As of Dec. 1, an electronic news summary that goes out to councillors no longer included reports on bloggers, as has been the practice in the past. (See the full message on the next page.)

Kind of odd, as it’s not really that hard to keep track of the four blogs that cover the city the most intensively.

Too many doses of annoying, temperature-raising information? I have heard that some blog posts have generated so much angst that various councillors or staffers have made vows not to read any more just to keep their blood pressure down.

Or is it that the powers that be figure that everyone, from the lowliest staffer to the city manager, is reading them obsessively anyway, so why bother? We don’t know as no explanation was offered.

But Councillor Ellen Woodsworth is planning to ask why next Tuesday.

Here’s the memo that went out.

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I’ve had more than one person, fulminating about how Vision Vancouver is wrecking the city in various ways, suggest that one clear sign of their mismanagement is the state of city finances.

The crazy spending on bike lanes, the office renos, the trips here and there, they point to. Others are scandalized by the $20-million budget shortfall. The guy who cuts my hair, always an infallible guide for me as to how the public chatter mill works, says his Shaughnessy and Kerrisdale clients are fuming about the way the city is spending money. The village mess, for one, is what gets them mad. Anoter: the amount of money the city is spending on the BC Place roof, he said.

Huh? I said, as hair was falling all around me. But it’s the province spending all the money on the roof. No, he insisted, the city is putting some in too.

Actually, they’re not, only in the sense that council (with a provincial gun to its head) allowed the land around BC Place to be zoned to high density so that the profits can pay for the roof. But no cash on the barrelhead.

As for budget shortfalls — well, every civic reporter in the city can tell you that every year, we go through a cycle where there’s an early report that there’s a $20-million, or $27-million, or $18-million or whatever shortfall (with a predicted horrifying five or eight or 12 per cent increase) and then it all gets managed down, usually, to something reasonable by budget deadline.

As I noted to a group I spoke to recently, if the Non-Partisan Association wants to get traction on finance issues in next year’s civic-election campaign, its candidates are going to have to hope and pray the public continues to be mad about the village or blame the city mistakenly for wild over-spending or go berserk over some minor but symbolic spending on a chicken coop or electric-powered tricycle.

Because the bottom-line people just don’t think there’s a financial problem. This editorial from the Vancouver Sun echoes what the bond-rating agencies and those knowledgeable about city finances are saying: that the city’s finances were in a bit of a shambles until recently, with no clear central sense of the overall money picture.

There are lots of issues Vision Vancouver is vulnerable on. This will be a harder row to hoe than others.

FYI, here’s a clip from what the city’s most recent bond-rating report, from DBRS in July, had to say:

Vancouver maintained a balanced operating budget for 2010, as required under provincial legislation. Budget pressures stemmed predominantly from an increase in police services and annual salary increases for citystaff from previously negotiated contracts. However, city management dealt with most of the pressurethrough a continued hiring freeze and a service review aimed at identifying new efficiencies. All in, prudent cost management reduced the average tax impact to a modest 2.08%; 4.08% for residential properties and0.08% for non-residential properties.

Medium-Term Outlook

The City is currently operating under the 2009-2011 operating and capital plan. Under this plan, Vancouver is expected to continue to deliver sound operating results in the years ahead, although pressure will persist from higher debt servicing costs and sustained contractual increases in salary and benefit expenses. While increases for most staff are locked in until the end of 2011, police and firefighter collective agreements are up for negotiation at the end of 2010, creating some uncertainty regarding future cost increases.

It seemed like just another Christmas party, but clearly there was a lot going on Saturday night at the traditional gathering, hosted by Bill Tieleman, Harvey McKinnon and Vanessa Geary among others, of the green/progressive/media/COPE/Vision/NDP crowd — which has also attracted NPA councillors Peter Ladner and Gordon Price in the past —  frequently called “the lefty party.”

The party included people on both sides of the NDP fracture, school-board chair Patti Bacchus, and Sharon Isaak, an activist with the Renters at Risk group. While I was downing martinis and talking about holiday plans with whoever came into my range (plus  hearing murmurs that it was “kind of tense” in the room as various factions of the left tried to get along momentarily), others were clearly working much harder than I.

When I woke up Sunday morning, the two halves of the NDP were hours away from backing off from their showdown. The Vision/COPE school board made an abrupt turn on school closures and delayed any decision on them til next March. And Mayor Gregor Robertson, who I saw last at 2 a.m. on the sidewalk conferring seriously with Sharon Isaak, was out at Isaak’s rally on behalf of West End/Seafield apartment renters — shades of past standing-up-for-the-people glory!

The evening also produced a memorable appearance by Vancouver’s former director of finance, Estelle Lo, who appeared to have been brought to the party by COPE councillor Ellen Woodsworth. It was Lo’s email to city manager Judy Rogers about the problem at the Olympic village, leaked by an unknown person to Globe and Mail columnist Gary Mason, that set off a firebomb in the 2008 civic election, which ultimately led to Vision Vancouver’s victory at the polls.

(Lo, who was terminated by city manager Judy Rogers around the same time, always said she wasn’t the one who leaked the memo.)

Perhaps next year, perhaps some other politically minded group could organize a Christmas party issue an open invitation to all terminated, “took early retirement to be with his family,” or otherwise departed city staffers under Vision. Now that would be fun.

Every so often, it’s great to take a break from Vancouver politics and do something totally different.

This time, I got to spent time with at her unique art space in the False Creek Flats — a little like going on a mini-trip to Berlin or a quiet corner of the Tate Modern in London.

Jeffries represents a whole group of artists who have come to define Vancouver to the outside world.

And to us: Her artists also seem to be favoured choices in Vancouver these days for public art, i.e. Myfanway MacLeod’s giant sparrows in the Olympic village plaza.

Yikes, we think road rage against nasty cyclists who take up pavement space is bad here. Didn’t realize that anyone who got in the way of cars, i.e. light rail or streetcars, might be next on the list.

Watch out, people in crosswalks! Your days may be numbered

So sad to hear this news about Virginia Greene, the former head of the Business Council of B.C. I met Virginia years ago at a party, not having a clue who she was. We spent half the evening swapping stories about dealing with difficult teenagers.

Her utter frankness about how hard it was (she didn’t have kids but had taken in a young woman who needed a refuge) and her nonetheless-positive attitude bolstered me for weeks. In subsequent years, it was always a pleasure to call her for a story and get her tough, thoughtful appraisals.

It’s a loss for all of us that she’s gone.

Didn’t get this up last night, but here is my story on the Vancouver city hall employee survey that popped up as a surprise item at the last minute for yesterday’s council meeting, with city manager Penny Ballem doing a two-hour presentation and Q and A with council on the survey plus a report on labour relations from another consultant.

There’s a lot of material in the report and survey, which none of us in the media could possibly cover all of so here’s the link to it.

Does it look good?

No. As the consultant noted, the indicators of employee satisfaction were below the averages for other public-sector agencies and for private-sector companies in all areas except “stress and workload,” where the city was higher than average with employees who feel those two items are manageable. (As I noted, the VPD’s survey, which came out the same day, showed employee satisfaction at 70 per cent.)

The areas that were particularly low:

– Confidence in leadership (27 per cent were favourable, 30 per cent couldn’t decide, 43 per cent were unfavourable)

– Development opportunites (34 per cent were favourable)

– Work structure and process (35 per cent were favourable)

– Clear and promising direction (44 per cent were favourable, but 29 per cent were unfavourable)

Vision councillors timidly asked questions to try to put the numbers in context, knowing all reporters would run out anyway saying morale is terrible at city hall.

JJJ asked for my thoughts. Here they are:

– This administration deserves some credit for actually doing this survey. For a group that hates bad news, this was almost inevitably going to be bad news. They didn’t have to do it, but they did anyway.

– This likely does reflect some unhappiness at city hall that is connected to the current administration, especially the changes that Penny Ballem is bringing in and the way she is bringing them in. But I don’t think these numbers are solely attributable to just the current situation.

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Trying to get a struggling real-estate project to start smelling like a rose again is one of the more difficult jobs in marketing. The Olympic village hasn’t suffered from just cost overruns and being built on an incredible timeline and some tussles with the city over design and green stuff.

It’s also become everyone’s favourite political football, the subject of talk shows and columns and blogs. Other projects in this city have struggled and changed direction as the recession squeezed them. But they got to do it under, mostly, the comforting shadowy place out of the limelight. The village never has had that chance. Elements of the village that are present in many, many other projects around the ctiy suddenly became the subject of controversy.

In spite of that, Bob Rennie and the receiver are going to try to make the village start smelling sweet again, as he details here.

I wish them well. I was down at the village last night (a lovely night for a visit, with a southeast gale blowing and persistent fine rain falling) with my SFU housing-policy students and housing professor David Hulchanski, visiting from the University of Toronto. Every time I walk down there, I’m struck with (mostly) how beautiful it is.

The parks are designed with meticulous attention to detail and are oases of visual pleasure in the middle of buildings. I love the feel of the buildings: the way they frame spaces and streets. And I like most of the materials, not awful glass, glass, glass like we see everywhere else, but limestone and chartreuse fritted glass and deep charcoal panels highlighted with brilliant orange rectangles. They feel like real buildings.

(I also acknowledge that my superficial self is deeply drawn to the German cabinets in the presentation suite.)

The plaza is like nothing else we have in the city, a European-style square lined with porticos at the base of buildings that are exactly proportion to make it feel enclosed. It has the view I like the most in the city, not just of the glassy downtown spires across the water, but the low bulk of Chinatown, our historic city. Even the increasingly spider-monster roof on BC Place looks attractive, its giant girders a work of art against the glass.

(NB. I actually think those roof girders are a startling blight on the city skyline, something that has ended up being nothing like what people thought they would be, but it’s a testament to the view from the plaza that they’re softened.)

The only building I really don’t like is the Arthur Erickson one, which looks like stacked sardine cans and seems kind of squashed or stunted as well. But it’s out on the edge, so I can ignore it. (Bob R. has to hope everyone doesn’t feel the way I do, since those are the biggest, most luxurious and most expensive suites.)

Well, someday it will be a jewel. I understand the next development on the city’s land built to the west will likely be more modestly priced, perhaps with some ground-oriented artist studios along the narrow streets. Maybe some of us will actually be able to afford to live there.

This year promises to be the most-polled ever in advance of a civic election, as various polling companies pile on to what promises to be a hard-fought battle for Vancouver city council in 2011.

The latest out, another Justason Market Intelligence poll, showing that some noticeable fraction of people are moving from undecided to disapproving of the mayor and that there’s an increasing number of  people cranky about the ongoing Olympic village mess.

Barb Justason also tested out a couple of names in the poll as potential mayoral candidates for the Non-Partisan Association, to whether having a name attached to the party improved its standing.

According to her poll, naming current councillor Suzanne Anton as a mayoral candidate brought the numbers separating the party together, from a 15-point difference to a three-point difference. She also tried Tung Chan, the former councillor and executive director of SUCCESS. That didn’t close the gap as much

When I talked to Vision Vancouver ED Ian Baillie, he said the poll reflected some general trends Vision is seeing, although said their numbers indicate very solid support for the mayor and the Vision team’s approach on many issues.

But the truth of any of these polls doesn’t matter as much as the more important message that’s going out to potential NPA candidates, which is that they have a fighting chance to beat Vision Vancouver. That’s what the party is looking to prove, desperately these days, as good candidates start to consider whether to run. (I know they’re out there. I’m starting to get calls from or have others tell me about good, credible potentials are who pondering whether to go for it.)

If the polls appear to tell them that Vision is unbeatable, they’ll stay home and run their businesses.  If it looks as though the gap is narrower than they thought, that there’s a couple of issues Vision is vulnerable on, that there’s a reasonable chance of winning, they’ll start collecting money to run.

On a completely other topic: To the person who posted a remark to the blog this weekend  that I’m a “self-important C-word” for not posting his (I’m assuming it’s a him) comments on one of the threads — nice way to express your frustration over this crucial issue! Maybe your mother needs to come over and wash out your mouth with soap.

Also, a reminder to all that I occasionally take weekends off and, when I do, remarks from people new to the blog don’t get moderated until I check back in.

This thoughtful column from former city councillor Peter Ladner.