Anyone who covered urban issues for longer than a week inevitably ended up speaking at some point to Warren Gill, an urban geographer and someone who loved the city. In recent years, he had become SFU’s vice-president of university relations.

He was always thoughtful in explaining the way cities work and he actually helped change Vancouver, spearheading SFU’s efforts to establish itself downtown.

I last saw him a year ago at, no surprise, Surrey’s town-planning competition held out at the SFU Surrey campus. In spite of his struggles with cancer, evident in his thinned hair, he was out scanning the dozens of designs that had been submitted and, as usual, happy to talk about how Metro Vancouver is changing.

I am so saddened by this note that I got just now from Gordon Harris, the president of of the SFU Community Trust.

It is with great sadness that I am writing to let you know of the passing of our long-serving board member Dr. Warren Gill, Simon Fraser University’s Vice-President of University Relations.

During his six years on the SFU Community Trust board, and his 33 years at Simon Fraser University, Warren worked tirelessly and inspired all of us with his dedication to the university, our community, and especially his work in establishing and expanding SFU’s major presence in downtown Vancouver.

Warren’s commitment to the work of the Trust was immense and with his passing we have all lost a great friend. I know you join me in extending our sympathy to Warren’s wife Shaundehl, his parents, other family members, and his many close friends.

Other blogs posted links to the Vancouver magazine story I did about Mike Magee Mayor Gregor Robertson’s chief of staff, back in August while I was on vacation.

So you may have seen this already, but just in case, here it is.

Magee is definitely the strongest, most go-to chief of staff I can remember seeing or hearing about at city hall. Although Daniel Fontaine worked closely with Sam Sullivan (he was actually the one who came up with the concept EcoDensity) and they were a tightly co-ordinated team, he was never the deal-maker and power-people wrangler that Magee is.

Geoff Meggs, now a councillor, told me while I was researching this piece that the chief of staff roles were really divided up among three different people — him, Stephen Learey, and Vanessa Geary — while Larry Campbell was in office. Magee has really centralized the chief of staff role to himself.

Janet Fraser in Philip Owen’s office saw her role as completely different from what we see now in chiefs of staff. And Gordon Campbell relied on Ken Dobell for advice and muscle, not his staff.

Some might see that as a good thing — makes the mayor’s office far more effective. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next non-Vision administration, whenever that arrives, finds someone similar for the role. But it obviously has its downside. People wonder who’s really running the show. And some don’t like Magee’s Rahm Emanuel (the famously abrasive Barack Obama staffer) style.

I have to say I honestly don’t know, when it comes to who’s in control. In the Campbell administration, I could get a sense of who was pulling the wagon in which direction: sometimes it was Jim Green, pushing for a particular project; sometimes it was Geoff Meggs, strategizing about the best way to carry out a particular plan; but often it was Larry Campbell, for good or bad.

With the Sullivan-Fontaine pair administration, there was no mistaking that it was Sam Sullivan taking the city off in particular directions. You knew what his passions were and the way he did business.

But with Magee and Robertson, they’ve been aligned for a long time and have very similar values, making it hard to tease apart the differences.

As well, Gregor doesn’t particularly like talking to reporters, me or anyone, so it’s hard to get a sense of how his head works and which parts of city strategy are his.

I try to figure out who holds the reins of power by checking with people on who they call to solve a city hall problem. That’s usually the test. By and large, what I hear is either city manager Penny Ballem or Magee. But not always. I continue to collect data.

As many know, Mayor Gregor Robertson announced last week that the city would hold off on proceeding for the moment with one of the tower applications for the West End.

The community group that has been doggedly campaigning for a change to the city program that led to this tower application gave it cautious approval and provided a whole list of information for backgrounders.

I’m posting it here for reference.

WEN, West End, Mayor’s Committee, Comox

In keeping with my sense that the civic-election campaign has already started, more than a year from the election, here’s some news from the polling front.

This poll from Barb Justason confirms that Vision and Gregor Robertson are still riding high with the public. But, in spite of that strength, she says there are signs that there’s a significant pocket of the public that doesn’t like some of what they are seeing. My story in the Globe here.

Barb’s full poll results are available on her website at Justason Market Intelligence.

Slowly, slowly getting my post-summer brain into gear this week as I re-enter the slipstream of Vancouver politics. I note that it feels like campaign time already, though the election is over a year away.

This promises to be a tough fall. Those of you who don’t like fights should tune out now, because opposition parties will be going all out to knock Vision off balance and show prospective candidates that the party is vulnerable (and therefore worth investing the energy and money to run against), while Vision will be doing its best to create an image of unstoppability.

In the meantime, a few things have broken out in the media while I was on my silent retreat.

First off, the memo from Vancouver city hall’s non-union employees outlining their concerns about the morale and dissatisfaction at city hall. That group of employees doesn’t speak out often. The last time was a decade ago, when a raft of them quit after the council of the day cancelled the four-day week that had been a prized employee benefit, and a survey much like this one showed high levels of employee dissatisfaction. (My story of the time is attached below)

It’s easy for bloggers from the right to leap on this as proof, yet again, of how incompetent and generally horrible Vision Vancouver is or for bloggers from the left to say this is all part of some smear campaign orchestrated by the right, with a compliant mainstream media aiding and abetting.

Too bad about all the politics, because it undercuts the need to deal with a real problem at city hall. I heard about this survey just before I left for my vacation and just ran out of time to ferret out a copy. (A lesson to all reporters — don’t go on vacation.)

Those who are inclined to can dismiss this as just the whining of a group of already highly paid people who can’t deal with change. And certainly, as any professor of organizational behaviour will tell you, change is always going to be met with resistance by a core group of people who have been doing things the same way for 30 years and just don’t want to have to make any adjustments. And change is never going to be accepted by everyone.

But I am hearing real frustration at city hall from all kinds of people: those who are young and enthusiastic and up for a revolution; those who agree with Vision’s goals and don’t just think they’re a bunch of crazy chicken-raising bike-riders; those who just take pride in doing a good job. They’re going nuts.

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As promised, I am going to try to give my mind a rest (though I will check out the Green Line in Portland shortly — thanks for the suggestion) and therefore not be posting until Sept. 1.

The comments section is open here for anyone to post anything they like related, however vaguely, to urban issues. The comments will be monitored from time to time for general civility. I decided not to have guest moderators as that would allow access to the email addresses of people who post here and I want to ensure their privacy.

Finally, before I disappear for this bit, I wanted to thank everyone here for making this blog a part of your day. It’s now been a few days over two years since I started it. In that time, it’s grown from 30,000 page views a month (I use webalizer as a counter) to, last month, just over 130,000 page views. That means well over two million in the two years. I’ve put up 940 posts in that time and had 13,662 approved comments.

I’m grateful for all the passionate conversations you’ve carried on here and the (mostly) thoughtful, informed comments, along with the occasional falling-down-funny interjections.

(Sorry, late posting on this due to sporadic ability to connect from paradise)

A new round of layoffs at the Vancouver Art Gallery has prompted staff and their union rep to speak out even more vocally this past week than the unhappy mutterings I’ve heard for the past few months.

As my story says in more detail, they are wondering how the gallery will fundraise the $350 needed (okay, only $260, subtracting the province’s $50 million and private donors’ $40 million) for a new building when it can’t even keep operations going now without laying off people and running a deficit.

The gallery says the layoffs and deficit are a result of the recession, which won’t last forever. And the money that’s going into advertising, PR, and contract staff to plan the new building are from special money donated just for a new building so it doesn’t affect the operating budget one way or another.

That all may be true, but it doesn’t look good to have this kind of unhappiness within your own staff ranks when you’re out trying to convince the public to give big.

As promised, the first of my two stories in the Globe Saturday. This a comparison of the rapid-transit lines in Seattle and Vancouver, both celebrating a one-year anniversary this summer but with very different histories and outcomes.

I know this has already generated some comments elsewhere but for those who missed them …

I’m sitting under an apple tree on Hornby Island, not Hornby Street, having just read my way through the 171 comments on the Hornby bike lane. All I can say is  … well, nothing. It’s too mind-boggling, the level of passion that is going into this stretch of pavement. Though, as someone pointed out, also pretty informative.

(Apologies to those whose comments were held in limbo, waiting for me to moderate. All up now. Everyone please go back and read, as they were very good.)

On other notes, I have two interesting news stories coming out tomorrow, watch for them. (I’ll post.)

Secondly, I am going to try to take some holidays, which means not writing stories, not writing blog posts, not answering emails, and generally not doing nerdy things like Twittering on the ferry or holding lengthy conversations with policy wonks while sitting on my towel at the beach. (It’s harder to do these days, because so many around are doing it — the Cardboard Bakery had three laptops running already when I got here and the naked guy next to me at Little Tribune was solving some kind of data problem on the phone while I was there this morning. In answer to your question, no, I was not.)

Soo .. what to do for the next two weeks. I could just shut everything down and disable comments, but I fear that would drive some people to have to leave their houses and we couldn’t have that.

My idea is to have a post called Holiday Comments, where anyone can post on any urban topic while I am gone. I’ll have someone monitor for violations of my blog policy — no stupid name-calling, no labelling people as mindless partisan hacks without some piece of specific evidence or analysis, no gratuitous meanness. You know, the Frances Bula Be Nice, or If You Can’t Be Nice, At Least Be Thoughtful policy.

Aye or nay?

I know you’re all panting to let the city know your views on this. Don’t waste your breath on me. Go directly to the source.

Here’s the city news release.

Hornby bike lane open house welcomes public input

City of Vancouver transportation staff will be at the Pacific Centre Mall rotunda Wednesday to meet the public, provide information on the proposed Hornby St. separated bike lane and receive public input.

Staff will be in attendance from 11 am to 7 pm. The rotunda is located just inside the Howe and Georgia streets entrance to the mall.

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