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 Mass [...]

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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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Police announced this morning that they won’t be laying any charges in connection with the Olympic village documents that went missing last fall. They say it’s partly because some councillors declined to take a polygraphy test.
As far as I can determine, that includes all the Vision councillors at the time — Raymond Louie, Tim Stevenson, [...]

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Because this topic seems to be generating a lot of controversy, I will do a bit of notebook dumping here to give everyone all the evidence available before they come to a verdict.  And then we can move on to other things.

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The wheels of Freedom of Information grind slowly, slowly, but I finally got an answer last week to two questions: What record was there of meetings attended by the city’s chief financial officer, Estelle Lo, related to the Olympic Village? And what emails did she send to city hall staffers or councillors about the village?
According [...]

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For those following this story closely — and many are, feeling that it’s a turning point in the city’s sense of safety as well as a huge personal tragedy — Councillor Suzanne Anton plans to make a brief statement honouring Wendy and her contribution to the city at council today at 2. That should be [...]

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Everyone who FOI’d Judy Rogers’ severance package got their letter this morning on the amount, though not the full severance agreement. It was $571,788 — not the $700,000 that some people had been chattering about.
Still a whack of money, though. You can read my web file here from the Globe and I’ll have more tomorrow [...]

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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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That was the word from city manager Penny Ballem this afternoon. Although Councillor Suzanne Anton didn’t get a seconder to her motion, which I posted earlier, asking for clarification in how those contracts were awarded, Mayor Gregor did ask the city manager to give an explanation since “questions have been raised.”
Penny’s statement: “It was a [...]

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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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