My pal Jeff Lee over at the Sun had an interesting story in Friday’s Vancouver Sun with details about the in-camera meeting back in June 2007 where the Non-Partisan Association majority voted in favour of the $193-million loan guarantee and completion guarantee for Fortress, so that Millennium could get its financing for the Olympic village. […]

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I’m continuing to hear from inside city hall how bad people feel about the resignation of Jody Andrews, who quit yesterday after apparently weeks of feeling that he was being effectively pushed out of his job as the manager of the Olympic village. For obvious reasons, they’re not going to be talking publicly. But there […]

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A little bird called me today and read out an email from a Vision board member that has somehow escaped to a larger audience than intended. The email, from Marcella Munro, went out this morning to the rest of Vision’s tight communications team, which frequently debates how well they are doing on their message. That […]

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This just in from the land of former city-hall staffers. David Hurford, who became legendary in this city for his ability to churn out press releases documenting Mayor Sam Sullivan’s every action, has moved on. He’s sent out this email to some: As of this week I have started as director of community and public […]

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I think it’s been hard for many of us to deal with the ongoing turmoil at city hall over the Olympic village. It’s so not Vancouver. Everything is so not Vancouver: the crashed housing market, the serial drama being played out with one leaked bit of information after another, the ongoing stories about how one […]

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Sources in city hall tell me that Olympic project manager Jody Andrews tendered his resignation today, effective immediately, after several weeks of being stripped of responsibilities and pretty much ordered not to talk to the public/media about the village. The relatively young 40-something Andrews, who has worked at the city for 18 years, was put […]

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City councillors have just received a message from city manager Penny Ballem that Jody Andrews, the young deputy city manager in charge of Southeast False Creek development, has resigned. There has been rumbling for the last couple of days that he would be fired so it’s very unclear how voluntary this resignation is. A bit […]

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One of the things I find many people are forgetting (or were never aware of) in the current hoopla over the Olympic village is that Vancouver has a decades-old tradition of being a real-estate developer. It’s one of the biggest land-owners in the city and its real-estate department, under the leadership of people like Bruce […]

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My learned friend Geoff Meggs commented today in the Globe and Mail that the city’s credit rating has never been downgraded before due to council actions. Actually, I was reminded by someone with a better memory than mine that that’s not true. The credit rating was downgraded in 2003, when Geoff was then assistant to […]

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I haven’t bothered posting the last couple of days on the Olympic village because there is now such a raging torrent of media coverage that I decided to stand on the riverbank letting it flow by, while I think about what’s going on. I’m sure many of you are in the same state, as we’ve […]

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