Surrey’s efforts to remake itself as an urban place, rather than just a bedroom suburb, are exciting and have generated a lot of media coverage.
What that coverage (some of it mine) doesn’t always convey is the reality of what a big job this is. Surrey doesn’t even have a vestigial version of a downtown at the Surrey Central SkyTrain station that it’s trying to fashion into its urban core. There was really almost nothing there that resembled a normal downtown when the mayor started in 2005 to talk about creating a downtown. There was a tower built on top of a mall, a lot of big-box parking lots, even more low-end fast-food joints, some fields, and, off in the distance, a few older houses and apartment buildings.
This is not a question of revitalizing or adding to an existing downtown. It’s really creating one out of whole cloth.
In my story for the Globe on the opening of the city’s new $97-million city hall, I addressed some of the real challenges Surrey has. It’s in competition with other suburbs and with downtown Vancouver for the offices that need to be in any downtown. The retail part isn’t really there yet. Mostly there is a huge investment by the city (close to $200 million) and a lot of condo projects in the works.
That’s not to say that this won’t happen. But it’s going to take a really sustained, focused effort.
A massive redevelopment of Vancouver’s oldest mall – one that will remake a largely single-family neighbourhood in the centre of the city – is expected to take a major step toward reality this week.
Councillors will decide Tuesday on whether to send the project to a public hearing.
This is what people who’ve actually argued these kinds of cases in court have to say about it the whole issue of conflict.
Those interested in the various law cases referred to in this story can find them, or references to them, here, here (do a search with Control F for King) and here.
Statement from the Park Board Chair on the Hadden and Kitsilano Beach Path
Park Board Chair Niki Sharma issued the following statement this evening regarding the proposed path in Hadden and Kitsilano Beach parks, and the related lawsuit.
“We’ve heard clearly from the public that there is significant concern with any proposed changes to Hadden Park. Tonight, the Park Board gave direction to staff to discontinue proceeding with any options for a new path through Hadden Park, and to communicate that to the petitioner in the B.C. Supreme Court application. The Park Board will not be pursuing a new separated path through Hadden Park or at Kits Beach.
“The Park Board will continue to demonstrate a strong commitment to improving the safety and enjoyment for both cyclists and pedestrians. The Board directed staff to explore ways to improve safety on the existing route through Hadden and Kitsilano Beach Park. Staff will also be relocating the funds from this project to other pedestrian and cycling safety priorities for the Park Board around the city.”
So here is the actual text of the lawsuit that the Cedar Party’s Glen Chernen and Co have launched against the mayor with respect to the HootSuite lease, which various other media have been reporting on.
I have yet to talk to any municipal-law lawyers about this, but my understanding from past coverage on this murky issue is that conflict is not as easy to define as it appears among those who throw the term around in conversation.
I remember Sam Sullivan once excused himself for voting on something involving the whole neighbourhood where he lived, a move that lawyers said was an excess of caution, since councillors can vote on issues where they have an “interest in common” with many others. If that weren’t true, no councillor could vote on, for example, taxes, since they are affected by any increase in taxes.
So the issue in a conflict case typically is — did the council member or a direct relative benefit directly by a decision that the council member voted on.
However, I’m sure there are better armchair lawyers out there than me. Any thoughts on the points raised here?
The Downtown Eastside has become our regional mental-health institution, as most of the world knows.
What that means, among other things, is trying to deliver health care to thousands of people who are spread out across a few dozen city blocks instead of one convenient large institution, who can’t be compelled to show up for medical appointments, who end up flailing around between the health and the justice systems, and who can’t be locked up in a room when things get out of hand.
To deal with the whole gigantic mess, the bureaucracy of Vancouver Coastal Health is forced to interact with a host of non-profits to deliver services on the street and to try to manage the many people who come into the area on a mission to save the world. The result, surprise: A lot of conflict.
Coastal Health commissioned a study and report by writer Charles Campbell last year, one that didn’t flinch from describing the conflicts in the area. The health authority has put itself on a path to try to reform its services. But, as I detail in my Vancouver magazine piece here, that’s a Titanic job.
Anyone who thinks the mainstream media is dead should have been at the scrum with Transportation Minister Todd Stone and TransLink mayors’ council chair Richard Walton Friday, where there was a multiplicity of cameras, recorders, and reporters.
And, since the talks that had just happened between the minister and council were fairly inconclusive, everyone was looking for some kind of new news out of the meeting.
I emphasized the fact that mayors, not TransLink, are now going to have to decide whether Surrey or Vancouver gets priority for a big new rapid-transit investment. Jeff Nagel, who has covered this issue like a blanket, went with a lead that suggested the mayors could decide to hold a referendum just on a new vehicle levy in order to pay for a big increase for the bus system.
What was obvious in the scrum was that the minister was trying to set a more conciliatory tone — yes, the mayors know what they want for the region. No, it does none of us any good to be squabbling about all this. The transit rider sitting at the bus stop doesn’t care who pays for it. (I guess that’s what their focus groups and angry emails were telling them, after the province seemed to go on the attack against the mayors a couple of weeks ago, complete with planted calls to talk shows about how the mayors never mention that Vancouver got exempted from the hospital tax to pay for transit 14 years ago.)
On the other hand, what also seems to be obvious is that the province is still stuck in a mentality of fighting to make sure it retains all the money it can from its bridge tolls etc. That’s why Stone, in his letter to the mayors Feb. 6, made it clear the province would not go along with any kind of regional road-pricing scheme in the referendum, since that might impact the revenues the province gets from the Port Mann Bridge and any future tolled bridges.
Too bad. If the province wanted to find a regional solution for road pricing, I’m sure a roomful of highly paid accountants could figure out a way to institute such a system and then divide up the revenue between the province and TransLink. But the province seems to be more desperate to protect its turf than work out a complex but perhaps, in the end, much more equitable and long-term solution like that.
The favourite parlour game among the political watchers these days is discussing who is being approached to take a run at the mayor’s job. Most of the chatter is about potential NPA candidates, although TEAM and COPE also see getting a high-profile candidate as key to their success. The names circulating? Carole Taylor, of course; Trevor Linden; Jamie Graham; Rick Antonson; Jim Chu; Colin Hansen; Margaret McDiarmid, among others.
My story here takes a look at the big names the NPA is said to have approached and why that mayoral candidate is so important. For those who plan to rake me down for not including current councillor George Affleck, yes, I know his name is also out there. But the reality is that the NPA appears to be shooting for someone more instantly more recognizable. George, in spite of some hard slogging he’s doing at council lately, is not there yet. There’s a sense that he is the fall-back candidate, if the NPA can’t score any stars.
For those thinking that this means the NPA is out of the running, well, not necessarily. As one Vision insider noted, there’s an advantage for the NPA in not putting out a mayoral candidate too soon. Announcing early means extra months for Vision strategists to dig up dirt on that candidate and try to frame her or him in a negative way. As we saw in 2002, when Larry Campbell sprang onto the civic election scene only in September, the opposition couldn’t really get any traction on negative stuff because of the short timeline.
On the other hand, having that mayoral candidate known helps recruit strong council candidates and bring in money from more than just the usual steadfast party backers.
This story will evolve, that’s for sure. This is just an early bulletin and an indicator of how hard the NPA is searching.
BTW, as I was researching this story, I was given to understand that on the COPE side, a couple of board members appear to be interested in running and there was a talk of a former judge running, until the party started fracturing in recent months. TEAM claims to have two potential good candidates in the wings. And one other name circulating for the NPA is Leah Costello, an events organizer who ran for the Conservatives federally a few years ago. She told me she hasn’t been asked and it’s something that would be a tough choice, as she has a busy operation. And I’ve heard since the story came out that maybe Jonathan Baker’s son is interested.
Hmm, not good news for Bixi. Alta has just announced a partnership with 8D, the former software provider for Bixi, for the “next generation” of bicycle-share operations in North America. Their news release here.
This comes just after my story last week on Alta Bicycle Share and its vertigo-inducing growth from a small planning and design consultancy to the only all-service bicycle-share company in North America, with contracts in four major cities and a few smaller ones.
As it turns out, four key managers left the company last year and have now set up their own bike-share consultancy as of November, with talk that perhaps Alta tried to be too many things to too many people. I didn’t include in the story some of the labour-relations problems Alta has had in Washington or the reporting that’s been done here and here on their close ties to transportation staff in Washington and Chicago, cities where Alta was chosen as the system.
I did finally get to talk to Alta vice-president Mia Birk last week, who said that some of what happened is just part of the challenge of growing rapidly. She said the company is hoping to get Vancouver’s system in place for 2014. And Birk, who in the early years of bike-share had expressed some skepticism about its viability as a major transportation mode said she’s now an ardent supporter.
“At the beginning, I was skeptical that bike-share would really be a game changer and, for cities faced with limited budgets, I questioned whether this was the top choice” for where to spend money. She said that skepticism vanished when she saw how successful Capital Bikes was when the company launched it in Washington.
Birk said it’s natural there have been some delays in the systems Alta has launched in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland and Vancouver.
“The systems we are launching, it’s like launching a transit system. It’s very complex. There’s a lot that has slowed things down, things that have nothing to do with Alta.”
