A commentary by a Victoria city councillor. The opinions expressed are hers.

There is a growing belief that Victoria city council is not listening. This belief poses a serious threat, not only to the well-being and character of our city, but also to the faith that citizens have in their local government.

As a longtime observer of city politics and as a Victoria councillor, I have witnessed over the past 10 years the systematic erosion of confidence in the way decisions are made and a corresponding coarsening of our civic dialogue.

The root cause of this decline in confidence comes from the limitations placed on citizen input to council decision making.

This reduced citizen input takes three forms.

The first is the reduction in opportunities for members of the public to address council directly at regular evening meetings. Council has only 10 meetings per year, where six people can address any topic of concern for up to five minutes each.

There is another evening meeting where members of the public may speak for five minutes each for up to a total of two hours.

Another way to influence councillors is to send an email. Before the adoption of the new Official Community Plan, councillors typically received between 500 and 1,000 emails per week, including orchestrated campaigns. In a recent week, we received about 150 emails.

A petition about the OCP from a James Bay Coalition of Residents, recently submitted to council, had 2,337 signatures. This compares to 1,457 Victorians who completed the engagement survey, which was intended to........

© Times Colonist