tobias, Council and Staff.

It really is wonderful to be back here again.

Next slide, please.

I always begin these presentations just with a reminder that Greater Victoria Public Library is a shared service model spanning 10 municipalities and 12 branches.

This allows us to deliver services that are equitable to a very large urban library to all of our member municipalities, regardless of size or location.

Next slide, please.

I think you can see it demonstrates the degree of usage that continues to grow throughout our system.

Library use remains strong across the system with more than 153,000 active cardholders, an increase of over 4% from the previous year.

Engagement also remains high with over 2.5 million digital circulations and 3 million plus physical circulations.

On a per capita basis, GBPL continues to rank extremely high this past year we ranked second in total circulation for comparable cult sized libraries in Canada with residents borrowing more than twice the number of items seen at the national average.

This level of use reflects both the strength of our collections and the trust our community places in their public library.

2025 has been a tremendous year of growth, renewal, and opportunity for GVPL.

And I'm just going to talk over the course of the next few slides and some of the highlights.

So next slide, please.

Early literacy support continues to be a central priority.

Our emergent literacy programs, drawing more than 14,000 attendees, according to the data up to November, support families in developing foundational languages and learning skills, and remain among our most consistently well attended offerings.

Participation in the BC Summer Reading Club also remained high.

Well, it was exactly 9,881 children taking part in 2025.

This is the highest it's been in since ever.

Next slide, please.

Expanding digital access and innovation.

Some of the highlights that we've achieved this year, we opened our digital media lab, self-served digitization space, empowering residents to preserve family and community history.

We're in the process of redeveloping our website, which we built our planning on engagement with over 300 community members to share accessibility preferences and user-centered design, digital investment.

I'll talk about that, and a couple more slides, and of course, enhancing cybersecurity and privacy resources for this system.

Next slide, please.

Libraries as gateways to equity access and community.

Removing overdue fines continues to support equitable access.

The financial impact has been minimal.

Lost fine revenue represents less than one percent of our operating budget, a level that had been has been fully planned for and managed within existing resources.

Return of materials remains the behavior remains stable.

In 2025, items are being returned, were returned at virtually the same rate as in 2022, which was before the fines were eliminated.

The average number of days overdue remains 11, and the median has shifted only slightly from four to six days.

These patterns mirror results across Canada and reflect responsible borrowing in our community.

Next slide.

Costs and digital access challenges.

As you all know, the funding for BC libraries from the province continues to be flat.

This has an impact on access for materials.

I'm going to talk a little bit more about what this means, particularly for the digital services that we provide.

However, we have seen an increase in our virtual visits, and part of this is just the improvements that we've made to our own kind of discovery features.

Next slide.

Libraries pay a lot more for digital materials and individual consumers pay for digital materials.

And we pay more for digital materials than we do for print books, which doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, but it is the fact.

Digital versions, versions cost more because of licensing agreements with publishers.

This is the multinational publishers.

I should note that it's not our Canadian local publishers, but the multinational conglomerates that require libraries to essentially rent the materials.

Okay, next slide.

Just to reiterate that Greater Victoria Public Library is outperforming major Canadian public libraries.

We have an exceptional high level of use.

And our in-person visit rate places us 18th nationally, which is significant for a library system without a large central urban core.

Residents continue to rely on our branch network as accessible spaces for learning technology access and community resources.

So next slide, just very quickly highlighting what we're looking ahead for our focused areas for 2026.

The board's strategic plan is enabling us to move forward in a number of initiatives.

Next slide, please.

And just a couple of photographs just to demonstrate the work that our library board has been doing with advocacy with the province.

This picture was with our Minister of Municipal Affairs at an event at the UBCM conference.

Okay.

Finally, I would just like to show in the next slide.

Probably just to go to the very next slide because I know I've got one minute left.

Our 2026 budget request.

We worked hard to contain the operating budget increase.

We've given you some facts, but the overall system-wide municipal contribution amount this year did result in an 8% increase.

The next slide, please.

Town of U Royal's share of the 2026 requisition based on converted assessment values and population of the municipality, including rental assessments, is 723,182.

A contribution increase of 7.60% per capita increase is 4.06.

Next slide, please.

And this is the final slide.

Just a reminder that in difficult times, the library does become a lifeline, a place where people turn for learning, digital access, and a sense of connection when they need it most.

And Melina and I and um Carl would be happy to answer any questions that you have.

That's two minutes.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you very much, Waureen.

Mayor Tobias, do you have a question.

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you for your presentation and coming up and visiting us after hours.

I appreciate that.

I'm just wondering if we have any literacy stats for Victoria in general or perhaps the West Shore.

We so when you say literacy stats, you mean in terms of the level of literacy locally?

I don't have that in front of me, but I do know that the Summer Reading Club participation has definitely been something recognized by the school board to kind of preserve uh youth literacy over the summer.

Um we have such a high degree of use that that would tell me that we have a pretty high level of literacy in in the Greater Victoria area.

I know that we frequently get comments from newcomers to to Victoria at View Royal and the GB PL um service area, that they are constantly um impressed and appreciative that the level of reading material that we make available to folks both online and in print is equal to what they're finding in large libraries and other provinces.

Yeah.

Uh and uh follow-up if I can, Chair, and that is um uh I I really applaud the work around the significant investment for digital licensing for things because I I know a lot of folks here, even if they could make it downtown, uh they just don't have the time to make it downtown to uh to get something out.

So that's a wonderful opportunity.

I'm just wondering if the kind of association of libraries and BC have got together.

Is there a way to get together and negotiate lower prices for licensing vehicle at it as a whole?

Yeah.

And is there a way to convince our government as well that it's a worthwhile thing that spans the uh British Columbia and they could invest directly into that with increasing.

Yeah, um, definitely there's both provincial work and national work, and in fact, international work, um, the Canadian Urban Library Council works very closely with the Urban Library Council of the United States.

They have exactly the same experience.

Like it, it's it's there's no border crossing about that.

Um, what is particularly unfortunate though, sometimes is some of our own Canadian authors because they're distributed by US-based um publishers, you know, it's it's um it's it's quite um challenging, but there is a movement, and we why we have become much more involved with both UBCM and AVIC, um, you know, to kind of just keep drawing attention to the fact that libraries are so well used, and this is a cost that um, you know, when we presented that information to the City of Victoria um budget presentation um in December, you may remember there was quite a lot of um news coverage about that because it's it's a bit of a surprise for people to to realize that that it that it is more, way more.

Yeah.

Yeah, thank you.

Councillor McKenzie.

Great.

Thank you for your presentation.

So as your services grow and costs everywhere continue to increase.

I know internally we ask our staff every year how they're going to cut costs in those areas where we see less value.

So I was going to pose the same from you to you to see if there were any um cost reduction measures that you or initiatives that you undertook this year that you wanted to highlight.

We um as as um operationalizing our strategic plan, that's exactly what we've been saying to our staff is that if we're going to meet the goals that the board has set, some things are gonna have to stop.

Like we can't keep doing everything as much as we did.

So that is something that we're actively looking at.

We we've had um you know some real challenges with recruitment over uh the last couple of years.

Um I'm very happy to say that we went from a vacancy rate at the beginning of last year 22% to 7%.

So that's that's really good news because we're funded for those staff positions.

Um, and now we will be able to do do more with with more.

But I might ask Melina if you want to say anything to that effect about cost savings.

Yeah, I can't say that we took some, you know, a specific intent to to cut costs.

I think going back to the challenge in recruitment, there was a sort of a natural reduction in services in ours and in services that some of our library assistants were uh outreach programs that happened because of that recruitment challenge.

And I think now we that we are staffed more fully will have that opportunity to look at the value added um that those the services that they're providing.

Um it's it is challenging when you know 72% of our costs are salaries and the cost of those salaries are based on collective agreement bargaining.

So to reduce that is to reduce positions is the only control we really have over that, and um and that will take some time to then align um what services are valuable and aligning the positions to that.

I would I would just add that um we do a lot of uh work with partners, you know, so that we're working with community groups to to present um different services um and i would say too that um a concerted effort uh you know we when contracts are being renewal like renewed that that there's a lot of scrutiny um in terms of best value but again as as was mentioned by our colleague earlier the usage of our spaces is increasing so then the the cleaning and the security support and all of that that the costs are going up and I don't know if our finance chair has anything to say from your perspective because the the finance committee has been over this budget um scrupulously yeah we've gone over it several times and uh yes staffing and security is is a large concern so um that that's that's the big driver thank you i appreciate that information thanks for that yeah I know libraries are a public space um I'm wondering if because of the province hasn't been doing a good job at finding uh spaces for for homeless people and or unhoused people uh whether that then becomes an an issue and a problem for the for the library and uh I don't know if you've chatted with the province about actually providing the supports necessary rather than sort of fostering a labor two though there was um uh a study session at the UBCM conference in September and the title of it was libraries on the front line and there were a number of um our colleagues um speaking to exactly that that that what pressures this is being this is putting on all of our public library branches it's significant and we have communicated that to the province and also to the federal government as well i mean it's that's another thing that's come up about maybe there's some funding opportunities at the federal level yeah anyone else counselor rochers yes uh thank you very much for the report um it it there was the uh front page that talked about community uses and um i i found that useful when you were talking about digital items borrowed physical items and and that's um i guess a snapshot what i'd be curious to see is each of those items over five years so go to the get the data five years show that i'd like to see graphically um what the increased digital uh items um and what what of these have changed and grown in the last five years and and being able to anticipate um our our costs uh obviously uh um i use a lot of um the ebook functionality and yes i can see that um it now has a considerable wait list of 27 people uh for a particular book but um i also understand the challenges and and we just wait patiently um it obviously reading illiteracy is a is critically important pbs uh just uh noted yesterday that 40 percent of the america american citizens did not read one book in 2025 so um the the success of uh the library system that we have here and and uh uh the amount amount of use is great.

And I also want to draw a parallel in terms of um budget requests.

You're making a budget request that uh works out to $57 dollars per capita uh for a year, but you don't have any user fees like we see in West Shore Parks and Rec.

So, you know, when we look at uh want to compare um what the costs are for West Road Parks and Rec and what the costs are for a library, um one has user fees and one doesn't for obvious reasons.

Um and uh unfortunately the it's a huge broken record uh the way uh the province has failed the library system and not its continued uh uh growth.

So um thank you for this report.

You don't you're doing the best you can.

Let's show the graphical um you know over five year time time for the community uses.

Let's demonstrate that so we can get a better understanding next year.

Thank you.

I and thank you for that.

If I could just make the point that the the what really is kind of um frustrating is uh a a book, a title in heart, you know, in print for that five years is still owned and used by the library.

That same title we have to repurchase it every or re-rent it really, re-renting it.

Um so that that there are some interesting numbers there.

Yeah.

Yeah, if I if I may, um I think um Mayor Tobias might have been thinking the same lines.

Um I would love to be able to see um uh some Canadian repository where we can build our own repository and set our own prices uh for e-books um to all the libraries in Canada.

Yeah.

A pipe dream correctly.

That would be nice.

Let's invest in that.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Certainly, libraries are not what they were 20, 30 years ago.

And I'm I at a previous meeting I I reported out as a as a trustee on the UBCM.

The the um the this the session on libraries.

What was it called, Maureen?

Um libraries on the front line, right.

And and one of the speakers had a date.

It's very specific.

It was like February 6, 2000 and 20, 2021, something like that.

Um as and she had it right down to the time, the risk of first overdose death in the library.

So the you know the the issues that are being dealt with go far, far beyond books and and reading material.

Thank you so much for your presentation.

It's I'm very proud to be a part of your um library world.

And uh thank you for coming.

Thank you for your support.

Thank you very much.

Uh Jeff, are you up?

Staff report on the rezoning application for 258 Helmkin Road.

Thank you, Chair, Jeff Chow, Senior Planner.

Um, as members of the count of uh committee will recall, um this is a property that is a six-story building with commercial and residential mixed use.

Uh the um the ground floor of that building um has been vacant since occupancy was issued in June 2025.

And there is a rezoning application to permit additional commercial types of commercial uses on that ground floor.

And those include medical clinic, retail personal service establishment, and with a minimum of 150 square meters of cafe.

This the bylaw to administer this rezoning, bylaw 1160 is at second reading.

Discussions just before the holiday break.

And a request has come forward to amend the bylaw at second reading to reduce the minimum amount of floor space for the cafe from 150 square meters to 74 square meters.

Next slide, please.

So the what staff looked at was how viable is the space at 74 square meters.

The 150 square meters came from the original zoning proposal where they presented some sample kind of uh coffee uh cafe um floor spaces and they were they average about 140 square meters.

Uh the proposal to 74 square meters is roughly 800 square feet.

Um in the local examples that we looked at, uh this would be a little bit on the uh the middle to smaller side of the other cafes that we have in View Royal.

Um 98 square meters to 200 square meters.

There are a couple that are smaller, uh, and those are the uh the Carlina Cafe at 264 Island Highway, which is actually a actually restaurant, a very small restaurant, and that one is 61 square meters, 62 square meters, um, with uh an actual cooking facility in it as well as coffee service, and that allows roughly 16 seats plus whole tables of two, one table of four.

Um the next larger space is the nest on Watkiss Way, and that is on the main floor, uh that is 69 square meters, and that has a service area, washroom, um, and and a seating area.

And that unit does have some storage prep area in the basement, which have we haven't counted here.

Um this proposed coffee shop in this area could work, would be a little bit larger than that.

Uh in that both similar to the to the nest, uh, there's there's opportunities for extensive outdoor cafes, outdoor seating space uh which would make make it viable the second part is um for this perspective tenant um they would likely not require a a kitchen space like a lot of the the food can be prepared off site and and served on site and that's similar so it's kind of a similar model that you see with a lot of other coffee shops now where there's a central commercial kitchen and food is distributed outwards and they basically just have a servery and you know make the coffee there so the the storage space and the kitchen space um demand is is a lot less so those are kind of reasons that that are in support of the proposal uh the other part is it would reduce the um the parking demand a little bit um so before with 150 square meters you're looking at uh 32 parking spaces where 29 are exist on site and we can't create any more and uh with 74 square meters you it brings it down to 31 required parking spaces so for a coffee shop to actually go in there if the rezoning is approved they would need either variants or they can they can do uh parking in lieu uh to to meet the parking requirements um yeah so uh next slide please the other part of this app so uh next slide please um so staff recommends uh approval of the proposal uh and uh if the application moves forward to council consideration to amend the bylaw um uh a public hearing is um is is uh recommended for to be scheduled for february uh third which is the uh next available public hearing date so tonight it's about discussing the proposal um council next week if it if there's support for it council consider amending the bylaw at second reading and sketch formally scheduling a public hearing in February so that completes the presentation if there's any questions I I have a quick question Jeff and I'm I'm reflecting on an earlier um presentation under public participation the proposed coffee shop and it's you know this it's not a sure thing I don't I perhaps it is perhaps it's closer to sure um but the people who attend the coffee shop wouldn't necessarily have to um if if the layout of the the whole area would be such that people they would be very separate right so people on their way to a doctor's appointment wouldn't necessarily wouldn't have to traips through a coffee shop they wouldn't have to be that kind of interaction um through the chair um there's no layout shown at this time uh so there's no layout shown at this time so um it would be up to the the owner and the applicant to work out what the layout of the uh the space would be whether um whether they're kind of there's shared space or not uh but yeah we don't have any information at this time okay understood got it um okay thank you colleagues any questions mayor to buy us uh what's the um square footage for the clinic you said it's 74 for the uh square meters for the coffee shop what's the rest of the space can you remind me John uh it's a total of it's a total of roughly 6,000 square feet I'm sorry to flip forward in numbers that's 582 square meters um so that would leave uh 74 would leave you still over 500 square meters for the uh for the clinic okay and then uh for your parking you were saying that for the coffee shop plus clinic like how do we do that variance up for the remaining parking because it's not adequate for either is it uh for for the combined um if it was actually 100% um medical clinic there'll be no variance uh but one of the the the uh reasons for this development occurring was to create that community gathering space and that's why there's a demand for a coffee space so in short could be a variance or they can pay um uh provide a payment in lieu which we use towards um transport you know improving transportation in the area on parking okay thanks Jeff um when everybody's done questions I've got a proposed amendment um chair anyone else counselor rogers yes uh thank you uh staff um the understanding a second um council um approved a uh a motion um and that was for doctors uh a covenant for both doctor's office and grocery store um is there still a grocery store planned for um the spaces that we have yet allocated?

Would this be a grocery store and the cafeteria of the uh coffee shop is separate from the grocery store?

Uh through the chair, the covenant is and or so um so the the proposed clinic would occupy the the spaces not occupied by coffee shop, but at this point we do not have the the tenancy is not guaranteed yet.

So in the event that the medical clinic um you know does not attain tenancy, then that that that gives flexibility to the space to be used for you know, someone else might want to have a smaller clinic or a grocery store may still want to occupy the whole space.

So it's derived flexibility.

Yeah, okay.

That thank you for that explanation.

The other is um again from um the public participation and and the doctor's uh concerns that we would be uh or you know, the uh tenants may have to share a common space.

And I I really respect the uh the doctor's point of view that um usually you don't want to have a doctor's waiting office shared with those having coffee.

So um uh I really can we get clarification from the uh uh owner, property owner, that they will indeed make uh a separate entrance um uh for these uh uh for the businesses that they're and uh respect the privacy of of uh patients and so forth.

Uh through the chair, I believe there's more than one door uh entering on so I think there are a lot of people.

Oh yeah, one door and you know, that's maybe have two doors.

I don't know.

However, it works.

Um it it is absolutely uh um I think a question that um because I certainly will be uh asking the question again when it comes to public hearing.

I think it's uh it's a valid point and needs to be addressed.

So could we follow up with the um uh the applicant to ensure that uh he that could be will be addressed?

Uh the requests can be forwarded to them.

We usually do not go to the extent of regulating the space within a building.

Okay, and thank you for uh the comparisons of um the different coffee shops.

Um uh certainly the nest uh is uh is a great facility, you know, that they have and I think and one of the uh interesting aspects of the Nest is that they have this great outdoor space, which um I have heavy expectation that um uh this for this particular site that will, you know, patrons will be able to use the outdoors and benefit from the outdoors that's uh a little difficult uh in in the one that's up by Stormont, which is very, very small.

So um and I guess one other question.

Um why not a coffee shop that's a hundred as opposed to 74?

Uh through the chair, this is the the applicant in consultation with a prospective tenant has has come up with this number.

And so it's basically it's to make the the clinic viable.

So it's trying to find that balance between yeah.

Okay, thank you.

Yes, that's great.

Thanks for the explanation.

Um Mayor Tobias, you Yeah, I have an amendment that I'd like to propose, but uh question first, Jeff.

Has uh obviously there's interest in the space as a medical clinic.

Uh has there been interest in people coming forward wanting to use it as a coffee shop at this time.

Um chair, um not to get too much into uh because there's no uh real estate transaction occurred, there's things are just a negotiated.

My understanding is that the prospective tenant would um operate or oversee the uh the coffee shop space.

What if the coffee shop space wasn't there?

Uh like if we weren't impeded by a coffee shop and it could just be all clinic.

Uh the chair, that would probably suit the clinic prospective tenant more.

Uh, but then the community would have less community gathering space.

Thank you.

Uh the amendment I wanted to propose, if I get a seconder for this, is to delete a coffee shop entirely.

There's one across the street, there's one across, there is one up the street from that.

Actually, by demanding a coffee shop there, we're not helping our current businesses out very much.

And I I I get it that if it's I I don't understand why there's a copy, why there has to be a coffee shop there.

I think what has happened is we got upset when the grocery store wasn't going in and demanded some sort of public amenity be there.

And it doesn't make sense, folks, because we can't we don't have enough parking for uh a coffee shop plus a clinic.

So now we're we're not doing a business that we say has to go in there, justification by having both a coffee shop and a clinic in there.

And I say we simplify this and go to the public and say uh our proposal is that the covenant is for either a grocery store or a clinic.

It's not and a clinic, it's not plus a coffee shop.

There's limited square feet.

The people moving in there are gonna have to do extensive renovations just for you know some of the concerns voiced by other counselors, as well as um putting in washrooms and and other stuff.

So I think we need to, you know, what did they say in the military?

Get a grip on ourselves or reality.

And we got a limited square footage that we're dealing with in a really busy corner with limited parking, and I don't think we're doing the business community or or the health industrial community any favors by over-prescribing exactly the breakdown of that for us.

So if I've got a second or I'd like to propose and or clinic and or grocery store for the covenant.

Second, second, John, you're seconding.

Thank you, sir.

Uh, and I think I'm motivated just about enough, but I think over-prescribing, we we've tried that once already with the grocery store, and it's not worked, right?

Uh and part of it I think is because of location as well, is that uh we seem to not have a middle of View Royal, right?

Or a center of View Royal.

It's all around the edges where we border with you know thrifties and uh, you know, that that and uh and Helmkin.

So what what I would propose is that um uh we consider the amendment, and I think that's enough for the public to say grocery store or a uh or a clinic, either one of those is good enough without the cafe.

Okay.

Anyone want to speak to the amendment?

Well, I think Jeff has this.

Oh Jeff.

Yeah through the chair.

You know, depending on how the the conversation and decision goes, if this is something that the committee would like to run into council, that would be by um the proposal here is to amend the bylaw at second reading.

The what to achieve this the amendment at second reading would include um deleting a clause in the bylaw that currently calls for a minimum of 150 square meters for the coffee space.

So it's just one line that would be deleted cafe would still be a permitted use in the future with the proof clearance but we're not we're not um having to deal with that floor space um allocating a specific floor space to a specific use which is very awkward to administer counselor rogers yes thank you question staff um staff um the applicant um are they uh supporting and uh wishing to have both a um medical office and a cafe cafe coffee shop uh through the chair um that arrangement came through multiple discussions in this chamber and their intent was to find some a solution that would uh be acceptable to council given this the the intent of the original rezoning so as speaking to the the motion, I'm opposed.

Um, you know, I understand that uh we have a couple of coffee shops, but uh quite frankly, um there there are people that do not wish to pay uh go to the extreme because it's a hole, it's in the bottom, um, and it's out of sight, out of mind.

Maybe there are a few that people that know about it.

Certainly I was not aware of the one at the top of the hill.

But the whole point was um of having some uh service um at the um you know on the corner was and if it wasn't a grocery store, you know, we was to be able to have um a gathering space so that people could easily go uh to the place it's it's obviously seen and um it would have a street presence that um uh I think is is a benefit to to the community, which unfortunately um uh you know the extreme uh uh coffee shop does not have.

Um if this is a better business that would be appealing to more public, I don't want, I don't think we should be making a motion to eradicate this or uh as we as but proposed until we hear from the public.

If we hear from the public that yeah, sure, we sure would love to have a coffee shop.

Let's wait.

Let's hear what the public has to say before we um venture to uh eradicate it right off the bat without public input.

Thank you, Councillor Rogers.

Can Councillor Mattson?

Yeah, I won't reiterate most of what Councillor Rogers had to say, but I'm in total agreement.

I mean there was an expectation for the community that there'd be a public amenity.

We shrunk it down to a coffee shop, and now the developer is willing to put in a coffee shop that we say, no, no, we don't need the coffee shop, just put in the clinic.

So I I think we're doing our community a disservice and we're doing something that's totally unnecessary.

And I've seen lots of places where they have a coffee shop and it's in the same building as a doctor's office.

In fact, it's a benefit at times because there's lots of traffic that goes in and out of the doctor's office and are able to go from uh go you know get coffee there.

So anyways, I don't support the amendment.

Um shall we vote on the amendment?

Oh yes, I I was kind of on the fence, but I I agree.

I think having this kind of gathering space would actually be beneficial for the people who live above um that area as well.

They might not be using the doctor's office, but that would be more of a convenient thing for them if it was a cafe.

So um for that reason I'll be voting against it.

Um I I think I will too, but I originally this was going to be a about a place for people in the neighborhood to go and buy a quarter milk, a loaf of bread, and some bananas.

And I think the hope was that perhaps the bananas and the loaf of bread would be behind the counter in the cafe if that's all we could manage there.

So I think that if this is the best we can do as an amenity, and what the public had the neighborhood had asked us for uh was something that enhanced their community.

I I am I I think I need to stick, my vote needs to stick with the coffee shop.

Um so vote on the vote on the amendment.

All those in favor.

Councillor Brown, Mayor Tobias in favor, those opposed.

And it's uh overruled.

Voted down.

So that was Councillor McKenzie, Councillor Matson, Lemon, and Rogers voted against it.

So council, what's your what's your wish on the um motion, the recommendation by staff?

And it's a multi it's multifaceted, so I'll just read it out for the public.

Uh the committee recommend to council that council rescind second reading of the zoning bylaw number 900 2014, um amendment bylaw number 1160 2025, and that zoning bylaw number, etc.

etc.

be amended to reduce the minimum required floor area allocated to a cafe use from 150 square meters to 74 square meters, and that zoning bylaw number, blah blah blah blah, as amended be given second reading and further that following second reading a public hearing date be scheduled for February third, 2026.

Which uh do we have a motion?

Do we have a wish?

Uh anyone want to do anything.

I'll I'll move the staff recommendation.

Okay, moved by councillor McKenzie.

Second.

Second by Councilor Brown?

Is that you, Don?

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

And um any comments?

Can I make an amendment at this point or put in for men?

I'd rather s I'd rather see it uh why not?

I'd rather see it at a hundred.

Oh, would you?

Yes.

Um again, same size as kinder cup, and they are able to put in able to make donuts and the bananas.

And you're able to make they're able to make things there.

Uh I think the other one, 74 is just too small, and so so I think 100 is sort of splitting the baby okay um so that's my motion to put it to 100 rather than seven all right so do we get a seconder for the amendment going back to a hundred i will second for discussion oh really okay uh just moment uh mr chow uh thank you chair um one uh consideration here is that the 150 uh the 74 square meters is the minimum and so that could change over time to increase if there were tenancy changes but the minimum is 74 but certainly um it has to be a number that that council is comfortable with so it can go to a hundred it's just it can't go below 74 okay so what anyway so for my perspective i i just thought the minimum size then i pick kinder cup because it's a building that i know and go to okay on a daily basis and it seems to work for me um there's no motion i'm quite happy to have a quick vote if i get okay let's have a quick vote on quick vote on councillor matts amendment all those in favor councillor mattson all those opposed everyone else uh so back to the original motion the staff recommendation councillor McKenzie and councillor brown um motion and seconder ready to vote all those in favor all those opposed um did it did those online did everyone vote in favor Don did you okay all right so and councillor or mayor Tobias said he has he's abstained which I don't think is a thing so and motions passed that was that was fun um okay moving on to fish official community plan review and update and that is Mr Scory talk talking to speaking to the visions what we heard report vision survey engagement thank you chair um yeah tonight I'll be giving three uh PowerPoint presentations each summarizing uh the past three what we heard reports that we've completed uh the first is for the uh vision survey and uh next slide please this was to follow up on the first actually the first survey that we completed for the uh the official committee plan update um it was done back in 20 uh 25.

So what we were following up on is the uh some of the early feedback that we got on uh our guiding principles, our values um and some input that would inform the vision.

What we asked in the vision survey that was completed over the summer was for participants to provide feedback on three draft vision statements as well as 11 draft goals.

And we are going to be using this feedback to finalize a vision statement and a uh a series of goals in the official community plan.

Importance of this is that the vision statement is really just a guiding um uh a guiding statement that provides uh um unity with our policies, objectives, um our actions, and our goals provide uh kind of a definitive outcome for um how we should uh satisfy our uh our vision.

Next slide, please.

Um like I said, this was completed over the course of the summer.

Uh the vision survey was launched on July 18th.

It closed on September the 7th.

We received a total of 85 responses.

One of the big reasons to launch the survey over the summer was the uh because we had further engagement to complete uh during the fall, and uh I'll get that to that in the next uh couple presentations.

For this uh engagement period, we focused largely online.

So we did have a large social media presence, um 18,000 views uh across 11 Facebook posts.

We had um a few staff members go out and put up posters throughout parks in V Royal and in some businesses, as well as hand out some uh project business cards that would direct people to rewards the uh the site online, so the social pinpoint site.

And we had uh also uh sent out email blasts to uh different stakeholders and uh uh the Royal uh V Royal uh e newsletter.

Next slide, please.

The summary of this presentation is going to be very high level.

Um there is a quite extensive um what we heard report attached to the staff report, um, but I'll just report uh back to the committee on kind of the major findings.

The first of which is the the clearer uh choice for uh respondents was the uh vision statement option number three, which I've uh put on the screen.

It is in the uh in the staff report.

Uh I'm not going to read this out.

Um, it's just there for information.

But um some of the feedback that we had received on the vision statements overall.

Um some thought the statements were too long, some thought they were too short.

Um, interesting because the existing uh vision statement that we do have in our 2011 uh official community plan is roughly a page long.

Um the preferred option here is a large paragraph.

Um of the the other feedback that we had received on the vision statements as well was uh confusion about the um I guess the state of the vision statement without a reference to a date or a time frame.

Um some participants that were providing feedback thought this was what our what our current uh vision is, uh, or rather our current state um rather than this is what we'd be trying to achieve by uh 2050.

So council uh uh may want to uh think about adding back in um uh a date um where we had previously uh taken it out.

Next slide, please.

Just quick clarification.

Did you say there was 45 respondents or 85?

There was 85 respondents.

Okay, thank you.

The next slide is um just a high-level uh overview of the feedback that we got for each of the 11 uh draft goals.

Um again, all the verbatim comments are in the uh the uh staff uh or sorry, the attached to what we heard report.

Um overall, we see uh strong support for the uh most of the the goals uh or at least some support.

And um where we see no support, this can be a variety of different reasons.

Um the feedback that we received um, for example, uh not supporting the uh uh growth management and community character preservation.

Um some comments were you know we're growing too much, others were um we need to have more in the way of uh providing housing.

Um there the same can be said for uh things like um uh the climate action resilience.

There was quite a large number of some supports, but um if you look at the comments, there was quite a few comments saying that you know we should be doing more, we should have stronger language.

Next slide, please.

Just in terms of demographics, just a bit of a high overview.

Um majority of the respondents were residents of Uroyal.

The majority of respondents also lived within the Helmkin neighborhood.

There was an equal number of respondents that were between the ages of uh 35 to 39 and 60 to 64, which is good to see that there's a variety of uh people of all ages that are filling out the survey.

Um interesting to see that nearly 30 percent had recently moved to VROIL within the past five years, and um that they uh found out about this survey through social media.

So again, reinforcing the large uh social media push um and uh trying to diversify through posters and and what what have you.

Um and um the uh other interesting point here would be that we had a few repeat customers, as I'll call them.

So 41% said that they had completed the vision uh and guiding principle survey, which was the previous survey, and the uh 40% said that this was also just their first time participating.

So we got uh some new uh new faces uh participating in uh our engagement.

Next slide, please.

Recommendation for the committee is to receive the uh the report for information.

Uh that's the end of this uh PowerPoint presentation.

Thank you, Stuart.

Uh any questions, Councillor McKenzie.

Thank you, Chair.

So I noticed that the preferred uh vision statement, I believe it's called, uh, option three, was the only one that had mentioned of the unceded territories that we're located on.

Um, and a lot of uh there was a number of comments in the individual responses saying that's why um people chose that one.

Uh so I was just wondering how or if we are going to be consulting with our First Nations neighbors to ensure that that acknowledgement is meaningful and um uh the way we should be doing it in in their eyes.

The chair staff have been in contact with both the Cassapso Nation and Songgy Station, and we've been advised by Songheast Nation at this point to uh prepare some draft material and they'll they'll review that material uh prior to the um uh the uh completion of this plan.

The idea is that we'll have them uh review with us uh time of uh first draft of the official reviewing plan.

Great.

I'm glad to hear that.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Thank you, Chair.

Um I just think it's horribly long.

Uh a vision statement is between eight and twenty words, and uh it's one sentence.

It is something if you can't remember, there's no word, there's no sense actually creating a vision statement.

You've crushed all of the goals that we have into the vision statement, which is admirable, but it's okay if they state goals.

A vision or a vision statement could be view royal gateway to Vancouver Island.

That's kind of a vision statement.

It's a high level.

Even a mission statement is two sentences.

We've got a paragraph here, folks.

I'm just concerned that we've gone out, and I think Councillor Lemon, you brought this out before.

It's just too many words.

And I don't care what other municipalities are doing.

You can't remember it.

Um, and so it's okay if we have goals, it's okay we have the these other things, including a territorial acknowledgement.

But but a territorial acknowledgement does not belong in your vision statement.

You know, uh it could be, you know, a community of tolerance.

That could be a vision statement, and then amplify it out by mission statement about how we're gonna do it.

I just am leery, counselors, that we're gonna go to final vote on this, and it's not gonna be what we want to get through and actually have in the OCP.

Great that we're doing engagement, and there's no uh shade on you.

I think you've done a great job getting it ready.

It's just that I don't think we were forceful enough to say it needs to be really concise and really catchy and with a longer statement.

You're covering everything, which is great, but you also risk by naming a bunch of stuff, leaving some stuff out that is important to some people more than others, right?

Um, you know, some of our folks are very concerned about the environment.

I see little in there.

I see community well-being, but I don't see wellness for individuals.

So uh I think our our our problem is is that we will add to this and it will balloon out as opposed to separating out just a simple vision statement.

And that by simple, I mean it's like on the bottom of your license plate, right?

Uh that that is as simple as it gets for a vision statement.

And anything below that would be a mission statement.

That's just my take.

But even then you're talking two sentences.

I I just want to follow up because I'm in total agreement.

You know, of all the statements we've had, the only one that I come close to remembering is View Royal, the best place to call home.

I mean, so that stuck with me.

This might be fine if we want to say we're just going to throw it in there and have nobody ever deal with it again.

You know, we've done it, we've got a vision statement, but no one's ever gonna remember it.

Uh we need to have something that's short and sort of speaks to people because this doesn't.

It's just a a lot of words, a lot of things in there that people will get to see further down the road in terms of um goals.

I'm I I believe we've had this conversation before, um, and some of us have very familiar with mission statements and how concise and sharp and pointed they typically are.

And I'm I'm not really clear how we got this far with three that we're not satisfied with.

And staff, you have done so much.

You put together this massive report.

And and and certainly it's on us.

I somehow or together, you know, we we we let it go that that far.

But um you put together a massive report, and Mayor Tobias is right, you know, there's just too, there's simply too much.

A territorial acknowledgement doesn't belong in a vision statement.

Yeah, um through the chair.

Yes, Leanne, go ahead.

I just like to provide a bit of um insights um on this discussion.

So um staff did um uh prepare a draft, a survey, so a vision, a vision and guiding principle survey, which was reviewed by the OCP advisory committee and reviewed by council for feedback.

Three um vision statements were prepared, one very short one which did not get a lot of community support, um, and then one in the middle and then a longer and a longer one, which is the preferred option within the community.

Um we are writing down um the committee's comments this evening.

Um again, um, this is really helpful feedback because tonight is just to um council's not voting on the vision statement tonight.

This is just um it uh sharing with council what we heard from the public through engagement, and then we'll take, you know, we're taking your comments this evening as well, and um you know, we'll be working with the consultants to probably you know to fiddle something.

There will likely be some further tweaks to the vision statement uh when council considers the first draft.

But uh right now we're just telling council this is what we heard, and um, and then we'll take it from there.

That's great.

Um and I and I hope you don't have to take it all out to the community again and say, do you like this this one or this one or this one?

We could just have one that is short, concise, future looking, and says, you know, in in a line, what we want to be where we want to be.

Thank you.

And and through the chart, I just want to add one last thing is that obviously it's gonna be hard to make everyone happy and staff is doing their best and trying to consolidate all those comments and prepare a vision statement that works for everyone.

And but it's you know it is it is it is it is challenging to do but um a council and the public will see the draft vision statement in the first draft and as well as the OCP review advisory committee and can provide um additional feedback at that time and then we'll take it back do further revisions and I'll come back in the final draft.

Understood really appreciate that thank you.

Councillor McKenzie oh oh counselor rogers yes thank you um yeah again um uh thank you staff um but I would certainly agree with counselor um sorry Mary Tobias um on the mission statements um it's the dangers of course uh what we try to include and what we miss then we've um annoyed somebody if someone comes to me and says uh what about this it's a goal what about this it's a goal what about this so I I think we can achieve a simple straightforward vision statement that uh is um concise and the goals take care of the rest of it I have uh a question to staff about the number calculations so can can uh staff bring up the uh slide that showed this the page of the summary statistics we are going up right that's it yes thank you um when I looked at these uh numbers um like goal one mobility and and connectivity uh and I looked down into the actual materials, if you like the guts on page 18, there's nothing that adds up to 64.

You know, in terms of support, it's 75.

So you know there were three numbers and and uh so staff if you can go to I don't know, I guess you can't bring up page 18 or page 20, but when I looked at each one of those, nothing added up to 64, 54, 40, 81 in in terms of um the numbers in those columns.

So um we'd have to give I don't know what you can do about that tonight, but it's um um I'm confused and I don't see the percentages that are on this page through the chair um on page 19 of the what we heard report there's a table that shows uh summary of the feedback so strong strong support, some support, no support, unsure, and other.

Yep.

And the strong support that I have showing on my piece of paper is 64 percent.

And I have 54 percent.

Oh wait a minute.

Oh, are you saying that?

Oh, pardon me, I stand corrected.

So you get 54 people, 64 percent.

Is that what you're saying?

Correct, uh Council Rogers.

So pardon me.

I'm I thought we were going like 54, whatever decimal decimal.

Okay, thank you.

I understand it, it.

It makes sense.

Uh okay, thank you.

Good any questions?

Happy to move it unless Alice.

Oh, I think Councillor McKenzie had a question.

Uh just a comment um with regards to the length of it.

Um I think while it's our preference, it seems to um have it shorter, and it's probably best practice.

I do think at the end of the day, this document is for the public.

It's their public with their vision.

Um so I think we have to go with what resonates with them.

Uh it's funny that the longest vision option was the most preferred, and the shortest was actually the least preferred.

Um so I kind of fear that if we start reducing the size of it, that we might cut out the things that people liked about it, and then it would make this survey and all this work actually null and void.

Um, since uh we wouldn't have consulted on the actual options.

I'm just going to say that none of them were very good.

The first two were grammatically awkward and the third was la long.

So go ahead.

And and the other comment I have to make, I know this might be the percentages, but it was just 85 people responded.

I mean you can't live and die on the responses of 85 people.

I mean, even though that's who applied.

Um I think a lot of things we have to do, and if and this are you know part of our judgment and and you know the general thoughts of of folks.

I just don't think that we can hold these, you know, etched in stone what we're gonna do on the basis of comments of 85 people can we have a motion to receive I uh yeah I'll move it.

I just wanted to say I think it's on us too.

Right.

We didn't we didn't really demand that it become shorter um council McKenzie before it went out, and I think that was the intent, but it didn't get there, and they had staff did all kinds of chances of review.

So I I think we need to be really clear and put things if we want it shorter, then we just don't agree with that.

We have staff go back and say we want it to be a sentence long or two sentences at most, or whatever the parameters are, agree on that, give staff firm guidance, because we didn't last time, and that was on us, right?

So now that we're getting it back to Council McKenzie's point and Councillor Lemon's point and yours, uh we just need to do a better job before it goes out to the public that we're happy with the product.

And that might take a bit longer or harder conversation or whatever.

Um but I think that's what we need to do.

So sorry, Chair, I interrupted.

Are you seconding?

I am okay.

All those in favor of receipt.

Unanimous.

Question given that have we provided staff direction to come back with a shorter uh vision statement?

I mean, because I don't think we've formally stated that, just we've just or did I miss that?

Staff say it's not necessary right now.

Thank you.

Um Mr.

Scorey, your Western Gateway Community Corridor Engagement, you're still on.

Thank you, Chair.

Okay.

Thank you.

Take it away.

So the next presentation is a uh a high-level summary of the feedback that we received through our Western Gateway Corridor engagement.

This was a combination of online and physical engagement.

And next slide, please.

This was based off of some uh council interest that was uh provided at the uh June 17th, 2025 council meeting.

Uh council had expressed an interest in establishing the Western Gateway Corridor as an employment hub with some mixed residential uh development, and had proposed that the existing Western Gateway Corridor be expanded as part of this uh desire to engage on what this area may look like in the future, and with the idea that feedback would be provided and incorporated into the first draft of the official community plan uh that is being uh prepared at the moment.

Next slide, please.

In terms of engagement, a bit of an overview.

Uh so like the the vision survey um staff completed a large uh online social media presence.

Um there was the uh rural uh view royal e newsletter posters.

Um unfortunately, we had uh planned to do a large mail out for this area, and um it's smaller on the screen, the area in orange, but it is available in the uh the staff report, the area of the Western Gateway Corridor.

We had proposed to do a large mail out, however, due to uh uh ongoing Canada post strikes at the time, we were not able to do so.

Um fortunately, we were able to make the best of the situation, and we had a uh staff member was able to do hand delivery of notices uh of the businesses along the corridor, and uh also to I believe approximately for 50 residents, uh so different uh residential homes, and uh get in contact with a couple of the larger uh condo rental uh units and uh strata in the area.

Um we had completed in addition to the survey that was opened.

Stir Sterling, if if I may, I'm I'm just looking at your report.

So there were 34 responses from the workshops and the focus groups, and there were 50 responses from the neighborhood.

Is that what you were what I just heard?

Through the chair, uh the we had uh sent out um uh hand delivered notice to each of the businesses along the corridor.

And I can't, I'm sorry, Councilor Lemon, I can't remember the off the top of my head how many that is.

Okay, but we had sent uh we had hand delivered 50 letters to residents um and a talk to a uh condo strata as well as a uh an apartment uh rental uh building.

So it's hard it's actually hard to say how many people actually responded because you were dealing with groups and addresses.

We will the the so the survey itself had um uh 58 people that responded to the survey in terms of how many people would have actually seen those um those notices, it's hard to say.

Um the strata unit uh or startup building had uh close to 400 uh units or 300 units, I think.

Um, and the the apartment rental had uh over 100 i think so it's hard to say how many actually saw saw the notice though got it yeah um in in terms of fee uh in terms of engagement um touch points for this uh uh process and this period we had um completed two open houses one of them was on the uh october 18th the other was on october 22nd we had 34 people participate um we had a uh community workshop that was held on october 18th we had 11 members of the public attend and we also had a uh focus group or or business landowner workshop um for uh business donors and uh landowners in the uh the gateway the focus of each uh touch point was largely based off the survey um and next slide please was to ask uh participants some general uh kind of high level visioning uh questions for this area and um these are shown on the screen here so the feedback uh on the screen is taken from the uh online survey the feedback from all of the other touch points the workshops the the open houses are available for uh and all the verbatim comments are listed in the the what we heard report what we can see from the survey responses um the primary purpose for traveling through or visiting the western gateway corridor largely for shopping and dining uh the respondents found that their value of the gate uh western gateway corridor was uh a gateway between communities and both uh issue and challenge now and in the future uh majority of uh respondents see heavy traffic uh and congestion as uh uh as challenges.

Next slide, please.

And existing conditions and future priorities uh again, just from the survey uh was uh a large number of uh respondents saw that the current retail and services uh have poor selection or poor uh poor variety um and that uh increases uh or priorities for upgrades and pedestrian crossings should be a priority for mobility and connectivity, and uh in terms of design, landscaping and street trees would be uh would be important as well as uh sidewalk improvements.

Next slide, please.

In terms of a preferred uh scenario and how we we went about this uh engagement, a large part of this engagement was to understand how the area could grow and develop in the future.

So, in addition to asking those visioning questions uh at a high level, um, each of the engagement touch points, so the surveys, the workshops, and the open houses uh allowed uh participants to identify their preferred land use scenario.

On screen is the uh second land use scenario that was uh prepared, and this was the preferred option.

The table shows how um each of the uh different uh touch points was calculated.

So for clarity, in brackets is the number of people that responded to that particular uh scenario uh via uh that particular um uh method of engagement.

So in the first line uh scenario one, 20 people uh responded to the survey, and that would make up 35% of all respondents uh for that survey.

I then did a calculation or for all responses and funny enough we got 100 total.

So it's easy to see that the total for each scenario is represented in the far right hand column.

So 39% of all responses indicated that scenario two was the preferred option.

The what we heard report that was attached to the staff report gets into a lot more detail in terms of what the uh the scenario is in terms of land use and what this would offer for the community at a high level though the area in pink or purple there is what would be the neighborhood village land use designation this would support or rather permit up to six stories and would be a mix of commercial and mixed commercial mixed mixed residential commercial buildings.

The large kind of purple area south of Parsons Bridge is the Western Gateway Employment Corridor District land use designation and this was proposed as a as a draft land use designation that is focused primarily on either commercial or light industrial use no residential use.

Next slide, please.

In terms of demographics, um, just a high level, we had uh uh roughly 86% of people uh living in V View royal.

Uh good to see that majority responses uh for this uh survey uh were for um uh people living in the Wolfert neighborhood, and I'll clarify that these are demographics based on the survey.

It's hard to gather demographics based on open houses and and workshops.

Um responses were from persons between the ages of 35 and 39.

Uh 40 percent or 42 percent had recently moved to uh View Royal in the last five years, and um 32 percent had previously uh completed a survey, and 58% said that this was their first time participating in the uh official community plan update.

Thank you.

That's the end of the presentation.

Thank you.

Mayor Tobias, you have a question?

Thanks.

Uh Chair uh Sterling, can you give me an example in Victoria of a employment district?

I'm just having a hard time figuring out a visual of what that looks like.

Because, you know, is it are we talking about you know where the majority of people work in government of either sort?

I just need a visual example that I can plug in my head and say, ah, that's an employment district.

Through the chair, um Mayor Tby, thank you for your question.

So employment districts is where there's there's high um employment opportunities and jobs, and so I would use so for example, like the city of Victoria.

Um, I mean, they have the downtown central business district, the downtown area, and then obviously the area around where the government offices is, but their focus in terms of sort of that strong employment would be around like the Douglas and Burnside corridor area in that is sort of the sort of focus of an employment generating area.

I mean, I don't really want I want to be careful I'm not speaking too much about another municipality.

Like uptown, for example, is another area where there's a lot of um you know employment growth in within our region.

So and typically you see these along you know the arterials along um major transportation routes, such as Douglas and Blanchard.

Uh so that's why this area, Long Island Highway, is a um an uh an ideal area for drawing um in attracting investment and growth and um employment opportunities and increasing that tax base.

So when I look to define it, correct me if I'm wrong, it's light or heavy industrial, potentially.

It's warehousing and logistics, it's office and business parks, it's research and technology campuses, manufacturing and processing, utilities and large institutional uses.

So through the mayor, uh sorry, through the chair, we can define it however we want to define it in our OCP.

That's a sort of general likely like um an overarching employment, but we um in definition, but we can define our employment as how we want to define it in our OCP.

So it could be a green technology park or whatever we want to define it as within that.

It doesn't have to be all of the other things.

No, not at all.

Not at all.

So um it's to elaborate on that point a little bit further.

I our you know our employment uh uses that would be supported in the OCP would be um I like IT like technology hubs um health industry um post-secondary education um light industrial could be production where housing distribution not not heavy industrial that's that would not be an appropriate use for along the employment corridor would not have residential above some of those areas we would not well we um haven't gotten that far yet okay all right how but just however just to add to that is that um what we're hearing from the from the community is that they're preferring what Sterling mentioned in his presentation that scenario two which um supports sort of the employment uses between Parsons Bridge and the employ in the uh Calwood corridor really strictly employment uses really preserving those lands for employment uses because once you allow residential in there you'll never get them back um and then focusing more on the residential um around uh six mile area but potentially we could have employment on the bottom floor or whatever and residential on top if that was a thing that's the mess yeah no just following up on my colleagues' comments here.

I I like the idea of having say the first two stories commercial and and something else and having the option for if somebody wants to build uh further commercial on top, great.

But if somebody if if it fits if it makes sense to put in residential, not to have it uh no are zoning so tight that it's not allowed.

So I think I just think uh, you know, from what I see downtown, there's lots of places where you have the first couple of floors seem to be commercial, and then there's you know, you know, 10-story apartment block or 20-story apartment block and dumb with it.

Through the mayor, uh through the chair, sorry.

Um, what we're hearing that those projects are becoming less and less viable.

It is um very expensive to build ground floor commercial and essentially residential is subsidizing the commercial and developers will put the minimum amount of ground floor commercial in.

Um so with mixed-use buildings, um the maximum commercial we get would be one floor because they have to, and the rest of it will be residential.

So I think it's really important that council is aware of that and very careful when you're considering that employment district.

Um if council wants to maintain a higher tax base along that um that corridor, that is something that council may want to consider when you're looking at those types of uses.

Uh Mayor Tobias has moved to seat.

Do we have a second or mayor Mayor Mattson?

Council.

We got a question.

Counselor Rogers.

Yes, thank you.

Uh thank you, Steph, for the uh presentation.

Um I I note um with interest um you know in this survey, general feedback, you know, what are the primary purposes of visiting or traveling through through, okay, traveling through, not to.

Um, because you know it would seem to suggest that there was shopping, dining, personal services, but no, there isn't.

Um, you know, that they're just traveling through.

And so the it it also then indicates that the the current conditions of Western Gateway is that there's um retail and services are poor.

So I'm wondering um how we would plan to build in those um those services and and so forth that are currently poor and uh make them more useful for those people that live in that area.

Where what kind of zoning opportunities are there to provide those services?

Through through the chair, um those types of questions, Councilman Rogers, would come out through policy, which then would turn into action items within our OCP in terms of how to implement those policies.

So we you know, obviously, as part of this exercise, we are looking looking at um that level of detail in in policy as well as an action for the future.

Great.

Those are great, great, great comments.

Thank you.

Um another, if I may.

Um in scenario two in the in the uh map that you showed us, um there was the the the top item, which is the transit oriented area.

Um so scenario two doesn't have that, does it?