The ongoing saga of the Vancouver Art Gallery’s efforts to get more space and/or move to another site have been going on for years, starting sometime in the 90s. (There’s a wild conceptual image from that early era of the plan to double the gallery’s space at the existing location, which you can find on […]
The problem with the VAG moving to Larwill Park? City needs $50 million profit there
March 7th, 2010 · 5 Comments
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Vancouver tries to kickstart rental housing
June 16th, 2009 · 9 Comments
Many cities have complained about the lack of rental apartments being built. Few have done anything. That’s largely because it’s been seen as beyond the financial ability of cities to start subsidizing something as expensive as housing. But Vancouver is going to give it a try, as I outline in my Globe story here.
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No charges in purloined Olympic village document case
May 12th, 2009 · 9 Comments
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 […]
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Tracking the warning emails on Olympic village
April 28th, 2009 · 6 Comments
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? […]
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Open meeting on how to create affordable housing
April 24th, 2009 · 21 Comments
If you’d like to spend a sunny Saturday afternoon at the cemetery listening to people talk about how to create affordable housing in Vancouver, you can. The Vision Vancouver council’s latest task force/brainstorming/collective put in place to hone in on an issue — in this case, how to create affordable and rental housing — is […]
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Latest snapshot of Olympic village finances
April 19th, 2009 · 4 Comments
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 […]
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Campaign finance disclosures: Louie and DeGenova
April 10th, 2009 · 14 Comments
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 […]
Tags: 2008 Vancouver Civic Election
Does Vancouver have the money for an integrity commissioner?
March 25th, 2009 · No Comments
Vancouver has spent we don’t know how much money to get lawyer Richard Peck to come up with recommendations for how the city can avoid future leaks of embarrassing documents. One of his main recommendations was that Vancouver hire a full- or part-time integrity commissioner. But it didn’t sound to me yesterday as though Vision […]
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The $5-million civic election comes to Vancouver
March 13th, 2009 · 8 Comments
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 […]
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NPA spends $1.3 million or so; Vision Vancouver rumoured $1.5
March 10th, 2009 · 9 Comments
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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