Last year, the city’s financial statements came out and no one paid attention to the paragraph buried deep inside saying that the city had provided a loan guarantee of $190 million for the private developers of the Olympic village. Even councillors didn’t notice it.
It’s quite a different picture this year, where the statements detail many [...]

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Here’s my latest column in Vancouver magazine, where I got to spend some time with Peter and Shahram Malek of Millennium Developments — the developers at ground zero in the current financial/housing/Olympics twister. Everyone in town has been playing backseat driver to these two and speculation continues to be rampant about the end cost of [...]

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I see my former Sun buddy Jeff Lee was the first to get this story in print about Jim Green being hired by Millennium Developments to help out with the Olympic village and possibly other projects of theirs.
Of course, the sub-text is that this must be about Jim, who helped started the Vision Vancouver party, using [...]

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You can read news stories with complete paragraphs in other media if you want. (My pal Rod Mickleburgh was covering for the Globe today, and pretty much everyone else was there in force.)
Here’s my take on what was new and interesting, beyond the basic news that the city is gearing up to go and borrow [...]

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My pal Jeff Lee over at the Sun had an interesting story in Friday’s Vancouver Sun with details about the in-camera meeting back in June 2007 where the Non-Partisan Association majority voted in favour of the $193-million loan guarantee and completion guarantee for Fortress, so that Millennium could get its financing for the Olympic village.
Jeff [...]

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If everyone could just PLEASE REMAIN CALM.
As unpopular as this might be to say right now, I’d just like to warn everyone that there’s nothing more dangerous or potentially uninformative as a media pack in full pursuit of a crisis. Everyone scrambles to find a detail that’s worse than what the last guy/gal just reported. [...]

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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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More on what the review by KPMG will provide answers to, with lots of comments by new councillor Geoff Meggs.

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The party talk this weekend is all about the Visionista’s move to replace Judy Rogers with former deputy health minister Penny Ballem, a highly unusual move at a local government level.
It’s not unusual to get rid of a city manager. It is unusual to put in someone with zero experience in city issues. Typically, cities [...]

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I called up my various friends and acquaintances who work in investigative reporting across the land, as well as checking with some local media lawyers on this issue. I’ve posted the good bits from what I found on my CTV blog here.

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