by George Le Masurier | Jan 17, 2018
Already overcapacity, Comox Valley Hospital planners overlooked whole departments and made assumptions on capacity and the new iHealth software that have worsened the bed shortage and added to worker stress, overtime and low morale.
This is the second in a series of articles about problems surfacing at the new Comox Valley Hospital. Future articles will look at how the change in culture and procedures and the lack of residential care beds in the Comox Valley has contributed to these issues.
UPDATE: This article has been updated to correct the original report that the hospital cost $350 million.
When the new Comox Valley Hospital opened in October 2017, patients and the public were welcomed into a bright, spacious and high tech facility.
The $331.7 million CVH is 2.82 times larger than St. Joseph’s General Hospital, and took nearly a decade to plan and construct.
Comox Valley and Campbell River health care workers devoted thousands of hours to planning the new CVH and the also new Campbell River Hospital.
But just three months and a few weeks into operation at CVH, some compromises and oversights made in the planning process are showing up as operational inefficiencies and contributing to a serious decline in staff morale.
Entire departments were overlooked, and faculty assumptions made on hospital capacity and number of beds caused physicians and other department leaders to write letters of complaint about the planning process to Vancouver Health Authority executives in Victoria.
VIHA responded by hiring a new planning firm, but it was too late to change many decisions already set in stone.
A two-month investigation by Decafnation has found that that these issues and an accumulation of other major and minor issues, rooted in the planning process itself, has frustrated staff who already feel overworked, and has cost taxpayers excessive overtime expenses.
A sampling of design problems
Here’s a snapshot selection of current problems related to hospital design and planning, according to sources from CVH medical and support staffs, including physicians, department leaders and front-line workers.
All sources spoke on conditions of anonymity.
Overcapacity — The new hospital was built with 153 beds for patients, but yonly budgeted for 129 beds. The extra, unbudgeted beds were planned to open over the next eight years as the community grew.
But on the day the it opened, the hospital was already overcapacity.
On Jan. 9, CVH had 166 admitted patients for 129 beds. On Jan. 10, 2018, it had 168, already 39 more patients than opened or available acute care beds.
Because the operating budget for staffing was set during the planning process for a far lower number of patients, overcapacity equates to understaffing, overwork and unexpected overtime costs.
The cause of the problem is obvious: roughly 46 of those acute care beds are occupied by patients requiring an alternate level of care (ALC). These are mostly elderly patients who no longer need acute care, but for whom VIHA doesn’t have available beds in residential care.
This is not a new problem. St. Joseph’s General hospital suffered for years from overcapacity, and a high number of patients in acute care beds who would be more appropriately served in residential care.
During the planning and construction phases, the ALC and overcapacity issues were raised in public meetings. And the CVH design and consulting firms gave assurances that by the time the hospital was built, there would be adequate residential care beds in the Comox Valley.
But last summer VIHA abruptly pulled back its 2016 Request For Proposal for 70 new/replacement residential care beds, and has not reissued it. A new RFP is expected sometime early this year, pushing the timeline for additional residential care beds out two or more years.
The Comox Valley Hospital has an ability to temporarily increase room capacity as necessary, according to Dr. Jeff Beselt, VIHA’s Executive Medical Director for Geography 1, which includes Campbell River, Courtenay, Comox and Mount Waddington/Strathcona.
“When we are experiencing increased patient volumes, we open overflow areas – this is usual practice when Island Health hospitals experience high patient volumes,” Beselt said.
“We encourage everyone who is unsure of whether they need to come to hospital to connect with their primary care provider, go to a walk-in clinic or call HealthLink BC at 811 to speak to a medical professional,” he said. But Beselt added that if anyone thinks they need urgent or emergency care, they should go to the Emergency Department.
“Depending on urgency, there could be a longer wait due to the high patient volumes,” he said.
FURTHER READING: The differences between acute care and residential (or long-term) care
Floor plan vs. staffing — The hospital’s design is so spacious that most people can’t tell the building is overcapacity.
That looks good, but the design requires medical and support staff to walk further every day, and those increased distances make almost every task take longer than it did at St. Joseph’s. As a result, employees have less time in their day to do their jobs.
In other words, the sheer size of the new hospital has unintentionally created its own staffing shortage.
Food service workers, for example, are now walking up to 15 km per day where they walked fewer than five km at St. Joseph’s. It sounds like that should be a benefit, except food service workers are pushing tall carts heavy with food trays, and many of the mostly female food workers are small in stature.
CVH has only installed traffic mirrors at some corridor intersections, so staff cannot see all adjoining hallways. St. Joseph’s had nearly 200 mirrors. At every intersection without mirrors, food workers have to stop their carts, check for oncoming traffic, then get the carts re-started and maneuver around corners.
This has contributed to delays in meal deliveries to patients, and has the potential to cause musculoskeletal injuries for food service workers.
There are yellow sticky notes on CVH walls where additional traffic mirrors are needed. But staff has been told the hospital ran out of money to complete the project.
Other departments have similar issues that apparently weren’t taken into account when staffing levels and budgets were decided.
For example, the new medical imaging department is three times further from the emergency room (ER) than it used to be, so hospital porters are regularly needed to move patients. But the porter staff is slim and their work takes longer because of the longer distances they now travel.
This means medical radiation technologists are often waiting for the next patient, which slows down the system and contributes to longer ER waiting times.
And, in a separate issue, patients are getting lost trying to find the medical imaging department, which also slows down the patient flow. In some cases, say our sources, they are waiting an hour for a x-ray that should have taken 15 minutes.
The spacious floor plan has had other unintended consequences, too.
In the Cancer Care unit, nurses now have more room to work around patients. But the treatment chairs are spaced so far apart from each other that patients can no longer see or talk to each other. The socializing that many patients enjoyed during their long treatments has been unintentionally eliminated.
Pre-risk assessments ignored — Based on experiences in other hospitals and public buildings, Worksafe B.C. and VIHA conducted pre-occupation risk assessments of all CVH departments and identified issues that required mitigation.
But in many cases, our sources say, the required post-occupation risk assessments have not been done, and many corrections identified in the pre-occupation risk assessments have also not been done.
For example, Worksafe B.C. has already flagged CVH for an issue identified in the Intensive Care Unit pre-occupation risk assessment. At St. Joseph’s, the ICU was 400 square feet in one room with a four-bed telemetry ward attached. Staff shared the samespace and were able to easily and safely cover each others breaks, etc.
At CVH, the ICU is 1,200 square feet in four private rooms. The telemetry is essentially it’s own unit. Staff can no longer cover for each other safely, but staffing has remained the same, despite staff suggestions and concerns.
Because they are two separate units, staff suggested they be staffed as such for safe patient care.
Worksafe B.C. asked CVH for its post-occupancy risk assessment (what actions had been taken to address this previously identified risk issue), but CVH hadn’t done one.
Health records overlooked — The new hospital was consciously designed without a room to store its voluminous health records, which are now taking up space meant for other purposes.
The hospital was planned to be a paperless workplace based on the anticipated introduction of the controversial iHealth software, which didn’t exist at the time and has subsequently stalled in Nanaimo due to physician complaints.
Hospital planners decided to solve the problem by storing paper records off-site. Then they changed their minds and had to scramble to accommodate both records and staff in a building with no designated space for either.
Health records are currently stored in what was planned to be a much-anticipated staff workout room. A new building, possibly a portable, will be required to house the records until they are no longer needed, if ever.
Meanwhile, the staff that transcribes health records, does data reconciliation and coding are working out of unopened acute care patient rooms using repurposed, non-ergonomic desks and chairs.
How these and many other issues arose can be traced back to the original planning process.
Flawed planning at the root
Back in 2010, the Comox Strathcona Regional Hospital District Board, comprised of local elected officials, provided VIHA with $3 million to expedite preparation of a business plan for submission to Treasury Board.
The contribution was made on the condition that it would be part of the board’s 40 percent capital contribution to the construction project, according to Charlie Cornfield, of Campbell River, the current CSRHD board chair.
“Treasury always requires a business plan to accompany a project before they will give project approval,” Cornfield said. “We funded the business case. The actual case preparation, hiring etc. was done by VIHA.
“Having said that, we were involved in determining the number of beds, and services provided at each hospital.”
VIHA used the funds to hire a dozen planning consultants, one of whom was a “functional facility programmer,” who had no major new hospital experience.
The functional programmer’s job is described by International Health Consultants as:
“The functional plan of a clinical department, hospital or other healthcare facility establishes the portfolio of services to be offered and the dimensioning of the structures needed to carry out these services.
Therefore, the functional plan forms the basis for any healthcare infrastructure project.”
FURTHER READING: What is a functional facility programmer?
The hospital planning process involved representatives from four main groups: Campbell River Hospital (a VIHA site), St. Joseph’s, VIHA management and PartnershipsBC’s contractors.
Some of those who attended the meetings to plan and design the new hospital say that VIHA personnel from sites other than CRH were rarely at the table. Most meetings were attended by CRH, St. Joseph’s and the private contractors hired by PartershipsBC, most often the functional programmer.
The initial conceptual drawings of the new hospital that were released in June 2011 contained numerous errors, say our sources: for example, nuclear medicine was missing, the pharmacy at Campbell River was shown as a tiny room, health records storage was not included and radiology was given a wall of windows (the processing and reading of x-rays require minimum light levels).
After the B.C. Treasury Board approved the business plan for both hospitals, which had been kept secret from employees and department leaders, and the Request For Qualifications was issued, it was discovered that entire departments such as the laboratory and pharmacy at CVH had been forgotten. Amendments were issued.
According to people who attended a September 2012 meeting of both hospitals’ department leaders, the planning consultants said the hospital would be designed as if it would never be overcapacity, and that planning for 2025 capacity and growth was sufficient.
Our sources say planners were challenged at the meeting on the short window to reach full capacity of 153 beds for a major publicly-funded facility.
The consultants also said at the September 2012 meeting, according to our sources, that the hospital was being designed as acute care facility only, not as an outpatient clinic.
That design premise ignored an important health care trend to limit overnight stays, and a St. Joseph’s study (related to paid parking issues) that 97 percent of patient and visitor vehicles in its parking lot were there for reasons that did not include an overnight bed; e.g. x-rays, physio, day surgery, endoscopy procedures, etc.
That same month, the first equipment lists for each department were circulated to department leaders and were found to be “unbelievably inaccurate,” according to a source.
When the business plan was finally shared with department leaders in December 2012, more errors came to light. For example, there was no oxygen or suction resuscitation equipment in the treadmill testing room, the laboratory was given a bedpan washer, for which there was no need, but no staff bathroom, and more.
At this point, several St. Joseph’s and Campbell River physicians and department leaders became sufficiently alarmed to send separate letters to VIHA executives expressing strong concerns about what they saw as a flawed planning process.
Shortly after receiving the letters in 2013, VIHA announced that it would conduct a “peer review” of the facilities plan. Shortly after that, VIHA issued a tender for a new facilities programmer.
But the Treasury Board’s approval had locked down the building’s size, number of inpatient beds and the total budget, nearly eliminating any changes to most of the facility’s original plan.
When a new planning firm was appointed, it resigned from the job in less than 24 hours. A third firm was subsequently found to finish the job.
So, in January of 2013, hospital planners learned that due to miscalculations in the original plan, which could not be changed after Treasury’s approval, many departments had to shrink their floorspace to order to make room for the undersized or forgotten departments. And this set off a series of inter-departmental battles for space.
Now what?
Many of the problems at CVH would be diminished, if not eliminated, by moving the roughly 46 ALC patients into residential care beds. But that’s not going to happen anytime soon.
Tim Orr, VIHA’s director of residential services, told Decafnation that a new RFP for residential care beds in the Comox Valley will be reissued sometime early this year.
“Island Health is committed to improving access to community-based facility care for seniors across Vancouver Island,” he said.
Next: How the change in culture and procedures from St. Joseph’s to Comox Valley Hospital has has affected staffing and patient care.
by George Le Masurier | Jan 15, 2018
This is the first article about problems surfacing at the new Comox Valley Hospital. Future articles will look at issues arising from the planning process, the change in culture and how the lack of residential care beds in the Comox Valley has contributed to these problems.
UPDATE: This article has been updated to correct the estimated cost of the new hospital originally reported as $350 million. And also to correct that VIHA does not lease the building from Tandem Health, which manages the facility, but that it pays a monthly management fee, and that while St. Joseph’s General Hospital was frequently overcapacity it was not on the hospital’s last day due to an intentional effort to reduce the number of patients prior to the move.
The new $331.7 million Comox Valley Hospital, which sits atop Ryan Road hill on 13.3 acres, looks like a shiny symbol of regional progress and modernity.
But inside the three-month old building, the working environment is not as pretty.
Questionable decisions and compromises made during the planning process have created operational inefficiencies that, when combined with a dramatic change in management culture, have caused a decline in staff morale during the hospital’s first three months of operation.
And yet, not all staff and physicians have had exclusively “unfavorable experiences” at the new hospital.
Our sources say they generally recognize the hospital’s many improvements over St. Joseph’s General Hospital; among them, more comfortable patient rooms, a quieter and brighter environment, leading edge technology and uncluttered hallways. And, it’s new.
But during a two-month investigation, involving nearly two dozen interviews, Decafnation has learned there are concerns about some operations at the new hospital and whether the facility is sufficient to service a growing and aging Comox Valley population for very long.
Our sources say they are not just unhappy about their personal working conditions. They are distressed over the failure of Vancouver Island Health Authority to staff the hospital sufficiently and the excessive amount of money being spent on overtime.
The hospital has been significantly overcapacity since it opened, as St. Joseph’s frequently was during its last years of operation. Yet, CVH was designed and budgeted (staffed) as if it would never have more than the projected number of inpatients.
It appears that planning teams did not take into account the increased size of the hospital and the advance to single patient rooms in the units and the Intensive Care Unit when the budget and staffing levels were set. Those changes require even more staff given the same workload, our sources say.
Overcapacity has caused, among other issues, the cancellation of at least two surgeries, a temporary shut-down of the emergency room and forced VIHA to use areas of the hospital that it had not planned to open for years.
And that appears to have increased the stress felt by many hospital employees, from food service workers to clerical staff to nurses.
Staff say they are frustrated that the hospital’s technology has them “locked down,” making them unable to help out different departments during peak periods, as they used to do at St. Joseph’s. They have concerns about patient care, and are disillusioned by what they see as a lost opportunity to have built a better facility for the community.
And they’re angry that management has not listened carefully enough to front-line workers, or addressed the issues they have raised, in some cases going back years into the planning process.
Almost everyone spoke on conditions of anonymity because they fear retribution from VIHA management.
One support staff member described the CVH working environment as worse than the “toxic” atmosphere reported at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital by an independent analysis in November.
FURTHER READING: Culture at Nanaimo hospital is “toxic,” report
“Every day, I meet someone crying in a hallway,” said the source, who is a current CVH employee. “We’d be worse than Nanaimo (hospital). I’d say 90 percent of staff are unhappy with the new hospital.”
VIHA and local elected officials have a different point of view.
Stressing the positives
Charlie Cornfield, of Campbell River and chair of the Comox Strathcona Regional Hospital District, which has no operational responsibility for CVH, but funds 40 percent of hospital capital costs, said the new hospital “is as good as it gets.”
“It’s quite reasonable with a project of the size and complexity of CVH to have hiccups,” he said. “It could take years to work these out. Give the system a chance.”
MORE INFO: Comox Stathcona Regional Hospital District
Dr. Jeff Beselt, VIHA’s Executive Medical Director for Geography 1, which includes Campbell River, Courtenay, Comox and Mount Waddington/Strathcona, said workers in other island hospitals are envious of the newsness and cutting edge technology and other features at CVH.
“We have an amazing hospital that we can grow into for decades,” he said. “We have to learn how to use what we have. It’s a long journey.”
Beselt chose not to characterize staff morale as good or bad.
“It varies on who you speak with,” he said. “It takes some people longer to adapt … the process was exhilarating and draining at the same time, for all of us.”
Beselt said the hospital has done non-compulsory “pulse check surveys” to measure staff morale, but would not disclose their results. And he emphasized that “staff well-being is very important to us.”
He acknowledged that supporting staff through such a dramatic change is “a hard thing to do well,” but he said VIHA is making a strong effort. And he recognizes that some people, especially those who came over from St. Joseph’s are “really hurting.”
Cultural change
Our sources also recognized that adapting to new processes and a new employer, which they say is less flexible and so far deaf to their concerns, has exacerbated the operational problems.
St. Joseph’s Hospital was smaller and run like a family or a locally-owned business. CVH is nearly three times larger (428,683 square feet versus 151,975 square feet) and is run like a large multi-jurisdictional corporation, including many layers of management.
Our sources say a major factor in the hospital’s low morale is that staff feel like they’re under a gag order, which prevents them from working through their grief to acceptance of a new workplace reality.
“We feel like we’re not allowed to say we’re unhappy or talk about things we think are being done wrong,” said one medical staff and a former St. Joe’s employee. “And senior leadership — who are probably also exhausted from this project — are not willing to listen.”
Beselt said CVH management is committed to listening. He noted that its newly-formed Quality Operations Committee brings front-line worker issues to hospital leaders.
Several sources said crying was a daily routine. A sign was once posted in a private nook of the building that read: “Crying section: 15 minute limit.” It was a reference to the number of people wanting to use the space.
P3 versus public
And, there’s another factor affecting discontent at the new hospital
St. Joseph’s was a public and denominational hospital, not directly run by VIHA. Comox Valley Hospital is a public-private partnership (P3).
FURTHER READING: North Island Hospital’s project
The P3 arrangement means that VIHA provides the operating funds for the hospital. The building itself is managed by Tandem Health — VIHA pays a monthly fee for this service to Tandem — the private partner, which is itself a consortium of companies. One of those is Honeywell, which is responsible for the building and everything from signs on the walls to safety mirrors for navigation in the hallways.
The public-private partnerships (P3) at CVH has created confusion and frustration, and intensified the amount of change for former St. Joseph’s employees.
For example, simple maintenance issues were previously resolved in-house. Now tasks like getting light bulbs redirected or dimmed are described as an exercise in futility, as hospital-employed maintenance staff has been decimated.
Private companies are responsible for maintenance on the equipment or services they provide, but are routinely slow to respond. And staff is unclear about who to call to fix problems and who is responsible.
Will all of these issues naturally work themselves out over time? Are they just hiccups, or imaginary issues conjured by former St. Joseph’s Hospital employees too set in their ways?
It’s difficult to determine which problems are simple growing pains or a natural resistance to change, which are systemic and which need immediate attention and which can wait.
But all of our sources agreed, the accumulation of scores of large and small problems has created a staff morale problem, not to mention the physical strains of overwork, working short-staffed and excessive overtime.
Next: A sampling of problems, large and small, and how the planning process went awry with errors and compromises.
by George Le Masurier | Jan 10, 2018
The Town of Comox has finally confessed that it inappropriately spent funds from the Hamilton Mack Laing trust.
At its Dec. 6, 2017, meeting, the Town Council approved paying $103,000 into the trust, a sum that town staff has classified as misspent prior to 2001, plus interest those funds would have earned.
In a report to Town Council, Comox Chief Administrative Officer Richard Kanigan characterized the misuse of funds as:
“These expenditures may not have been in strict accordance with the terms of the trust, which required the town to use the funds to convert Shakesides into a museum.”
It was an understatement. Some of those expenditures included repairing the Brooklyn Creek stairs, which aren’t even located on Mack Laing’s property.
It’s the first time the town has admitted spending Laing’s trust funds improperly.
And it’s unclear whether the confession is simply posturing for an upcoming B.C. Supreme Court hearing, or a genuine acknowledgement that the town mishandled a binding trust agreement with an important literary and ornithological benefactor.
In any case, the admission makes a start toward reparations for 36 years of disrespecting the Last Wishes of one of the community’s most widely admired citizens.
But not everyone agrees the town has fully owned up to the totality of expenditures disallowed by the trust. And there are other unresolved questions about the town’s accounting and handling of the Laing trust.
These issues are raised in at least a half-dozen affidavits that oppose the town’s court application to tear down Laing’s house.
Mack Laing vs. Town of Comox
Laing was a prolific naturalist, photographer, writer, artist and noted ornithologist, whose work from the Comox waterfront since 1922 earned him worldwide recognition.
Prior to his death, Laing left his waterfront property and his second home (named Shakesides) to the town. After his death, he left the town the residue cash from his estate “for the improvement and development of my home as a natural history museum,” and to support its ongoing operation.
But nearly 36 years later, the town has done nothing to satisfy Laing’s last wishes.
Instead, the town applied to the court last February to alter the terms of Laing’s Last Will, namely to demolish his house and use his trust fund to construct a viewing platform.
To finance the project, the town now proposes to use the $103,000 of misspent money, $75,000 previously allocated, and the balance remaining in the Laing Trust, estimated at around $70,000.
Any money left over would be placed in a reserve fund to maintain the new platform.
But to critics, such as the Mack Laing Heritage Society, the town’s $178,000 deposit into the trust is a hollow gesture because the town had already committed itself to building a viewing platform in its court filing to tear the house down.
The town appears to be simply moving the money it has promised to spend, if the court allows, from general revenue into the Laing Trust. Not so, says the town. They maintain their action was to make Laing’s trust whole.
Accounting disparities
According to several affidavits submitted to the Attorney General’s office, which is charged with defending trusts made to public institutions, the town’s calculation of misspent funds doesn’t square with its own ledger entries.
Gordon Olsen, who has filed one of those affidavits, was a friend of Laing. He says the documents he has compiled show the town is “way short of making the Laing trust whole.” But he said the details of his claim is in the AG’s hands and will ultimately be made public.
In 2016, Olsen hired a Campbell River accounting firm to review publicly available financial records of the Town of Comox. The review showed the trust fund should be worth in excess of $480,000 today. The firm used figures released by the town and used conservatively calculated interest rates.
The independent analysis suggested that if the town had immediately invested all of Laing’s bequeathed cash plus the income it derived from renting the house for 30-some years, it would have nearly a half-million dollars in the trust fund.
Olsen believes the great disparity in accounting demands a court-ordered forensic audit of the town’s financial records.
A forensic audit is a specialization within the accounting profession to determine negligence or other financial irregularities for use as evidence in court. Most major accounting firms have a forensic auditing department.
The Attorney General’s office doesn’t discuss active cases.
In response to an enquiry from Decafnation about the number and content of affidavits it has received in this case, the Ministry of Attorney General sent this statement:
“The Legal Services Branch of the Ministry of Attorney General is responsible for this case. Applications made to the B.C. Supreme Court will be decided by the Court. As this case is before the courts, we cannot comment further.”
Comox Mayor Paul Ives declined to comment for this story, referring enquiries to town staff.
by George Le Masurier | Jan 4, 2018
Courtenay City Council appears to have opened the door for businesses to erect electronic message boards, despite unfavorable public opinion of digital signage.
At its Nov. 20 meeting, council defied its existing sign bylaw and approved a variance for an electronic message board for Prime Chophouse, a restaurant visible, but not accessible, from Ryan Road.
Chophouse owner Kory Wagstaff told council people have difficulty finding his restaurant, which is threatening the viability of his business. He said his location makes it a challenge to stay open for lunch and the business itself may not be sustainable without help from the city.
Wagstaff argued that digital signs are more representative of “the style of the Comox Valley.”
The current sign bylaw prohibits electronic message boards except for institutional uses. The Lewis Park Recreation Centre has one, as does St. George’s Church and Mark Isfeld High School.
Prior to 2013, the city disallowed all such signs. But the parents association at Isfeld High School lobbied council to amend its bylaw after they had raised the funds for an electronic sign.
A staff member told council that the city receives frequent requests from private businesses for electronic signs, but rejects them because during the 2013 public hearings for the Isfeld amendment, people were clearly opposed to them. Staff said people don’t like the esthetics and the added illumination of digital signs.
Council member David Frisch moved to reject the Chophouse application for a development variance permit, because “The city … sign bylaw was passed in 2013 to ensure that the character and visual appearance of our community would be maintained, and that traffic safety would not be compromised.”
Frisch’s motion was supported by councilors Doug Hillian and Rebecca Lennox.
But they lost the battle to Mayor Larry Jangula and councilors Erik Eriksson, Bob Wells and Mano Theos. Their support seemed to be based on the Chophouse’s support of local charities, that it’s a “great restaurant” and its location has access problems.
The most surprising support came from Councilor Eriksson, who has announced his candidacy for mayor in this fall’s elections. He had previously opposed the electronic sign at the Lewis Centre, but supported this variance application.
“I support this … it’s a great restaurant,” he said.
Eriksson later said via email that “ Lighted digital message signs are becoming more commonplace, where appropriate … I think the applicant made a good case for a variance ….”
Only Mayor Jangula addressed the key issue of whether council was opening a Pandora’s Box.
In an emailed statement to Decafnation, Jangula said, “During the meeting I commented that this was a unique problem requiring a unique solution. This is not a precedent for other electronic signs in Courtenay, and there are no plans to update the sign bylaw at this time.”
“Prime Chophouse has some unusual access problems,” Jangula said. “Council acknowledged that the lack of access off Ryan Road, which is under MoT jurisdiction, has been a challenge for this business.”
But Councilor Hillian worried about precedent.
“There’ll be no rationale for refusing any future (similar) requests,” he said.
Lennox told Decafnation, “While I have compassion for the inconvenience people have when trying to locate the entrance to The Prime Chop House, I didn’t support the resolution.
“I feel the community has been very clear about it’s hopes for modest signs without illumination and felt the applicant could have used a traditional sign to convey the same information,” she said.
Frisch, who moved the motion to reject the private business sign, said electronic message boards are allowed at schools, churches, rec centres and other public assembly locations.
“I believe this reflects the general will of our community and I support the idea that too much signage detracts from our natural surroundings, while providing limited benefits to our citizens,” Frisch said. “I am always open to revisit and discuss our bylaws and would consider variances as well. However, the benefits of changed and variances must be in line with our community values and must not simply be for the sole benefit of a few.”
Lennox and Frisch offered solutions other than an electronic sign for the Chophouse dilemma, but Jangula shot them down saying the sign bylaw wouldn’t permit those concepts.
But, in fact, those alternate solutions could have been permitted by a variance granted by council, which it then proceeded to grant the business owner.
by George Le Masurier | Jan 1, 2018
On January 1 every year, the Decafnation presents its annual collective Book Report. Thanks to everyone who took the time to share short reviews of books they enjoyed during the past year. You can read last year’s Book Report here.
Mary Lee — What on Earth am I here For? by Rick Warren. Why? To find the answer to the ultimate question.
Arzeena Hamir — Station 11 by Emily St. John Mandel. It’s a glimpse at a post-apocalyptic Canada
Ken Adney — How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson. And I’m currently re-reading Robert Heilbroner’s The Worldly Philosophers, which holds up as a simple introduction to economic thought (and the economists).
Brent Reid — Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan. In this Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, Finnegan portrays his lifelong obsession with surfing the most challenging beaches in the world–some of them previously undiscovered. His descriptions of his fellow surfers, the code they follow, the magnificent beaches and breaks they find, and the death-defying rides they take are fascinating.
Maingon Loys — Defending Giants by Darren Frederick Speece was a pretty illuminating read. It is a history of the Redwood Wars, very useful insights. It makes a very good case exposing how conservation strategy is only transitory — somewhere human beings have to re-evaluate their priorities
Joe Scuderi — Man’s Search For Meaning by Victor Frankel. It’s short but profound. Hillbilly Elegy was also excellent.
Kim Sleno — A Column of Fire by Ken Follett. Read the first of this trilogy Christmas Day 1989. As a lover of history it gave me a glimpse of the past.
Jessie Kerr — I Was Told To Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad by Souad Mekhennet. The story of a German Muslim reporter who traveled to interview several ISIS leaders. She reported for a major German daily, The Washington Post and the NY Times. Because she produced balanced stories, those leaders agreed to talk to her. Oddly, I found her stories heartening because she explores her own and other Muslim citizens’ interest in understanding the motivation behind the often violent solutions pursued by these extreme Jihadist groups. I heard her interviewed on CBC’s The Current; I knew then that I must read her book.
Jodi Le Masurier — Into the Magic Shop by James Doty
Gordon Mason — The Shadow of Kilimanjaro, on foot across east Africa by Rick Ridgeway. A wonderful journey through a fascinating area in Kenya, Tsavo National Park. An incredible journey on foot from the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro to the Indian Ocean, offering a rare view of East Africa as it is today and how it once was before the inclusion of European civilization.
Dennis Crockford — All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr … wonderful description of the growing characters. And a very different writing style … flipping between the two characters every few pages … off-putting to some but I really enjoyed it.
Wayne Bradley — Ravensong by Lee Maracle. Maybe its best because I read it last, who knows? I realize that I am very late for the Lee Maracle party, but I loved Ravensong! Great writing style with good character development, and chalk full of First Nations perspectives. Written i early 1990s, I think, but with perspectives on First Nations / settler relations that are startlingly relevant today.
Bill Morrison — The Boys in the Boat by James Brown. An epic rowing story about the struggle for gold in the 1936 Berlin Olympics by an unknown Washington team.
Brad Morgan — Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. A mix of American history, spirituality and allegorical surrealism out of a story about Abraham Lincoln’s grief over the death of his 11-year-old son.
Richard Schmidt — Sing, Unburied, Sing By Jesmyn Ward. A story about the love-hate tensions between races as a black woman and her children take a road trip through Mississippi to pick up her white husband from prison.
Allison Grey — Exit West by Mohsin Hamid. A wonderful love story about how place can affect the heart.
Bobbi Ellison — Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan. A WWII-era tale about connecting disparate stories about a father’s disappearance and the rise of a mobster and the host of larger issues this journey reveals.
John Vernon — The Future is History by Masha Gessen. Why post-Soviet Russia rejected democracy for Putin and the threat he poses.
Marcia Sorenson — Hunger by Roxane Gay. How an early-life sexual assault shaped this woman’s body image for life.
George Le Masurier — The Force by Don Winslow. Fictional but insightful peek into the shady world of “dirty” cops in the NYPD. It makes “Serpico,” “The Departed” and “Donnie Brasco” seem tame and shallow by comparison.
