Six months after Victoria city council formally adopted its new Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan, mayor Marianne Alto promised meaningful change.
“Six months or less, I think I’m confident in saying you’ll see a difference,” said Alto in a press conference on July 2, 2025.
After releasing a scathing report last summer calling for an immediate improvement to downtown safety, the Downtown Victoria Business Association says its members are reporting a remarkable turnaround.
“That visible policing is making a real difference,” said Jeff Bray, executive director of the Downtown Victoria Business Association. “There’s just a sense that there’s less of this sort of disorder that may have been happening before because of the increase police and bylaw presence.”
Guided by the Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan, the city says so far $10.35 million has been spent on creating 97 shelter spaces, hiring nine new Victoria Police and 10 bylaw officers.
Money also went into creating new dispatch hubs for bylaw, as well as investing into public cleanup, maintenance and community services. And with Phase One of the Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan complete, Victoria’s mayor says now the city is looking to what’s next.
“There’s a lot more to do,” said Alto. “The challenge now is how to sustain this.”
Future work will include the rehabilitation and rebuilding of Pandora Avenue and Princess Street, but the mayor admits the rapid scale of the plan’s rollout won’t keep up at the same pace.
“It is now very clear to us that we can’t expand this degree of activity and we believe we’ve done enough,” said Alto.
Alto says the city’s safety work will continue with discussions for 2026’s budget allocation to the plan, ongoing, but will likely be on a smaller scale.
She’s hoping other municipalities, and the province find other ways to pick up the baton.
“Now it is for others to use these examples and use these in their own communities. We have done more than enough,” said Alto.
source & photo: Chek News
