It’s tough to unseat an incumbent mayor unless that mayor’s party is splitting behind him, but Suzanne Anton is going to try anyway. And she’s finally got some team support — something she’s struggled without until now — with Norman Stowe (last seen at the Kevin Falcon leadership campaign) heading up her campaign.

That should help sharpen her message and eliminate some of the confusing tangles that she’s occasionally gotten herself into on where exactly she stands with respect to bike lanes, casinos, affordable housing and more.

Suzanne will certainly rally the Non-Partisan Association base of voters, a committed group that delivers 30,000 votes minimum in each election. Now, in the next six months, she has to try to win over many more of the approximately 40 per cent of undecideds in the city.

This poll from Justason Market Intelligence, which I wrote about in the Globe, gives some idea of the weak spots Suzanne will be aiming for and the challenges ahead of her.

The news release just went out that NPA Coun. Anton is going to hold a news conference tomorrow to make an “important announcement about city politics.”

This can only be the announcement that she’s running for mayor, which I’ve been hearing about via various sources for the last two days. Some say she’s been arm-twisted into it because the NPA has been unable to convince anyone else to run. (Unlike COPE, where sacrificial lambs would duly put their names up as mayoral candidate back in the pre-Vision days knowing that slaughter lay ahead, apparently potential NPA candidates do not feel the same sense of duty to be cannon fodder.)

However, that’s all just speculation and others are saying Suzanne is happily jumping into the fray, not being pushed. More news tomorrow on what she outlines as the main issues. My guesses: the Olympic village, the handling of the bike lanes (though not bike lanes themselves), and arrogance at city hall. Those are the obvious targets.

It costs $5-8 million to build one kilometre of road. Until recently, we drivers have taken that for granted. Not much longer. All kinds of people are busily looking at how to extract money from drivers in new and different ways, in a user-pay world of funding for roads and transit.

For BC Business, I got to explore this subject beyond B.C.

Sadly, no trips to experience congestion pricing in London or Stockholm, no flights to Singapore to drive through their roads where the price per kilometre changes with the rush-hour conditions. But I did get to go to the most experimental place in the U.S.: Oregon. Convinced that the fuel tax is a bad way to pay for roads or transit, since people are buying more fuel-efficient (but not less road-damaging) cars or electric vehicles, politicians there have been dabbling with the radical black-box monitoring system.

Now, I’m just waiting to see what TransLink and the province, who have been looking quietly at this whole issue behind the scenes, are going to do next.

Metro Vancouver has always been an odd beast, as politicians from 21 municipalities with weighted votes make decisions about all manner of issues that they sometimes have wildly differing opinions on.

It has seemed even more fractious lately, with the tussling over the new growth strategy. And now the complete disarray, some say gong show, that is going on with what to do about labour relations and collective bargaining. (And that means 72 contracts for 15,500 workers, by the way.)

Seven of the 18 municipalities that participated in the Labour Relations Bureau, as they call it, have now left or served notice to leave. Now everyone’s trying to figure out, What next.

A just-released (after being held in secret for a month) report by labour consultant Jim Dorsey says the big municipalities should just go, if they want to, and the smaller municipalities should band together in an employers association. Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie told me yesterday he thinks that’s the wrong way to go, that Metro Vancouver should do what all of the city administrators recommended, which is to have the district provide a menu of services to all the municipalities that can be provided on a fee-for-service basis.

West Van’s director of human resources said that, even though that municipality has served notice to leave, they might consider staying in if the whole function can be restructed. The City of North Vancouver wanted to force everyone to remain in the collective bargaining group as a condition of being part of Metro Vancouver. Apparently legal letters are flying around with differing opinions on whether municipalities that have given notice will be allowed to do their own bargaining when contracts expire this December or whether Metro is still in charge.

And who cares? Well, all taxpayers should. Contract costs make up more than half of spending in any tax increase. They set the bar for what non-union staff get too. If municipalities are in disarray and they end up settling for rich contracts, guess what that means?

Many of them say that, with the regional system broken apart, they’ll actually be able to come to more reasonable agreements with their local unions. Hope so. The problem is that it’s so hard for the general public to assess. We schlubs in the media and public tend to focus on percentage wage increases. But there are lots of other pieces of contracts (benefits, vacations, sick pay and more) that can cost money.

As the Dorsey report shows, by comparing just the firefighter costs for each municipality, the salaries per firefighters and the cost to the taxpayer vary widely. New Westminster pays its firefighters the most at $88,291 per firefighter. But it only has 1.4 firefighters per 1,000 population. In West Vancouver, there are 2.2 firefighters per 1,000. So even though each firefighter in West Van is paid $68,111, the cost per 1,000 taxpayers is $152,557 compared to New West’s $122,219.

One of the best recommendations Dorsey makes is that collective bargaining agreements be put into an open database that the public can look at. That’s a start. Distilling those agreements down so that the public can truly understand what they are paying for, when all parts of the contract and the level of staffing are included, would be even better.

The report, by the way, is fascinating reading, since the bitterness that exists between the municipalities bubbles up frequently. (Here’s a link to it, which is weirdly only on Geoff Meggs’ site, but not on the Metro Vancouver site.)

This paragraph, for example, highlights the fears that some municipalities have that others will give away everything to their unions because they can afford it, without any concern for the consequences that will have for others,

Some believe the success since 1983, when the current letters patent were issued, has led to an erroneously diminished assessment of the risk of work stoppages, whipsawing and leapfrogging. They believe national and international unions will take advantage of any erosion of employer solidarity. A broad-based defensive organizational structure must be maintained and strengthened to prevent undisciplined, wealthy municipalities from making agreements, some say sweetheart agreements, for which everyone else will have to pay in taxes or realigned budgetary priorities.

 

The suburbs are the most interesting places to watch these days. They’re where people are trying to create new forms of urban life — not the bedroom suburbs of yore, not the traditional cities of the past either. Something new, which no one quite knows what it will be.

My story in the Globe this week looks at how they’re trying to create new downtowns, often with not even so much as a historic old town centre to build from but just out of whole cloth. That prompts the question of, what is a downtown? What makes it work? What are all the pieces you need?

At the moment, too many of them consist of a few large towers or civic buildings next to a transit station and a mall. But they’re all at work trying to figure out how to fill in from there with smaller streets, more mid-rise buildings, more of the kind of variety that older towns naturally produce, where you can have an office building next to some dilapidated one-story building with a tattoo shop next to a historic old bank next to a cool new bar at the bottom of a condo tower.

Surrey and Mississauga in particular are pushing hard to transform themselves, in a time frame as short as two decades they’re hoping.

Why is the NPA having so much trouble attracting strong candidates? It’s conventional wisdom that the party is bound to attract more votes this year than in 2008, as people look for alternatives to Vision Vancouver.

The reasons coming from people with the NPA now or in the past: Too many other elections, perhaps still some infighting between the Peter Ladner/Sam Sullivan-affiliated factions, lack of a strong backroom team, some confusion about the brand. My story here.

The byelection to give B.C.’s new premier a seat is this week and I see that Christy Clark’s efforts to bypass the media and speak only to “regular citizens” are becoming a bit of a story. No surprise to me.

At Vancouver magazine, we decided to do a profile of Ms. Clark, this perpetual firecracker on the B.C. political and media landscape, before she was chosen as the leader. I started work on it a couple of weeks before the leadership vote and continued on for another month after.

I never did get an interview. It was a somewhat liberating experience, although unprecedented in my career. I’ve never had the subject of a profile do that before. But over the course of those weeks, I just got a series of non-answers or We’re just so busy or We just don’t have even 10 minutes available.

A couple of hours before the magazine shipped, we got some typed out answers to very general questions I had sent earlier as an indication of areas I wanted to cover.

All kind of weird, considering that I’m not a reporter known for doing hatchet jobs in particular. (Something that my critics go after me for, frequently accusing me of not skewering people they hate — Judy Rogers for some, Penny Ballem for others — sufficiently.)

I will report what people blunder into saying about themselves, however. Maybe that was the concern, but I really have no idea.

As I said, the lack of interview was liberating to a certain extent. When you get access to a Powerful Person, the temptation to use what they tell you as opposed to what you’ve dug up elsewhere is a strong one.

But the cone of silence appeared to extend beyond the premier’s office. Of the approximately 50 people I called for interviews, sometimes specifying that it didn’t have to be on the record, only about half — an equal mix of friends and enemies — agreed to say anything of any description. Many didn’t even call back to say they didn’t want to say anything.

Makes it tough for the public to know who their politicians really are.

Today is the final day for the NPA to receive applications from those wanting to run as candidates under the party’s banner.

I’ve run a list before of the candidates who appear to be in the race so far, though I had to glean it from various bits of gossip. (So, sorry, Jason Lamarche, that I didn’t include you in my first list, as Mike Klassen didn’t mention your name at his candidacy announcement.)

But I have to say, this is the deadest NPA campaign I’ve ever witnessed.

We have no sense of who the mayoral candidates are. None have made their names known publicly yet, though we’ve had any number of people say they aren’t running. That means there’s not going to be any kind of Christy Clark/Sam Sullivan or Sullivan/Peter Ladner type of race, as far as I can tell.

Besides today being the day for candidate applications, it’s also the last day anyone can sign up for a party membership to vote. Since no one has declared publicly for the mayoral slot, there’s been no mass frenzy of signing up as we’ve seen in the past.

There is the possibility, of course, that the party could bring in a star candidate now or even in September without a big race — as COPE did with Larry Campbell in 2002 — but that speaks to the temperature of the party right now, that no one is fighting to lead it.

So here’s what I know so far about who’s running and who’s not. Updates welcome.

[Read more →]

Kathleen Bartels, Vancouver Art Gallery director. Sadhu Johnston, deputy city manager. Mike Shiffer, senior TransLink planner. Chicagoans (is that the right word?) all. So I finally decided to come here and see what inspired them.

What do I see?

– A city hall that looks like the world’s biggest secure bank, a massive building with four-storey-high columns filling up a whole downtown block. No doubt about where the power sits here.

– A city transit system that is premised on the idea of allowing people to travel around on rail tracks at second-storey level. Like our SkyTrain, Chicago’s El isn’t buried, but gives people a great visual tour of the city. Including a big loop of elevated rail that encircles the downtown, though they have giant metal trains, not like our little Playmobil SkyTrain system. Amazing to think of putting something like that into Vancouver downtown streets — people would go nuts. Incredible noise and shadowing underneath, but it’s unique.

– Incredibly cheap transit. A three-day unlimited pass is $14; a monthly pass $86, only $5 more than a one-zone pass in Vancouver, but with a vastly bigger range and frequency of service.

– A city that seems to be able to combine old and new harmoniously. There are glass towers, forests of them, especially along the lakeshore, but they’re interspersed with grand old plaster-festooned apartment buildings. In most of the city, acres and acres of pleasant sidestreets with brick houses, duplexes and (like where I’m staying) fourplexes built out at a steady two, three or four storeys, pressed close together but every one with a small pocket yard, filled with flowers these days.

– At first glance, lots of interesting public art. The “bean,” of course, the metallic blob in Millennium Park that is a tourist magnet, because it reflects the city and everyone around it in endless combinations.

I’ll spare myself some scathing blog comments (maybe) by noting that I’m aware of Chicago’s difficult history of corruption and racism, so I don’t imagine it’s perfect.

But wonderful to feel yourself in the middle of a thriving city that seems filled with confidence and beauty. A stark contrast to our brief two hours in Detroit, five hours away. The empty downtown had big beautiful buildings, but was completely empty, except for one lonely tour group, on a Sunday. Outside the downtown, the occasional brave loft development, but many crumbling, abandoned-looking buildings and empty, shelled streets.

The most encouraging sign of life: the people who jammed into the cafe we stopped at near the Motown Historical Museum, a post-church crowd dressed for Sunday service, piling in for a big feel of fried chicken, waffles, and collard greens. As we were leaving, a young woman who’d parked her car behind ours in the lot next door stood up to move it so we could get out.

“How could you tell it was our car?” I joked, since it was obvious that we, the only white family in the joint, were likely the owners of the rental car with the Quebec licence plates. “Oh, I could tell you weren’t from around here,” she replied seriously before reversing her car so we could squeeze out.

Waiting to hear an explanation for this news release which has Vision and COPE agreeing that they will split the council slate 7-3. Of course, no guarantees who will be elected but, still, it means Vision is not going to go past the seven spots it has now. In 2008, you’ll recall, they had eight candidates, with only Kashmir Dhaliwal not getting elected from their team.

Still waiting for news on whether all seven current councillors are going to run again, but even so, not likely to be more than one, at most two, new names, for Vision.

But what can this mean? COPE has a winner candidate that Vision decided to make way for? Vision concentrating its votes on what it has now? Anyone?

COPE and Vision Vancouver reach agreement
Vision Vancouver and the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) have agreed in principle to coordinate election efforts and endorse a common slate of candidates.
 
“We’re happy to have reached an agreement with COPE,” said Vision Executive Director Ian Baillie. “We think the progressive majority in Vancouver is best represented by our continued cooperation.”
 
The agreement would give Vision Vancouver the opportunity to achieve majorities on Council, School and Park Board.
 
Numbers of Candidates
Vision has agreed to run 7 for Council, 5 for School Board, 4 for park board
COPE has agreed to run 3 for Council, 4 for School board, 2 for Park
It is proposed that The Green Party run 1 for Park board.  If an acceptable agreement cannot be worked out with the Green Party then Vision Vancouver will run 5 for Park board.

[Read more →]