After months of slender meetings over the summer, this week has a full slate of three committee meetings: Planning and Zoning (P&Z), Parks and Rec (P&R), and Protective Services. The full agendas are available at City Hall’s website (until removed after the meetings), but here are some of the highlights:

P&R (Monday night at 5PM)
- a proposal to create a new two-year “Public Art Plan” to increase the number of statuary installed in Langford
- a letter from a resident asking City Hall to consider buying a property at Kelly Rd./Veteran’s Memorial Parkway as a public park

P&Z Committee (Monday night at 7PM)
- There’s a request for a variance to create gates for four gated communities on Bear Mountain (an issue complicated by the fact that three of them have already been built)
Read the rest of this entry »

Langford Council tonight adopted the final (after many false starts previously) of the Spencer Road Interchange financing. In doing so, Langford Council set in motion the borrowing of $9.75 million (reportedly from TD Bank, though TD officials have thus far refused to confirm or deny this).

Perhaps the most controversial aspect is that the deal with the five developers absolves them of paying “Roads Development Cost Charges” (aka Roads DCCs) until January 2020 that would normally have to be paid as they subdivide and develop the properties they have agreed to associate with the interchange project. Read the rest of this entry »

The agenda is up for Monday night’s Council Meeting, 225 pages of it. Highlights include:

- a proposed transmission tower (cell site, FM tower, etc.) policy, responding to calls by CAUSE and others to establish a public consultation policy on new wireless transmission towers;

- the final agreement between the developers and City Hall regarding the financing of the Spencer Road Interchange.

– Steven Hurdle -

Sharon Noble of CAUSE (Citizens Against Unsafe Emissions), who recently held a public meeting on the existing Triangle Mountain transmission towers, and who alerted the public to the proposed new tower on Latoria Road, sent along this note about that proposed new tower coming up for discussion at the forthcoming Langford Council meeting this Monday.

– Steven Hurdle -

I have just been advised that the Latoria cell tower will be on the agenda for the meeting this coming Monday, at 7:00 pm on the 3rd floor of 877 Goldstream.

People have asked to address the council on the need for an antenna consultation policy, Read the rest of this entry »

The most contentious things Tuesday night was the request from a local trucking company to use Goldstream Ave along Langford Lake to approach a concrete plant, as opposed to traveling down the highway to Spencer Road. In the end the request was turned down. However, members of the public pressed the committee on rumours they indicated were making the rounds in their neighbourhood that traffic was going to be diverted off, the highway, onto Goldstream Ave., and then onto the Spencer Road Interchange. Les Bjola indicated that a traffic study had concluded that there would be a limited increase in traffic due to this move, an assertion that met with a sceptical reaction from audience members.

The crux of the issue is how much traffic will be traveling east along the highway (from Goldstream Meadows, Sooke Lake Road, Goldstream Provincial Park, and the Malahat and everything north of it), and then wanting to travel up to Bear Mountain. This is the traffic that the new plan proposes to divert onto Goldstream Ave. Read the rest of this entry »

There are several newsworthy things that came out of tonight’s Transportation and Public Works committee meeting, but the most unexpected was the revelation that the Spencer Road Interchange will now be built in two phases, with many (perhaps all) of the on-ramps and off-ramps now not included in the initial design. This will affect traffic levels on Goldstream Ave along Langford Lake and down towards Leigh Road, as some highway traffic is routed through to Goldstream Ave.

There is no announced timeline for the second phase of the interchange, other than Read the rest of this entry »

The Transportation and Public Works Committee meeting agenda is up on City Hall’s Agendas and Minutes page (please note that agendas are removed once the meeting occurs). Here are the highlights:
Read the rest of this entry »

The current issue of the Goldstream Gazette has an article on the fact that the velodrome infield was being eyed for permanent closure, it also notes that “The decision, if any, was made after the Gazette’s deadline.”

Inside Langford has learned that the velodrome infield in fact has been closed, and this despite the fact that it’s Read the rest of this entry »

Previously Inside Langford reported on the possible closing of the Peatt/Station/Phipps intersection for four months during construction. The intersection is now closed and will remain so until Read the rest of this entry »

An important update to this article is available here.

The last Langford Council meeting dealth with an interesting issue: incomplete landscaping by developers on affordable housing units by some developers.

This had previously been discussed at the Affordable Housing Committee, and it had been a racuous discussion at times. Originally City Hall staff had prepared a report recommending a $10,000 bond be posted by developers when creating an affordable housing unit, fully refundable once the landscaping was completed. Committee member and realtor Colleen Milne, however, had argued Read the rest of this entry »