Oaklands — Victoria 2030 | A City That Works

Where things stand (2026)

Childcare waitlists run years, not months. Families plan careers around them.
The missing-middle homes Oaklands is perfectly built for aren't getting built: 61 permits city-wide in 2024 against a target of 150.
Community centre programs fill within minutes of registration opening.
Hillside Avenue is an arterial running through a neighbourhood full of young children. Whether its crossings are spaced and timed for them is exactly what the framework's published pedestrian standard is designed to answer, block by block, with a count rather than an assertion.

Who speaks for Oaklands, and who doesn't. The city-wide numbers here, including the 61-versus-150 permit figure, are sourced in the full program. The local observations are this framework's read, not a survey of residents. The Oaklands Community Association speaks for this neighbourhood; this page does not. Corrections welcome and published.

Victoria 2030: a Tuesday in September

Drop-off is a 5-minute walk, because the childcare space opened on the school site, in the agreement the City and the school district finally signed. On the corner where the old bungalow sold, a fourplex from the pattern book went up in a single season: a local builder, a permit in weeks, and a design the street actually likes.

Crossing Hillside stopped being the scary part of the school run 2 years ago, when the crossings were rebuilt to the new spacing standard. And fall registration at the community centre didn't require the 7 AM refresh war, because program capacity finally grew with the neighbourhood.

What the framework does here

Family services and childcare

The SD61 standing agreement (M13d): childcare on school sites, joint-use gyms and fields, safe routes to school as a program. Childcare funding is provincial; the City's role is space, sites and advocacy (M12), and the framework says exactly that.
School food (M13).

Missing-middle infill, done well

The pattern book (M7b) with an automatic fast lane, published permit clocks (M7), and lower development cost charges for rental buildings (M8), the per-home fees builders pay the City. This is the fix for the 61-versus-150 failure: cost and delay, not zoning.
Design standards (M43) so infill looks like Oaklands.

Parks, programs, safe streets

The crossing-spacing standard and walking-speed signals (M20b) on Hillside and the school routes. 30 km/h residential (M39).
Canopy planting and free seedlings (M61).
Voting places weighted toward the lowest-turnout neighbourhoods (M82b), because a neighbourhood of young renters and busy parents deserves a ballot box it can reach.

Also lands here

Parks kept to a standard (M49) and a pet-friendly parks standard (M25c) with waste stations and water at every major park.
Drug-use buffer zones around child-focused spaces (M33b): schools, playgrounds and sports fields posted and consistently enforced. In a neighbourhood this full of young children, this is the measure parents ask about first.
Climate Friendly Homes (M60) with published uptake, for the 1940s and 50s housing stock most Oaklands families are heating.
Outdoor spaces activated year-round (M51), so the parks and the community centre grounds work in February and not only in July.
Proper night lighting (M37) on the school routes, with no cameras anywhere (M30).

What it means for your household. Council raised residential taxes 9.34% in 2026, about $323 on a median $1,015,000 home, and called it 7.28%. For a young family with a mortgage and childcare costs, $323 is a real number. The glide path (M66) caps the residential rate at 6.5%, then 5%, then roughly 3.5%, and Year 1 has to hit it without cancelling the debt payment or raiding the parking reserve, which is how the current council got to its number. The Household Bill (M66d) publishes tax plus every utility as one figure with a five-year view. Over-collection returns as a credit (M66b).

The first 18 months

SD61 agreement signed, first childcare-site assessment on a school property.
Pattern book published with Oaklands-scale examples, fast lane live.
Hillside crossing audit done, first rebuilds funded from the existing walking line.

How you'll measure it

Childcare spaces created on public sites. Pattern-book permits issued and their clock times. Crossing injuries on Hillside. Program registration capacity. Quarterly (M67), annually (M82).

Straight goods: childcare operating dollars are provincial. The City's deliverables are sites, speed, and the agreement that unlocks school land, all already costed.

How you hold us to it

Everything on this page is reported on the same public cadence as the rest of the framework: the quarterly dashboard (M67), the annual community survey (M82), and the indicator library that says what each number is, where it comes from and which way it should move.

See the KPI library → · See the 12 Commitments scorecard →

Residents overwrite this page. Neighbourhood empowerment (M80), the annual survey (M82) and the Local Area Plan schedule are the standing mechanisms for that. This is the framework's opening read of local priorities, not the last word. If something here is wrong about your street, tell us and it gets corrected in the open, the same way every other correction in this framework has been.