Surrey’s mayor has made it to the 25-person shortlist by an organization called World Mayor (which I never hear from except when someone from Canada gets onto this list).

If you want to vote to support Dianne Watts, instead of Newark’s Cory Booker (seen by some as the next Obama), Calgary Mayor Dave Bronconnier (boo Calgary), or the current ruler of the Most Loved City of Bus Advocates (Beto Richa of Curitiba), you can go here. Vote early and often.

Well, this had to happen at some point and now it has. Here’s the story, which the CBC got first.

People are anxious about the idea of making radical changes to the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts, an idea that appeared suddenly last fall and is moving ahead as of today. Vision councillors agreed to fund a study to look at options, although they limited the public complaints about the $700,000 cost by saying they’re only going to start with a first $300,000 phase and then council will decide whether to go further after results from the early studies are in.

As I note in my Globe story in tomorrow’s paper, taking a lane from the Burrard Bridge was one thing. Removing one of the three main commuter routes in the tangled road mess east and north of False Creek is another. The viaducts are one of the several examples around the city of Vancouver’s ambivalent attitude to car traffic over the years. Like the Champs Elysees-width Pacific Boulevard, the grand sweep of Burrard Bridge on the south end, and Georgia Street, the viaducts are a stretch of road that looks like a freeway but that runs ends up funneling drivers into regular non-freeway-style streets later on.

As I noodled around among pieces of historic research, it became apparent to me that the east/north corner of False Creek has always been a particular mess, a tangle of small roads that were part of the historic communities there, alternating with chunks of big road as various councils have tried to create solutions for commuter traffic. (The Columbia-Quebec connector, that weird strip of highway road that runs in front of Science World, is another effort to fix the mess, also built in 1972 like the viaducts.)

While people are worried about the impact of tearing down or re-routing the viaducts (i.e. more cars trolling through the small streets of Gastown and Chinatown), the reality is that was never a very well-designed commuter route. At the eastern end, it dumps traffic onto Venables, which runs alongside Strathcona single-family houses, and that it eventually dead-ends at Victoria.

For those who think that removing or rejigging the viaducts would someone free up huge tracts of land that Vancouver could sell for mucho dollars — no such luck, I’m hearing. While the one block east of Main, where the ramps are, would be an attractive site, the land west of Main under the viaducts is super-contaminated. It would cost a fortune to build anything there.

I was on CKNW yesterday grousing about the abrupt demolition of the Mount Pleasant pool building (which means the pool won’t operate this summer, of course) and the absence of any definitive plan for replacing it, when park board chair Aaron Jasper phoned in and said they are definitely looking at how to include it in the next three-year capital plan.

I’m awaiting more news on this.

The laneway houses have started to go up — 89 permits issued so far, despite some road bumps along the way — and a few of them are raising eyebrows with their size and ornate look.  (My story on this here.)

I know some people have been opposed to them from day one and so are not going to like them in reality any more than they did in theory. But others who had thought they were a good idea are taken aback by what’s going up.

One piece of info that I couldn’t squeeze into this story was my conversation with Jake Fry, the Smallworks owner who has been a proponent of laneway houses since the beginning. Jake told me that, although he prefers the smaller houses, he can see in some ways why people are choosing the larger ones.

It turns out that it’s costing people around $40,000 to do prep work for the laneway houses. A rule that was meant to apply mainly to people building new principal houses is catching the laneway houses, so that they’re having to put in separated sewer and storm water lines from their property out to the city main. (It’s ironic, too, since the laneway houses, built on slabs, don’t have stormwater drains built in around them the way regular houses do; the water just drains into rock filters.)

Between the cost of excavation for the new lines and the permitting for the sewers and other things, it’s quite a hefty bill. Once people have spent that kind of money before even starting to build, they’re going big, says Jake.

The Zagross Construction owner I spoke to in the story said it costs about $120,000 to $200,000 to build the laneway houses, depending on how elaborate you decide to make the finishings. But she said it looked like a good investment to her. She figured you make your money back on your investment by Year 10 and after that, any rental income you make is pure profit.

According to this item from CKNW, it sounds like there is planning going on for the park where the Mount Pleasant pool used to sit but there doesn’t seem to be any real effort to figure out how to create a pool.

From what I’ve heard from various people, the community is being told that if they want that hugely popular neighbourhood pool back, they have to go out and raise money. I didn’t think that’s how facilities were planned in Vancouver. Apparently I’m wrong.

I have to say that the whole pool thing baffles me. If there was one thing you used to be able to count on old left-wing governments doing, it was siding with neighbourhoods, especially working-class neighbourhoods, trying to save their modest amenities.

But there seems to have been barely a discussion about this, except for embarrassed “well, sorry, there’s just no money” statements. (Or weirder still, statements that the park board was losing money by operating the pool. On that basis, every facility in the city should be shut down. They all cost money and it would save everyone a huge amount if they were all closed or sold off to the Waterslides ‘R’ Us Corp.)

Okay, I admit I’m biased because I live in the neighbourhood and loved that pool, not just because I could walk to it, unlike the Kits and New Brighton pools that require definite long-distance trip-planning, but because it was a reminder of the neighbourhood pools of my childhood, where people would hang out all day — instead of going to the mall.

Members of Vancouver’s oldest civic political party get to vote June 29 on whether they want to change their name from the Non-Partisan Association (or Civic Non-Partisan Association legally) to Vancouver First. (Full wording of the motion here.)

This is the follow-up to a membership meeting a couple of months ago where there was extended debate on whether to change the name, as part of an effort to renew the party, and whether to create political-party-style policy stances on various issues. Members agree to consider the first, but not the second, saying the association has a long tradition of not being a political party and not tying its elected representatives to fixed policy. (Well, except for the vaguely Chamber of Commerce-ish type principles that are part of the association’s constitution.)

So … Vancouver First. What do you think?

Me, I’m wondering if they have to ask Dianne Watts’ permission. As you’ll recall, she created a unique party (me and people on council I agree with, no members, no voting) out in  Surrey called Surrey First. Perhaps this is kicking off a string of franchises.

The residents are revolting in more places than just the West End. Tonight, two meetings bring them out.

One, the Broadway transit group that is coming together of “Not another Cambie” is holding a meeting to rally the troops and hear from speakers they’re likely to agree with.

Two,, there is a public hearing at city hall for two of the eight social-housing projects that recently got funding. One of them is the tower at Broadway and Fraser, which has managed to unite two groups with different interests: the usual “we’re not against the homeless, we just don’t want so many of them in this neighbourhood” faction and others who have no problem with social housing, but really don’t like the very visible tower planned for this low-rise area of Broadway.

More info on the two meetings below

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Ever wanted to run a shrimp-dumpling, bahn mi, or fish-taco cart? Here’s your chance. The city of Vancouver is issuing a call for street-food vendors with “diverse and healthy” offerings as part of its effort to help Vancouver break out of the hog-dog gulag it’s been in for the last several decades.

Info on how to apply is here. There will be 17 vendors selected through a lottery system. But beware: you still must “nutritional options as part of your menu; have a plan to reduce the environmental impact of your operation (i.e. waste management and / or diversion); and comply with Vancouver Coastal Health requirments.” I would suggest something involving the eggs of backyard chickens myself.

The new vendors will have access to these 17 new locations which, from the look of them, have mainly been chosen for the absence of retail activity nearby. Hmmm.

Now what I’d like to lobby for is those coffee huts that you see everywhere in Washington and Oregon, often located in gas-station or mini-mall parking lots. Now that would be excellent. Why can’t we have those? Because, you know, there aren’t enough coffee places in Vancouver. I am often forced to go as far away as four blocks for a coffee, which I think is a terrible hardship.

Dropped by the Vision Vancouver fundraiser Wednesday night, held at the Coast Plaza — just down the street from the St. John’s church site whose proposed redevelopment is causing such an uproar. There’s going into the heart of the dragon’s den or something.

West End Neighbours, the new impromptu group that has sprung up to oppose Vision’s rental incentives for developers and, along the way, a lot of other things, was outside waving placards and letting anyone who didn’t know already about their general dissatisfaction.

But the group went a bit further than others I’ve seen in my many years at city hall, by having a couple of them buy the $150 tickets (unless they got them free from Vision) and go in to mingle with the crowd. When I passed the mayor at one point in between the two tables of shrimp dumplings, deep-fried prawns and spring rolls, he was embroiled in a deep conversation with WEN’s persistent Randy Helten.

The event, a cocktail-party type thing that mercifully allowed people to move out to the outdoor patio/garden, was not as big a do as the Wall Centre fundraiser last fall, but still drew the faithful. Among people from the development crowd I saw there: Peter and Shahram Malek of Millennium (Olympic village, current Maxine’s project in the West End that is on the WEN hit list), Andrew Grant from PCI (Marine Gateway), architects Richard Henriquez (art gallery planning), Stuart Lyon (social housing projects all over the city), and Walter Francl (Bob Rennie’s Chinatown gallery makeover, Olympic village community centre) and James Hancock (two residential towers bordering BC Place).

Also present: David Cuan from the First Shaughnessy residents association, Dr. Peter Wong, who’s been doing a lot of work in Chinatown, Shirley Chan, working with BOB in the Downtown Eastside. I’m told there were any number of government-relations-type people, but I don’t run in those circles so couldn’t ID them.

Congratulations should go to the mayor’s speechwriter for keeping things short, unlike previous events where Gregor Robertson went on forever over what was usually a din similar to what I’m hearing during the World Cup soccer matches that I wake up to every morning in our house these days.

The successes the mayor listed: the Olympics; progress on dealing with homelessness; progress on dealing with homelessness; progress on becoming the “coolest city in the world by 2020” with various green initiatives like bike lanes and curbside composting. He did acknowledge that neighbourhood groups have their concerns about affordable housing and praised them for their “engagement,” adding that that “we’ve got lots of tension and lots of struggles to get through these decisions.”

Gregor also noted that “city hall is a different place than it was 18 months ago” (something many city hall staffers would agree with) and that it’s a lot more confident and ambitious.

School board chair Patti Bacchus got the main cheers of the night, when the mayor praised “our school board for standing up for our kids.”

And that was it. Another few thousand for the election-account kitty, which the mayor reminded everyone is going to be needed in only another 17 months.