That was the word from city manager Penny Ballem this afternoon. Although Councillor Suzanne Anton didn’t get a seconder to her motion, which I posted earlier, asking for clarification in how those contracts were awarded, Mayor Gregor did ask the city manager to give an explanation since “questions have been raised.” Penny’s statement: “It was […]

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Oops, forgot to post my story from the Globe today earlier than this. But here it is. A look at what’s going on, as the city and province try to figure out where all those 500 people now camping out at First United and a warehouse near Great Northern and in city buildings under the […]

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I didn’t realize how strongly people felt about the question of One Big Police Force until I did some calling among mayors this week. The question of regional policing is not academic for these people, as they argue for and against, as you can read in my Globe story here.

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Sorry, it’s taken me a while to get this up (I’ll spare you the details why), but I promised in my Twitter tweet to provide more details on Gregor Robertson’s speech to the Urban Development Institute, aka the developer crowd, Friday. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. It […]

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Robert Matas’s story in the Globe this morning gets on the record the Vision Vancouver council’s discomfort with the idea of having a czar for the Downtown Eastside, a constantly recurring idea that had been floated again recently. The Vision mayor and council didn’t criticize the idea at first, but behind the scenes, they were […]

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Here’s the latest from city hall, from those of you not already in the loop from the twitterings, blogs, news flashes and what all emanating from the media horde there. More later on some of the interesting Q and A at the council meeting, but I’m at work on other projects right now. STATEMENT FROM […]

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Allen Garr at the Courier is always the first person to spot the soft underbelly of new mayors, in my experience. He was the first to write a column back in the early days of COPE’s term noting that Larry Campbell appeared to have undergone a transformation, shortly after being elected, from crusading coroner to […]

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It was one year to the Olympics yesterday, but for the city and the Olympic village developers, the deadline is much closer: Oct. 31 to be exact, except for a couple of buildings that are going to be delivered Nov. 30. The city is still working on finalizing its financing, and it’s also taking extreme […]

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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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Just back from roaming the room at the Commodore, where the newly in power Vision Vancouver held its first fundraiser since winning the election. I have to say, their fundraisers are different. No rubber chicken, no speeches, no videos about the accomplishments of the Great Leader. Instead, a great band with local jazz singer Karen […]

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