For those who missed it, Jonathan Ross and Civicscene.ca — currently in the middle of a very bad smell — is back and posting.

For those of you who missed this link posted last night by a commenter, here is Global’s very damaging story on the ongoing issue of whether the company Mayor Gregor Robertson’s staff hired to do his city website (with city money) paid for a pro-Vision blogg.

Here’s my reported story on the ongoing standoff in the Township of Langley between the mayor and council. And here’s the lengthier Vancouver Sun story on same, which has many more details.

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson is on Day 9 or so of his China visit. In an interview with Anthony Germain in Shanghai, he was asked whether he doesn’t have foresee difficulties working with an authoritarian regime like China. The mayor said no, going on to give a relatively bland answer about making connections with people.

Then, unsolicited, he went on to praise the way the Chinese get things done on the environmental front in comparison with democracies. My story on this here.

We all think the sun rises and sets on Vancouver politics, but this erupting storm in Langley township shows there is life — and contentious politics — elsewhere in the region.

The Langley Advance has the most complete coverage of this strange tussle between council and mayor that has resulted in the mayor being censured, although the actual details of the incident and allegations that led to the censure are a bit murky. Any further information anyone has that isn’t libellous would be helpful for us outsiders.

Vancouver’s Olympics albatross continues to weigh heavily. The latest: The bid deadline for the non-profits bidding to operate the city’s three buildings had to be pushed back to Sept. 27 from Sept. 7 last week because there is so much confusion about the city’s demands. The bid has prompted a flurry of questions about the city’s plan to claw back any surpluses, the requirement to prepay huge leases, and more.

BC Housing, which is managing the bid process for the city, had to post two full sets of questions and answers to perplexed potential bidders. (You can see the Request for Proposals plus appendices with the Q and As here. My story here.

Also, since my story appeared, Dave Eddy of Vancouver Native Housing got back to me with this message:

Due to the complexities involved we have decided not to put a bid in on the Olympic site housing. I am quite certain that in the end whichever group is successful on the RFP their agreement with the city and BC Housing will look a lot different than what is currently proposed in the documents.

I wanted to be able to think for 10 minutes before plunging into this mess and I have now. I don’t claim to have found the light at the end of the tunnel, but at least I’ve had a bit more time to reflect and make some preliminary phone calls.

So, for those of you not tuned in elsewhere, here is the precis:

Alex Tsakumis, the blogger who is rapidly making it his full-time career to dig up damaging stuff about Vision, obtained the following documents.

1. A proposal from FD Element, a company that does communications/political/media work for various outlets from Queen’s University to the David Suzuki Foundation, on July 6, 2009, to redo Mayor Gregor Robertson’s “About” page on the city website for $14,500.

2. A counter-proposal from Robertson’s chief of staff, Mike Magee, dated Aug. 19, 2009, to do something different, not a redesign of the About page, but a new web page and mayor’s blog, which he pegs at $27,500.

3. A contract with Jonathan Ross, dated April 20, 2009, that agrees to pay him $500 for 10 hours of online marketing work, and then a subsequent contract with Ross dated May 25, 2009, that agrees to pay him $50 an hour for something called “conversation mining.”

4. An invoice to FD Element from an outfit called Tommy Media (clearly a web design outfit) for $730 worth of work on civicscene.ca, the blog that Jonathan Ross started up last summer that is clearly intended to provide counterspin to the citycaucus blog run by NPAers Daniel Fontaine and Mike Klassen, and another $60 charge for one year’s worth of hosting services for civicscene.ca.

I’ve talked to Ross and the mayor’s office and received an email from Don Millar of FD Element confirming that all of these documents are real, none are fakes or have been altered in any way.

Tsakumis’ conclusions, sort of echoed by citycaucus although with some cautions (Mike Klassen got $24,000 from Sam Sullivan to design and run his website over three years, so he’s a bit hesitant about throwing rocks on this one) , are that the mayor’s office clearly pumped up its website contract in order to secretly fund Ross’s blog; ergo, taxpayer dollars are being used to run a partisan political blog.

Both mainstream and alternative media are circling around this one, not completely sure what to do about it. Unlike the radio clip that West End Neighbours came up with that had the mayor calling them “f’ing hacks,” these documents put a lot of smell around the mayor’s office and Ross but don’t nail the coffin lid quite as tightly as that tape did.

Here are my thoughts on all of this and, before I start, I know already some people would wonder why I am giving attention to something on a blog from someone clearly ready to believe any smear about the political party he happens to hate the most today. (I do believe Alex is non-partisan in the sense that he is eventually turns against everyone, except, to this point, Tony Parsons.)

1. The number one rule in journalism is that everyone who coughs up information has an agenda. They may want to make themselves look good; they may have it in for someone. You can’t judge information by the agenda of the person who has it; you have to judge it by whether it’s newsworthy.

2. This kind of information leakage and dynamic is marks an escalation of dirty-tricks political campaigning that is undoubtedly going to go on all this year. This is the first time I can recall that documents between private companies and individuals, as opposed to internal city documents, have been leaked out to the public in a civic campaign — an act of industrial espionage that tops any previous records.

So we had better all get used to what’s going on and figure out how every one of is going to handle it. (I’m not saying that it was Scouts’ rules until now. The evolution from just the previously genteel capitalist/socialist bashing began with the 2005 campaign.  Jamie Lee Hamilton accusing Vision mayoral candidate Jim Green of something or other nefarious and the James Green/Jim Green debacle were departures from all previous campaigns. The 2008 campaign, where Vision Vancouver benefited from well-timed leaks, accusations, and news conferences about Olympic village financial problems, was the next stage.)

So what do I think about all this?

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 As the date for a Sept. 15 public meeting on the large new project at Marine Gateway approaches, this letter is going in to city and council from one particularly knowledgeable resident: Trish French, former assistant director of planning with the city until last year.

She is not impressed with the current plan, for the many reasons she spells out here. I, for one, am waiting to see which direction council will go on this troubled project. Though there are residents in the area who quietly favour the idea of having more shopping and a cinema complex nearby, the project has generated a steady core of public resident opposition and it has endured some weirdly conflicting demands from the city. (i.e. This is supposed to be an industrial area, not residential, but we’ll allow some residential because it’s close to transit, though we want it to be rental. Oh, now reduce the height and get rid of some of the office space. Does that mean you’ll lose some of the rentals? Pity.)

The design has been approved, after a second try, at the urban design panel but only after the tower height was reduced. That eliminated the majority of the rental apartments that had originally been part of the project.

Here’s Trish’s letter.

September 10, 2010

 Dear Mayor and Council:

 RE:     Rezoning Applications at 8430 Cambie Street (“Marine Gateway”)

and 8018 – 8150 Cambie Street

 As a Cambie Corridor resident, and until recently an Assistant Director of Planning for Vancouver, I am shocked and concerned that Council has directed their staff to process two very large rezonings at Marine and Cambie prior to completing the necessary area plan.  Because I will be out of town until early October, and cannot attend the September 15 public meeting on the “Marine Gateway” rezoning, I am writing now to state in the strongest terms why an area development plan must be done before rezonings of this scale proceed.

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Just kidding with that title, but that’s what it feels like already.

Anyway, I didn’t cover any of the brouhaha this week so far but here it is in summary: Cycling group announces survey saying lane will bring more cyclists and business into downtown; city holds technical briefing; business group announces survey saying every business on Hornby hates it and thinks council is out to get them (or words to that effect).

To kick off any more discussion anyone may wish to have here, I’m re-posting a comment deep in a thread on another post that provides a thoughtful, intelligent analysis of the city’s current consultant process.

From Morven:

I think it would be fair to say that among my concerns, the timing and the process are high on the list.

Anytime you turn a policy into reality, you have to start consultation early. And, more importantly, have the consultation , whether an abbreviated or a full process, run by an independent consultant.

Why?

For one, the credibility of the process and the information is vital if there is any hope of consensus.

If the consultation is run by the same people who developed the policy and provide advice to decision makers (as well as take political direction), there is, for many otherwise reasonable citizens a real or perceived conflict of interest. There is simply too great a risk of institutional bias skewing the results.

Note, I am not suggesting any malfeasance. But even in the best run organizations, there is a phenomenon known as optimism bias. Quite simply put, when the organization has a vested interest in a politically advantageous outcome, it is extremely difficult not to err on the side of optimism.

(optimism bias is not confined to engineers, I may add).

Now, Vancouver probably has one of the highest concentration of impact assessors, urban planners and transport planners anywhere in North America so outsourcing some consultation functions is not a resource problem (the financial aspect is another matter).

In case you asked, I am not involved in local consultation initiatives. But at one time I was involved in issues like radioactive oil field waste management and oil rig construction siting, – issues that generate strong reaction to put it mildly.

I recently read the Request for Proposal for the Toronto Bloor Street/Danforth Class Environmental Study of the Danforth Bikeway. I have to admit that Toronto is way ahead of us in Vancouver in independent and integrated bikeway assessment. They take this seriously in Toronto at both the political and administrative level and no reason why we could not adapt some of the Toronto bikeway lessons to our issues.

The Vancouver Art Gallery submitted its formal proposal for the Larwill Park site to the city in July and is waiting for their response. I haven’t seen the proposal and so don’t know if it’s the request to option the land for two years, with the intent to raise the money for the building during that time.

All going as expected, there could be public info sessions on their proposal as early as mid-October, I’m told by staff.

In the meantime, I did an FOI on what the original plans were for Larwill Park way back in the early days. My story in today’s Globe is the result.