Inside Langford

The City of Langford’s Protective Services Committee is meeting tomorrow (Tuesday) night. On the agends is a presentation on “The Fresno (California) Experience” by the Fire Chief of the Langford Volunteer Fire Department. The City of Fresno’s fire department has teamed up with ours to assist in training Afghan fire fighters, to national and international recognition.

Also on the agenda are quarterly updates for the RCMP, Fire Safety, and on Community Outreach Prevention & Education Program from the Pacific Centre Family Services Association. Finally, the West Shore RCMP will provide a verbal report on “Trends and Activities”.

The Protective Services Committee at Langford City Hall takes place at 5PM on the third floor in Council Chambers Tuesday. The agenda is available until the meeting at the City of Langford’s website until the meeting, and is available until and after the meeting on Inside Langford in the FILES area of the left sidebar under “09-11-24 Protective Services agenda”.

There are several interesting elements in the Parks, Recreation, Culture, and Beautification Committee (PRCBC) meeting tomorrow night (agenda availalble at the City of Langford’s website, and on the Inside Langford “Files” section in the left sidebar under the filename “09-11-23 PRCBC agenda”).

At the last Parks and Rec. meeting a member of the committee asked Jason Parks, head of Langford’s Parks Department, whether Jason had had been contacted by the Ministry of Environment about the Langford Lake aerator. Mr. Parks did acknowledge that he had received a call, and that the Provincial Ministry of Environment reportedly believed Read the rest of this entry »

There were several fire trucks and ambulances at the Jesken Aerie, an assisted living residence on 817 Goldstream Ave this afternoon, suggesting there was a fire. A call to the front desk of the facility to confirm this got voicemail, but it appeared a large number of the facility’s residents were downstairs in a common area, and a large number of emergency responders appeared to be on the scene.

The Jesken Aerie is a 60 unit facility run by M’akola Housing Society, and has the involvement of Independent Living BC and VIHA (Vancouver Island Health Authority). It was constructed in 2005 and features a West Coast Aboriginal theme.

At tonight’s Langford Council Meeting, citing strong community opposition to the original 14 storey proposal, the developer’s time and money, and city hall staff’s time and effort, Lillian Szpak (representing the Planning, Zoning, and Affordable Housing Committee) recommended that the developer come back with a new proposal of 6-8 storeys.

The proposed development would have resulted in a 14 storey building across the street from Ruth King Elementary. At present, 2771 Jacklin is an apartment building named “O Rancho Velho.” Peter Dosanjh and his wife Michelle had proposed to Read the rest of this entry »

The agenda for tomorrow’s Langford Council meeting (Monday night) has a proposal to bring in an agricultural strategy for Langford’s Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) land. This is being done at the behest of the Agricultural Land Commission (ALC), which is charged with deciding whether several proposals for removing land from the ALR in Langford are going to go ahead or not. Most ALR land removals have been forwarded to the ALC with Langford’s approval, and a few without approval or disapproval by our City Hall.

There are also two proposals to dispose of parkland that City Hall received as part of previous developments. If the proposals goes ahead, and a buyer for the land is found, then the money would be held in a fund to purchase parkland elsewhere in the municipality.

The agenda with these, and other, details about tomorrow’s meeting are available in the agenda, which is available Read the rest of this entry »

Once again this coming Saturday is the PMD Depot, 10AM – 1PM, in the Belmont High School parking lot off Jacklin Road.

It is quicker for everyone, including you, if you pre-sort your recyclables into these categories:

Read the rest of this entry »

Dozens of people choose to get Inside Langford’s posts emailed to them every day (when there is new content, no email is generated on a day without a news post). We’ve enhanced Inside Langford’s email content, with the email’s subject line now containing the title of the latest post (and a note if there are additional posts that day) to make it easier for people to find the stories that interest them.

While you’ve been able to receive Inside Langford posts by emai for over a year, you haven’t been able to receive reader comments that way. The reader comments are the most popular feature of Inside Langford, so by popular demand you can now also subscribe to Inside Langford reader comments by email, receiving an email with a summary of a day’s comments (if there are no comments on a given day, no email will be generated). Click here to subscribe to Inside Langford Reader Comments by email.

- Steven Hurdle -

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Several articles (likely four or five) will result from Monday night’s Planning, Zoning, and Affordable Housing (PZ&A) committee meeting (the agenda for which is no longer available on the City of Langford’s website, but will remain available on Inside Langford in the Files area on the left sidebar under the name “09-11-09 PZ&A agenda”).

I have published the first article already on Vibrant Victoria, and is about something that wasn’t even on the published agenda for the meeting (having been added to the agenda when the meeting commenced):
City of Langford opens affordable housing eligiblity to armed forces

The remaining articles will be on Inside Langford in the coming days. There will likely be a total of three posts about the two proposed developments on the PZ&A agenda: one about the 65 unit Hazelwood/Englewood development in South Langford, and probably two about the 14 storey proposed seniors facility at 2711 Jacklin Road (though, as you’ll read in the articles, there is a lot more to this development than “seniors facility” suggests).

Also, a reminder that Langford City Hall is closed tomorrow for Remembrance Day.

- Steven Hurdle -

In a comment yesterday, “JH getting caught up on the GG” said:

I was suurprised to read:

Langford Seeks Sportsplex Funds in Wed., Nov. 4th GG p. A5

http://www.bclocalnews.com/vancouver_island_south/goldstreamgazette/news/67254962.html

I thought the deal with the Federal infrastructure stimulus spending money was “shovel-ready” projects, where the local government already had their 1/3 portion in place, would get funding. So why is Mayor Stew Young quoted as saying, “the City is trying to get future facility operator Xcalibur Bowling to pay $4.46 million to build the bowling centre.” And Councillor Lanny Seaton suggests, “If Xcalibur doesn’t come up with the funding, the City will need to go through a counter-petition or referendum process to get public permission to borrow the money.”

Since when does the City of Langford need new money, and possibly borrowed money, to complete a project that been on the books for at least 2 years?!

Once I figured out that the “GG” in “JH getting caught up on the GG” referred to “Goldstream Gazette” and not the “Governor General”, I was quite intriqued by the comment. I’ve converted it into a post because I suspect it may trigger other comments, and because “Reader News” doesn’t do it justice since the reader was making an (from what I can tell quite astute) comment. I too understood that all projects had to be shovel ready both in the sense of legislative and zoning approval in place, and the local portion of the funds already in hand and allocated, but I must admit I hadn’t made the connection when reading the Gazette article. Thank you for your comment, JH.

Vibrant Victoria has asked me to do a few articles a month for them, and the first results of this collaboration are now available on their website:

Honouring Canada’s veterans, one vote at a time (editorial)

Threat of arrests halts annual invasive species removal on Skirt Mountain (news story)

The first discusses reform at the local government level, the second is a news story on today’s proposed Broom Bash that was cancelled at the last minute.