Every measure, in full.

Establish quarterly working tables between the City (Mayor + Chief Administrative Officer) and the elected leadership of the Songhees Nation and the Esquimalt Nation respectively. Standing agendas: shared infrastructure, land use, cultural protocols, economic opportunities, public safety coordination. Published meeting summaries (with Nation approval) so residents can see the partnership is real.

Adopt a municipal Indigenous procurement target consistent with the federal 5% standard. Prioritize Songhees and Esquimalt Nation-owned and -affiliated businesses where qualified. Simplify RFP processes for small Indigenous suppliers (single-point-of-contact, plain-language requirements, advance notification of upcoming contracts). Layered addition: regional supplier preference. Separately from and additional to the Indigenous procurement standard above, the City will apply a local and regional supplier weighting in procurement scoring for contracts below the applicable trade-agreement thresholds:

• Scoring weight for suppliers based on southern Vancouver Island, as one criterion among price, capability and delivery record, not a set-aside and not a disqualifier
• Contract unbundling where a large tender can be split into lots a small local firm can realistically bid, without loss of coordination
• Advance procurement calendar published annually so local suppliers can prepare rather than discovering tenders at closing
• Trade-agreement compliance: local preferences are constrained above the monetary thresholds set by the Canadian Free Trade Agreement and the New West Partnership Trade Agreement. The weighting applies only below those thresholds, and the City will publish the applicable threshold values annually so the rule is auditable. The Indigenous procurement standard above operates under the CFTA's Indigenous-business exception and is unaffected by these thresholds

These two preferences are additive, not competing. One reflects an intergovernmental relationship; the other keeps municipal spending circulating in the regional economy. A bid can qualify under both.

Continue and accelerate dual-naming of streets, parks, and public buildings using lək̓ʷəŋən place names, with the participation and consent of the Nations. Where there is clear historical record and Nation support, restore Indigenous names that predate colonial ones.

Adopt clear protocols for Council meetings, civic events and major project consultations, including territorial acknowledgments developed with the Nations (not generic boilerplate), and Nation participation in major land use decisions affecting their territories.

The City does not deliver social services. But it can coordinate. Establish a permanent municipal liaison position for urban Indigenous services, working with the Victoria Native Friendship Centre, Surrounded by Cedar Child & Family Services, and other organizations to ensure City infrastructure (parks, recreation, libraries, emergency services) is accessible and welcoming for urban Indigenous residents.

Victoria is running ahead on provincial housing targets in raw volume. The Province set the City a target of 4,902 net new homes over five years in September 2023, measured in completed units with an occupancy permit rather than in starts, and after two years Victoria had delivered 2,359 net new units, about 48% of the five-year target with three years still to run (City of Victoria; Times Colonist, November 2025). The City met its year-one quota of 659 units nearly threefold, at 1,477.

The real problem is composition, and it is the part Victoria is failing. The same reporting records the City falling behind on below-market rental and on homes with three or more bedrooms, and CMHC data shows Victoria building 56 apartments for every single townhouse. A city where families cannot find 3-bedroom homes is a city that exports young families. A volume number cannot fix a composition problem, and this framework does not pretend otherwise.

Targets to 2030, with quarterly reporting on each:

• 12,000+ net new homes total by 2030, against the provincial five-year target of 4,902 net new units and measured on the same basis
• At least 25% in the missing middle: townhomes, duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, garden suites
• At least 20% as 3-bedroom or larger family-sized units
• At least 15% as below-market or non-market through partnerships with BC Housing
• At least 30% as purpose-built rental

These targets stack: a single building can count toward more than one category. The point is to use the City's land, permit, and zoning levers to shift the mix, not just the headline number.

We will also identify and release city-owned land suitable for housing through a competitive process that scores developers on speed to completion, affordability commitments, and design quality — not just price.

Mayor Alto's 2022 platform committed to establishing a city land bank — using City-owned and acquired land as a strategic instrument for affordable housing, civic infrastructure, and long-term value capture. The commitment has had cross-bloc support, but delivery has been limited. We will continue this commitment and give it operational discipline.

• Public inventory of all city-owned land suitable for housing, with parcel-level mapping, current use, and disposition status — published and updated quarterly
• Strategic acquisition fund for opportunistic purchases (foreclosures, surplus federal/provincial sites, distressed commercial blocks suitable for residential conversion)
• Competitive disposition that scores proposals on speed to completion, affordability commitments, design quality, and family-sized unit ratio (per Measure 6 composition targets) — not just price
• Right-of-first-refusal for non-profit and Indigenous-owned housing partners on a published share of disposed parcels
• Quarterly public reporting on holdings, dispositions, and resulting housing outcomes

This is a continuation, not a new direction. The objective is to make a started commitment work — not to substitute for it.

Victoria currently publishes no permit-processing benchmarks. That ends.

Published targets by permit type:

• Simple residential building permits (single-family alterations, secondary suites): from 3–6 months to under 6 weeks
• Complex building permits (multi-unit, mixed use): from 12+ months to under 6 months
• Rezoning applications: from 12–18+ months to under 9 months
• Development permits (form & character, heritage alteration): published targets per category, audited quarterly

Concrete actions:

• One-stop development centre: a single physical and digital entry point for all permits
• Online e-permitting with real-time status tracking — you know exactly where your application stands at all times, like tracking a package
• Published service standards by permit type, with quarterly variance reports
• A tenure-based priority queue. Non-market, co-operative, and supportive housing applications, and purpose-built rental delivering against the Measure 6 composition targets, are processed ahead of the general queue within each permit category rather than in date order. The City cannot fund non-market housing at scale. It can stop being the reason a funded project waits. Published: median approval time for priority-queue files against the general queue, quarterly
• AI-assisted pre-screening of permit applications — software that generates a conformity report flagging issues for human review, on the model that Kelowna is currently developing (ConstructConnect). Kingston's DASH portal provides 24/7 online access with a 10-business-day target on simple permits (Kingston Herald). Kamloops launched paperless permits in November 2024 (Castanet). Victoria publishes no processing benchmarks and offers no comparable digital tools. We will match the best in BC within Year 1
• Statutory deadline review: Where the BC Local Government Act and Community Charter permit, introduce response-time triggers (e.g., escalation to senior staff, fee waivers for delayed files). Where statute restricts automatic advance, publish accountability metrics instead. The point is consequences for City delay, not lawlessness
• Simplify and clarify zoning rules. When rules are 2,000 pages long, even experts get lost. Clear rules mean faster approvals, fewer appeals, and less uncertainty for builders. The VRBA consistently criticizes Victoria's "regulatory hurdles, slow approval processes, and escalating fees" (VRBA)

Currently: Victoria's missing-middle policy produced 61 permits in 2024 against a target of 150, and 3 applications in its first six months. The binding constraint is no longer zoning, which Bill 44 and the September 2023 overhaul already opened. It is cost and delay. A homeowner adding a garden suite or a small builder constructing a triplex carries the same architectural, engineering, and permitting overhead as a large developer, spread across a fraction of the units. Measure 76 already commits to a pre-approved design library at homeowner renovation scale (garden suite, secondary suite, accessibility retrofit). Nothing covers the multi-unit missing-middle forms that Measure 6's 25% composition target actually depends on. ACTW: Publish a municipal pattern book, and give anything built from it a fast lane.

• A pattern book of pre-approved designs for duplex, triplex, fourplex, townhouse, courtyard housing, and laneway forms, procured through an open architectural competition and published free of charge with no licensing fee
• Automatic expedited permit stream for any application using a pattern-book design unamended, on the Measure 7 simple-permit target of under 6 weeks. Compliance is pre-established, so review becomes confirmation rather than assessment
• Family-appropriate unit sizes written into the design brief, so the pattern book delivers against Measure 6's 20% three-bedroom-or-larger target rather than working against it
• Site-adaptation guidance published alongside each design: what varies by lot width, grade, and setback, and what amendment triggers exit from the expedited stream
• Heritage-compatible variants for the Heritage Conservation Areas, so the fast lane does not stop at the edge of Measure 43
• Scope boundary, stated to prevent double-counting: Measure 76's library stays as written and covers homeowner renovation scale. This measure covers the multi-unit forms. Neither is counted twice
• Published annually: applications using pattern-book designs, the share of missing-middle permits they represent, and median approval time against the standard stream

British Columbia has already moved in this direction with provincially published standardized housing designs. A municipal pattern book calibrated to Victoria's lot geometry, heritage character, and infrastructure capacity is the local version, and it is the cheapest supply instrument available to a city that cannot lower interest rates.

A healthy market where renters have real choices. The vacancy rate has already risen from 1.6% (2023) to 3.3% (2025) — the highest in 26 years (Victoria News) — largely due to factors outside City control (reduced immigration, weak youth employment). But this progress is fragile. We must lock it in by continuing to accelerate supply, so the next economic cycle doesn't plunge us back into a crisis.

Concrete actions:

• Accelerate purpose-built rentals, garden suites, duplexes, triplexes, and infill housing across appropriate zones
• Pre-zone residential areas for missing-middle housing — no rezoning hearings needed for duplexes and triplexes in single-family zones
• Targeted DCC reductions for purpose-built rental projects, paired with a published infrastructure funding plan so the cuts do not strand essential infrastructure spending
• Expedited permits for any project delivering below-market rental units

Currently: Thousands of secondary suites across Victoria sit outside the permit system. Built decades ago, occupied by long-term tenants, never formally approved. The tenancies are real, the rent is real, and the units are counted in nobody's housing target. Many owners are older residents on fixed incomes for whom legalization is slow, expensive, and risky enough that the rational choice is to do nothing and hope nobody complains. The result is a rental stock the City cannot inspect, cannot count, and cannot protect. ACTW: Bring them in, rather than pretending they are not there.

• A 24-month legalization amnesty for existing secondary suites meeting basic life-safety standards: egress, smoke and CO alarms, ceiling height, and electrical. Life safety is the bar. Dimensional and aesthetic non-conformities that do not affect safety are grandfathered
• No retroactive penalty for the period of unpermitted operation where the owner comes forward inside the window. After the window closes, normal enforcement resumes, and we say so at the outset so the window means something
• A standardized approval package and a named permitting concierge who carries the owner through inspection, remediation scope, and sign-off as one file rather than five departments
• Tenant protection built in: legalization is not a ground for eviction and not an occasion for a rent reset. The concierge provides the tenant a plain-language notice of what is happening and what their rights are under the Residential Tenancy Act (per Measure 9)
• Remediation financing signposted to the Measure 60 Climate Friendly Homes rebates where the required work overlaps (insulation, electrical, heat pump), so one visit serves both purposes
• Published quarterly: suites brought forward, suites legalized, median application-to-sign-off time, and the running count of net new legal rental units

Every legalized suite is a rental home added to Victoria's counted stock at zero land cost and zero construction. It is the cheapest housing in this framework.

The problem: Redevelopment is essential to grow housing supply (Measure 6), but redevelopment without tenant protection creates churn that destabilizes neighbourhoods and prices long-time renters out of the city. The goal is more housing AND fewer displacements — not one or the other.

What we will do:

• Stronger controls when buildings are redeveloped — minimum notice periods (12+ months for major redevelopment), moving-cost compensation indexed to local rents, and a documented right-of-return for displaced tenants
• Mandatory replacement rental units — buildings that displace rental tenants must replace those units in the new development at a documented ratio, with priority access for displaced tenants at a published below-market rate
• Renters' Hub — a single digital and physical front door for tenant rights information, continuing the existing partnership with the Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre and on the Coun. Krista Loughton / Coun. Dave Thompson 2025 motion concept. Plain-language guides on RTA process, sample letters, direct referral to legal aid
• Tenant assistance program during transitions — case management for vulnerable tenants (seniors, people with disabilities, language-barrier) facing displacement
• Coordinate with provincial enforcement — the Residential Tenancy Branch and the Compliance and Enforcement Unit handle most landlord-tenant disputes; the City's role is information, support, and aggressive advocacy for stronger provincial enforcement (per Measure 70b)

More housing, not fewer tenants. Growth and protection go together.

Tighten short-term rental (STR) licensing, enforcement, and platform-data reporting. STRs convert long-term rental units into part-time tourist accommodation, tightening vacancy in exactly the moment we are working to expand it. Within the BC framework, the City will: require platform-side licence display and data sharing on every listing; cap non-principal-residence STRs; cross-reference STR addresses against business licence and property tax records; impose meaningful penalties for unlicensed operation that escalate per offence; publish a quarterly STR compliance report by neighbourhood. This measure addresses residential rental supply. The related but separate problem of commercial downtown storefront vacancy is handled under Measure 71. Same function, adjacent duty — grant and contract condition compliance. The compliance capacity built for STR licensing is the same capacity required to verify that municipal grant and contract conditions were actually met. The City currently disburses grants against stated conditions and rarely verifies them afterward. The compliance officer's mandate will extend to: condition verification on municipal grants above the Measure 65 review threshold — was the money spent on what the application said; recovery of misapplied municipal funds where conditions were breached, through existing contractual repayment provisions; and a published annual summary of conditions verified, breaches found, and amounts recovered. Scope limit, stated deliberately: this covers municipal grants and municipal contracts only. It has no role in provincial or federal income assistance, disability benefits, or health programs — those are neither the City's money nor the City's jurisdiction. The City audits its own spending, and nobody else's residents.

Vacancy control between tenancies — limiting rent resets to tied-to-unit rather than tied-to-tenant — is provincial jurisdiction under the Residential Tenancy Act. The City does not control it. But the City can be a credible advocate. Council will pass a formal advocacy resolution calling on the Province to introduce inter-tenancy rent control on the model of Manitoba and parts of Quebec, conditional on offsetting protections for landlord operating-cost recovery so that maintenance investment is preserved.

Modernize social housing waitlist coordination with a clear, digital process inspired by the best allocation systems in the world.

How it works (within municipal authority — BC Housing remains the social housing operator):

• A single digital portal for City-affiliated waitlists and partner non-profits: upload your documents once. No more filling out multiple applications at different providers
• Transparent point-based scoring: criteria are public and rational. Sample weights: working in Victoria (+50), essential worker in healthcare/childcare/emergency services (+20), single parent (+20), disability in the household (+50), family with 3+ children (+10), time on waitlist (+1 per month, max 10)
• Real-time visibility: you see your position in the queue, the number of units available, the number of units coming available in the next months, and your probability of receiving an offer
• No outside intervention possible. No queue-jumping, no political favours. The algorithm assigns based on points
• Alerts: you receive a notification when a unit matching your criteria becomes available. You accept or decline. After three declines, you are moved to the back of the queue

This replaces opaque processes with full transparency. It also optimizes occupancy — matching partial-week needs, flagging units sitting vacant, and maximizing the use of every available space.

Currently: The Alto council has spent $25M+ on homelessness response since 2023 without publishing outcome metrics, plus $11M repairing encampment damage. The 2025 Point-in-Time count found 1,749 people experiencing homelessness across the Capital Region, up from 1,665 in 2023 (Globe and Mail). The Community Safety and Well-Being plan was not endorsed until June 2025 — nearly three years into the term — and its Phase 1 was funded by raiding reserves rather than by operational savings.

ACTW: Reduce unsheltered homelessness by 50% — from ~320 to under 160 — through Housing-First: supportive housing with wraparound mental health and addiction services, in partnership with BC Housing and local non-profits. With published outcome metrics, not just dollars spent.

This is not about enforcement alone — it is about offering genuine alternatives and then enforcing consistently. You cannot enforce people off the streets if there is nowhere for them to go. The principle: build capacity first, then enforce, and never move people to nowhere — with published outcomes, not just published spending. Victoria bears a vastly disproportionate regional burden: 89% of shelter beds and 83% of supportive housing for the entire Capital Region, despite being one of 13 municipalities. Since 2017, the Province has funded 4,120+ homes in Victoria through BC Housing, with major projects like the 158-unit tower at 926–930 Pandora and 90 supportive units at 726 Discovery Street (BC Gov News). We will continue and accelerate these provincial partnerships — they are working. We will demand the other 12 municipalities take their fair share — and we will hold the Province accountable for every dollar spent by publishing outcomes, not just inputs. Throughput, not just intake — adopt a STEP-style program. Supportive housing in Victoria is effectively full at all times, even as people remain unsheltered. The bottleneck is throughput: residents who have stabilized are not transitioning out to market or non-market housing, so units stay occupied and new entrants have nowhere to go. On the Coun. Krista Loughton January 2026 motion and the Vancouver Streetohome / BC Housing / Vancouver Coastal Health STEP (Supporting Tenants, Enabling Pathways) model, the City will partner with BC Housing, Island Health, and Pacifica Housing to operate a transition program: case-managed pathway from supportive housing → bridging non-market rental → market rental, with maintained service connection through each step. Free up the supportive units; do not just add to them. Coordinated Access and Assessment (per the June 2025 Loughton/Thompson motion) is the intake side; STEP is the exit side. Both are required.

Dollars-to-outcomes — what we will publish every quarter (per Measure 67):

• Cost per successful housing placement, by program and funding source — not just total dollars deployed
• STEP throughput — supportive-to-market and supportive-to-non-market transitions completed, and average time-to-transition
• Returns to homelessness within 12 months of placement
• Occupancy and turnover across shelter and supportive-housing stock
• Service-offer acceptance and refusal rates (per Measure 35)

The current council reports dollars spent. We will report what the dollars achieved. Any program that cannot demonstrate its cost per successful outcome is restructured or reviewed under zero-based budgeting (Measure 65).

Childcare is provincially regulated, but the City controls zoning, permits, and city-owned buildings. We will use every municipal lever available:

• Fast-track permits for childcare facilities — any new childcare centre application processed in 60 days or less
• Pre-zone community buildings, churches, and commercial spaces for childcare use — eliminate the rezoning step that adds 6–12 months
• Offer city-owned space at below-market rates to licensed childcare operators — we have community centres and buildings that are underused during daytime hours
• Advocate to the Province for priority housing for Early Childhood Educators — ECE workers earn $20–25/hour but cannot afford to live in the city where they work. If they can't afford to live here, they don't work here, and your children don't have childcare

Victoria's school food programs should serve local, BC-sourced ingredients wherever possible. We will:

• Work with School District 61 to establish a "Farm to School" standard for school meal programs, prioritizing Vancouver Island producers
• Partner with local chefs to redesign cafeteria menus — real food, made fresh, that children actually want to eat
• Publish daily meal photos on school communication apps — parents see exactly what their children are served

This is not the City's direct jurisdiction (education is provincial), but the City can convene, co-fund, and champion. It costs little and delivers enormous community goodwill.

Victoria, like much of BC, faces an acute family-doctor shortage. Healthcare is provincial jurisdiction, but the City controls property tax, zoning, and municipal real estate — three levers that materially affect where clinics can afford to operate. On the precedent of the Andrew 2022 platform plank and the Alto 2022 "permissive tax exemptions for not-for-profit clinics" commitment (still not delivered), the City will:

• Permissive tax exemptions for not-for-profit primary care clinics under section 224 of the Community Charter, on the precedent of similar exemptions for not-for-profit social service providers
• Below-market lease of city-owned or city-affiliated space to recruited family practices, with affordability and bulk-billing conditions
• Fast-track permitting for new clinic builds and conversions, on the same timeline as childcare facilities (Measure 12)
• Co-funded recruitment partnership with Island Health and the Province for family doctors willing to commit to Victoria for a minimum term
• Housing as a recruitment tool — the Measure 6b land bank and the Measure 6 composition targets applied to health-professional attraction. Practitioners cite housing cost as a primary barrier to practising here, and it is the one barrier the City can actually move
• A published number — net new primary-care practitioners practising in Victoria, and where Island Health data permits, the share of Victoria residents attached to a family practice, reported annually on the quarterly dashboard (Measure 67). A measure without a number is a wish
• Regional coordination with Saanich, Oak Bay, and Esquimalt through the CRD. Attachment does not stop at a municipal boundary, and competing municipal incentive packages would waste public money on both sides of the line

What we will not claim. Health care delivery, physician compensation, and practice models are provincial. The City can make Victoria an easier and cheaper place to open and keep a practice. It cannot recruit doctors, and any candidate who says otherwise is promising someone else's job.

Victoria's families and seniors are reasonably well-served by existing City programming. Its young adults — particularly those aging out of school programs, transitioning to independent housing, or new to the city for work or post-secondary education — are not. The result is out-migration of exactly the demographic the city depends on for its future. The City does not deliver youth services directly (BC and federal jurisdiction), but it controls space, programming budgets, and partnerships:

• Youth-priority slots in below-market City-owned and -leased space for organizations serving 18–25 — including the Victoria Native Friendship Centre's youth programming, employment-training partners, and post-secondary partnership programs
• Late-evening recreation and community-centre hours in dedicated facilities, priced for off-peak access (free or near-free)
• Youth fare partnership with BC Transit — work toward continuation and expansion of existing youth and student fare structures
• Annual Youth Voice consultation with measurable response standards (per Measure 79) and youth representation on advisory committees affecting their neighbourhoods
• Co-investment with Camosun, UVic, and Royal Roads on student-housing and student-employment partnerships rooted in Victoria proper

Currently: School trustees are elected on the same October 17 ballot as council, and the two bodies share the same residents, the same streets, the same children, and in several cases the same land. The relationship is nonetheless ad hoc. This framework touches School District 61 in three places — school food (Measure 13), school-zone speed cameras (Measure 40), and Royal Athletic Park programming (Measure 52) — with no standing mechanism behind any of them. Education is provincial jurisdiction and this measure does not pretend otherwise. Crossing guards, playing fields, gyms, playgrounds, safe walking routes, and childcare siting are municipal or joint. ACTW: One agreement, one annual public meeting, one published work plan.

• A standing joint agreement with School District 61, with a published annual work plan and a joint council-and-board meeting held in public once a year
• A joint-use agreement for facilities — school gyms, fields, and playgrounds available to residents and community sport outside school hours; City facilities available to schools during them. This is standard practice in comparable BC municipalities and it is the cheapest recreation capacity a city can add, because the buildings already exist. Same utilization logic as Measure 52
• Safe routes to school as a program, not a complaint queue — crossing guard coverage reviewed annually against enrolment and collision data, school-zone infrastructure delivered per Measure 40, walking-route gaps prioritized in the Measure 20b sidewalk inventory, and a published route map for every school
• Childcare on school sites, pursued jointly under Measure 12, where the Province funds the spaces and the binding constraint is land and building
• Playing field capacity and condition planned jointly rather than in parallel, feeding Measure 52
• A single named City contact for the District, published, so neither body is negotiating through councillors' inboxes (per Measure 79c)

Rapid-response cleaning crews, expanded DVBA Clean Team contracts, real-time dispatch through the ConnectVictoria app. Establish this as a published service standard, tracked and reported quarterly. Continuing the DVBA partnership. The DVBA Clean Team removes over 12,000 graffiti tags per year — it is one of the most effective public-realm partnerships the City has. We will continue and expand the partnership, not replace it. The 48-hour standard is the discipline; the partnership is how we deliver it.

Currently: Victoria's roughly $12M/year in waste collection and street cleaning operates without any competitive benchmarking. The City does not know whether it pays market rates because it has never tested the market. ACTW: Cities that have introduced competitive bidding for waste collection and street cleaning have delivered substantial multi-year savings while improving service quality. Phoenix's managed competition program saved the city in excess of $25 million between 1978 and 1988 alone (Frontier Centre for Public Policy, citing City of Phoenix Public Works records) — the model is mature, well-documented, and has been adopted across North America. The private sector's core business is logistics and cleaning; their survival depends on better equipment, better routing, and better training.

How we will do it:

• Divide Victoria into zones and run a competitive process for each zone
• Test both directions. Every contract cycle, the City's own operation submits a costed bid alongside private bidders, on the same specification, scored the same way. The cheaper competent option wins. This is the Phoenix managed-competition model as it was actually built: City crews bid in every tender, and on the record there they frequently won (GovTech)
• Require all bidders, City and private, to meet the same performance standards: response times, cleanliness scores, citizen satisfaction surveys
• Employee protection is not contingent on who wins: at least 80% of existing City workers in these roles must be offered equivalent positions at equal or higher pay by any winning bidder, and no worker is displaced by a process that concludes the City was already competitive
• Publish every bid comparison, including the ones the City wins
• The City retains oversight and audits performance quarterly. Underperformance triggers re-tender, whoever holds the contract

Year-2 candidate functions — contingent, gated, published in advance. If — and only if — the waste and street-cleaning tender delivers, the same model will be tested on one or two additional functions in Year 2. Candidates: facilities maintenance, grounds and parks maintenance, and fleet servicing. The gates: audited savings at or above the 20% target; contracted service standards met for four consecutive quarters; the 80% re-hire floor demonstrably honoured, verified against payroll; and no net degradation in the public-realm KPIs reported under Measure 67. If any gate is missed, no further function is tendered this term. The condition is real — under the Phoenix managed-competition model, City workers bid in every tender, and on the record there they frequently win. Insourcing is a permitted outcome, not a failure. Cannes brought previously contracted urban-cleanliness work back in-house as part of a multi-year savings program, on the finding that in-house delivery was cheaper at that specification. If Victoria's own crews win the bid, that is the measure working as designed. The point is never to privatize. The point is to stop paying an untested price. This is not ideology — it is the same approach that has worked in cities across Canada and internationally. The CRD's own blue-box recycling is already contracted to GFL Environmental — the principle is proven regionally. On the savings target. The ~$2.4M/year figure is a property of the specification, not of the winner. A City bid that meets the standard at 20% below current cost delivers the same saving as a private bid at the same price, and the measures funded from it (Measure 27 extended bylaw hours, Measure 28b business-security pilot) are unaffected by which party wins.

Rat proliferation is a direct consequence of poor sanitation. The best anti-rat measure is removing food sources at street level.

• Locking lids on commercial waste bins — bins that open only when tipped by collection trucks
• QR codes on public waste bins: residents scan to report a full bin, and crews are dispatched in real time
• Dedicated pest control team using modern methods: dry ice, smart traps, grate covers on storm drains
• Coordination with restaurant and food service operators on waste storage standards

Daily street sweeping and bin emptying in the downtown core, including evenings and weekends. Clean when it matters, not just during office hours.

Expand the "My Great Neighbourhood" grants for community gardens, murals, and block clean-ups. Commission neighbourhood-specific murals and installations — art that tells Victoria's story: lək̓ʷəŋən history, maritime heritage, natural beauty. Neighbourhoods that take ownership stay clean.

Progressively, traffic signals on Victoria's major corridors will be connected to an adaptive control system that adjusts signal timing in real time based on:

• Local conditions at each intersection: if a queue threatens to block an adjacent intersection, the light stays green longer to prevent the bottleneck from spreading
• Corridor-level conditions: detecting congestion patterns, identifying streets to relieve, holding access roads at red longer to prevent saturation of main arteries
• Continuous learning: the more the system observes traffic patterns and driver behavior, the better it optimizes

Pittsburgh's Surtrac adaptive control system, deployed at ~50 intersections, reduced travel times by 25% and emissions by 21% (Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute). A 2024 study published in Nature of 100 cities with adaptive signals found an 11% average reduction in travel time during peak hours, 8% off-peak, with Boston reporting 13.5%.

Realistic phased rollout:

• Year 1: Pilot of 10 intersections on the Douglas Street corridor, fully instrumented (controllers, detection, fibre/wireless backhaul, central software): $1.5–2M
• Year 2–3: Evaluate pilot, then expand to 30–40 additional intersections on major corridors (Hillside, Blanshard): $3–4M
• Year 4: Optionally extend to remaining major corridors based on measured results: $2–3M

Close gaps in the 36 km built so far, extend protected lanes into neighbourhoods, improve bike parking and end-of-trip facilities. Physical separation from traffic — not painted lines. Victoria has the cycling culture; we need the infrastructure to match. Claim the success, then extend it. Victoria has 36 km of All Ages and Abilities routes built since 2017, 95% of residents within 500 metres of a safe cycling route — the highest share in Canada — and the country's highest bike-to-work rate at 5.3% (CBC News). That is a genuine achievement of successive councils and this framework says so plainly. It is also unfinished: the network has known discontinuities, the standard varies segment to segment, and maintenance is inconsistent.

• A published network gap map in Year 1, built from the Measure 53 GIS layers rather than a new survey contract, showing every discontinuity, substandard segment, and unprotected crossing on the AAA network
• A published coverage target — from 95% of residents within 500 metres to 100% within 400 metres by 2030, reported annually in kilometres delivered. Capital is drawn from the existing active-transportation envelope with federal Active Transportation Fund cost-share pursued per Measure 70. No new capital is created by this target. If cost-share does not materialize, the timeline extends and we say so rather than quietly missing it
• Annual reporting on kilometres, coverage percentage, and cycling mode share on the quarterly dashboard (Measure 67)

Conditional tier, gated on verified savings. Two further commitments are real costs and are therefore not booked in the Balance Sheet. They proceed in Year 2 only if the Measure 15, Measure 65, and Measure 68 savings are verified as tracking at the end of Year 1:

• A maintenance standard for the AAA network — sweeping, leaf and debris clearance, winter treatment, surface repair, and lighting (per Measure 37), with a published response time. A protected lane full of gravel is not a protected lane. 150 to 250K per year
• End-of-trip facilities — secure bike parking at civic facilities and in the downtown core, bike parking minimums in new development, and bike valet at major civic events, on Coun. Susan Kim's 2022 plank. 100 to 150K per year

Currently: Victoria is a walkable city by geography and an inconsistent one by infrastructure. Walking is the mode used by every resident, including every transit rider at both ends of every trip, and it is the only mode in this framework with no commitment of its own — it appears inside the cycling, accessibility, waterfront, and pedestrianization measures and nowhere on its own. The City publishes no sidewalk gap inventory, no crossing-spacing standard, and no obstruction-clearance response time. ACTW: Walking gets its own commitment, its own numbers, and its own line on the dashboard.

• A published sidewalk gap inventory in Year 1, built from the Measure 53 GIS layers rather than a new survey contract, mapping every block with a missing, substandard, or one-sided sidewalk, ranked by school route, transit-stop proximity, seniors' housing, and commercial frontage
• A published annual construction figure — kilometres of sidewalk gap closed per year, reported quarterly, funded as a named allocation inside the existing Measure 25 road capital envelope rather than as new money, and prioritized by the inventory ranking rather than by request volume
• A crossing standard — a published maximum spacing between controlled or protected crossings on arterial and collector streets, with the gap list published and closed on a schedule. Where a crossing cannot be signalized, a marked and lit crossing with curb extensions is the minimum
• Signal timing that assumes people walk at real speeds — delivered inside the Measure 19 adaptive signal rollout at no incremental cost: pedestrian clearance intervals timed to 1.0 metres per second rather than the 1.2 default, leading pedestrian intervals at every high-conflict downtown intersection, and no beg buttons on primary downtown crossings
• An obstruction and hazard clearance standard with a published response time for blocked sidewalks, construction encroachments, overgrowth, ice, and leaf accumulation, reported alongside the Measure 25b accessibility set
• Wayfinding on the pedestrian network in the Inner Harbour, downtown, and commercial corridors, integrated with the Measure 24b washroom map and the Measure 56 open data portal
• A published pedestrian collision and serious-injury figure by location, feeding the Measure 38 dangerous-intersection redesign list and the 12 Commitments scorecard

Walking is not a subset of cycling and it is not a subset of accessibility. It is how the city is actually used.

Work with BC Transit to finally deliver contactless payment (credit, debit, mobile). Free Wi-Fi on buses and at hubs. This is table stakes for a modern transit system — Victoria is behind every comparable Canadian city.

A growing proportion of Victoria's daytime workforce lives in Langford, Colwood, and View Royal. Peak commutes routinely exceed 60 minutes one way. The City of Victoria does not control inter-municipal transit (that is BC Transit and provincial jurisdiction), but it sits at the geographic and political centre of the region and benefits massively from a functional regional network. Cross-bloc municipal work. Regional transit on the Westshore corridor is one of the rare points of multi-councillor and cross-municipality alignment — Coun. Jeremy Caradonna's CRD vice-chair role on regional housing connects to it, Mayor Alto's 2026 "reimagine transportation" plank touches it, and the Westshore mayors (Stewart Young in Langford, Doug Kobayashi in Colwood, Karen Harper in View Royal) have all signalled support in principle. Victoria's job is to refuse to be the regional bottleneck.

The City will:

• Formally endorse Light Rail or Bus Rapid Transit on the E&N corridor as the highest-priority regional transit investment, and request acceleration of the Province's South Island Transportation Strategy
• Protect the E&N right-of-way for transit use within Victoria's boundaries through zoning and infrastructure decisions — no encroachment that forecloses future rail or BRT operation
• Co-fund station-area planning with the CRD and Westshore municipalities so that when provincial funding arrives, receiving infrastructure is ready
• Provide dedicated bus lanes on Douglas Street and Trans-Canada approaches to keep RapidBus 95 competitive with driving in the meantime
• Use the working table with the host Nations (Measure 1) to ensure E&N planning respects treaty and reserve geography from day one, not as an afterthought

A functional Westshore connection takes pressure off Victoria's own housing market, supports downtown employers, and reduces the carbon and congestion costs of single-occupancy commuting. The City cannot build it alone, but it can refuse to be the bottleneck.

Make transit time-competitive with driving on Douglas, Hillside, and other major corridors. If the bus is faster than the car, people will take the bus. If it isn't, they won't.

Currently: Transit service in Victoria is planned and operated by BC Transit and funded and governed through the Victoria Regional Transit Commission. Routes, frequency, fares, fleet, and labour are not municipal decisions. This is the single most common place where municipal candidates promise what they cannot deliver, and residents have learned to discount transit promises accordingly. Victoria's actual levers are real but nowhere stated: street space, signal priority, curb allocation, stop and shelter infrastructure on City right-of-way, the sidewalk connections that make a stop usable, land use along corridors, and its representation on the Commission. ACTW: Say exactly what is ours, put money against it, and publish how we vote on the rest.

What the City controls, and will fund:

• A named annual transit priority capital line for bus lanes, queue jumps, transit signal priority, boarding bulbs, and stop accessibility, allocated inside the existing transportation capital envelope and reported by project. Douglas Street and the Trans-Canada approaches first, per Measure 22
• Transit signal priority delivered inside Measure 19 at no incremental cost, on every corridor the adaptive system reaches
• Curb and land-use decisions that do not foreclose transit priority, and station-area planning co-funded per Measure 22

What the City does not control, and will not pretend to:

• A published annual City transit position, adopted by Council in open session before the Commission's budget cycle, stating Victoria's position on service hours, frequency, fare policy, and the local share — carried by Victoria's Commission members and reported against publicly each year (extends Measure 79c). Commission members are appointed under the British Columbia Transit Act rather than elected to the Commission, so this is a published position and a reporting duty, not a direction to vote. We will not describe it as more than it is
• A published record of Commission decisions affecting Victoria on the quarterly dashboard (Measure 67), so residents can see what was decided on their behalf
• A stated funding posture — Victoria will fund its proportional local share of a BC Transit service expansion on the frequent network inside the Measure 66 tax cap, and will say so in advance rather than discovering it at budget. We will not commit to an open-ended share of a service plan we do not write
• Fare policy, honestly — contactless payment (Measure 21) is a BC Transit deliverable the City can press for and cannot deliver. We will report on the ask annually until it lands

Conditional tier, gated on verified savings. A published stop standard for every stop on a frequent route — accessible landing pad, connected sidewalk per Measure 20b, lighting per Measure 37, and shelter and seating where boardings justify it — at 200 to 300K per year, proceeding in Year 2 only if the Measure 15, Measure 65, and Measure 68 savings are verified as tracking at the end of Year 1. It is excluded from the Balance Sheet until then.

First-hour free parking in commercial areas. When you want to pop into a shop, grab a coffee, or pick up takeout, you shouldn't pay $3–5 just to park for 20 minutes. A free first hour supports local business, encourages foot traffic, and increases turnover. Real-time parking availability, without City street cameras. Approximately 30% of downtown traffic is drivers who have reached their destination but are circling for a spot. We will publish real-time space availability using City-owned parkade and surface-lot systems and non-imaging in-ground or optical occupancy sensors at metered on-street stalls, publishing space counts only, through the City's open data portal and integrations with major navigation apps. No City cameras on public streets and no retained identifiable imagery, consistent with Measure 30, Measure 28c, and Measure 53d. Occupancy sensors cost more per stall than cameras would. That is the price of the position, and it is worth paying. Less circling means: less traffic, less pollution, less noise, less wasted fuel, less frustration.

On the Coun. Susan Kim 2022 platform plank: a city that asks residents and visitors to walk, cycle, take transit, and spend time in its public spaces must provide the basic dignity of a place to use a bathroom. Victoria's current network is sparse, poorly mapped, and inconsistently maintained — a daily problem for seniors, families with young children, people with medical conditions, transit users on long trips, and the vulnerable residents the city is trying to bring indoors.

• Network expansion: at least one publicly-accessible 24/7 washroom every 500 metres in the downtown core, Inner Harbour, and major commercial corridors (Government, Douglas, Fort, Cook)
• Modern format mix: attended facilities where viable, automated kiosks (Sanisette-style) where attended is not
• Real-time location and status integrated with the ConnectVictoria app and open data portal (per Measure 56)
• Daytime extended access partnership with businesses and the DVBA in commercial areas
• Universal-design standard: every new facility built accessible to people with mobility devices, families with strollers, and people of all body sizes

This is not a luxury. It is basic public-realm infrastructure. The DVBA Clean Team currently spends hundreds of hours per year on the consequences of insufficient facilities — a direct cost that disappears when the underlying need is met.

Prioritize the infrastructure maintenance backlog. Pothole repair targets: report-to-fix within 7 days. Road condition improvements tracked quarterly. Stop building new things while the old things crumble.

Treat accessibility as a city-wide infrastructure standard, not a one-off project.

• Comprehensive accessibility audit of all City-owned sidewalks, public buildings, parks, washrooms, and transit-adjacent infrastructure over 24 months — using a published methodology (Rick Hansen Foundation Accessibility Certification or equivalent) and a public dashboard
• Remediation backlog funded as a dedicated annual capital line, prioritized by foot-traffic and population-density of residents with disabilities
• Universal-design standard for all new City builds and major renovations — best-practice, not minimum-code
• Curb cut, tactile paving, and audible-signal program at every controlled intersection within 4 years
• Sidewalk maintenance standard: response time for hazards and obstructions that disproportionately affect people with mobility devices
• Disability Advisory Committee with delegated review authority on major projects, integrated into the 5-step process (Measure 78)
• Accessibility lens required on all permitting and grant decisions

Currently: Public safety responses across VicPD, Bylaw, Public Works sanitation, and Outreach operate in silos. There is no unified command, no shared daily metrics, no single field supervisor per shift. The Alto council's CSWB plan added staff but did not change the operational structure. ACTW: One unified operation: VicPD + Bylaw + Public Works sanitation + Outreach workers. Single daily briefing at 8 AM, single set of weekly metrics, single field supervisor per shift. No more silos. During DPOT operating hours the team works from a single co-located operations desk rather than four separate buildings, so dispatch, bylaw, sanitation, and outreach see the same board at the same time. This is a co-location commitment within existing accommodation, not a new facility. This is the same principle that made the Olympic Games safe in every host city: unified command, constant presence, systematic intervention. There is no reason Victoria cannot have that level of coordination every day.

DPOT Weekly Dashboard:

Currently: Measure 26 puts outreach workers inside the Downtown Public Order Team, which is the right structure. What it does not do is name the response type. A substantial share of the calls reaching VicPD and Victoria Fire are mental-health, wellness-check, and non-violent intoxication calls where a police or fire response is the available one rather than the appropriate one, and where the outcome is an emergency-room handoff. VicPD is 50 to 55 officers short of authorized strength. Every call answered by the wrong responder is an officer unavailable for the calls only an officer can take. ACTW: Fund the responder that fits, and be honest about whose responsibility it is.

• A civilian crisis response capacity for mental-health, wellness-check, and non-violent intoxication calls, staffed by trained crisis workers with clinical backup, dispatched from the same co-located board the Measure 26 team works from so there is one dispatch picture and not two
• Dispatch criteria published in advance, developed with VicPD, Victoria Fire, BC Emergency Health Services, and Island Health, stating which call types go to a civilian team, which go to police, and which go jointly. Ambiguity in dispatch criteria is what causes the wrong responder to arrive, and it is the part that is usually left unwritten
• A published diversion figure: calls diverted from police and fire response, outcomes by disposition, and hospital handoffs avoided, on the Measure 31 weekly dashboard and the Measure 67 quarterly dashboard
• Jurisdiction, stated plainly: mental health and addictions services are provincial, delivered through Island Health and BCEHS. The City can fund a partnership contribution, provide co-location, and press for provincial investment. It cannot operate a clinical service, and this measure does not claim it can (per Measure 70b)
• Complementary, not substitutional. This does not reduce the Measure 27 bylaw hours, the Measure 26 team, or the Measure 28 focused-deterrence work. Relentless with the dangerous, appropriate with the unwell. Those are not the same call and they have never been the same call

Currently: Bylaw enforcement operates 7 AM – 4 PM weekdays only — missing the evenings and weekends when disorder actually peaks. The Alto council's CSWB Phase 1 added 12 bylaw staff but did not change the hours; 80% of officer time is consumed by encampment management rather than general enforcement. ACTW: Extend bylaw enforcement to 6 AM – 10 PM, 7 days a week — the hours when downtown is actually busy. Funded primarily by managed-competition savings on waste collection (Measure 15: ~$2.4M/year) — not by raising taxes or raiding reserves. Deployment follows the data, not the clock. Officer hours within the extended window are assigned by incident density using the Measure 28 hotspot data, not spread uniformly across shifts, and the resulting shift pattern is published so residents and businesses know when coverage exists. Cost-neutral: the same hours, allocated better.

The problem: A small number of individuals and locations account for a disproportionate share of downtown disorder calls. Coun. Stephen Hammond's 2023 FOI on VicPD call data surfaced that ~24% of all 2022 police calls came from just 19 identified addresses — encampments and supportive-housing sites. Spreading enforcement evenly across the city misallocates VicPD's already-stretched capacity (50–55 officers short of authorized strength).

What we will do:

• Focused-deterrence model on trafficking, weapons, and violent repeat offenders — coordinated with Crown counsel on bail decisions, sentencing requests, and conditions of release
• Data-driven hotspot identification updated weekly via the DPOT dashboard (Measure 26), with aggregate locations published quarterly (privacy-protected, no individual identification)
• Crown coordination on prolific offenders — pre-charge consultations, joint case management, consistent applications for conditions that reduce reoffending
• Outreach decoupled from enforcement for everyone else — vulnerable people in crisis get the wraparound response (Measure 11, Measure 26 outreach component), not the criminal-justice response
• Refusal-rate tracking (from Measure 35) identifies residents who decline services and may need a different intervention model

The principle: relentless with the dangerous, compassionate with the vulnerable. These are not the same people, and they should not receive the same response.

Pandora-corridor businesses and other disorder-exposed properties carry an enforcement burden the rest of the city does not. Insurance claims, broken glass, private security retainers, sharps removal — these are real costs paid by a small number of property owners. On the Hammond July 2023 motion concept (defeated 6-2 at the time, but the underlying problem is unresolved), the City will pilot a narrow, exposure-based cost-spreading instrument:

• Eligibility: street-front commercial premises within designated high-exposure zones, defined by FOI-validated VicPD call-volume and Bylaw incident data (Hammond's 2023 FOI surfaced that ~24% of all 2022 police calls came from 19 identified addresses)
• Reimbursement: capped per-premises reimbursement for specific eligible costs (private security hours, glazing repair, sharps-bin servicing) above a deductible
• Sunset: 24 months, with renewal contingent on measurable downtown disorder reduction (Measure 32)
• Funded from: managed competition savings (Measure 15), not new tax revenue

Currently: When a downtown assault, break-in, or act of vandalism occurs, VicPD investigators spend the following day walking the block asking business owners whether they have footage. Some do. Much of the useful recording is overwritten before anyone asks. The delay is the loss. ACTW: A voluntary registry of camera locations only, operated by VicPD with City partnership, on the Kelowna model launched April 14, 2026. Businesses register where their cameras point. When an incident occurs nearby, investigators know within minutes which premises to approach.

• Voluntary in both directions. Registration is optional. So is providing footage when asked. A registered business may decline any specific request and may withdraw from the registry at any time
• No live access. The registry records locations, not feeds. There is no monitoring station, no automatic upload, and no City or police access to any camera
• The City does not collect the video. Businesses retain custody and control of their own recordings under the private-sector Personal Information Protection Act. VicPD requests footage under its own Police Act mandate, in the course of an active investigation
• Published safeguards: the registry's privacy impact assessment is published in full before launch, sent to the OIPC for review and comment (there is no fee for an OIPC review), and reviewed annually
• Published performance: registered premises, footage requests made, and median request-to-receipt time, reported on the quarterly dashboard (Measure 67)

Why the City itself will not run cameras. In Investigation Report 26-01 (January 2026), the OIPC found that the City of Richmond was not authorized under FIPPA to collect personal information through its public-safety camera field test, because a municipality does not have a mandate to police individuals. Victoria's policing mandate belongs to VicPD under the Police Act, not to the City. That distinction is the whole legal difference between this measure and Richmond's: the party requesting footage has the mandate, and the City's role is facilitation. Measure 30's commitments stand unchanged — no audio surveillance, no facial recognition, no behavioural AI, and no City cameras. We got the investigative benefit without putting a single City camera on the street, and we did it inside the law the OIPC has just written.

Currently: Measure 28 establishes that a small number of addresses generate a disproportionate share of calls. Coun. Hammond's FOI surfaced that roughly 24% of all 2022 police calls came from 19 identified addresses. Council's January 5, 2026 decision restricting Victoria Fire Department response to serious medical calls cut projected annual call volume from roughly 12,000 to between 6,000 and 6,500. That decision addresses what firefighters respond to. Nothing in this framework, until now, addressed why so many calls are generated in the first place. Community paramedicine, which BC Emergency Health Services built primarily for rural and remote communities, places paramedics in a proactive relationship with high-frequency callers before the call happens. Victoria's downtown core, with its concentration of high-utilizing residents in supportive and transitional housing, is the urban environment where that model would be expected to perform best, and it has no equivalent.

ACTW:

• Fund a City partnership contribution to an urban community-paramedicine program targeted at the high-frequency-caller geography Measure 28 already identifies, and provide municipal space and co-location at no cost to the program
• Advocate formally to the Province for a permanent urban community-paramedicine mandate rather than another time-limited pilot, through UBCM and directly to the Ministry of Health (per Measure 70b)
• Measure it against the call volume it exists to reduce: repeat-caller contacts, emergency-response calls avoided at the identified addresses, and emergency-department transports avoided, published on the Measure 67 dashboard
• Jurisdiction, stated plainly: community paramedicine in British Columbia is delivered by BC Emergency Health Services, a provincial Crown corporation. Victoria can fund a partnership and advocate. It cannot operate a paramedic service, and any candidate who says otherwise is promising someone else's job
• Sequenced with Measure 26b and not duplicative of it: the civilian crisis team answers the call that comes in. Community paramedicine works on the resident who would otherwise place it. One is response, the other is prevention, and a city that funds only the first will pay for it forever

Victoria pays 86.33% of the joint VicPD budget; Esquimalt pays the remainder. Disputes have escalated to provincial appeals. This is dysfunctional governance: it consumes management attention, weakens the Police Board's ability to plan, and undermines public confidence in policing.

Resolution path:

• A renegotiated funding formula based on transparent service-consumption metrics (calls for service, officer-hours, geography), reviewed every 4 years
• If the parties cannot agree, formal mediation through the BC Police Services Branch with a binding outcome
• Until resolution, publish quarterly the actual service consumption split versus the funding split, so residents in both municipalities can see what they are paying for

The annual public dispute serves neither Victoria nor Esquimalt residents. A four-year cycle with binding mediation creates predictability for both.

The Capital Region operates four separate municipal police forces (VicPD, Saanich, Oak Bay, Central Saanich) plus RCMP detachments — for a region of roughly 400,000 people. Other Canadian metro areas of this scale and smaller operate one integrated service. The cost duplication (four command structures, four IT systems, four procurement streams, four collective agreements) is real and structural. Mayor Alto's May 2026 re-election platform raised regional policing consolidation as a priority; this measure absorbs that plank and gives it a concrete delivery mechanism. A Greater Victoria Policing Services Review — co-sponsored by Victoria, Saanich, Esquimalt, Oak Bay, View Royal, and the affected First Nations — will:

• Examine operational consolidation, joint-service expansion, or full amalgamation of municipal policing across the region
• Be time-boxed to 18 months with terms of reference signed by all participating councils up front
• Produce a costed recommendation with a published deliberative trail (modelled on the BC Police Act framework)
• Trigger binding mediation through the BC Police Services Branch if participating jurisdictions cannot agree on a path forward within 6 months of the report
• Preserve municipal accountability through a regional governance structure — not a provincial takeover

This is a co-sponsorship plank, not a unilateral one. Victoria cannot impose this; Victoria can convene it.

Victoria's LED streetlight conversion, budgeted at just $150,000, has been delayed by supplier issues. By contrast, Kelowna converted 17,000+ lights for $4.9M, achieving $1M/year in electricity savings alone and a 400% ROI over 15 years (Kelowna Now). Halifax deployed 44,000 smart LED fixtures with an IoT platform, saving $5M/year and creating infrastructure for smart parking, traffic counters, and environmental sensors (Lighting Design & Specification). Victoria has zero smart/connected streetlight capability.

What we will deploy (and what we will not):

Yes:

• Full LED conversion of Victoria's ~7,000–10,000 streetlights
• IoT-connected platform for outage detection, brightness modulation, and energy management
• Adaptive dimming (lower intensity during low-use hours, restore quickly on demand)
• Optional add-on environmental sensors (air quality, noise levels) at selected locations
• Better lighting design (warm tones, heritage-compatible fixtures, gap-filling on dark stretches)

No:

• No audio surveillance (gunshot detection, scream detection, behaviour detection). The available evidence on these systems is mixed at best (the MacArthur Justice Center's analysis of ShotSpotter found weak crime-reduction impact; Chicago dropped the system in 2024). The privacy and Charter implications are serious. The OIPC of BC has cautioned strongly against municipal audio surveillance
• No facial recognition, license-plate reading, or behavioural-pattern AI on streetlights
• No "directed brightness at suspect" functionality — lights will brighten on schedule and on need, not in response to AI threat assessment
• No City-operated cameras of any kind. Where investigators need footage, the route is the voluntary business registry in Measure 28c, under which the City owns no cameras and holds no recordings

The published evidence base for street-lighting and crime is real, and we cite it at its current, revised value: the updated 21-study meta-analysis (Welsh, Farrington & Douglas, Brå / Criminology & Public Policy, 2022, to Campbell Collaboration guidelines) finds a significant 14% reduction in total crime in treated areas — down from the 21% reported in the earlier 13-study review, with effects at least as strong by day as by night, indicating the mechanism is community investment and guardianship rather than visibility alone. A benefit that does not depend on watching anyone needs no surveillance to capture. Victoria can take it — plus the operational savings of Kelowna and Halifax — without crossing that line.

Encampments cleared, response times, sidewalk obstructions addressed, public drug use enforcement actions, referrals to shelter/treatment, needles collected. Published weekly. Accountability you can see. No more governing in the dark. If we publish the numbers every week, there is nowhere to hide and no excuse for inaction.

Currently: Victoria publishes no accounting of bylaw enforcement activity. Residents are told enforcement is happening, businesses are told it is not, and there is no published number that settles the argument. Measure 33 commits to consistent enforcement; a commitment without a published count is a slogan. ACTW: Publish the enforcement record every quarter, alongside the public-realm KPIs already committed under Measure 67. Where Measure 31 reports operations weekly, this reports enforcement outcomes quarterly — the two are complementary, not duplicative.

• Volume by category: bylaw notices and municipal tickets issued, by bylaw and by geography, for the contraventions this framework names — sidewalk obstruction, illegal dumping, graffiti, noise, unlicensed vending, daytime sheltering
• Outcome, not just activity: notices issued, disputed, upheld at adjudication, cancelled, and paid. Enforcement that collapses on review is not enforcement
• Voluntary compliance first: warnings and voluntary-compliance resolutions reported alongside penalties, so the record shows escalation rather than revenue
• Explicitly not a revenue target. No officer, team, or department will be given a quota, and the report states total penalty revenue against total enforcement cost each quarter so residents can judge the ratio themselves

Victoria has two enforcement routes and they behave differently. Bylaw notices under the Local Government Bylaw Notice Enforcement Act run through independent adjudicators who cannot be municipal employees or elected officials, and are capped at $500 per notice. Municipal tickets under Part 8, Division 3 of the Community Charter reach up to $3,000 but proceed through Provincial Court. We will report both, and we will support the UBCM resolution asking the Province to raise the bylaw-notice cap to $1,000 so that the efficient route carries real deterrence.

Currently: Victoria's Community Safety and Well-Being plan was endorsed in June 2025, nearly three years into the council term, and its Phase 1 of 10.35 million dollars was funded by drawing 2.5M from Centennial Square revitalization, 4M from the Financial Stability Reserve, and 1.5M from Royal Athletic Park upgrades (Victoria Buzz). The document reads in soft verbs: convene, support, advocate, explore. Its major commitments do not state which body holds the legal authority to act, who leads, by when, against what measurable target, or at what cost. More than 10 million dollars has been committed against a narrative, and reporting is annual and descriptive. ACTW: Keep the plan. Retrofit it with the five fields that turn a commitment into a commitment.

• Every major commitment restated with five mandatory fields: legal authority, responsible lead body, implementation timeline, measurable target, projected cost. A commitment that cannot populate all five is not a commitment, and is reported as an aspiration rather than counted as a deliverable
• Where the legal authority turns out to be provincial, the commitment moves to the Measure 70b downloading ledger instead of being carried as a municipal deliverable. This is the single most useful output of the exercise: an honest split between what the City can actually do and what it has been quietly absorbing
• Quarterly public outcome reporting replaces annual narrative updates, on the Measure 67 dashboard: crime trend, street-disorder indicators, response times, shelter placements
• A published implementation matrix showing every commitment, its status, spend to date against budget, and measured result, so residents can track delivery without requesting a report. Hamilton and Toronto both operate public implementation matrices of this kind
• No re-plan. We are not commissioning a new safety strategy. Victoria has one, it cost real money and real time, and the deficiency is governance rather than content. Rewriting it would restart the three years this council spent producing it

The current council published a plan. We will publish whether it worked.

Continuing the momentum. Victoria's Crime Severity Index dropped 11% in 2024 to 152.65 — its lowest since 2020 — and property crimes fell to 2013 levels. Real progress that should not be undone. The additional 15% reduction by 2030 builds on this trajectory.

How we get there:

• Hot-spot policing at data-identified locations (per Measure 28), with sustained presence shifted as patterns shift
• Visible bike and foot patrols downtown, Inner Harbour, Beacon Hill Park — Measure 36 specifies these geographies
• Better lighting (Measure 30, Measure 37, Measure 48) — the updated systematic-review evidence shows a ~14% total-crime reduction from improved lighting alone (Welsh, Farrington & Douglas, 2022; 21% in the earlier 13-study review)
• Capacity-first enforcement (Measure 35) means enforcement is consistent and credible, not erratic
• Quarterly community safety surveys — not just statistics, but resident perception, tracked block-by-block

This target is aggressive but achievable — cities that combine unified command, better lighting, and data-driven policing consistently achieve 15–25% reductions in comparable indices.

Victoria already has rules for overnight sheltering in designated parks (down by 7 AM), sidewalk obstruction, and public space use. The problem is enforcement capacity, not missing rules. We don't need new laws — we need to enforce the ones we have.

On the Hammond September 2023 concept (drafted then shelved when the Province pivoted on decriminalization), with the post-May 2024 legal framework now restored: prohibit illicit drug use and possession within 30 metres of expanded "child-focused spaces" — defined to include schools, playgrounds, sports fields, tennis courts, picnic tables, bus shelters serving schools, public libraries, and community centres. Enforcement model:

• Verbal direction to move along (first contact)
• Seizure of substances (second contact)
• Referral to outreach and treatment intake, paired with the Phase B capacity work in Measure 35
• Arrest only where required for public safety or persistent non-compliance

This is not a return to broad criminalization; it is a precisely-scoped buffer rule around the spaces where children gather, consistent with the post-May 7, 2024 BC public-use legal framework.

Same-day clearing of structures obstructing sidewalks and doorways. Documented process: compliance window (30–60 min) + outreach engagement → if non-compliant, remove, clean, restore. Property stored for retrieval. Humane, consistent, predictable.

At 5 PM daily, publish available shelter spaces, suitability flags (women-only, couples, pets, mobility), and intake paths on a public dashboard. When capacity exists and transport is offered, enforce consistently. When it doesn't, focus on daytime removal and sidewalk access. The principle: increase capacity faster than enforcement ramps up. Don't enforce people into nowhere. Partner with BC Housing and nonprofits for managed alternatives outside the core. Modular supportive housing, shelter expansion, converted buildings.

Focus areas for permanent visible presence:

• Inner Harbour and waterfront — Victoria's front door. Patrols on foot and bicycle, permanent and visible, from 7 AM to midnight
• Centennial Square and Pandora corridor — the areas where disorder concentrates. Dedicated DPOT presence
• Beacon Hill Park — families, tourists, seniors must feel safe. Regular mounted or bike patrols

We will systematically apply the same method to each problem area: massive visible presence → interpellation of offenders → referral of vulnerable individuals to services → sustained presence until order is restored → gradual reduction to maintenance level.

Instead of cutting streetlights at midnight, we will progressively dim intensity while maintaining minimum lighting everywhere, all night. LED technology makes this practical: lower energy consumption, longer lifespan, adjustable intensity on demand. We will restore warm, inviting lighting that enhances Victoria's beauty — not cold industrial fixtures but lighting that complements heritage architecture and makes streets feel safe and welcoming after dark. Commercial properties will be encouraged to keep storefront and signage lighting on at night — lit storefronts contribute to street safety and neighbourhood vitality.

Protected left turns, better crosswalk lighting, traffic calming at Blanshard & Hillside, Douglas Street, and other crash hotspots. Study each intersection using GIS-based traffic analysis (Measure 53) and AI consultation imagery (Measure 53b) for community review, then implement the best solution.

With speed humps, curb bulges, and physical design that makes speeding impractical. Not just signs — physical infrastructure that forces slower driving.

Currently: British Columbia's Intersection Safety Camera program has run since 1999 as a partnership between the Province, ICBC and the RCMP. It operates 140 red-light cameras province-wide, 35 of which also enforce speed. Per UBCM, the program is not operated by or delegated to municipalities, and the officers who issue the tickets are appointed as Special Provincial Constables under section 9 of the Police Act. A BC municipality cannot install a speed camera, cannot issue the ticket, and cannot keep the fine.

Victoria council already established this. In 2023 Coun. Dave Thompson moved, seconded by Coun. Matt Dell and carried unanimously at Committee and Council, that the Province either install speed and red-light cameras at every Victoria location with more than 20 casualty crashes between 2018 and 2022, or allow BC municipalities to install them at their own cost and collect the fines. The second limb of that motion is the proof that the authority does not presently exist.

ACTW: We will not promise a camera we cannot lawfully install. We will do the three things a municipality can actually do, and publish whether they worked.

• Nominate the sites, with evidence. Submit a ranked site list to RoadSafetyBC and ICBC covering every active school zone, every active playground zone, and every controlled intersection with a documented multi-year collision history involving pedestrians or cyclists, drawn from the Measure 38 collision evidence and the Measure 20b published pedestrian collision figures. The Province selects sites from crash data. We will make Victoria the easiest municipality in BC to select
• Prepare the sites at City cost. Signal head placement, detection, sightlines, signage and the civil works a camera site requires are municipal right-of-way work. Where a site is nominated, the City completes the enabling work in advance so that provincial installation is never delayed by municipal readiness
• Advocate for the enabling authority, carrying Victoria's own unanimous 2023 resolution forward through UBCM and directly to the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, with a common regional position coordinated through the CRD (per Measure 70b)
• Use what we do control in the meantime: the Measure 39 physical calming, the Measure 38 intersection redesign, the Measure 20b crossing standard, and targeted VicPD school-zone enforcement at the hours that matter
• Published annually: sites nominated, sites accepted by the Province, enabling work completed, 85th-percentile speeds in school and playground zones before and after, and the status of the enabling-authority ask

On revenue, stated plainly. Automated enforcement revenue in British Columbia is provincial. The Province transfers net traffic-fine revenue to municipalities that pay for policing through a separate program, not camera by camera and not tied to the street the ticket was issued on. This framework books no revenue from this measure, because there is none for a municipality to book.

And on cameras, stated plainly. Measure 30 commits the City to operating no cameras of any kind. That commitment is unqualified and this measure does not carve an exception into it: an intersection safety camera is provincial equipment, operated by provincial constables, on a provincial program. Victoria nominates and prepares. Victoria does not own, operate, or view.

Zero tolerance for speeding where children are present. That is a commitment about what we build and what we press for, not a claim to a power the City does not hold.

Continuing Victoria's cycling success story. The 36 km of AAA (All Ages & Abilities) routes built since 2017, with 95% of residents within 500 metres of a safe route, is the strongest cycling infrastructure record of any Canadian city. We will close the remaining gaps and extend the network into the neighbourhoods that still lack it.

Specifically:

• Protected (physical separation, not painted lines) on all major commuter and commercial corridors
• Neighbourhood connectors to close the gaps between the AAA backbone and residential streets that currently force cyclists into mixed traffic
• Improved bike parking at major destinations (transit hubs, civic facilities, commercial districts), including covered and secure long-term parking
• End-of-trip facilities required in new major commercial developments — shower, change room, secure bike storage
• Peer-city benchmarking as the standard for evaluation (Saanich, Esquimalt, Edmonton, Minneapolis, Chicago, Austin, Boston, Nashville, Ann Arbor) — per Coun. Dave Thompson's ongoing peer-city benchmarking work
• Coordination with Measure 25b accessibility — bike infrastructure must work for adaptive cycles, hand cycles, and the e-bike fleet that older residents and people with disabilities increasingly rely on

Victoria has the cycling culture; we will keep the infrastructure ahead of the demand.

Vision Zero review built into the approval process. No new infrastructure that creates new danger.

Extending Coun. Dave Thompson's Vision Zero work on peer-city benchmarking (Hoboken, Minneapolis, Boston) to the federal regulatory level. Pedestrian fatality rates have risen across North America even as overall vehicle-occupant fatality rates have fallen — a divergence driven substantially by the rising hood height and front-end mass of SUVs and light trucks. This is federal motor vehicle regulatory jurisdiction (Transport Canada, Canada Motor Vehicle Safety Standards). The City does not regulate vehicles, but the City represents the constituency that pays the pedestrian cost. Council will pass a formal advocacy resolution to Transport Canada and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities calling for harmonized pedestrian-injury crash standards on the European model (Euro NCAP pedestrian protection, mandatory automated emergency braking on new light trucks and SUVs).

Complete the update of the Downtown Core Area Plan and Old Town design guidelines. Height and design controls to protect sightlines and human-scale streetscapes. New architecture must complement, not clash. Like the great cities of Europe, Victoria's beauty comes from coherent design — a "design code" that ensures every new building and renovation fits harmoniously with its context. We will establish clear architectural guidelines: materials, proportions, colours, and massing that respect the character of each neighbourhood. Simple, enforceable rules that make beautiful buildings the path of least resistance.

Victoria's identity rests partly on its details — lamp posts, benches, planters, bus shelters. Generic replacements erode character. We will:

• Establish a Victoria Heritage Street Furniture Standard — specifying designs that reflect the city's character for all new installations
• As street furniture is replaced through normal lifecycle, require heritage-consistent designs
• Use public-private advertising partnerships to fund bus shelter and kiosk replacements at low net cost to the City

Centennial Square, Bastion Square, and the waterfront deserve investment. Better lighting, seating, landscaping, and programming (markets, events, performances). These are Victoria's living rooms — they should feel like it.

Many of Victoria's most beloved streetscapes were not designed for high-volume car traffic. Successful European and North American cities have moved decisively to give priority to pedestrians and cyclists on signature commercial blocks — typically with measurable lifts in retail sales, foot traffic, and tourism after an initial adjustment period. Victoria has talked about this for years; we will deliver pilots with the rigour and reversibility that makes the experiment honest.

• Bastion Square full pedestrianization — restore it as the public square it was designed to be, paired with daily programming (markets, performances, public art)
• Government Street (Bastion Square to View Street) seasonal pilot — weekend pedestrianization from May through September, with controlled vehicle access for deliveries and accessible drop-off. Permanence reconsidered each season based on measured foot-traffic, retail-sales, and resident-feedback data
• Fan Tan Alley pedestrian priority — preserve the historic character with no vehicle access except emergency
• Digital Twin simulation — superseded in v1.3 by GIS-based traffic analysis (Measure 53) + AI consultation imagery (Measure 53b) for the visualization step. Model traffic redistribution, delivery flow, accessibility impact, and adjacent-street effects through these tools before any permanent change
• Decision rule: any pilot that does not meet measurable success criteria at the end of two seasons is reversed; any pilot that meets them is made permanent through normal public process

Cities consistently report initial business anxiety followed by net retail uplift after 12–24 months. We will pilot honestly — with success criteria published in advance, not after the fact.

Every measure in this framework fixes something. One should also build something residents can walk through. Peer cities pair operational discipline with a single defining public-space investment: Nice converted a buried riverbed into the 20-hectare Promenade du Paillon (12 hectares opened 2013, extended in 2025); Toronto turned the space under the Gardiner Expressway into The Bentway; New York converted a disused rail line into the High Line. Victoria has the candidate sites — and, uniquely, it already has the democratic machinery (Measures 77–78) to choose one honestly instead of by council fiat.

What we will do:

• Shortlist three candidate concepts in Year 1, developed with the host Nations (per Measure 1) and neighbourhood associations (per Measure 80): (a) a Pandora corridor linear park — the block-by-block conversion of Victoria's most damaged corridor into its most cared-for one, sequenced strictly after the Measure 26 and Measure 35 safety and capacity work, not instead of it; (b) a continuous Inner Harbour promenade — closing the gaps between Songhees Point, the causeway, Fisherman's Wharf, and Dallas Road into one uninterrupted waterfront walk (extends Measure 47); (c) a Centennial Square full renewal — completing the revitalization the current council defunded to backfill the CSWB budget
• Visualize before choosing — AI consultation imagery (Measure 53b) and GIS traffic, utility, and infrastructure analysis (Measure 53) published for all three concepts, per the 5-step process (Measure 78)
• The referendum decides — as a major new park development, this project falls squarely inside the $25M threshold (Measures 74 and 77). The public vote is not an obstacle to the signature project; it is what makes it legitimate. Crystal Pool proved Victorians will approve capital they can see and price
• Senior-government cost-share secured before the vote — a minimum one-third provincial/federal funding commitment (per Measure 70) is a precondition for putting the question on the ballot

A city that only maintains is managing decline. A city that only builds is performing. This framework does both — and lets residents pick the monument.

Incentives for adaptive reuse. Tax breaks or grants for owners who restore heritage facades. Zero tolerance for demolition by neglect in Heritage Conservation Areas. Heritage buildings are not obstacles to growth — they are the reason people want to live and visit here.

The threat of losing Hermann's Jazz Club (continuously operating since 1981) and the broader pressure on independent live-music venues across the downtown core demonstrated that municipal heritage protection cannot rest on building fabric alone — it must also protect use. We will adopt a cultural-venue preservation tool on the precedent of Vancouver's Cultural Spaces program and Toronto's Cultural Hotspot designation:

• Designate a limited list of cultural venues of city-wide significance (live-music venues, independent theatres, artist studios, long-standing community-arts spaces)
• Right-of-first-refusal for the City or a designated cultural-spaces non-profit when a designated venue's lease is terminated or property is sold
• Permissive tax exemption for designated cultural venues that meet programming and accessibility criteria
• Lease-bridge fund to help designated venues navigate landlord transitions and short-term rent shocks

Cultural venues are not interchangeable with retail or office uses. Once they close, they almost never come back.

Continuing Victoria's signature public-realm asset. Victoria's waterfront is its greatest single public amenity — the Inner Harbour walkway, the David Foster Way, the Songhees and Vic West shoreline routes, and the Ogden Point breakwater are world-class assets that the City has rightly invested in. We will continue connecting and expanding the network so that residents and visitors can walk the entire coastline.

What we will do:

• Close the gaps in the existing walkway network — particularly between Songhees and the Selkirk Trestle, and along the Gorge Waterway
• Maintain to a higher standard — surface, accessibility, lighting, seating, signage, and tactile wayfinding (per Measure 25b)
• Coordinate with the host Nations (Songhees and Esquimalt) on shoreline access that affects their territorial waters and reserve geographies (per Measure 1)
• Year-round programming — interpretive signage, public art installations, exercise stations, seasonal events
• Tourism and commercial integration — the waterfront is also a corridor of restaurants, hotels, and small businesses; the walkway is their front door

Every metre of walkway added is an investment in tourism, quality of life, and adjacent property values.

Victoria's ornamental lighting on heritage buildings and the harbour should not switch off at 10 PM. Maintain heritage lighting until midnight. A city known for beauty should be beautiful after dark.

Continuing Victoria's identity as a gardens city. Victoria's parks are world-famous for a reason: Beacon Hill Park, the Inner Harbour gardens, Ross Bay, and Government House grounds are part of the city's identity and a primary tourism draw. The Parks department's mission must include the meticulous, skilled gardening that makes these spaces extraordinary — not "naturalization" by default.

What we will do:

• Restore the Parks operating budget for skilled horticulture and grounds maintenance to a level that matches the quality of the assets
• Beacon Hill Park as flagship — a comprehensive 5-year restoration plan covering pathways, plantings, water features, the Children's Farm, signage, and seating
• Inner Harbour gardens as Victoria's front door — best-practice horticulture, year-round colour, and night lighting (per Measure 48)
• Neighbourhood parks — every neighbourhood gets at least one signature horticultural feature, programmed and maintained
• Free seedling program for homeowners — 75% of Victoria's urban forest is on private land; we partner with residents on canopy growth (per Measure 61)
• Royal Athletic Park and sport-oriented parks (per Measure 52) are treated as part of the same network, not as a separate category

Intentional beauty, not afterthought.

The Royal BC Museum is provincial, but Victoria's civic cultural spaces (Crystal Garden, McPherson Theatre programming, public libraries) should offer extended evening and weekend hours. Culture should be accessible to people who work during the day. Two evenings per week open until 9 PM. Sunday hours for libraries.

Currently: Victoria's cultural sector is one of the city's genuine competitive assets and the first line every fiscal-restraint council reaches for. This framework already contains real cultural commitments — venue preservation (Measure 46b), extended hours for civic cultural spaces (Measure 50), year-round outdoor activation (Measure 51), heritage and ornamental lighting (Measure 48), and a flagship event (Measure 73b). What it does not contain is the one thing arts organizations actually ask for at every forum: an assurance that the funding will not be cut to pay for the tax glide path. ACTW: The floor is published, and it is protected by the same rule as every other fiscal commitment in this framework.

• A published arts and culture funding floor, expressed both as a per-capita figure and as a share of operating expenditure, set at the current level in the first financial plan of the term. It does not go down
• Protected by supermajority — reducing the floor requires a supermajority of Council (6 of 9) with a published written rationale, the same standard as the Measure 66 tax cap, the Measure 66b refund override, the Measure 66c debt rule, and the Measure 66d utility discipline
• Multi-year operating agreements for anchor organizations, replacing annual grant uncertainty. Three-year terms with published performance expectations, so organizations can plan, hire, and programme
• Space is the real subsidy — the Measure 69 real-estate inventory will identify City-owned and City-leased space suitable for rehearsal, production, studio, and performance use, offered at below-market rates on multi-year terms with priority to organizations displaced by redevelopment. This is the lowest-cost, highest-value cultural lever a municipality has
• Event permitting is cultural policy — festival, busking, street performance, and temporary venue permits brought under the Measure 72b simplification charter with published turnaround targets. Cost and delay in permitting is a tax on culture
• The Measure 65 grant review applies to arts organizations on the same three-part test as every other recipient, and on no other test. Artistic content, programming choices, and public positions are never a funding criterion, per the Charter protection stated in Measure 65

Fiscal discipline that is paid for by the cultural sector is not discipline. It is a transfer.

Victoria's mild climate is a competitive advantage that the City under-uses. We will:

• Heated outdoor patios for restaurants (electric / heat-pump, non-polluting) — streamlined permitting and a published design standard
• Expanded night markets in public squares — weekly during the summer, monthly during the shoulder seasons, with simplified vendor licensing
• Pop-up events and seasonal programming in Centennial Square, Bastion Square, the Inner Harbour walkway, and Beacon Hill Park
• Busking and street performance — designated zones, simple licensing, no harassment of legitimate performers (current City rules are inconsistently applied)
• Active-use design for new public spaces — benches that work for everyone, lighting that invites evening use, accessible WCs (per Measure 24b), and Wi-Fi (per Measure 56)
• Year-round Christmas / festival market at the Inner Harbour and Government Street — a permanent fixture that draws tourism and supports adjacent commerce

The cities that win in the post-pandemic era are the ones that make their public spaces work. Victoria has the bones; we will activate them.

Victoria's recreational facilities are often underused during off-peak hours. We will partner with employers to offer corporate access during these windows, generating revenue and promoting employee health. Facilities should be open from 6 AM to 10 PM, with expanded weekend programming. Continuing the Royal Athletic Park commitment. Mayor Alto's 2022 platform included Royal Athletic Park enhancements as a stated priority. The 2025 CSWB Phase 1 funding pulled $1.5M from Royal Athletic Park upgrades to fund downtown-safety operations — a tradeoff that should not have been necessary, and one residents did not vote for. We will:

• Restore the Royal Athletic Park enhancement budget reallocated in 2025, over the next two budget cycles
• Complete the deferred facility upgrades — seating, surface, lighting, accessibility
• Expand programming with the Victoria HarbourCats, School District 61 partners, and community sport organizations
• Position Royal Athletic Park as a regional sport-events draw, not just a local facility — events generate visitor spending that flows directly to surrounding businesses

Currently: Victoria's underground utility records — water, stormwater, sanitary sewer, telecom conduit — are partially digitized, inconsistently updated across departments, and not always coordinated with permit-issuing or capital-planning staff. The result: re-trenched streets, surprise utility hits during construction, repeated excavation of the same blocks within years, and significant un-budgeted repair costs. The City does not currently publish utility-coordination performance metrics. ACTW: A focused modernization of the City's geospatial data and utility records — the practical, evidence-grounded foundation any later visualization or digital-twin work would require, but a worthwhile investment on its own terms.

What we will do:

• Comprehensive utility records audit and migration to a unified GIS platform — water, stormwater, sanitary sewer, telecom conduit
• Inter-departmental coordination protocol — every capital project, every utility work order, every permit applies against the same map. No more parallel records
• Permit-system integration so applicants and staff see the full subsurface picture at point of decision
• Construction coordination dashboard — quarterly publication of all planned excavation work to reduce re-trenching
• Open standards and Canadian data sovereignty — no vendor lock-in, data stored on Canadian servers, exportable in open formats
• Co-funding pursued through federal Infrastructure Canada modernization programs and provincial Local Government Modernization Grants

Why this and not a full Digital Twin (v1.3 honest reframe):

The Helsinki, Singapore, and Boston digital-twin deployments cited in earlier versions of this framework served cities 7–25× Victoria's population, with project-density and grant-funding profiles Victoria does not share. No Canadian municipality of Victoria's scale (~92K residents) has successfully deployed and sustained a full city-scale digital twin. The honest assessment: the underground-utility-coordination case is real and Victoria-sized; the full-city digital-simulation case is not, at this stage. We modernize the data first. The simulation tools become viable later if and only if the data and the use case justify them — see the future-state note at the end of this section.

Continuing Coun. Matt Dell's precedent from the Beacon Hill All-Weather Field reimagining (CHEK News, 2025). The City uses mature, low-cost AI image-generation tools to produce realistic visualizations of proposed projects for public consultation — at a fraction of the cost of conventional architectural renderings, small enough to deploy on every meaningful public-consultation project.

Implementation:

• Project teams generate 3–5 visualization options per major project for public comment
• Visualizations clearly labelled as AI-generated illustrations, not engineering drawings
• Always accompanied by underlying plans, dimensions, and impact data — illustrations supplement, not replace, the technical record
• Cost is a fraction of conventional architectural renderings (typically $1–3K per visualization vs. $15–40K for full renderings)
• Output published in the public-consultation portal (Measure 79) for every project triggering the 5-step process (Measure 78)

v1.3 reframe: This is now a permanent measure on its own merits, not a "bridge" to a Digital Twin. It captures the bulk of citizen-facing visual-impact value at a small fraction of the cost of a full simulation tool.

A one-time aerial and street-level LIDAR survey of the downtown core (Inner Harbour to Quadra, View to Yates) — approximately 2 km². LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) produces a high-resolution 3D point cloud of buildings, streetscapes, vegetation, and infrastructure.

Why this matters as a standalone investment:

• Heritage protection: every heritage building digitally archived at high resolution — invaluable for restoration, fire-loss insurance documentation, and conservation planning
• Emergency management: post-disaster recovery planning has a baseline 3D record of pre-disaster downtown
• Planning and development: developers, architects, and the City share a single accurate baseline for proposed builds and impact analysis
• Public consultation: LIDAR-derived 3D models feed directly into M53b AI consultation imagery
• Future-state option: if a full digital-twin investment ever makes sense, LIDAR is the foundational data layer it would require — but the scan is worth doing on its own merits regardless

Vendor neutrality: open data formats (LAS / LAZ), published to the open data portal (Measure 56), available to local technology companies, academic researchers, and the public.

Currently: This framework commits the City to AI-assisted permit pre-screening (Measure 7), AI-generated public consultation imagery (Measure 53b), AI-assisted translation (Measure 80b), and sensor-based parking availability (Measure 24). It commits the City not to deploy behavioural AI, facial recognition, or audio surveillance on public infrastructure (Measure 30, Measure 28c). What it has not contained until now is a single rule about how the City governs the AI it does use: who may deploy it, what may be automated, what is disclosed, what is retained, and what is subject to freedom-of-information request. Victoria has no published AI policy. Neither does any comparable BC municipality, which makes this available and unclaimed. ACTW: If we are going to use these tools, we publish the rules first. This is the natural companion to the no-surveillance commitment, and it costs almost nothing.

• A public AI register — every AI or automated decision-support system the City uses: purpose, vendor, data inputs, whether it touches personal information, and the responsible department. Published and kept current on the open data portal (Measure 56)
• Human-in-the-loop is mandatory, and automated adverse decisions are prohibited. No permit, licence, grant, enforcement action, hiring decision, housing allocation, or benefit determination affecting an identified person is finally decided by an automated system. AI may sort, flag, pre-screen, draft, and translate. A named human decides, and is accountable. Measure 7's permit pre-screening and Measure 10's allocation rules operate under this constraint explicitly
• Disclosure by default. Any public-facing image, text, or translation that is AI-generated is labelled as such. Measure 53b's consultation imagery is labelled in every instance, on the image itself, together with a plain statement that it is an illustrative visualization and not an approved design. A visualization presented without that label is a misrepresentation, and this framework will not make one
• Records and access to information. AI prompts, outputs, and system logs used in any decision are municipal records under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, retained under the City's records schedule, and disclosable on request. No decision-relevant AI use in unretained channels
• Privacy assessment before deployment — a Privacy Impact Assessment for any system touching personal information, per the BC Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner's January 2026 Public Sector Surveillance Guidelines, published in summary form
• Accuracy and bias testing before deployment and annually after, with results published. Where a system's error rate is not measurable, it is not deployed on a decision path
• Data sovereignty and no vendor training — City data on Canadian servers under Canadian privacy law (per Measure 55), and no contract permits a vendor to train models on Victoria resident data
• Procurement standard — these conditions are contract terms, not aspirations. A vendor that cannot meet them does not win the work

The City is going to use these tools either way. The only question is whether residents can see how.

Covered in detail under Mobility. Adaptive signals and the modernized GIS (Measure 53) are complementary: shared geospatial data supports traffic-pattern analysis, signal-timing decisions, and integrated construction coordination.

Victoria has one of the strongest concentrations of technology talent per capita in Canada — the cluster around the Atrium, Fort Tectoria, Vancouver Island Technology Park, and UVic spin-offs is a real economic asset that the City has not systematically leveraged.

What we will do:

• Local-preference scoring in procurement for tools and services available locally — permit systems, traffic management, data platforms, civic-engagement software, accessibility tech
• Plain-language RFP requirements that do not favour large incumbent vendors over local startups
• Innovation pilot framework — small contracts ($25K–$100K) for local companies to pilot solutions to specific civic problems, with a clear path to scale-up
• Open data and APIs (per Measure 56) — Victoria's data should be available to local developers and entrepreneurs to build products
• Data sovereignty — City data stored on Canadian servers, subject to Canadian privacy law (BC FOIPPA and federal PIPEDA). No US-cloud lock-in for sensitive municipal data

The best way to support a local industry is not subsidies — it is contracts. Real work, real revenue, real accountability.

Every serious mid-size city picks a lane. Victoria's is the ocean, and it is already here — Ocean Networks Canada at UVic operates world-leading cabled ocean observatories; the Institute of Ocean Sciences in North Saanich is one of Canada's largest marine-science centres; CFB Esquimalt anchors the Pacific fleet and its maintenance economy; and a working harbour still builds and repairs ships minutes from downtown. Halifax showed what a deliberate municipal posture does for this sector: the COVE marine-technology campus (opened 2018 on a former Coast Guard base) turned Dartmouth's waterfront into an ocean-industry cluster. Victoria has more raw assets and no comparable posture.

What we will do:

• Name it — adopt the ocean economy as Victoria's declared economic vertical in the City's economic-development materials, delivered through the Team Victoria office (Measure 73b), not a new agency
• Procure into it — extend Measure 55's local-preference scoring and innovation pilot framework ($25K–$100K contracts) explicitly to marine-technology applications the City itself needs: harbour water-quality sensing (per Measure 56), shoreline monitoring for sea-level adaptation (per Measure 59), and underwater infrastructure inspection
• Convene it — one annual ocean-economy summit co-hosted with UVic, the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority, and the host Nations (per Measure 1), whose marine economic interests in these waters long predate the city
• Market it once, credibly — a "capital of the ocean economy" claim made with the evidence behind it, not sprayed across six sectors

The best economic-development strategy is the one your city would pursue even if no one was watching — because the assets are real.

Expand Victoria's open data portal with real-time transit data, traffic counts, air quality readings, and parking availability. Support community-driven solutions — transit apps, bike route planners, air quality alerts — by making city data freely available in machine-readable formats. Deploy air quality sensors in key locations (downtown, near schools, waterfront) to provide real-time readings during wildfire smoke season. This costs very little and provides enormous value to residents making daily health decisions. Free public Wi-Fi in Centennial Square, the Inner Harbour, and all City facilities.

Work with BC Hydro and private operators to expand public EV charging across Victoria — at City parkades, community centres, and new developments. Require EV-ready wiring in all new residential and commercial construction (already supported by BC Building Code). This is not ideology — it is infrastructure for the vehicles that are already being sold.

Continuing Victoria's Climate Leadership Plan. The 2019 climate emergency declaration and the subsequent Climate Leadership Plan set the right targets; the gap is delivery and reporting. We will continue the framework and close the delivery gap.

• 50% community GHG reduction by 2030 (vs. 2007 levels) — requiring 19 more percentage points from the 31% already achieved
• 100% renewable energy by 2050
• Carbon-neutral by mid-century

Why this is a cost measure, not a values measure. Every tonne not emitted is matched by infrastructure Victoria does not have to build twice: stormwater sized for storms that arrive anyway, road surfaces that fail early under heat, emergency response mobilized for events that are now annual. The CRD's Regional Water Supply Master Plan alone contemplates $2 billion in capital over 30 years. Adaptation spending avoided is the largest single line in Victoria's long-run capital picture — and it is invisible in any budget that reports only what was spent. The City alone cannot hit these targets — provincial and federal action is essential. But Victoria can move faster than the minimum, and we will track and publish progress annually, including actual uptake numbers for the Climate Friendly Homes program, which the current council has not published.

Building heat is the named gap in Victoria's climate math. Natural-gas heating is the largest remaining emissions share (per the section diagnostic above), and no realistic retrofit program (Measure 60) closes it building by building alone. The proven municipal instrument is district energy: shared low-carbon heat delivered as a utility, paid for by the ratepayers who receive it, at rates benchmarked against gas. British Columbia already runs this playbook — Vancouver's Southeast False Creek Neighbourhood Energy Utility recovers heat from sewage; the City of North Vancouver's Lonsdale Energy Corp has operated a municipal district-energy utility since 2004; Richmond's Alexandra District Energy Utility runs on geo-exchange; and Victoria's own Dockside Green has operated a neighbourhood energy system for years. This is not experimental anywhere except at Victoria City Hall.

What we will do:

• Feasibility first, honestly — commission a district-energy feasibility study for the downtown core and major redevelopment areas, screening sewer heat recovery, ocean and ground-source exchange, and waste-heat sources; cost-shared through the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' Green Municipal Fund, which exists precisely for studies like this
• Utility model or nothing — if the business case passes, the system is established as a ring-fenced, rate-payer-funded municipal utility (joining the Measure 66b exclusion list), financed on its own revenue, with published rates. If the business case fails, we publish the study and stop — no vanity infrastructure
• Connect through growth — new major developments in the service area connect at time of construction, as Lonsdale and Southeast False Creek require, so the network grows with the city instead of by retrofit
• Count it — projected and actual emissions displaced reported annually against the Measure 58 targets on the quarterly dashboard (Measure 67)

This is the difference between a climate target and a climate instrument.

Replace the oldest systems first. Incorporate green infrastructure: permeable surfaces, rain gardens, urban wetlands. Prepare coastal areas for sea-level rise. Victoria's stormwater system includes pipes over 100 years old — these are ticking time bombs during heavy rain events.

Continuing and expanding a program that works. The Climate Friendly Homes retrofit program is one of the current administration's strongest climate plays — the principal weakness is that the City has not published uptake numbers, so neither the program nor its critics can judge how well it is working. We will continue and expand it, with full transparency.

• More rebates for insulation, heat pumps, and solar panels
• Help homeowners cut emissions and energy bills simultaneously
• Create green economy jobs in retrofitting and clean tech
• Publish annual uptake numbers (homes served, retrofit type, dollars deployed, estimated GHG reduction) on the quarterly performance dashboard (Measure 67)

A homeowner who cuts $200/month off an energy bill does not need to be persuaded of anything — they need a program that works and an application that takes twenty minutes. The public return is the same either way: lower household operating costs, reduced peak load on infrastructure the City and BC Hydro would otherwise have to expand, and housing stock that survives the next heat event without an emergency response (per Measure 64).

Continuing and expanding Mayor Alto's 2022 parks-acquisition and urban-forest commitments. Climate-resilient species on streets, in parks, and through community programs. Grow the urban canopy beyond its current level of roughly 30%. And put a number on it: a published canopy target of 35% by 2035, measured on a consistent, repeatable methodology and reported annually. Victoria is a Tree City of the World with no adopted canopy target, which means the canopy can decline for a decade while the tree-planting count rises. A planting count measures effort; a canopy percentage measures result. Where the two diverge, the canopy number governs, and the planting programme is what changes. Shade, carbon sequestration, stormwater management, and beauty — all from one investment. Continue and expand the partnership with community groups and schools for neighbourhood planting events. Offer free seedlings to homeowners — 75% of Victoria's urban forest is on private land, so the canopy goal cannot be met by City-owned streets alone. Coordinate with the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations on tree planting in culturally-significant areas (per Measure 1).

Accelerating the Official Community Plan's 2041 target by 11 years. The fiscal case: road and parking capacity is the most expensive infrastructure a city builds per person moved — and Victoria has almost no room to widen anything. Every trip shifted to transit, walking, or cycling is capacity the City does not have to fund, build, or maintain. A mode-share target is a capital-avoidance target. Congestion relief, cleaner air, and better public health follow, but the budget reason comes first: this is the cheapest way to move a growing population through a street network that is not getting any larger. See the Mobility measures (M19–M25b) for the delivery mechanisms.

Maintain 2.7+ hectares of parkland per 1,000 residents as population grows. Protect Garry Oak ecosystems and rare habitats. Restore shoreline habitats. Maintain 36% of parkland in natural state for biodiversity. Green space preservation doubles as climate action.

Heatwave cooling centres in every neighbourhood, air quality advisory protocols for wildfire smoke, flood response plans for coastal and low-lying areas. Protect vulnerable residents first — seniors, people with respiratory conditions, people without air conditioning. Maximum-temperature rental bylaw — a mass-casualty prevention measure. In the 2021 heat dome, 619 British Columbians died of heat. The BC Coroners Service Death Review Panel report — Extreme Heat and Human Mortality: A Review of Heat-Related Deaths in B.C. in Summer 2021 (released June 7, 2022) — found they did not die outdoors: 98% died indoors, 67% were aged 70 or older, and 56% lived alone. Sustained indoor heat above 26°C is the danger zone the review identified — the threshold the New Westminster bylaw adopts. These people died in their own homes, mostly old, mostly alone. This is not a climate measure. It is the same category of rule as a smoke-detector requirement or a handrail on a stairwell: a minimum habitability standard against a known, documented, repeatable cause of death. Following the New Westminster precedent (adopted April 2026) and the Dell/Caradonna/Thompson motion before Victoria council (May 2026), we will require landlords to maintain at least one room of every rental unit at no more than 26°C during declared heat-warning periods. Implementation:

• Tied to the BC Building Code and the Standards of Maintenance Bylaw, not as a new standalone instrument
• Reasonable transition window (24–36 months) for existing stock
• Compliance via portable cooling, heat pumps, or built-in mechanical cooling — landlord's choice
• Council will also formally advocate to the Province for enabling legislation that overrides strata bylaws that currently prohibit window or portable AC units, where unit-specific health needs require them

Currently: Victoria's emergency planning is oriented to weather. Its largest exposure is geophysical. The city sits in the highest seismic-hazard zone in Canada, and the BC Building Code 2024 seismic provisions, in force March 10, 2025, identified the Capital Regional District explicitly as a high-risk area requiring stronger design. The Code governs new construction, alterations, and repairs. It imposes no obligation on any owner to upgrade an existing building, and Victoria has never published an inventory of its own vulnerable stock. ACTW: Treat earthquake and coastal inundation as the resilience file they are, and be honest about which parts the City controls.

• Inventory first. A published seismic-vulnerability inventory of City-owned buildings, and of pre-1975 unreinforced-masonry and soft-storey private stock in the downtown core, built from the Measure 53c LIDAR baseline and Measure 53 GIS layers rather than a new survey contract
• Fix our own buildings. A costed, sequenced retrofit program for City-owned facilities, prioritized by occupancy and post-disaster function, reported against schedule on the quarterly dashboard (Measure 67)
• Coastal adaptation delivered through Measure 59, not alongside it. Measure 59 already commits to preparing coastal areas for sea-level rise; this measure supplies the missing inputs — king-tide and sea-level-rise exposure mapping for low-lying shoreline, and adaptation standards applied when shoreline infrastructure reaches lifecycle replacement. Measure 64's flood response planning is unchanged; this is adaptation
• Voluntary on private stock, and we say so. Owner information, a published retrofit-cost benchmark, and permit-process priority for voluntary seismic upgrades. Where genuine hazard exists, the existing remedial-action authority under section 72 of the Community Charter already applies
• Advocate for the authority we lack. Under the Building Act, BC municipalities are restricted from setting technical building requirements that diverge from the BC Building Code. Vancouver could mandate unreinforced-masonry retrofits because it has its own building bylaw under the Vancouver Charter. Victoria cannot. We will advocate through UBCM for enabling authority or a provincial retrofit program

We will not promise a mandatory private retrofit bylaw. It is outside municipal authority in British Columbia. Any candidate who promises one has not read the Building Act.

Every program must justify its existence from scratch. Not "last year's budget plus 3%" — every dollar must be re-earned. We will examine every line item the way an entrepreneur examines expenses: Does this program deliver measurable results? What is the cost per beneficiary? Is there a more efficient way to achieve the same outcome? If a program cannot demonstrate its value, it gets cut or restructured.

Specific targets:

• Line-by-line review of every grant and subsidy over $50,000/year, against a published three-part test applied identically to every recipient:
• Jurisdiction — is this the City's job? Does the activity fall within municipal responsibility, or is it a provincial or federal mandate the City has absorbed by default? Where it is the latter, the grant is a candidate for transfer to the responsible government under Measure 70b, not simply for cutting
• Outcomes — is it delivering? Documented utilization, cost per beneficiary, and measured results against the grant's own stated objectives. Not activity, not attendance, not reports produced
• Duplication — is someone already funding this? Where a provincially or federally funded program covers the same service for the same population, the municipal grant is redundant and the City's role is referral, not parallel funding
• This is not a viewpoint test, and it will not become one. No grant will be reduced, denied, or eliminated because of a recipient's advocacy positions, public criticism of the City, litigation against any government, endorsement activity, or political speech — all protected under section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and outside the scope of this review. Any recipient may test a decision against the published criteria through a documented appeal
• Published: every reviewed grant, its assessment against each of the three tests, the decision, and the reasons — recipients see the standard in advance and see how they were assessed
• Identify and restructure symbolic programs that produce reports, strategies, and consultations but no measurable change in residents' lives

Peer city precedent: Calgary's SAVE program (rotating Zero-Based Reviews, 2012–2019) targeted $74 million in operational savings by 2022 (City of Calgary newsroom, February 2020). At Calgary Council on March 31, 2026, KPMG's Chris Sainsbury reported that SAVE had found $60 million in operational cash to that date (LiveWire Calgary, March 31, 2026). Greater Sudbury's Auditor General recommended incorporating ZBB techniques into value-for-money audits as a pragmatic compromise (Greater Sudbury AG Report, 2023). No comparable Canadian city uses formal ZBB at this scale — Victoria would be a pioneer in BC. Applied to Victoria's $384M operating budget, even modest 2–3% savings per reviewed area could yield $2–3M annually. We will review 3–4 service areas per budget cycle on a rotating basis.

Tie property tax increases to a published formula: CPI + population growth + a documented efficiency-gain adjustment, with a target of inflation + growth (≈3.5%) once the savings measures in this framework are fully realized.

What the cap applies to, decided and stated. The cap is on the residential property tax rate, not on total tax revenue. Those are different numbers and in 2026 they were far apart. Per the City's own budget page, council raised the revenue it needed from property taxes by 7.28% overall, then distributed that increase at 9.34% to residential properties and 4.78% to business properties. A cap written on the total would have let a council deliver a 9% bill to homeowners and describe it as 6.5%. We are not going to cap the number residents see and stay silent on the number they pay.

On the tax-class ratio. We will not move the business-to-residential ratio in either direction in order to hit a cap. Any change to that ratio is a separate decision, voted on its own, with a published reason and a stated dollar effect on both a median home and a median business. Relief for one class has to be paid for with savings, not with a transfer from the other. The current council is moving that ratio from 3.67:1 toward 3:1 by 2030, which is a real policy choice with real winners and losers; it should be argued on its merits and not delivered as a side effect of a headline number. On assessments, plainly. The cap governs the rate the City sets. An individual bill also moves with BC Assessment's valuation of that specific property, which the City does not control. A homeowner whose assessment rises faster than the city average will pay more than the cap; one whose assessment rises slower will pay less. We state this at the outset rather than being accused of it in year one. What gets published, every year. Both numbers side by side: the total levy increase and the residential rate increase, with the dollar change on a median assessed home. Measure 66d then adds water, sewer, solid waste, and stormwater on top, so the full picture sits in one place instead of three.

Honest staging:

• Year 1: Residential rate increase capped at 6.5%. Measured against the 9.34% residential increase council actually levied in 2026, not against the 7.28% aggregate and not against the 13.3% opening draft. This is the comparison that matters, and it is the harder one to hit: the aggregate benchmark would have made 6.5% a reduction of three quarters of a point, while the residential benchmark makes it a reduction of nearly three points. It is also a lower number delivered without the cut $2M debt-reduction payment, the $2.8M parking-reserve deferral, or the capital slippage the council used to reach 7.28%
• Year 2: Residential rate increase capped at 5%
• Year 3+: Residential rate increase capped at CPI + population growth (≈3.5%) once managed competition, ZBB, and administrative attrition savings are realized
• Any increase above the published cap requires a supermajority of Council, meaning 6 of the 9 members (the mayor plus 8 councillors), together with a public explanation on the record. The same 6-of-9 standard governs the Measure 66b refund override, the Measure 66c debt rule, the Measure 66d utility discipline, and the Measure 50b arts funding floor, so that every fiscal rule in this framework is unlocked the same way and none of them can be moved quietly

The starting point, read from the plan itself rather than from the argument about it. At the May 7, 2026 final budget vote Coun. Marg Gardiner stated that the adopted five-year plan's 2027 estimate is roughly double the 2026 increase and called deferring expenditures and debt payments into future years an election ploy. Coun. Matt Dell disputed that it will land there: "to suggest it's going to be 14 per cent next year, we all know better than that," arguing the next council will do the same trimming work from the same "cost of everything" starting point (CHEK News, March 2026). So we read the adopted 2026–2030 Financial Plan instead of repeating either characterization. It contains no 2027 tax-increase percentage. The plan publishes five-year departmental forecasts, not an out-year tax rate, which means neither the "roughly double" nor the "we all know better than that" was quoting a published figure. Here is what the plan does show for 2027:

• The $2M annual debt-reduction contribution, cut to zero in 2026, resumes in 2027 and in every year through 2030
• Debt servicing rises from $9.9M to $13.0M, up 32% in a single year (repayments $5.26M to $6.96M, interest $4.60M to $6.06M), and continues to roughly $28.2M by 2030 as the Crystal Pool borrowing draws down
• The transfer to capital rises $5.0M, from $20.8M to $25.8M, and by a further $5M in each year after that
• Parking Services expenditure jumps 33%, from $9.3M to $12.3M, cutting the net parking contribution to the budget by about $3.7M. The 2026 figure was held down; 2027 is where it comes back
• The Corporate envelope grows 22.8% overall, from $57.5M to $70.6M, almost entirely on those items

Those four lines alone represent roughly $13.8M of new pressure against a 2026 property tax base of $209.1M, which is about 6.5 percentage points before a single wage settlement, contract escalation, or police requisition increase is counted. We are not going to present that as a forecast, because it is not one, and the Housing Accelerator line that also rises in 2027 is grant-funded and offset, so we have excluded it. We state the arithmetic because it is the real starting condition for Year 1 of the next council, and because it shows what the 7.28% of 2026 was purchased with. Year 1 is not a small ask, and we would rather publish the arithmetic than borrow a number from either side of a council argument.

One conditional tightening. Of Victoria's 7.28 points of 2026 aggregate increase, 5.06 points were policing — a cost governed by the Victoria and Esquimalt Police Board under the Police Act, which the mayor chairs but does not command. Where that cost line can be regionalized or provincially cost-shared (Measure 29b), the Year 1 cap tightens from 6.5% to inflation plus growth. We state it as a condition rather than a promise, because a Year 1 freeze would require a policing decision that is not council's to make. We will not promise a freeze we cannot deliver.

This is the honest answer. We do not promise day-one delivery of full savings; we promise a credible glide path, measured in the unit residents are actually billed in, with quarterly reporting on whether the savings are tracking.

Currently: When Victoria's actual results come in better than budget, the surplus is absorbed — into reserves, in-year additions, or a quietly reduced borrowing requirement the following year. Residents who were taxed for a service level the City did not need are never told, and never repaid. The reverse operation is well documented: the 2025 CSWB Phase 1 was funded by drawing $2.5M from Centennial Square revitalization, $4M from the Financial Stability Reserve, and $1.5M from Royal Athletic Park upgrades (Victoria Buzz). Reserves are treated as a discretionary pool in both directions, with no rule governing either. ACTW: If we collect more than we needed, we give it back.

• The rule: where audited year-end operating results exceed the approved operating budget by more than 1.5% of operating expenditure, the excess above that threshold is returned to taxpayers as a credit line on the following year's property tax notice, implemented through the annual tax rate bylaw
• The 1.5% band stays with the City as legitimate forecasting contingency — this is a refund of genuine over-collection, not a prohibition on prudent variance
• Excluded from the calculation: statutory and restricted reserves; development cost charges and amenity cost charges; water, sewer, stormwater, and — if established under Measure 58b — district-energy utility results (rate-payer funded and ring-fenced); conditional senior-government grants; and one-time real-estate disposition proceeds, which go to debt reduction under Measure 69
• Override: Council may retain the excess only by supermajority (6 of 9) with a published written rationale naming the specific purpose — the same standard as the tax-cap override in Measure 66
• Published: the over-collection calculation is published in full with the audited financial statements and reported on the quarterly dashboard (Measure 67), whether or not a refund is triggered that year

This is the mirror image of the tax cap. Measure 66 limits what we can take; Measure 66b returns what we took and did not need. A council that can raid a reserve without a rule can also refund a surplus without a rule — we will do neither by discretion.

Currently: Victoria has approved $168.9M in Crystal Pool borrowing over a 20-year term, with a staff-recommended $63M in further infrastructure borrowing behind it, and debt servicing is already named a main cost driver for 2026. To hold the 2026 increase at 7.28%, council cut a $2M debt-reduction payment and a $2.8M parking-reserve contribution. Mayor Alto's own assessment of that approach was that it is not a solution in the long term. The City does not publish total debt outstanding or debt-to-revenue in any accessible format.

ACTW: The third fiscal rule, alongside the tax cap and the over-collection refund. Measure 66 limits what we take. Measure 66b returns what we took and did not need. Measure 66c stops us charging the difference to the next council.

• Publish first. Total debt outstanding, annual debt service, debt service as a share of operating expenditure, and debt per household — on the quarterly dashboard (Measure 67), from the first quarter of the term
• The rule: the scheduled debt-reduction contribution in the financial plan is not available as a balancing item. Reducing or deferring it requires a supermajority of Council (6 of 9) with a published written rationale — the same standard as the Measure 66 tax cap and the Measure 66b refund override
• A published ceiling: debt service will not exceed a stated share of operating expenditure without the same supermajority and published rationale. The opening ceiling is set in the first financial plan of the term against the actual figure, because setting it before that figure is published would be guesswork
• Real-estate proceeds, correctly stated. Section 188(2)(e) of the Community Charter requires proceeds from the sale of land and improvements, other than tax-sale proceeds, to be placed in a reserve fund for paying any debt remaining in relation to that property and for acquiring capital assets. Measure 69's proceeds therefore retire property-related debt and fund capital; they cannot be swept to general debt reduction, and this framework describes them accurately rather than conveniently

No new borrowing headroom is created by this measure. It is a constraint, not a plan. It does not forbid a deferral; it forces the deferral to be voted in public with a reason attached — which is exactly what did not happen in May 2026.

Currently: Victoria's public conversation about affordability is conducted entirely in property tax percentages. That number is not what a household pays. On top of it sit the water bill, the sewer levy, the solid-waste charge, and a stormwater utility fee of 218.42 dollars per property per year. The fastest-growing part of that bill is the part nobody campaigns on. The CRD's five-year forecast for regional water rates is 7.6% in 2026, 9.4% in 2027, 10.9% in 2028, 12.3% in 2029, and 12.6% in 2030 (Times Colonist, November 2025), which compounds to roughly 65% over five years, with more than half of the underlying capital program attributable to the region's first water filtration plant. In February 2026 the CRD board endorsed a water development cost charge covering about 35% of a nearly 2 billion dollar thirty-year program, effective April 2027; the remaining 65% comes from user fees and grants (Times Colonist, February 2026). None of that appears in a property tax percentage. This framework had a gap of its own, and this measure closes it. Measure 66b correctly excludes water, sewer, stormwater, and district-energy results from the over-collection refund, because those are ring-fenced rate-payer funds. The consequence was that the three fiscal rules in this framework — the tax cap, the refund, and the debt rule — gave residents no protection at all on the fastest-rising line of their municipal bill. A tax-only glide path is an incomplete promise, and we would rather say so than be told so. ACTW: One number, published every year, covering everything the City and the CRD bill a Victoria household.

• The Household Bill — a single published figure for a median assessed Victoria home: property taxes plus water, sewer, solid waste, and stormwater. Published as a dollar amount, a year-over-year change, and a five-year forward trajectory, alongside the same figures for a median condominium and a median purpose-built rental unit
• Published with the tax cap, not separately — the Household Bill appears in the annual financial plan and on the quarterly dashboard (Measure 67) beside the Measure 66 glide path, so the visible number and the total number are never reported apart again. Measure 66 caps the residential rate; this measure reports everything on top of it
• Discipline on the City-controlled portion — any increase above CPI plus population growth in a utility fee the City sets itself (stormwater, solid waste, and municipal water and sewer distribution) requires a supermajority of Council (6 of 9) with a published written rationale, the same standard as the Measure 66 tax cap, the Measure 66b refund override, and the Measure 66c debt rule
• Honesty on the portion we do not control — CRD wholesale water and regional wastewater costs are set at the regional board, not at Victoria council. We will not cap what we cannot set. We will report it, forecast it, and act on it through Measure 70c
• A five-year forward view, updated annually, so a household can see the trajectory rather than one year at a time

We are not going to cap the number residents see and stay silent on the number they pay.

Currently: Victoria publishes no quarterly KPI dashboard. Salary and benefits as a share of operating budget are not reported in an accessible format. Total municipal debt outstanding and debt-to-revenue ratios are buried in technical financial plans. The result: voters cannot hold elected officials accountable between elections.

ACTW: Permit timelines by category, pothole report-to-fix times, 311 response rates, crime statistics, housing approvals, budget variance, salary share of operating budget, Climate Friendly Homes uptake, the over-collection calculation (Measure 66b), the full debt set required by Measure 66c (debt outstanding, annual debt service, debt service as a share of operating expenditure, debt per household), the quarterly enforcement record (Measure 31b), the camera-registry performance set (Measure 28c), the Conference Centre targets and net cost (Measure 73c), City-owned seismic assessment progress (Measure 64b), the homelessness dollars-to-outcomes set (Measure 11), the Household Bill and its five-year forward view (Measure 66d), the CRD decision and voting record for Victoria's regional representatives (Measure 70c), the record of Transit Commission decisions affecting Victoria (Measure 23b), the walking set — sidewalk-gap kilometres closed, crossing-gap list, and obstruction response time (Measure 20b), the cycling set — kilometres delivered and coverage percentage (Measure 20), the public AI register and assessment status (Measure 53d), the arts and culture funding floor against actual (Measure 50b), and the 12 commitments scorecard. Published online every quarter. Explained in plain language. No hiding.

Public-realm condition, reported every quarter. The cleanliness measures in this framework commit to standards, and a standard without a published number is a slogan:

• Graffiti: share removed within 48 hours against the 90% standard (Measure 14), and median report-to-removal time
• Street and sidewalk condition: sampled cleanliness score by downtown block and neighbourhood commercial corridor, on a published, repeatable scoring method
• Bin overflow: median report-to-service time on public waste bins (Measure 16 QR reporting)
• Sharps: needles collected and hotspot map (shared with the weekly DPOT dashboard, Measure 31)
• Washrooms: share of the public washroom network in service, and mean out-of-service duration (Measure 24b)

This is the core of democratic accountability. If you can see the numbers every quarter, you can hold elected officials accountable every quarter. Not once every four years at election time, but continuously. Coun. Marg Gardiner's existing monthly fiscal newsletter is the closest current-council precedent — ACTW formalizes the practice as a city-wide service standard.

Streamline internal processes before asking taxpayers for more. Every form a resident fills out, every process that requires visiting City Hall in person, every paper-based workflow — digitize it. Non-replacement of departing administrative staff: As staff retire, resign, or move on, we will not automatically replace every position. Each vacancy will be assessed: can technology handle this? Can the work be redistributed? Is the position still necessary given digital tools? Target: reduce administrative FTEs by 12–15% over the term through attrition alone, where vacancies allow. No layoffs. Natural departures only.

Conduct a full inventory and utilization audit of all city-owned properties. Sell or lease properties that do not serve essential public functions. When selling, require buyers to meet community benefit criteria (housing, employment, public access) where appropriate. Where the proceeds go, stated correctly. Section 188(2)(e) of the Community Charter requires that proceeds from the sale of land and improvements, other than tax-sale proceeds, be placed in a reserve fund for paying any debt remaining in relation to that property and for acquiring land, improvements, and other capital assets. Proceeds therefore retire property-related debt and fund capital — they are not available as general debt reduction or as operating revenue. Earlier versions of this measure described them loosely; Measure 66c governs the distinction.

The City shouldn't build alone what senior governments should co-fund. Active advocacy for infrastructure dollars. Maintain low debt ratios. Every federal or provincial dollar attracted is a dollar not taken from property taxes.

Successive provincial governments — across parties — have offloaded responsibilities onto municipalities (mental health, addictions, social housing operations, decriminalization compliance, encampment management) without commensurate funding transfer. Council members across the political spectrum have flagged this: Mayor Alto (downloading as a driver of the 2026 tax hike), Coun. Hammond (the structural mismatch between local revenue tools and downloaded mandates), Coun. Kim (the broken municipal taxation framework itself). It is one of the few points of cross-bloc agreement on council. We will operationalize that agreement:

• Quarterly downloading ledger — a published list of every provincial or federal mandate that the City delivers without dedicated funding, with estimated annual cost per file
• Formal advocacy resolutions twice per year to UBCM and FCM, calling for either funding transfer or mandate return — file by file, not generic motions
• Published refusal threshold — services the City will not assume additional responsibility for without dedicated, indexed funding. Examples: net new supportive-housing operations, net new addictions services. The point is not to abandon vulnerable residents — it is to refuse to be the funding pressure-valve for senior-government underinvestment
• Coordinate with Esquimalt, Saanich, Oak Bay through CRD to present a unified regional position

Currently: A significant share of what a Victoria household pays for municipal services is decided at a board that Victoria does not control and does not report on. Victoria's ballot includes three CRD Director positions, voted on by residents from among council candidates, with the appointments confirmed at the start of the term; the Mayor also sits as a director, and the CRD allocates directors and votes to each local government on a population formula. Those representatives vote at the region on a nearly 2 billion dollar water capital program and a comparable wastewater program. There is no published mandate, no published voting record, and no reporting duty back to the council and residents they represent. Measure 70b holds senior governments to account for what they download onto Victoria. Nothing in this framework held the region to account for what it bills to Victoria. The specific file. The Goldstream Water Filtration Plant is costed at 1.07 billion dollars for completion in 2037 (CRD Regional Water Supply Master Plan project sheets), and it is the largest single driver of the rate trajectory in Measure 66d. The case for it is real and on the record: rising source-water temperature, algal-bloom risk, wildfire exposure, and the eventual integration of the Leech and Goldstream sources, reviewed by Stantec and supported by Island Health (Times Colonist, January 2024). The case against the current plan is also real and on the record: the Greater Victoria Water Supply System is currently exempted from filtration requirements under BC's Drinking Water Treatment Objectives for Surface Water Supplies, and Island Health's own medical health officer told regional water commissioners in March 2024 that there was no urgent need for additional filtration capacity at Sooke at that time (Capital Daily, March 2024). An engineering review commissioned by the Urban Development Institute Capital Region concluded that the master plan did not demonstrate a compelling scientific rationale for the plant, that its implementation date was not supported by the data presented, and that the plant would drive roughly half of a planned 500% increase in costs to water customers (Times Colonist, January 2024). ACTW takes no position on whether the plant should be built. We take a position on the standard of evidence and public reporting required before a billion-dollar regional commitment is locked in, which is precisely the standard Measure 74 and Measure 78 apply to Victoria's own capital. A project that survives that test is stronger for having passed it.

• A published annual City position on regional cost, adopted by Council in open session before the regional budget cycle, stating Victoria's position on rate trajectory, capital sequencing, and cost allocation (extends Measure 79c)
• A published record of CRD decisions and Victoria representatives' votes on the quarterly dashboard (Measure 67), so residents can see how the bill they receive was decided. This is a position and a reporting duty, not a direction to vote — a director's vote is the director's own, and we will not describe it as more than it is
• The five-step process, applied regionally — Victoria will advocate at the CRD board for staged approval of the filtration plant rather than program-level commitment: a published business case, a published independent alternatives analysis (including watershed fuel management, staged capacity, and deferral triggers tied to measured turbidity), and a rate-impact statement in household dollars, before design procurement proceeds
• A rate-impact statement as a standing requirement on every regional capital decision above 25 million dollars, expressed in dollars per household per year rather than in percentages — the regional analogue of Measure 74
• Coordinate with Saanich, Oak Bay, and Esquimalt on a common position on regional cost discipline, parallel to the regional coordination in Measure 70b
• Feed the result into Measure 66d, so the regional share of the Household Bill is forecast rather than discovered

Ask the candidates, not just the council. Three CRD Director positions are on the October 17 ballot and no candidate for them has published a position on the rate trajectory. That is the accountability gap this measure exists to close.

Economic development initiatives, tax incentives for occupying vacant spaces, streamlined tenant improvement permits, animated downtown programming (night markets, pop-ups, public events). This measure addresses commercial storefront vacancy. The related but separate problem of residential short-term rental conversion is handled under Measure 9b. On vacant-storefront taxation: Imposing a property tax surcharge on long-vacant commercial properties typically requires provincial enabling legislation — Vancouver's Empty Homes Tax sits within a specific provincial framework (Vacancy Tax / Speculation and Vacancy Tax). The City will:

• Advocate to the Province for enabling legislation that would allow municipalities to surcharge persistent commercial vacancies, on the BC residential model
• Use existing municipal levers immediately: vacant property licensing requirements, façade-improvement-or-lease conditions on business licence renewals, pop-up tenancy facilitation programs, and targeted business attraction grants for filling priority storefronts
• Publish a quarterly downtown vacancy report by block and by sector — transparency itself creates pressure on owners to lease at market rates

Protect the land the economy actually runs on. Victoria's remaining light-industrial and marine-industrial land in Rock Bay, Vic West, and along the working harbour is finite, unreplaceable, and under continuous pressure for residential conversion. Once it converts it does not come back, and the trades, marine services, ship repair, food production, logistics, and creative-production businesses that use it relocate to the Westshore or leave the region. Those are the jobs that let people live here without a downtown office.

• No net loss of employment-designated land over the term without a published replacement plan identifying where the capacity goes
• A published employment lands inventory with capacity, tenure, and utilization, built from the Measure 53 GIS layers
• Marine-industrial land treated as a distinct category with its own protection, because waterfront industrial capacity cannot be relocated inland at any price (per Measure 55b)
• This is stated as a tension, not hidden. Measure 6 commits to 12,000 homes and this commits to holding employment land. Both are real, and the resolution is that residential capacity comes from the corridors and the missing middle, not from the last of the industrial land

The problem: Small businesses create the majority of Victoria's private-sector jobs, but they are the businesses least able to absorb regulatory friction — permit delays, complex licensing, inconsistent enforcement, and a slow City Hall that does not value their time.

What we will do:

• Business licence processing: 5 business days, maximum. Not 5 weeks. Most licences are renewals or low-risk new applications that need a documented turnaround
• Tenant-improvement permits for commercial fit-outs: published 6-week target (aligned with Measure 7 simple-permit benchmark)
• Designated downtown economic coordinator — single point of contact for storefront operators, with authority to escalate stalled files
• Proactive recruitment for vacant storefronts (per Measure 71) — the City should be calling promising retailers and helping them open
• "Welcome / thank you" small-business program — continuing the Alto 2022 plank, never delivered. A brief in-person visit from a Council member or senior staff to new and long-tenured businesses, with a focused conversation about what the City can fix
• Tax relief for community-serving non-profits and small businesses — continuing the Alto 2022 plank under section 224 of the Community Charter. Published criteria, transparent decisions, no political favouritism

Treat small business operators the way the City treats its largest taxpayers — as customers, not applicants.

Currently: Victoria's bylaw corpus accumulates. Nothing in the City's process requires anyone to ask whether a rule adopted in 1994 still serves a purpose, what it costs the people who comply with it, or whether a new rule duplicates one already on the books. Measure 72 commits to faster licences and permits. This measure addresses the volume of rules those processes administer. ACTW: A council-adopted simplification charter, with four operating rules.

• Sunset by default. Every new regulatory bylaw carries a review date not more than 5 years out. At the review the bylaw is renewed, amended, or lapses, and the decision is published with the compliance data behind it
• A rolling repeal review. Two bylaw families per year, reviewed against the same published three-part test the Measure 65 grant review already applies — jurisdiction (is this the City's job), outcomes (is it delivering), duplication (is someone already doing this). Recommendations published in full, including the ones council rejects
• Compliance-cost statement. Any new regulatory bylaw comes to council with a one-page estimate of what compliance costs the people subject to it: dollars, hours, and forms. Small operators are not a rounding error
• Small-commerce charter. A published statement of what a Victoria business can expect from the City — a named contact, a published turnaround, one file number, plain-language correspondence, and no requirement to submit the same information twice. This gives the Measure 72 "welcome / thank you" commitment a service standard attached to it, rather than replacing it

Nothing lapses silently. Every review publishes its data and every decision is a recorded council vote, which is more scrutiny than most of these bylaws have had since they passed. This is deliberately unglamorous. Bureaucratic accumulation is a tax paid in time by the people least able to absorb it, and nobody has ever campaigned on repealing a bylaw no one remembers passing.

Continuing the post-pandemic momentum. Victoria's tourism numbers are back: ferry traffic up 2%, cruise ships increasing, hotel occupancy near pre-pandemic levels, Condé Nast Traveller "best small city" for the third time in 2025. Tourism employs roughly 22,000 people across the Capital Region and underwrites a substantial share of Victoria's small-business ecosystem.

What we will do:

• Better wayfinding — Victoria's directional signage is inconsistent and dated; visitors get lost between obvious destinations. A unified wayfinding system tied to the Heritage Street Furniture Standard (Measure 44)
• Extended business hours in commercial areas — too many Victoria businesses close at 5 or 6 PM in summer, when foot traffic is peaking
• Waterfront activation (Measure 47) and outdoor programming (Measure 51) as tourism infrastructure
• Cruise-ship coordination with the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority on visitor flow, with downtown businesses on logistics, and on Pier 21 / James Bay neighbourhood impact
• Marketing partnership with Destination Greater Victoria — Victoria should be marketed nationally and internationally as Canada's most liveable small city, because it is, or will be
• Indigenous tourism partnership with the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations (per Measure 1) on shared cultural-tourism products that direct revenue to the Nations

Tourism is not separate from the rest of the city — a clean, safe, beautiful, well-managed Victoria is the best tourism strategy that exists.

Currently: The Victoria Conference Centre is owned and operated by the City and is the second-largest facility of its kind in British Columbia, with a stated mandate to generate economic benefit for the City. In 2024 it generated 94,200 delegate days (up 12% over 2023), 25,300 room nights (up 10%), and $31.1M in business sales supporting more than 10,000 jobs (Business Events Victoria / Destination Greater Victoria, January 2025). Sales and marketing is already contracted to Business Events Victoria, a division of Destination Greater Victoria. So what is missing is not an operator, and not a promoter. It is the asset's own target and the asset's own bottom line. ACTW: Measure 73b makes Team Victoria accountable for downtown vacancy and uses the VCC as its principal off-season instrument. This measure makes the instrument itself accountable.

• A published annual target for delegate days, room nights, and business sales, set in the financial plan and reported on the quarterly dashboard (Measure 67) against prior year and against target — the VCC's own numbers, distinct from the Team Victoria vacancy mandate they support
• Published net cost to the taxpayer. What the VCC costs the operating budget, net of revenue, stated plainly each year. An asset carrying a $31.1M economic-impact claim should be able to show its own bottom line, and today it does not
• Governance reviewed, not presumed. Whether an arms-length operating entity would outperform the current in-house-plus-contract model is a question for evidence, not assertion. A one-time review reports to council in Year 2 with a recommendation either way

Scope boundary: the single events calendar and the flagship-event commitment live in Measure 73b; shoulder-season programming is delivered through Measures 47 and 51. This measure adds no programming — only the target, the net cost, and the governance question. On the corporation question. Section 185 of the Community Charter permits a municipality to incorporate a corporation only with the approval of the Inspector of Municipalities, and a society is expressly excluded from that requirement — so both a lighter and a heavier vehicle exist. Neither is worth pursuing before the Year-2 review establishes that the current arrangement underperforms. Section 175(2) additionally requires approval of the electors for most agreements running beyond 5 years, which is a real constraint on any long-form delegation and a reason not to promise one casually.

Victoria's economic-development effort is scattered across marketing lines, memberships, and goodwill — and no one owns a number. Cities that reversed downtown decline consolidated the effort into a single small office with a published quantitative mandate and a mayor personally accountable for it.

What we will do:

• One office — a small Team Victoria economic-attractiveness office (2–3 FTE), chaired by the mayor, consolidating the City's existing marketing partnership (Measure 73), storefront recruitment (Measure 71), red-tape work with operators (Measure 72), and the ocean-economy vertical (Measure 55b) into one accountable unit — working alongside Destination Greater Victoria and the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority, not duplicating them
• One number — the office's published mandate is Measure 71's target: downtown storefront vacancy from 11% to 5%, reported quarterly on the Measure 67 dashboard, with conferences, delegate days, and off-season occupancy as supporting indicators. The city-owned Victoria Conference Centre (94,200 delegate days, 25,300 room nights, and $31.1M in business sales in 2024) is the office's principal off-season instrument, with its own target and net cost published under Measure 73c
• One flagship event — develop one recurring international event that belongs to Victoria the way the Jazz Festival belongs to Montreal: a Pacific ocean-economy summit (per Measure 55b), a signature maritime festival on the Inner Harbour, or an Indigenous cultural-tourism flagship co-created with the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations (per Measures 1 and 73). One event, chosen for durability — not a calendar of one-offs
• Accountable like every other program — every dollar and every claimed outcome published; if storefront vacancy is not measurably falling by Year 2, the office is restructured under zero-based budgeting (Measure 65) like anything else
• Anchor institutions as economic infrastructure — a standing annual table with UVic, Camosun, and Royal Roads on student housing in Victoria proper, co-op and graduate employment placement, campus-adjacent transit priority (per Measure 23b), and research commercialization (connecting Measure 13c, Measure 55, and Measure 55b). Post-secondary education is one of Victoria's largest economic sectors and the City has no standing relationship with it
• A published shoulder-season target — visitor nights and downtown foot traffic for November through March, reported annually. Victoria's tourism problem is not volume, it is distribution: the summer is full and the winter is empty, and the winter is when downtown businesses fail. The flagship event above, the Measure 51 year-round outdoor activation, the Measure 50 extended cultural hours, and the Measure 73c Conference Centre targets are all sequenced against the shoulder season rather than the peak
• A published sector view — the annual attractiveness report covers the ocean economy (per Measure 55b), technology, post-secondary, public sector, marine and trades, and tourism, with employment and business-count figures for each, so that "economic development" stops meaning "downtown retail vacancy"

Attractiveness is not a brochure. It is a number, a name, and someone accountable for both.

Currently: Victoria has economic-development activity and no economic-development plan. Measure 71 sets a storefront-vacancy target, Measures 72 and 72b reduce friction for operators, Measure 73 handles tourism, Measures 55 and 55b handle procurement and the ocean vertical, and Measure 73b consolidates the effort into the Team Victoria office. What no document states is which sectors Victoria is trying to grow, what quality of employment it is trying to attract, and what it will decline. In the absence of a plan, economic development defaults to whatever arrives.

ACTW: One plan, published, with numbers in it.

• A Strategic Economic Plan adopted by Council in the first year of the term, produced by the Measure 73b Team Victoria office, covering the ocean economy (per Measure 55b), technology, post-secondary, public sector, marine and trades, tourism, and the creative sector
• Employment quality, not just employment count. The plan reports median wage and full-time share by sector, not only business counts, because a city can add jobs and still lose the ability to live in it. This is the number that decides whether Victoria's young adults stay (per Measure 13c)
• Employment land tied to the plan, not filed beside it: the Measure 71 industrial and marine-industrial inventory is a direct input, so sector ambition and land capacity are decided together rather than in separate rooms
• Anchor institutions inside the plan through the Measure 73b standing table with UVic, Camosun, and Royal Roads
• A stated declination. The plan names the sectors Victoria will not chase. A document that pursues everything is a list, not a strategy, and the discipline of saying no is the whole value of writing it down
• Reviewed annually against its own indicators on the Measure 67 dashboard, and rebuilt once per term rather than continuously

A plan that cannot be measured is a brochure, and Measure 73b already exists to own the number.

Following the Crystal Pool referendum model and within the BC Local Government Act / Community Charter framework. Any new (non-lifecycle) capital project exceeding $25 million goes to the public via Assent Voting or the Alternative Approval Process, as the statutory framework permits. The Crystal Pool replacement continues as voted. In February 2025, 58.7% of Victoria voters approved $168.9M in borrowing for the Crystal Pool replacement under a referendum process. That decision stands. Lifecycle replacement of existing infrastructure proceeds; the Crystal Pool referendum is the exact precedent ACTW Measure 77 and Measure 78 are designed to make standard practice. What is included in the $25M threshold: new community centres, new arenas, new pools (the Crystal Pool replacement was already approved through this mechanism), new civic buildings, major new park developments, significant scope-changing renovations. What is not included: lifecycle replacement of existing infrastructure (stormwater pipes, road resurfacing, water/sewer renewal, bridge rehabilitation, statutory infrastructure obligations). Lifecycle work is the City's basic statutory and operational duty; subjecting it to referendum would block essential maintenance. When the City spends big on new capital, residents decide. Not consultants. Not councillors alone. You.

See Measure 24. Direct savings for every resident who drives downtown.

The problem: Garden suites, accessibility modifications, energy retrofits, and small additions get caught in the same fee structure as multi-unit developments. The result: homeowners are deterred from doing the work, or do it without a permit — neither of which serves the City.

What we will do:

• Reduced or waived fees for projects under $50K that:
• Add housing (secondary suite, garden suite, lock-off unit, in-law suite)
• Improve accessibility (per Measure 25b — ramps, grab bars, accessible bathrooms, widened doors)
• Improve energy efficiency (insulation, heat pumps, solar, electrical upgrades for EV charging)
• Restore heritage features
• Published one-day-turnaround target for these simple categories (per Measure 7 simple-permit benchmark)
• Pre-approved design library — common garden-suite, secondary-suite, and accessibility-retrofit designs pre-screened for compliance, available to homeowners free of charge
• Online permit application for these categories (per Measure 7) — no need to come to City Hall

Faster, cheaper, easier permits for the projects we actually want more of.

Not just consultations where input gets filed away. Binding votes, within the BC Local Government Act and Community Charter framework (Assent Voting or Alternative Approval Process). The Dowler Place controversy proved why this matters. A CHEK News FOI revealed the mayor's confidential draft plan to relocate the Pandora encampment was far broader than publicly disclosed. Mayor Alto admitted council skipped community engagement because "we knew what the comments would be" (CHEK News). She later apologized (Capital Daily), but the episode — combined with firefighter Josh Montgomery's one-day suspension for criticizing the plan, which prompted Premier Eby to demand an apology and a Change.org petition calling for Alto's resignation — cemented a perception of closed-door governance. This cannot happen again. Referendums for new capital, the 5-step process, and the quarterly dashboards are the antidote.

Currently: The Dowler Place file is the cleanest illustration of what happens without a required process. Mayor Alto's confidential draft motion to relocate the Pandora encampment was disclosed via CHEK News FOI in June 2025; the mayor stated publicly that early consultation was skipped because "we knew what the comments would be from the public." She apologized for a "rocky" rollout, but the underlying problem was structural — there was no required process to follow, so the process was skipped.

ACTW: every major public project goes through five steps, in this order, no exceptions:

1. Local consultation. Problems, pain points, what needs to improve
2. Expert project design — engineers, planners, affected residents
3. Public visualization and impact analysis — AI-generated imagery (Measure 53b) for visual impact preview; GIS-based traffic, utility, and infrastructure analysis (Measure 53). Publish the analyses showing traffic, noise, visual impact, effects on adjacent streets and businesses. Let residents see the future before they decide
4. Referendum if a new capital project over $25M — binding public vote under statutory process (Measure 77)
5. Quarterly public progress reports during construction — on time, on budget, or explain why not

The Crystal Pool replacement (Feb 2025, 58.7% Yes, $168.9M borrowing) is the proof of concept. We will continue it as voted, and we will require the same process for every new capital project over $25M.

Currently: Measure 78 governs major public projects. Private development applications run on a separate track, and that track has a defect. A rezoning or development permit can be materially amended after the public hearing has closed and before the bylaw is adopted: height or density increased, an affordable-housing commitment reduced, a heritage-retention condition removed, a public amenity dropped. The residents who spoke to the application, and the councillors who weighed their submissions, are then responding to a proposal that is no longer the proposal. Nothing requires anyone to tell them.

ACTW: If the deal changes, the record reopens.

• A defined material-change threshold: any post-hearing amendment that increases height, density, or permitted use by more than 10%, or that removes or reduces a community amenity contribution, an affordability condition, a heritage-retention commitment, or a public-access commitment
• The consequence: the file pauses, staff report publicly on what changed and why, and affected parties are renotified before any vote proceeds. Not a fresh hearing in every case, but never a silent change
• A published register of material changes by application, on the Measure 67 dashboard, so the frequency of the practice becomes visible for the first time. Nobody currently knows how often this happens, which is itself the problem
• Applies symmetrically. A change that increases public benefit is disclosed on the same terms as one that reduces it. The rule is about the completeness of the record, not the direction of the change
• Paired with pro-forma disclosure: where an applicant seeks relaxation of an affordability or amenity condition on viability grounds, the claim is supported by an independent pro-forma review at the applicant's cost before Council considers it. An unverified hardship claim is an assertion, not evidence
• Legal boundary, stated honestly: the Local Government Act governs public-hearing procedure and what constitutes a change requiring a further hearing. This measure sets a municipal disclosure and renotification standard above the statutory minimum and does not purport to alter the statute

Measure 78 exists because the Dowler Place file showed what happens with no required process. This is the same principle applied to the applications that arrive every month rather than the projects that arrive twice a term.

Every public consultation must report back: here's what you said, here's what we decided, here's why. Transparency isn't a value statement — it's a service standard. Too many consultations in Victoria end with a report that gathers dust. We will publish a response to every consultation within 60 days. And on any plan or policy, the draft comes back before adoption. The 2025 Official Community Plan process is the case study: consultation ran, submissions were made, and no draft plan was published for the public to confirm that what they said had been heard before Council adopted it. That removed the one step that makes a consultation verifiable rather than merely completed. For every plan, policy, or strategy that goes through public consultation, the City will publish two things: the draft, and a what-we-heard-and-what-we-did reconciliation stating each substantive theme raised, what changed in response, and where nothing changed, why. Both published a minimum of 30 days before the adoption vote, so the reconciliation can itself be corrected by the people it claims to summarize. A consultation nobody can audit is a consultation nobody should trust.

The MNP governance review of Victoria City Council surfaced specific recommendations on conflict-of-interest management, council-staff boundaries, transparency in decision-making, and the establishment of an Integrity Commissioner to investigate complaints against elected officials and recommend remedies. Implementation of those recommendations has lagged. Council members across the political spectrum have advocated for it — Coun. Gardiner most consistently ("the MNP recommendations should be addressed before further major decisions" — Capital Daily), Coun. Coleman (process-integrity advocate), Coun. Hammond (council-conduct accountability). We will:

• Establish an arm's-length Integrity Commissioner office for the City of Victoria, with jurisdiction over conflicts of interest, gifts and benefits, post-employment restrictions, and council code-of-conduct breaches. A shared-service model with one or more adjacent municipalities is acceptable and likely cheaper
• Publish a complete implementation tracker for the MNP governance report recommendations, with status and target completion dates for each
• Annual public report on Integrity Commissioner caseload, outcomes, and systemic recommendations

This is not a partisan tool. An Integrity Commissioner protects councillors of every persuasion from frivolous attacks and protects the public from genuine misconduct in equal measure.

Canadians already know this instrument. Federal and British Columbia cabinet ministers receive published mandate letters stating what each is responsible for delivering. No equivalent exists at Victoria City Hall — councillors hold liaison, committee, and external-board roles with no published deliverables, and residents cannot tell who owns what. Under BC's Community Charter the mayor is one vote of nine and cannot direct councillors — so this measure imposes nothing. It publishes.

What we will do:

• The mayor goes first — within 30 days of taking office, the mayor publishes their own mandate letter: the commitments they personally own, mapped to the 12-commitments scorecard and the quarterly dashboard (Measure 67)
• Council is invited, by resolution — council may adopt published mandate letters for each liaison, committee-chair, and external-board appointment (CRD, police board, library board), stating the assignment's purpose and reporting cadence. Participation is voluntary and stated as such: the Community Charter lets a mayor publish, not command
• Quarterly portfolio scorecards — each published mandate reports progress quarterly on the Measure 67 dashboard, in plain language, including "not started" and "off track" where that is the truth
• No theatre — scorecards report the mandate, not the person. This is the accountability infrastructure of Measures 67 and 79 extended to elected roles, not a performance review of colleagues

Residents should never have to file an FOI request to learn who at City Hall is responsible for what.

Currently: British Columbia operates a Lobbyists Transparency Registry for provincial public office holders. It does not cover municipal government. In Victoria, a development proponent may meet City staff and members of Council repeatedly across the life of an application, and no record of those meetings is published anywhere. The applications are public and the decisions are public. The access is not. This is among the cheapest trust measures available to a municipality and Victoria has not taken it.

ACTW:

• A searchable public registry of meetings between development proponents or their representatives and members of Council or City staff, on files that are or become land-use applications
• What is recorded: date, participants, the file or address, and the subject in one line. Not a transcript, and not a deterrent to meeting
• Filed by the City side within 10 business days, so the obligation sits with the public body rather than with the applicant, and compliance does not depend on the goodwill of the party being recorded
• Published on the open data portal (per Measure 56) and summarized quarterly on the Measure 67 dashboard
• Exclusions stated in advance: routine counter service, permit intake, inspection, and code interpretation are not lobbying and are not recorded. Nothing here should make it harder to ask a simple question
• Applies to everyone, including the mayor. A registry with an exemption at the top is not a registry

Meeting a developer is a legitimate and necessary part of the job. Doing it unrecorded is the part residents object to.

Currently: British Columbia introduced a 10 dollar application fee for general freedom-of-information requests in 2021. Public bodies may charge it; they are not required to. Victoria charges it. Ten dollars does not fund an access-to-information programme and was never going to. What it does is place a payment step, a receipt, and a small deterrent in front of the one instrument residents have when the City will not tell them something voluntarily. ACTW: Waive it.

• The City will waive the application fee for general freedom-of-information requests, by Council policy, in the first quarter of the term
• Processing fees for large requests are unaffected. Where a request requires substantial search and preparation time, the existing statutory fee schedule continues to apply. This measure removes the entry toll, not the cost-recovery mechanism for genuinely large files
• Published annually: requests received, median response time, share responded to within the statutory 30 business days, and share where an extension was taken
• Read alongside the rest of this pillar. Measures 31b, 66d, 67, 70c, 79, 79c, 79d and 82b all exist so the information arrives without anyone having to ask for it. A rising FOI volume against this framework would be evidence that its transparency measures are failing, and we would rather see that number than suppress the requests that produce it

We would rather publish it than charge you to ask for it.

Currently: Victoria's Council sets its own remuneration by bylaw, and the MNP governance review recommended a formal review of base Council remuneration including comparators, benchmarks, and a regular review framework. The structural problem is not the amount. It is the timing: a body voting on its own pay during its own term holds a conflict that no review methodology, comparator set, or independent consultant removes. ACTW: Keep the review. Change when the result applies.

• Any change to Council remuneration takes effect only at the start of the following term, so the councillors who vote for it are not the councillors who receive it, and the electorate has an opportunity to respond before it is paid
• Adopted in the first year of the term, before the next remuneration discussion rather than after it, so that it binds the council enacting it and not only its successors
• The independent review still happens (per the MNP recommendation and Measure 79b): published comparators, published methodology, published recommendation. Transparency about the number and independence about the timing are two different problems, and this measure solves the second
• Published: current remuneration by position, the last change and its effective date, and any pending recommendation, on the Measure 67 dashboard
• Stated limit, because this framework does not overclaim: this binds by bylaw and by public commitment, and a future council may amend it as it may amend any bylaw. What it cannot do is amend it quietly, because the amendment would itself be a recorded public vote on Council pay

An honest pay process costs a council nothing except the ability to benefit from its own decision.

Strengthen support for neighbourhood associations in Fernwood, James Bay, Fairfield, Vic West, Hillside-Quadra, and every community. Small grants for community-led meetings. Expand "My Great Neighbourhood" program. Expand the Local Champions Program — train residents to lead engagement in their own communities. The people who live in a neighbourhood know it best.

Victoria's civic processes should operate in the languages of the country, English primarily and French, and should be written clearly enough that any resident can actually use them. Neither provincial nor federal law requires a BC municipality to provide service in French, and Victoria does not do so today. We will, on the same principle that governs the rest of this framework: the standard is national, not demographic. Access to City Hall should not depend on which community happens to be largest.

• Plain-language standard in English for all grant applications, eligibility criteria, permit forms, and consultation materials — readability-tested, with jargon and legal boilerplate stripped. This is the single change that reaches the most residents: native English speakers, seniors, people with cognitive disabilities (per Measure 25b), and anyone reading in a second language
• French provision for the core corpus — principal service pages of the City website, permit and grant application forms, tax and utility notices, emergency and public-safety communications, and consultation summaries. AI-assisted translation with mandatory human review for anything legally operative
• Interpretation on individual request in either official language at service counters, permit intake, and public hearings — provided to the person who asks, when they ask
• No parallel community-language channels. The City will not operate separate application streams or standing translation programs by community. Residents needing settlement support in other languages are referred to the provincially and federally funded settlement sector, whose mandate and funding this already is (per Measure 70b)
• One civic process for everyone — same forms, same criteria, same queue, same published decision rules (per Measure 10)

The two official languages are the common ground of Canadian civic life. Serving in them is a national standard, not an accommodation program.

Currently: Victoria 2050, the Official Community Plan adopted in 2025, replaced the 2012 plan and is written at city scale. Beneath it, the neighbourhood-level plans that gave residents and small builders parcel-level certainty about what could be built where have not been renewed, and several are old enough to predate the conditions they govern. A resident asking what is permitted next door is answered by a citywide document written in discretionary language, and that discretion is where public trust in the planning process has been lost. This framework has a Measure 80 on neighbourhood empowerment and, until now, nothing on neighbourhood planning, which is the instrument neighbourhoods have actually been asking for. ACTW: Rebuild the layer beneath the OCP, on a published schedule.

• A rolling Local Area Plan programme: two neighbourhood plans per year, published schedule, every neighbourhood either covered within the term or carrying a dated commitment for the remainder
• Parcel-level clarity as the deliverable: built form, height, and use expectations legible to a resident and to a small builder without hiring a planning consultant, so that Measure 7's speed and Measure 7b's pattern book have a rulebook to be fast against
• Infrastructure-linked capacity stated in each plan using the Measure 53 GIS layers: what the sewer, water, and road network in that neighbourhood can carry, and what must be built before more is added. Growth that outruns its infrastructure is a cost the whole city pays later, and Measure 66c is where it lands
• Written with the neighbourhood, not presented to it: community associations and land-use committees as drafting participants from the outset, delivered through the Measure 80 envelope and subject to the Measure 79 draft-back standard before adoption
• Housing capacity is not reduced by this measure, and we say so at the outset. Each plan must accommodate its share of the Measure 6 targets, including the 25% missing-middle and 20% family-sized composition splits. A Local Area Plan is a statement of where and how, not whether. The instrument has been used elsewhere to mean no. It will not be used that way here
• Published: plans adopted against schedule, and permit-processing time inside plan-covered areas versus uncovered areas, on the Measure 67 dashboard. If the plans do not make approvals faster and more predictable, they are not working and the number will say so

On the alternative. Repealing and replacing the 2025 OCP has been proposed in this election cycle. It is a defensible diagnosis of the same problem, and we decline the remedy: a repeal would consume a term, reopen every settled question, and stall the housing supply Measure 6 depends on. Local Area Plans deliver the parcel-level certainty without the demolition.

Currently: The question is no longer whether to study amalgamation. It has been studied. Residents of both municipalities voted in 2014 to explore the idea, and again in 2018 on whether to spend up to $250,000 establishing a Citizens' Assembly to examine the costs, benefits, and disadvantages. A majority in both municipalities said yes; Victoria, Saanich, and the Province each contributed roughly $250,000. Work resumed after pandemic delay, and the Assembly was established in 2024 with MASS LBP support under Terms of Reference approved by both Councils: 48 randomly selected residents from Victoria and Saanich, meeting for eight full-day sessions between September 2024 and April 2025. It concluded deliberations on April 5, 2025, recommending that the City of Victoria and the District of Saanich amalgamate into a single municipality, and presented its Final Report to Council in July 2025. Where the file then stalled is the part that matters. On July 31, 2025 Council resolved to receive the report and direct staff to work with their Saanich counterparts on a short ballot question. In October 2025 the two mayors jointly requested provincial authorization to hold a referendum during the 2026 general local elections. In April 2026 the Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs replied that a referendum would only be considered following additional analysis of the financial, transitional, and service impacts of amalgamation, and consultation with area First Nations. In July 2026 both Councils settled on placing the same non-binding question on their ballots: "Do you support Saanich and Victoria becoming one municipality?" So on October 17, 2026 residents will answer a question that carries no legal force, on a file where the deliberative work is finished and the outstanding work is analysis the Province asked for over a year ago and neither municipality has delivered. ACTW: Twelve years of consultation has produced a recommendation and a ballot question. What it has not produced is the analysis that would let anyone act on either. We will finish the file rather than restart it.

• Do not re-run the Assembly. It sat, it deliberated, it reported. Convening a second body would insult the 48 residents who did the work and would postpone the answer by another term
• Publish the result against the Minister's conditions within 90 days of the vote — the ballot result by neighbourhood, set beside a plain statement of which of the three impact analyses remain outstanding, what each would cost, and how long each would take
• Commission the outstanding analysis jointly with Saanich, on a published timeline — a financial, transitional, and service-impact study to the standard the Ministry has asked for, procured jointly, with terms of reference published before the contract is awarded
• Begin the First Nations consultation the Minister named through the Measure 1 government-to-government working tables, at the outset rather than as a late-stage sign-off. This is a condition the Province set, not an optional courtesy
• Return to the Province with the completed analysis and a request for a binding referendum, and publish both the request and the reply
• Report quarterly on the performance dashboard (Measure 67) until the file is closed in one direction or the other

On the word "binding." Earlier versions of this measure proposed a binding referendum question drafted by a new Assembly. That is not available. Amalgamation requires provincially conducted referendums in each municipality, and in April 2026 the Province declined to authorize one until its conditions are met. Promising a binding vote that a municipality cannot call would breach this framework's own rule against promising what is not ours to deliver. The honest commitment is to remove the obstacle the Province actually named, and then ask again. On the Citizens' Assembly Council Committee. Victoria's Citizens' Assembly Council Committee, chaired in this term by Coun. Chris Coleman, is the existing body with custody of this file. Its remaining work is implementation follow-through, not fresh deliberation, and this measure is scoped to that.

Track satisfaction, priorities, and safety perceptions across every neighbourhood. Publish results. Adjust course. No governing in the dark.

Currently: Victoria's 2022 general local election drew roughly 38% turnout, about 27,452 votes cast, down from 44.9% in 2018. A council elected by a bit over a third of eligible residents has a legitimacy problem it does not discuss. This framework has a Democratic pillar containing referendums, published dashboards, mandate letters, an Integrity Commissioner, and community surveys, and until now no commitment on the one act of participation that determines who gets to do any of it. For 2026, all four advance voting days — October 7, 13, 14, and 15 — fall on weekdays. ACTW: Turnout is the outcome. Access is the commitment, and access is squarely within municipal control through election bylaws adopted by Council under the Local Government Act.

• More advance voting opportunities, at the statutory maximum where demand supports it, including at least one weekend advance voting day — an obvious gap in the current schedule
• More and better-placed voting places, reviewed against the Measure 82 survey data and turnout by voting place, with placement weighted toward the neighbourhoods that turned out lowest rather than the ones that turned out highest
• Voting where people already are — on post-secondary campuses (per Measure 13c), in large multi-unit residential buildings, and at seniors' residences and care facilities
• Mail ballot access on the broadest basis the statute permits, with a published application process that does not require a reason
• Plain-language voter information in both official languages (per Measure 80b), delivered early, stating what the ballot contains, where and when to vote, and what each office actually does. For 2026 that includes plainly explaining that the ballot elects three CRD Directors and School District 61 trustees as well as mayor and council, and that the amalgamation question is non-binding (per Measure 81)
• A published post-election turnout report within 90 days, by voting place and neighbourhood, so the next council inherits evidence rather than anecdote
• All election bylaw decisions taken at least 12 months before the vote, in open session, so no council of the day is setting the rules of its own re-election in the final year

A target, stated honestly. We will set and publish a turnout target of 50% for the 2030 general local election and report the access measures delivered against it every year. We cannot promise turnout, because turnout is the residents' decision and not ours. We can promise that no resident failed to vote because the City made it inconvenient, and we can be measured on that.