Vancouver has spent we don’t know how much money to get lawyer Richard Peck to come up with recommendations for how the city can avoid future leaks of embarrassing documents. One of his main recommendations was that Vancouver hire a full- or part-time integrity commissioner. But it didn’t sound to me yesterday as though Vision […]

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Councillor/journalist Geoff Meggs has another interesting tidbit from city hall, the latest report on development permits continuing the downhill slide. By the way, his post below that one is also pretty interesting — a dramatic account of the city meeting over a Fraser Street re-development project, which includes people crying and fainting. Who ever thought […]

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Former journalist, now councillor, Geoff Meggs has put his blog back in motion recently. For those of you who just can’t read enough about city hijinks and deep policy thoughts, the link is here. It was impressive that in a recent post, he took the time to publish a lengthy comment from someone critical of […]

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Remember the Vision Vancouver promise to create an affordable housing boom? Here comes the task force to accomplish same, as you can see in this motion coming up next week from councillors Geoff Meggs and Raymond Louie here. It’ll be interesting to see what kinds of solutions they can come up with, given how dramatically […]

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I have a story in today’s Globe about what cities are trying to do to keep business, especially development, going in their neighbourhoods. Surrey’s efforts are just kicking off so not a lot of details yet, but there’s a LOT of talk in Vancouver these days about what the Vision council could do to thaw […]

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It looked like it was going to ho-hum day at city council, with councillors Suzanne Anton and Raymond Louie continuing their energetic pillow fighting over the the budget, the Olympic village, the kinds of candies given out for free in the mayor’s office, and so on. But, instead, at the end of the budget presentation, […]

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A little bird called me today and read out an email from a Vision board member that has somehow escaped to a larger audience than intended. The email, from Marcella Munro, went out this morning to the rest of Vision’s tight communications team, which frequently debates how well they are doing on their message. That […]

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Sources in city hall tell me that Olympic project manager Jody Andrews tendered his resignation today, effective immediately, after several weeks of being stripped of responsibilities and pretty much ordered not to talk to the public/media about the village. The relatively young 40-something Andrews, who has worked at the city for 18 years, was put […]

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My learned friend Geoff Meggs commented today in the Globe and Mail that the city’s credit rating has never been downgraded before due to council actions. Actually, I was reminded by someone with a better memory than mine that that’s not true. The credit rating was downgraded in 2003, when Geoff was then assistant to […]

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I really think there should have been a sports commentator at today’s first meeting of the new Vision-controlled council. Or several really, to handle the various rounds that ensued as council proceeded through the many motions put forward to kickstart the Vision agenda. We could have started with one of those hushed-voice golf types for […]

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