Quick links to news today.

– The lenders for Millennium Development’s Evelyn Drive project have gone to court to start foreclosure proceedings, according to the CBC. A real blow for Millennium, even more than the village receivership in a way. It came the morning after Bob Rennie praised them for all the work they’d done on the village at the annual Urban Development Institute awards dinner on Wednesday.

– The first of the city’s extra four emergency winter shelters opened yesterday, within 48 hours of the announcement by Housing Minister Rich Coleman that he would provide funding after all.

– Park board commissioner Ian Robertson, with Green Party commission Stuart Mackinnon (hmm, looks like an alliance forming there) blasts the Visionista parkies for their willingness to accept more big cuts.

Here’s the news release

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There was huge anxiety at Vancouver city hall the last two months over whether Housing Minister Rich Coleman would come up with the money to fund the four extra winter shelters that operated last year.

In fact, people I talked to sounded sincerely dismayed at what seemed to be an uncompromising message from the province that it wouldn’t fund the shelters.

So I was surprised to read the announcement from the minister yesterday that he was going to be kicking in $1.5 million. His answer why is here.

I have to say, it’s cheering to see the way the city and province, who have their tensions and conflicts, managing to do the right thing out of all this. Penny Ballem and the mayor, whatever their other faults, have really stuck to their guns on this and pushed hard. And the minister, well, he huffs and puffs but ends up doing the right thing. Those 160 people who get to sleep inside the rest of the winter are the winners. So are we.

Vancouver’s plan to put 7,000 people in close proximity to two stadiums, an outdoor civic plaza and (potentially) a casino is unique in North America. Not surprisingly, it’s raising questions about how to deal with some of the inevitable conflicts, noise being one of them.

The city, trying to minimize the likelihood of any lawsuits from future residents who say that government had a duty to protect them from excessive noise, was looking at just having new condo owners sign agreements that spelled out they were moving into a noisy area. Apparently the law department was concerned that wasn’t going to be enough.

So now there are additional measures. The city is going to ask developers in the area to come up with different construction techniques to minimize noise. At this point, a “guideline,” not a requirement, but developers going to the development-permit board will have to explain what they’ve been able to do. As well, there is going to be an effort to work with event organizers to see what can be done about minimizing sound. Good luck there.

And what no one can do much about is the fact that BC Place will now have an openable roof that, yes, will be open for many events. Which means noise will travel even further.

Kwok Chan’s family contacted me on the weekend, concerned and upset about an accident that took the life of their father last week, four days after he celebrated his 80th birthday.

Although they politely hesitated about blaming anyone too quickly, they were distraught that they didn’t know how exactly their father had lost his life and whether the cyclist involved had been travelling at a high rate of speed.

None of us know that at this point, as police typically don’t release details about crash investigations while they’re ongoing. But this is a case that will likely interest many in Vancouver, as the balance between cars, cyclists and pedestrians shifts.

I’m sure no one here will want to miss this.

I’ve seen three new councils come in to city hall in the past eight years and every one has experienced some discomfort about the way reporters go to staff for information, information that is occasionally at odds with what the councillors are saying.

There’s occasional grumbling about the level of power they seem to exert. (One political staffer noted bitterly that an advertisement for city staff used the slogan at one point, “We run the city.”) But by and large, the new councils have adapted and come to grips with the fact that the thousands of bureaucrats they allegedly oversee actually know something and are excellent public-relations ambassadors for the city.

They give reporters explanations about complex issues and they do it in a way that removes some of the politicization from particularly contentious initiatives. (Note how council recently made sure to send out their engineers to explain the process of designing and building the Hornby Street bike lane during public consultations.)

But apparently things are changing at the hall. I called three planners last week to talk about a relatively innocuous report going to council last Thursday: a report about efforts to deal with noise around the two stadiums that will impact the 7,000 people who will eventually move in there. Important note: This was not a controversial report or one that was likely to split on political lines or one that was likely to set off any more neighbourhood commentary than already existed.

It’s the kind of call I’ve made hundreds of times over the past decade and a half, as have many in the city, which the city has always made easy for anyone to do by printing the names and phone numbers of the people who wrote the report at the top.

But I didn’t get a call back from any of those planners, as I normally would. Instead, I got a call from communications officer Wendy Stewart, who explained to me that I wouldn’t be getting any calls back.

That’s because it has created some awkward moments in the past, she said, when reporters have done stories about reports, quoting staff, and councillors have had to scramble to catch up. (I’m not quoting verbatim because Wendy called when I was walking around on the street and didn’t have my notebook with me.)

So, in order to prevent councillors from being asked to comment when they’re not ready to, staff are no longer going to be returning calls about staff reports.

Wendy Stewart suggested that I call COPE Councillor David Cadman instead. Which I did and, while I’m sure David cares deeply about noise in general in the city and has championed anti-noise initiatives, he knew almost nothing about the specifics of this report and didn’t have answers to the technical questions I had. No surprise, since it’s really staff and the legal department who initiated this particular effort to come up with noise-minimization measures.

This is unprecedented and a sad day for everyone who covers the hall. I’m also not totally surprised at this rather blunt statement. I’ve noticed over the past while that staff sound more nervous and cautious when I call to have them explain something to me. I’ve heard through various channels that staff have been told bluntly not to say anything about particular high-profile issues, like the casino.

And I’ve had staff on occasion ask me not to mention to any councillors that I’ve even been talking to them (let alone quoting them in stories), as those councillors apparently get upset when they something to me and I say, “Well, that’s not what I’ve heard from Planner X or Engineer Y.”

As well, I understand that one of the areas of conflict around former FOI officer Paul Hancock was that he would release FOI documents that were requested by media without notifying anyone else at city hall. That also occasionally created embarrassing moments, when councillors were being asked to comment on released documents that they didn’t know anything about.

The plan for the future is to have a notification system internally, so that everyone is briefed and ready to go when an FOI document is released. (I’ve checked with Darrell Evans of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Association and apparently this is not illegal, as long as there is no interference with the request.)

I can understand the Vision team wanting to figure out new ways to deal with messaging. They’ve facing a new, energetic and unusual kind of opposition in Citycaucus.com, two former staffers in Sam Sullivan’s office who have used their insider knowledge of city hall to get information, through FOI and other means.

But in their struggle for control, they’ve gone too far. In the past, it’s been accepted practice that reporters wait until city reporters are posted online before calling councillors (even if we knew about them in advance), to give councillors a chance to read them before getting calls.

But this goes beyond that. Now staff can’t even comment once the report is out, so as to give councillors the stage to themselves where they may or may not be delivering accurate information. (I note that the bureaucrat to whom this does not apply is Penny Ballem, who usually takes over doing the actual explaining of complex issues once Mayor Gregor Robertson has delivered his crafted message on whatever the topic at hand is.)

The bureaucrats at city hall are knowledgeable professionals, whose efforts to explain difficult issues for reporters have only worked to the city’s benefit.

If councillors are concerned because they sometimes appear to be less knowledgeable than their staff or even at odds with them, I’d suggest that the solution is not telling staff they can’t speak.

Tom Hawthorn, who chronicles the transitions of those who have made B.C. the place it is, has a lovely story here about the life and passions of Chuck Davis. Chuck, one of the handful of people in Vancouver who have fought to tell its historical story in spite of this city’s tendency to amnesia, died on the weekend after having announced a couple of months ago that he was battling cancer.

After the news that the Olympic village was put into receivership Wednesday, all of us reporter types went galloping off in all directions to try to figure out more what this means now and in the future.

I focused on the possibility of block sales of some condos to investors.

CBC focused on the possibility of renting out condos.

Jeff Lee at the Vancouver Sun focused on how much the city is paying in interest on the unsold condos — high, but of course not as high as the Maleks were paying at $4 million a month, compounding.

And I see that Bob Mackin is looking at who might be interested in picking up a block of condos from the village.

As requested, the court document about the receivership appointment.

RECEIVERSHIP

As well, anyone wanting to follow the trail of documents in the receivership process can do so through Ernst & Young’s website here. (Currently all they have up is the same court doc in my link above.)

Here’s my more complete story in the Globe on what transpired today (and the days leading up to it) related to the Olympic village moving into receivership.

But these 700 words have a hard time capturing everything that has been happening in this incredibly complex deal. (A sample of how badly it’s going to be mangled: As Penny Ballem explained some of the complexities for the umpteenth time to a roomful of reporters late this afternoon, one wanted to know: “But does the city own the village now?” Um, yes, in a word.)

As you can see in my story, the two sides have been bargaining for a few weeks on what it would take to simply have Millennium bow out. The keys plus $3 million, plus $10 million, plus $25 million or plus $60 million from them. Those were some of the numbers being batted around.

Key for you, the taxpayers, is to understand that it will be crucial to find out at some point how much money the city actually gets from Millennium, in addition to taking control of the physical asset. That additional money is what will make the difference in how much of a loss, if any, local taxpayers end up having to cover.

City people seemed to be quite pleased with whatever bargain they ended up striking at the 11th hour with Millennium. While I might normally be tempted to discount that and be wary of any claims that they had done well, those who are close to Millennium were dismayed at how much the developer brothers ended up handing over.

There are so many possible questions to this latest turn of the plot that I can’t think of where to start answering. So how about this? Ask me anything you want and I will answer to the best of my knowledge. And perhaps others can weigh in too.