Mayor Alto’s Proximity Problem with a Ward Crusade vs. Her Own Place of Residence
By Arthur McInnis
March 23, 2026
Mayor Marianne Alto has made residency the cornerstone of her case for electoral reform at the Greater Victoria School Board. Her argument is straightforward. She believes that trustees should live in the communities they represent. In her view geographic proximity produces accountability or distance produces drift.
It is a defensible position. It is also one she does not apply to herself.
Do as I Say, Not as I Live
Alto resides in Saanich while serving as Mayor of Victoria. This is legal even if democratically ill-advised. Our Community Charter, unlike the Vancouver Charter, imposes no residency requirement on mayors. But legality is not the standard she has set. The standard she has set is that a representative who does not live among the people they serve cannot fully understand or be accountable to those people. She has used that standard to argue for restructuring an elected board. Her own office sits on the wrong side of it.
Merge with Me, Ward with Them
The inconsistency is sharpest on the amalgamation question. Alto has committed to placing a Victoria-Saanich amalgamation referendum on the 2026 ballot, premised on the idea that the two municipalities are functionally one community and should be governed as one. But you cannot simultaneously argue that geographic boundaries matter enough to require ward-based trustees and that they matter so little that two municipalities should merge. These are not complementary reforms. They pull in opposite directions. Ward systems sharpen local boundaries while amalgamation dissolves them. Holding both positions at once suggests the democratic principle being applied by the Mayor is whichever one is most useful to her now.
Drawing the Line
The boundary question adds a further complication. A ward system for SD61 would not simply trace existing municipal lines. The district spans Victoria, Saanich, Oak Bay, Esquimalt, View Royal, and several smaller jurisdictions, and ward boundaries would need to be drawn to achieve rough population equality among trustee electoral areas. So this is a requirement that cuts across municipal boundaries rather than following them. A ward trustee might end up representing a portion of Saanich and a portion of Victoria simultaneously, which quietly undermines Alto’s clean residency principle. The hyper-local accountability she is promising depends on boundaries that do not yet exist and may not, when drawn, deliver the geographic clarity the argument assumes.
There is also the question of who draws those boundaries and by what criteria. The Province holds significant authority over school board structure, and boundary-drawing is where the real political power in any electoral reform sits. Alto’s advocacy positions Victoria City Council as the champion of a reformed SD61. But the shape of that reform, which communities end up in which ward, whose voices get concentrated and whose get diluted, will largely be determined elsewhere. That is a significant amount of democratic consequence to attach to a principle whose geographic logic has not yet been tested against an actual map.
The Political Consequence is Straightforward
Critics of the SD61 ward proposal, particularly those in Saanich and Esquimalt who worry about being absorbed into a Victoria-dominated board, can point directly at the Mayor’s residential address and ask one simple question. If residency is essential for a trustee, why is it optional for the Mayor who is leading this charge? Alto has no clean answer to that question, because there is not one.
Alto’s support for ward-based representation may well be the right policy. But credibility on a principle requires living by it. She has staked her electoral reform argument on a residency principle she does not herself meet. Rather than resolve that contradiction by moving to Victoria though, Alto has decided to move Victoria.
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See also:
Index of Articles and Other Resources on Amalgamation. – CRD Watch Homepage
CRD Watch Homepage 
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