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Start your engines, Vancouver city staff

December 10th, 2008 · 6 Comments

The first raft of motions from the new council just hit the decks. Enjoy your holidays, city hall staffers, because you’ll be scrambling when you get back to come up with answers and options for your new bosses. What the new council is asking for” – a staff report on options for the Burrard Street […]

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Outsiders to check city’s Olympic village deal + What do we want in a mayor?

December 9th, 2008 · 24 Comments

Links here to my Globe story on what’s up for the first week with the new Vision council (Olympic village and homelessness the big priorities), plus my Maureen Dowdish analysis of our desperate search for a datable mayor on my CTV blog

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Here’s to the new council and new classroom management

November 27th, 2008 · 5 Comments

Sorry for the short absence there, folks. Just a lot to do between covering the last council meeting and finishing off the teaching year at Langara and and and. I have to say, it was nice to hear people talk about what their time on council had meant to them (and B.C. Lee got the […]

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Split among council candidates on shifting business taxes to residential

October 29th, 2008 · 2 Comments

Sharper eyes than mine have noted that in the Vancouver Sun survey of council candidates, two of the seven Non-Partisan Association candidates who answered the question said they did not support shifting more of the business share of tax to residential. Michael Geller, a development consultant and expert on how real-estate economics work, is not […]

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Gruelling meeting tonight a reminder of what council all about

October 17th, 2008 · No Comments

Those newcomers vying for a seat on Vancouver city council might want to check into the meeting that’s still going on here at 9:30 at night, to see if this is really what they want to sign up for. Councillors are grappling with what sounds like an unresolvable dilemma of trying to find new artist […]

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Vancouver election brings out 86 candidates and Nude Garden Party

October 10th, 2008 · 9 Comments

Here’s the full list of candidates, all, for those of you not in direct communication with city hall. As you’ll see, it looks like it will be a relatively clean election, since there is no “Pete Ladner” or “Gregory Robertson” in there to muddy the waters. I’ll skip the boring parts (“two parties with exciting […]

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Tags: 2008 Vancouver Civic Election

How did Tim Louis come so close to winning?

September 28th, 2008 · 11 Comments

That was the question in a lot of people’s minds when he came within six votes of being the second COPE candidate along with David Cadman. Louis’s camp had not seemed that strong two weeks ago, when there was a vote on whether to accept the deal with Vision to give that breakaway party over […]

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COPE rules for voting today

September 28th, 2008 · No Comments

I’ll be down at the Coalition of Progressive Electors meeting this afternoon to get the results of voting for their part of the slate that’s been agreed to with Vision. The toughest race and the one everyone’s watching is, of course, for the two city-council spots. At the moment, there are five people competing for […]

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The first quiet debate between Robertson and Ladner

September 26th, 2008 · 14 Comments

The first official debate between Vancouver’s two mayoral candidates is due to take place next Wednesday, hosted by Langara at the Vancouver Public Library. But a select group got to see the candidates in action together for the first time this past week, when Lambda Alpha hosted an event at the Vancouver Club. Not a […]

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David Eby: “Really excited and surprised how well we did”

September 21st, 2008 · 26 Comments

Vision council candidate David Eby disappeared quickly last night, after the voting results from the day showed that had, for the moment, lost to Kashmir Dhaliwal by only 17 votes for the eighth and final spot on the slate. Since then, I’ve had any number of comments from his diehard supporters saying they can’t believe […]

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Tags: 2008 Vancouver Civic Election