This is currently circulating at city hall, a place that is as porous as limestone these days.

My only observations at this point are that the payout is not a lot, considering that Mr. Tsisserev was making in the $120-130,000 range the past couple of years. I’m sure there will be lots of commentary on why Mr. Tsisserev wrote the letter he did. Certainly, most employees who leave a company don’t want to develop a reputation for trashing their former employer. But it’s hard to believe he would provide assurances he didn’t believe in, if the stories I’ve heard about his willingness to stand up for what’s right are true.

From: Ballem, Penny
To: Robertson, Gregor; Chow, George; Anton, Suzanne; Reimer, Andrea; Cadman, David; Chow, George; Deal, Heather; Jang, Kerry; Louie, Raymond; Meggs, Geoff; Stevenson, Tim; Woodsworth, Ellen
Cc: Merkley, Ryan; Coulson, Marg; Magee, Michael; Ballem, Penny; Stewart, Wendy; Hancock, Paul; Impey, Patrice; McLellan, David; Johnston, Will; Sirsiris, Dana; Quinlan, Kevin
Sent: Fri Mar 26 17:45:52 2010
Subject: Council Motion re Arkady Tsisserev

Dear Mayor and Council – I am attaching a memo, in camera Council report and minutes, and various other documentation in regard to the motion passed in Council on Tuesday March 23 2009 re  the termination of employment of Mr Tsisserev. I apologize for the delay in getting this information together but as you can see it is a large package which has been collected from different parts of the organization. Thank you for your patience and we will be posting this information on the city website first thing Monday morning.
Penny Ballem, MSc MD FRCP
City Manager

TSISSEREV

Here’s the official news on the mega-entertainment complex planned for beside BC Place. Let the brawling begin.

By the way, I’ve been told by the city that Pavco had already made inquiries about how high the towers could go and have been told that the province, just like everyone else, will have to respect the view cones.

The province’s task force on civic electoral reform is slowly generating more interest these days, with the realization that maybe something really is going to change.

I did my brief summary on the issues in the Globe here, but there’s a lot more material around and information to be had. The big items are 1. whether to ban corporate and union donations or put limits on all donations 2. how to make election contributions and spending more transparent and accessible to the public (i.e. online and available BEFORE the election, not three months after) 3. who to get to investigate complaints after elections, since it’s a cumbersome procedure that currently involves having city staff investigate their own bosses (something they say frankly makes them uncomfortable) or calling in the police, which is heavy-handed, cumbersome and usually useless 4. whether there should be a corporate vote (Minister Bill Bennett already says he’s heard a huge negative reaction on that one) 5. whether the restrictions on who can run should be changed, something smaller towns are pushing for (volunteer firefighters currently aren’t allowed to run for office) and 6. whether elections should be every four years instead of every three.

The minister in charge of the task force with the Union of B.C. Municipalities, Bill Bennett, has been very open about what his opinions are on various things or what he’s been hearing. That’s ruffled the feathers of people who worry he’s decided what he’s going to do in advance or that he’s only giving his version of what he thinks people want.

Bennett told me yesterday he has now decided to make all submissions to the task force available online (something that wasn’t being done before), although without names because of privacy consideration, and they should be up next week. As for him having undue influence on the process, the task force is being co-chaired by the UBCM, which said loud and clear a couple of weeks ago that they thought bringing back the corporate tax was a hugely bad idea. Bennett said he’s heard that message.

I heard earlier this week that there was a housing bomb coming down the pipe from province. Here it is, the province taking over the once-venerable Downtown Eastside Residents Association after an audit that they say shows provincial money was being used improperly.

The city had its day in the media sun Tuesday, with a homeless count that seemed to be proving that having more shelters is keeping people off the street.

The housing minister got his day today, with his Colemanesque gentle ultimatum that, if Vancouver wants to open more shelters than the province currently funds, it should pay half the operating costs.

The question that I can’t help thinking is going to come Mr. Coleman’s way: If his complaint is that the city is “setting its own policy” on how many shelters to have open without wanting to pay the bill, surely some people are going to ask, “Why is it not provincial policy to ensure that there are enough shelters to provide everyone on the streets with a bed?”

I’m sure we’ll get an answer soon.

Toronto is celebrating six months of 311 service and bragging about their low wait times and popularity. Vancouver’s 311 appears to be equally popular in its early stages — it gets half as many calls as Toronto does in a city that is population-wise 1/5 the size, but average wait times are considerably longer, as Daniel Fontaine found when he FOI’d the performance report.

What is the problem? I for one would like to know, as I still keep hearing complaints from people that they have to spend ridiculous amounts of time on the phone waiting. My one and only personal experience with 311 has been good — a call about garbage dumped in the back alley that was taken after only a relatively short wait and a truck came by the next day to pick the stuff up. But others I talk to say they wait a long time, find their calls routed to strange departments, and don’t get to form the same kind of bond with the actual person dealing with the problem that they used to.

If you didn’t catch it in other media, the city is going to release all documents related to the firing, laying off, termination, shared-services review downsizing of chief electrical officer Ark Tsisserev, which has been stirring up dustclouds of speculation in recent weeks.

Presumably not his personal file from the human-resources department, but things that were presented during the in-camera meeting where his position was eliminated.

A propos of all this, I heard last night that Mr. Tsisserev is now employed at the engineering-firm giant here, Stantec.

The city had its own homeless count, a first, yesterday, which everyone covered. Here’s my version. Interesting to note that the city’s numbers will be out in a couple of weeks — just before the five community emergency shelters are set to close April 30. I await developments on this front.

When I started working the city-hall beat in 1994, I was plunged into furious debates about casinos. The Mike Harcourt NDP government was entertaining a proposal to have a big, destination casino on the waterfront behind Gastown.

The NPA city council of the day took the public opposition to that and ran furiously with it, holding all kinds of public meetings to allow people to rant about the evils of gambling.

Now, here we are, 16 years later, with that Las Vegas-style casino back on the city’s front door. Here’s what the current council has to say about the issue now: No, they don’t expect anything like the same opposition to gambling. But they do think local residents won’t be happy and, at the very least, will be expecting the city to extract some concessions in return for plunking Bellagio down in their midst. But the city has no bargaining chips, as it turns out.

This just out from city hall today. Strikes me as a motion created to give the media something to gnaw on on a quiet Sunday besides endless blog circling around the Tsisserev mystery story. Looks like it promotes transparency, without giving away too much. Councillors’ expenses are, for the most part, completely boring and uninteresting. Even those who faithfully track them every year can barely get an angle out of them. More interesting would have been to put the entire mayor’s office expenses online. Perhaps the city manager’s too, along with the special fund the city manager directs — unless Penny Ballem got rid of this interesting little piggy bank that’s been around for a decade or so.

N.B. Even though it doesn’t specifically say so in this news release, I have been assured, since I put this up on the blog, by the powers that be at city hall that this motion will also refer to the expenses of the mayor’s entire office (which includes costs of all staff, travel not just for the mayor but anyone travelling with him from the office, and other things that go well beyond just the mayor’s travel and miscellaneous expenses.) We don’t even get an unexplained total of those expenses in the skimpy report going to council this Tuesday, as has been the practice since time in my memorial.

Mayor Robertson calls for Council expenses to be available on-line

Vancouver – Mayor Gregor Robertson will be introducing a motion on Tuesday to have the details of Council’s expenses posted on-line for the public to view, in a move to increase transparency and accountability at City Hall.

“Vancouver lags behind other cities when it comes to openness and accountability,” said Mayor Robertson. “In cities like Toronto, you can view on-line a detailed breakdown of each councillor’s local and travel expenses, but in Vancouver, you have to request it.”

A report coming to Council on Tuesday outlines the remuneration and expenses for Council in 2009, but does not provide details on what those expenses actually are. Anyone who wants to see what the expenses are has to request it through the City Clerk’s Office.

“We should be making it as easy as possible for the public to see how City Council spends its money,” said the Mayor. “By posting the details of individual expenses on-line, taxpayers can see what their elected officials are spending their budgets on. Other cities around the world already do this and it’s time Vancouver did too.”