
A wave of vandalism has crashed onto Victoria’s downtown core, leaving a sea of broken windows and frustrated small business house owners in its wake.

Some owners say they have taking into consideration going their companies out of downtown – despite features from town hall to address some of the expenditures brought about by the vandalism.

The Greater Victoria Public Library is just one business enterprise getting affected, pressured to near Thursday for the sixth time in just more than two weeks, right after obtaining its home windows smashed.

Russell Textbooks and 6 other small business ended up caught in the crossfire as perfectly, with home windows smashed previous Wednesday.

Baggins Shoes fell target previous thirty day period, and now the keep owner, Balinda Wallenburg, claims she’s thinking about shifting.

“You have to care about the workers. We have to make sure there’s suitable folks in the retail outlet, just in situation an incident arises,” she stated.

Wallenburg claims she’s also weary of working with the strain caused by the downtown crimes, and her staff members really don’t blame her.

In accordance to Mark Filipovic, owner of safety business Themis Stability, vandalism is unquestionably on the rise downtown.

“In comparison to final yr, we are obtaining about a 20 to 22 for each cent increase in calls for company – alarm calls, vandalism, loitering, trespassing,” he stated.

On Thursday, Victoria council voted to extend the timeline for accessing a grant called the Safety Initiative Reimbursement settlement, which helps enterprises shell out for broken windows or petty vandalism.

The method will now be prolonged right up until the close of this yr, or right up until the equilibrium of the fund has been exhausted.

Most of the cash has now been made use of nevertheless, with only about $10,000 remaining from the initial $65,000. In addition, a business can only include a part of the destruction with the grant revenue, up to a utmost of $1,000.

A single of Victoria’s town councillors, Stephen Hammond, supports the grant, but claims “it is an unbelievable tragedy that we have to have a system like this simply because of vandalism and unlawful functions heading on in our town.

On Friday, city council and corporations are scheduled to focus on the spike in vandalism and will take into account introducing additional income to the funds available to offset the growing expenses of undertaking enterprise in downtown Victoria.