Just when I was starting to wonder what was going on. I’d been told at the Oct. 20 NPA fundraiser that the list of nominees was going to be released the next day. Then there was a mysterious delay. Anyway, here’s the list of those running for the four positions the party is allowing nominations for.

As most of you will note here, this is not a list that will give Visionistas too many sleepless nights except possibly for the party’s floundering park board candidates, worried about facing a De Genova on the ballot.

There’s no Randy Helten, the very effective leader of the West End communards/aka West End Neighbours. No prominent developer who just might be interested in running for council. No former Vision mayoral candidate.

Vancouver, BC (November 6, 2010) – The Vancouver NPA’s Board of Directors has approved five candidates for its November 20 nomination meeting, which will take place at the Croatian Cultural Centre. They are: 

• Bill McCreery – Nomination candidate for City Council
• Jesse Johl – Nomination candidate for City Council 
• Casey Crawford – Nomination candidate for Park Board
• Melissa De Genova – Nomination candidate for Park Board
• Sophia Woo – Nomination candidate for School Board

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From the community grapevine:

The City of Vancouver Planning Department has scheduled an Open House at the Hellenic Centre for 4 – 8 p.m. Wednesday, November 17th.   Obviously Larco Investments has gone back to the drawing board to make some changes to its development plan.  The Urban Design Panel made some recommendations for changes to the plan. We think the presentation that  our association, ARCCA ,  made to the members of the Panel influenced these suggestions for change.

Now we are being asked to “Have Your Say!” on the new plans.

We have 6200 signatures on our petition calling for a commercial upgrade, only, on the 7 acres.  At last count, Larco’s plans had 540 units with fewer shops, underground parking and the recreation centre for the Village probably would not be rebuilt.

With 40,000 people in our broader community, we need the shops and services not 1000 more neighbours and 500 more cars!

Doreen Braverman

ARCCA Chair

I didn’t go to the meeting until 1 a.m on the Olympic village social housing. I haven’t watched the video of the event. I don’t know every last detail.

But can people please stop screaming hysterically about the abuse of process and decisions being rammed through and contempt for the public.

Yes, I would have preferred they held the meeting at a normal time so that we could have some rational discussion of what the implications are. But you know what would not have made a difference even if the meeting was held during the day with a lot of notice?

1. Housing protesters, who don’t really understand the financial implications or the political impossibility of anything they are asking for, would still have showed up to disrupt the meeting. (And very amusing to me that NPA types, who have zero in common with the radical housing activists and in fact would never in a million years agree with a single thing they are proposing, are portraying them as put-upon members of the public who have had their democratic rights trampled.)

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Well, even if the 480 market condos are sitting empty, at least some people will be moving in.

After some uproar when the province said none of the three non-profits who applied was suitable to run the social housing, the city took over.

It has chosen, as outlined in this report, the Co-operative Housing Federation of B.C. That experienced group will manage the one building it actually bid on, Building 2, the mostly market-rental building, for 60 years.

As well, one of its offshoots will manage the two buildings that are mostly the subsidized units for two years, which will allow everyone to figure out if the maintenance costs on these units is as unpredictable or as high as some people feared. Renters will be moved in ASAP, giving the place a little more life.

The latest here.

Plans for selling the Olympic village’s 480 empty condos have ground to a halt because the City of Vancouver is refusing to approve a new marketing plan with drastically reduced prices until the developer proves it can make up the $100-million to $200-million loss that could result.

“They need to have a satisfactory plan for how they will meet their obligations,” Vancouver city manager Penny Ballem confirmed this week. “Until that is satisfied, we can’t go forward.”

Yikes, the horses are out of the gate and madly galloping in all directions, I gather, after Premier Campbell’s resignation yesterday. People are in secret meetings all over the place figuring out if they will run for the leadership of the Liberal Party.

And Dianne Watts, the reigning queen of municipal politicians, has ignited even more interest from media than she usually gets by not specifically ruling out the possibility that she might enter the race. Here’s the story on same from Watts’ hometown media.

In the past, I’ve been dubious that Dianne would want to make the move to provincial politics. I’ve also wondered how she would manage to keep together a very difficult and diverse caucus, ranging from soft Liberals to hard-core Reform/Alliance/Conservative conservatives. Although she has brought together a disparate band of councillors into a party of her own making — a tribute to what I would call her very high EI (emotional intelligence) skills — that’s a different story from the kind of gladiator war at the provincial level.

But an ally of Gordon Campbell’s reminded me last night that Campbell started much the same way at the municipal level , crafting the rather rambling NPA into a party of his own making that encompassed a broad range on the political spectrum.

Btw, I’m being told not to expect anyone to declare before the Liberal convention Nov. 19 as it would be seen to be dancing on the premier’s grave in an unseemly way or leave the declaree open to accusations that s/he was the kingslayer.

That doesn’t mean there’s not a whole lot of plottin’ going on everywhere.

That’s the rumbling I hear in the background. With the NDP’s chances presumably better in 2013, who among the councillors might be contemplating a run at an NDP seat?

Kerry Jang is a name I hear mentioned. Possibly Raymond Louie. Heather Deal, Geoff Meggs, George Chow? Hmm, though they’ve been mentioned, I get the sense they’re content where they are. Since I’m famously wrong, wait for me to continue with my perfect track record.

Here’s my update — thanks to several phone calls — on the situation with FOI at Vancouver city hall and the future employment of departing FOI officer Paul Hancock.

As many others are, I’m sad to see him leave. Paul was incredibly patient with what is becoming an increasingly demanding job. As I note, FOI requests have almost doubled (260 to 400 + a year) and challenges to the B.C. Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner have soared.

We’ll see if the re-org at city hall results in faster responses

This just went up on the citycaucus.com website. Paul is a young guy, so this is not something can be written off as another boomer getting close to retirement.

Anyone know anything more on this? You can email me at [email protected]

As council comes up to a vote on where to go with laneway houses this Thursday, my look here at their popularity in Vancouver and elsewhere.

There are many issues I didn’t address in this story that I have elsewhere (complaints about the sizes of some of the larger ones, the outsize city fees that are essentially pushing people into building bigger because of the investment they have to make and more) and some issues I didn’t address that should be addressed sometime, somewhere.

As one reader wrote in an email, because all municipalities only allow these small houses to be rented rather than strata-titled and purchased, the laneway-house phenomenon doesn’t really allow first-time buyers to use them to get a foothold in the city.

The likely effect, my reader said, will be to make the cost of a single-family lot even more expensive, since prices will rise to account for the fact that a lot may now have three separate residences on it.

It’s difficult to believe it won’t have an effect on prices since everyone in Vancouver who looks at real estate for a second soon comes to realize that a house with a basement suite sells for more than the identical house next door without a suite.

However, for a lot of homeowners, the laneway houses are proving to be popular — not just in Vancouver, which is just getting started, but in Surrey, where there are already nearly 700 “coach houses” — because it does give some very attractive flexilibility.

Several close-to-retirement couples or singles I know are considering building them to live in, while they rent out their main house and use the proceeds to subsidize their travels or other retirement activities.

But, as Lance Berelowitz pointed out in my story (and Tsur Somerville from UBC did in a conversation), we shouldn’t kid ourselves that this does anything to create a large stock of affordable housing. It’s the Prius of housing solutions — nice and filled with good intentions, but very limited in what it can accomplish.