The wheels of Freedom of Information grind slowly, slowly, but I finally got an answer last week to two questions: What record was there of meetings attended by the city’s chief financial officer, Estelle Lo, related to the Olympic Village? And what emails did she send to city hall staffers or councillors about the village? […]

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This went out at 10:11 today (while the civics panel was on at CKNW with Bill Good — how handy) and has quickly spread all over town. CKNW’s Janet Brown is reporting that Ridge is leaving because of “politicization” at city hall, though no word that Ridge is talking directly to anyone. Not a total […]

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It was quite the scene at the stunning new Celebration Hall in Mountain View cemetery Saturday — I definitely want to be buried there now with the great views and lovely, modernist new hall for all my friends to party at when they send me on my way — as developers, architects, and housing advocates […]

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If you’d like to spend a sunny Saturday afternoon at the cemetery listening to people talk about how to create affordable housing in Vancouver, you can. The Vision Vancouver council’s latest task force/brainstorming/collective put in place to hone in on an issue — in this case, how to create affordable and rental housing — is […]

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Oh, poor Paul Hancock, the city’s Freedom of Information officer. He must be working overtime these days, dealing with all the FOIs that have flooded in in the last four months. Here are the latest results from one of my requests. The details of Judy Rogers’ severance agreement. Not much new in terms of the […]

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The debate over the contract terms of the city’s new chief financial officer was quite lively here, so I’m sure you’ll all be interested in Chapter 2. Allen Garr has an analysis of why one element of this story in particular showed the kind of bad reporting that bloggers with an agenda and the media […]

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While many of you were watching a couple of hockey teams face off on Tuesday night, there were two other teams facing off at city council over an issue that is key to what kind of city people think Vancouver is about: how much housing should be allowed downtown and how much of the downtown […]

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Faced with mounting bills at TransLink and no way of paying them except to keep going back to transit fares and property taxes, the region’s mayors have decided to make transit funding a campaign issue. They’re holding their (required) in-camera meeting tomorrow to talk about their plan to ask for some of the millions in […]

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One of my sharp-eyed phone buddies noticed that President Obama’s plan for high-speed train links throughout the States also includes a couple of stops north of the border. One of them is, you guessed, the Terminal Lotus City itself, Vancouver. The link is here. That would be pretty exciting for those of us who like […]

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Last year, the city’s financial statements came out and no one paid attention to the paragraph buried deep inside saying that the city had provided a loan guarantee of $190 million for the private developers of the Olympic village. Even councillors didn’t notice it. It’s quite a different picture this year, where the statements detail […]

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