Brad Cran has been named as Vancouver’s new poet laureate and will be official inducted tomorrow at council. You can read his official bio on the city website, but here’s a brief literary pause to read one of his actual poems which has, you’ll be pleased to note, a kind of urban development theme.
On Childhood

Do [...]

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Oh, here we go again. There’s a show-cause hearing scheduled next week to look at where the following businesses should be allowed to retain their city business licence. As you all know, the city doesn’t schedule these hearings unless the answer is pretty well: No f’ing way.
Avalon Sunsplash Ltd. dba 420 Convenience Store at 316 [...]

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Our favourite time of the year — budget estimates — is here again, with the traditional three acts: 1. The discovery that the projected tax increase to maintain the existing budget is not as high as everyone said the previous fall. 2. The wrangling over what gets cut or added, during lengthy public meetings 3. [...]

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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 in [...]

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One of the things I find many people are forgetting (or were never aware of) in the current hoopla over the Olympic village is that Vancouver has a decades-old tradition of being a real-estate developer. It’s one of the biggest land-owners in the city and its real-estate department, under the leadership of people like Bruce [...]

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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 Mayor [...]

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I have to say, it sounds nuts over at city hall today. There’s an in-camera meeting on right now and apparently Mayor Gregor is going to make a statement/announcement right after that. It could be just my imagination, but every time I talk to someone over there, they sound exactly like those CNN reporters covering [...]

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Should be lots of fun today, with a public council meeting scheduled for 2 at city hall on the Olympic village. I’m sure Suzanne Anton is practicing her punches right now, with coaches on all sides. If I’m not mistaken, it will be available to watch on the city’s website, so all of you who [...]

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Just back from the wild scene at city hall, with all of us rabid Olympic-following media types herded into a sub-basement to get a briefing on the Olympic village from a “senior government official” we’re not allowed to name. (Not sure what the penalty is if we do — have to go help with the [...]

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The city of Vancouver has called a “technical briefing” for media on the Olympic village for 2 p.m., followed by a statement from Mayor Gregor Robertson at 3:30 p.m.
This hastily organized conference is apparently in response to Miro Cernetig’s anonymously sourced story in The Vancouver Sun today, where the key piece of new information is [...]

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