Vancouver’s Non-Partisan Association sent out a notice late last week saying it plans to lower its membership fee from $20 to $10 a year, in an apparent move to compete with Vision Vancouver’s successful membership drive that brought in 17,000 new members last year at as low as $5 apiece.

This seems to be part of [...]

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This story from the Toronto Star, praising Vancouver’s car-free days and Toronto’s lack of same, popped up on my screen today. It’s ironic given the debate that keeps raging in this city about changing the current proportions of the car-bike-walker sharing system.
It reminds me forcibly of the way it’s so easy to praise from afar, [...]

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Peter Ladner and Suzanne Anton are not impressed. That’s the politest way of putting their reaction to the news from the VPD this morning that no charges can be laid in the case of the missing Olympic village documents.
Ladner can’t believe the police need people to agree to polygraph tests in order to complete an [...]

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Mayor Gregor Robertson’s comments that city hall bureaucrats are leaving because they can’t handle the pace of his aggressive agenda are really kicking up a s**storm.
The comments, for those who haven’t seen them, are in Jeff Lee’s story in the Sun here and the mayor said substantially the same thing to me, which will be [...]

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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 later [...]

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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 composed [...]

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Mike Howell, the hardest-working reporter on the civic beat and someone who makes me feel tired whenever I look at the volume of stuff he produces on a weekly basis, has been keeping on top of the city hall investigation into the leaked document on the village’s finances last fall. His story is here.

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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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