A letter I wrote in August was recently published in our community newspaper, The Vancouver Courier. I'd responded to a front-page article where the subject focussed on whether we had "walkable" schools and the impact of location on environmental issues.

I found the article disappointing, seeing it as yet another distraction from what I consider Vancouver's most pressing facility problems. Broadly speaking Vancouver has plenty of schools. I pass within two blocks of seven schools on my walk to our kid's school two and a half kilometers away.

What we don't have are safe schools, specifically, seismically safe schools. An extract from the letter:

Seismic upgrades must take priority (Sept. 10 2008, The Courier)

But we have walkable schools today. What we don't have today are seismically safe schools to walk to. Many of our school facilities were unsafe the day they were built 50 or 100 years ago. School seismic safety ought to be our number one facility concern in this city yet isn't because of widespread public ignorance of the issue.

A truly sustainable facility management program is one that strives to ensure that buildings are not merely survivable but are also usable after an earthquake. We should support our school board by working with them, not against them, to push forward seismic mitigation projects at the fastest possible pace. We all can further support Vancouver and other affected school boards by calling upon the Ministry of Education and the premier to fully meet their government's commitments to complete seismic mitigation work within a decade.

Does it take an Olympic-style countdown clock to get this process finally on track?