Gets boring to write election after election, but … most expensive election ever.
Campaign finance reports are over on the Elections BC website, for those anxious to scrutinize them. I so look forward to having someone note that somebody gave some sum of money every time their business licence or development is approved.
The basics: Vision went nuts on spending, with $3.3 million in spending by the end, leaving the organization almost $400,000 in debt. Strangely, the NPA had $228,000 left over, after raising almost $2.5 million. Did they decide it wasn’t worth blowing any more money or it was in the bag or ???
COPE did not file by deadline. Greens spending was modest, as they’d said it would be.
I look forward to your finds of nefarious doings, hidden in all the pages of money. I’d like to go through the timelines to see how much money Vision spent in the last few weeks of the campaign, when the team was desperately trying to pull it out of the polling hole
7 responses so far ↓
1 boohoo // Feb 23, 2015 at 4:57 pm
It’s all quite a spectacular waste of money.
2 Brilliant // Feb 24, 2015 at 5:47 pm
Looks like all those developer donations paid off. And now Vision pays bask their masters by appealing the ruling that their backroom deal in Yale town was illegal.
3 Tiktaalik // Feb 24, 2015 at 10:29 pm
Hootsuite only gave $2000. So much for those conspiracy theories about them getting secret deals on real estate etc.
The taxi lobby gave $50k+. They really, really, really don’t want Uber to be allowed to operate.
4 Kirk // Feb 25, 2015 at 8:30 am
There was the whole lawsuit about Hootsuite. Most info was already made public.
http://metronews.ca/news/vancouver/943743/vancouver-mayoral-hopeful-sues-gregor-robertson-for-conflict-over-hootsuite/
http://www.vancitybuzz.com/2014/07/dismissed-judge-deems-lawsuit-mayor-alleged-hootsuite-sweetheart-deal-without-foundation/
5 jenables // Feb 25, 2015 at 7:12 pm
I copied this comment from another post from here on the subject. The comment was from Bill Lee and is the text of a courier article.
Social media company paid $692,145.80 for rent, parking and property taxes in 2013
by Bob Mackin / Vancouver Courier, February 28, 2014 02:58 PM
http://www.vancourier.com/hoot…
[ PHOTO After three months of free rent, Hoostuite’s contract called for payments of $47,149.50 per month ($17 per square foot) for the first year, plus $4,615 per month for 71 parking stalls (at $65 each). Photo: Dan Toulgoet ]
HootSuite received more from the City of Vancouver last year to renovate the city-owned building it occupies than it paid to use the building.
Figures released by city hall show the social media company paid $692,145.80 for rent, parking and property taxes in 2013, the first of a five-year lease at 5 East Eighth Ave.
On April 10, 2013, city hall paid $698,922 to HootSuite under the tenant improvement allowance clause of the lease contract, which was approved by city council behind closed doors on June 27, 2012.
Various city hall departments also paid HootSuite $42,438.92 for use of the HootSuite Enterprise Package, subscriptions, and Twitter account management.
City hall’s Freedom of Information office had refused to disclose monthly payments to and from HootSuite on five separate requests filed since last September. That changed when the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for B.C. intervened in February.
The city now shows it paid $39,458.68 for the HootSuite Enterprise Package from January to November, $423.63 in Library monthly charges and $804.10 for IT monthly charges. The mayor’s office spent $1,667.34 and councillors $85.17 on HootSuite subscriptions.
The purchases from HootSuite fell under the $75,000 threshold for an open, public tendering process. Documents released by city hall, however, show that bureaucrats did not follow policy to research the prices of competing products.
After three months of free rent, the Jan. 21-released contract called for payments of $47,149.50 per month ($17 per square foot) for the first year, plus $4,615 per month for 71 parking stalls (at $65 each). By year five, HootSuite is supposed to pay $61,017 per month in rent.
The tenant improvement allowance was set at $20 per square foot for the 33,282-square-foot former Vancouver Police building. HootSuite’s contract includes two five-year lease extensions and an option to purchase the building for $9.3 million that expires on Dec. 31, 2015. The latest assessment shows the property is worth $10.191 million.
If it exercised the purchase clause, HootSuite would have to repay a portion of the tenant improvement allowance.
Cedar Party leader Glen Chernen launched a B.C. Supreme Court petition on Feb. 14 aimed at disqualifying Mayor Gregor Robertson from office for not declaring his HootSuite conflict of interest under the Vancouver Charter. Chernen claimed HootSuite got the city building lease without tender because it helped Robertson and his Vision Vancouver party win the 2011 election.
Robertson’s defence statement has yet to be filed, but he did call the allegations “bizarre” and claimed city hall was helping HootSuite for economic development reasons.
“This contract with HootSuite for their services is just another piece of proof that some of our elected officials think it is all right to give their friends and supporters special access and privileges to our city without any questions or consequences,” Chernen said.
Neither the office of the mayor nor HootSuite responded for comment on Friday morning.
6 jenables // Feb 25, 2015 at 7:32 pm
I agree, but that money paid for the legions of phone callers, door knockers, advertising and professional strategists that allowed vision the bottom six spots on council and mayor re election. Of course, I’m sure part of the election strategy was a dearth of east side advance polls and late stage campaigning, as well as enlisting the help of an NGO, (very, very sketchy, imo) //www.theprovince.com/touch/story.html?id=10382073
and the shenanigans with the union. The strategy in general was to keep the focus off issues they do have control over that directly affect Vancouverites and present the election as being about pipelines and oil tankers in our harbour. Disappointed but not surprised to find money talks and bullshit WORKS.
7 Dan Cooper // Mar 7, 2015 at 7:31 am
The thing I’ve been pondering is how the arguments for changing the elections from yearly to every four years, starting four decades ago and going in stages, have always been at each step: 1) To cut the costs of elections; 2) To increase voter turnout; and 3) To promote stability in government and expertise/knowledge in those governing. Instead, election costs per annum have increased – not unreasonably since the stakes of winning or losing a particular election are now four times as great; and voter turnout has fallen drastically (it was actually highest ever at the time of yearly elections!). Perhaps people no longer feel comfortable voting for either since, since while it could be debated whether our rulers are better now than they were before, they are definitely more rulers not leaders now, since they are essentially unanswerable and can do whatever the deleted they want for three or so of each four year term. Vision has often been an excellent example of this, as now is Ms. Fraser on the school board; no one actually knew what the heck she was going to do until she got there but we’re stuck with her and whatever she pulls out of her ear for the next four years!