The folks over at the Georgia Straight had this interesting item about park board commissioner Ian Robertson thinking aloud about running as the mayoral candidate for the Non-Partisan Association next time around. It’s actually not too early to start planning for that — a bare year and a half away, really, or only 18 Critical […]

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I apologize that it’s taken me so long to put this up, but here, at last, are the campaign finance disclosures that mayoral candidates Raymond Louie and Allan DeGenova filed with Vision Vancouver. (My late-night struggles with blog technology are finally paying off.) They aren’t available at the city clerk’s office because the city clerk […]

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Not all the financial disclosures are in yet — still waiting for many of the Non-Partisan Association candidates — but there’s now enough in to show that the spending reached unbelievable new levels. Vision Vancouver spent almost $2 million, as I report in the Globe this morning. (The documents will be filed with the city […]

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That most exciting point in the three-year cycle of any civic reporter approaches, as the deadline for disclosing campaign finance donations for all candidates and parties in the last fall’s election draws nigh. I know that the folks at Beyond Robson will mock me again for beating them repeatedly with long lists of numbers, but […]

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This post is a little belated, since NPA types told me early last week that a new executive was going to be chosen and on Thursday, just on schedule, the list of new names came out, which you can read, along with new president Michael Davis’s message, here. It’s interesting that the new executive is […]

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Daniel Fontaine, the chief of staff to former mayor Sam Sullivan, has posted a thoughtful essay on his blog on where the city’s 80-year-old Non-Partisan Association needs to go. One idea he has? Out to pasture, leaving the field open for a new party. Thoughts all?

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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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I’ve put this insert into my recent post about deconstructing the Olympic village and I’m repeating it here to make sure it doesn’t gets missed. Daniel just called me to clarify that he is absolutely not the person who gave in-camera documents and Jeff Lee has posted on his blog that it is not Daniel […]

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There’s been a fair amount of opinionating about the recent Non-Partisan Association board meeting, which saw a struggle between two slates for the 11 directors positions that were open. There are posts here and here, giving two quite different perspectives on what actually went on at that meeting. Not sure how many people will be […]

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Don’t ask me why, but I’m spending my leisure time these days reading Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone,” (yes, I know, several years late) a thoughtful and heavily documented analysis of the decline of civic engagement in American society since the 1950s. As we’ve become a more individualistic society, Putnam argues, our participation in political parties […]

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