I agree with Geoff Meggs.

The fact is, the Olympics are happening in six months and the fiscal situation is quite different today than it was when we submitted our bid book and were awarded the games….but I don’t want to be embarassed when the world comes to Vancouver.

So rather than worry about who ‘pays’ for these staff, (one way or another, the money comes from many of us) I just hope they can be properly organized and in turn help contribute to a well run games. The fact is, these Olympics will cost the participating municipalities and province of BC more than anticipated. But now is not the time to back down from the tasks at hand because we might not get paid for services provided.

I am often reminded of Expo ’86. My good friend Mike Harcourt was opposed to our staging the event…(I kept my copy of Macleans magazine showcasing his opposition)…but after we did do a good job of managing the event and showcasing our city, Mike was the first to agree it was the right thing to do. I’m hoping the same thing will happen this time too.

I know many of you would prefer to see the money being spent on the Olympics devoted to other things…and I’m with you, especially when I hear about the security arrangements and so forth….but in 6 months the Olympics will be on, and the more we can do now to ensure that the events go well, regardless of how the accounting is done…the better I think it will be for all of us.

Just think about the alternative…we spend all this money; we live through tremendous disruption; and then after a chaotic and disorganized event people will ask why didn’t we second more city and provincial staff to help do this right, rather than rely on a small number of poorly qualified volunteers?

The civil servants paid “volunteers” aren’t costing the taxpayers any additional money we we would be paying their salaries regardless. The taxpayers additional expense will be a reduction of service during the timeframe.

Someone once told me not to pay any too much attention to the security costs as most of it is made up by payroll and that a very large portion of that would be paid out regardless of the games. The army would still be paid wether they are on base or on the streets of Vancouver, the only additional costs are extra hours for reservists and OT for police officers. Guess there might be some comfort in that to us taxpayers.

Interesting story just appeared in USA Today, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and on CTV…Will Vancouver Olympics leave an iconic legacy?
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/2009-08-11-4178735504_x.htm?POE=click-refer

Michael G. again:
“Interesting story just appeared in USA Today, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and on CTV…Will Vancouver Olympics leave an iconic legacy?”

Sure they will. Moral (and maybe financial) bankruptcy.
gmgw

The International Olympic Committee takes in at least $80 million a year for itself, no matter what happens. This nonprofit organization issues no audited statements, demands tax free status, and offloads all liabilities.

Those Games are rigged. The IOC gets the gold, the host city goes in the hole. Don’t play.

@Joseph Jones

You got it. The host city (i.e. the taxpayer) goes in the hole, while the owners of the hotels, restaurants, bars and stores rake in huge profits.

Meanwhile…

Perhaps the city should go after all of those greedy business owners who don’t pay for their business licenses? Think that might make up some of the gap?

Perhaps the city can force these idiotic bicyclists who love to hold their monthly anarchic “Critical Mass” bike rides to start paying for licenses to ride their bikes on the same roads that I drive my car on? (And pay good money for, God-dammit.)

Perhaps the city can finally install turnstiles on the skytrains and buses, and keep the leeches, cheapos and and bums out who don’t want to pay their “fare share”?

Perhaps the city should license and tax the thousands of marijuana grow-ops around the city? That should be good for a few hundred million dollars, maybe even a billion.

The reason why there’s such a shortfall of people willing to work for free (oops, I mean volunteer) over the Olympic period is simple.

It’s because the average Vancouverite is deep in-the-hole because of their sky-high mortgages and the fact that their significant loved-one is out of work! Vancouver has the least affordable housing market of any major Canadian city. Add to that the recession/depression and the risk of losing your job, and it doesn’t exactly scream, “YEEHAA! Olympic party time!”

It’s inconceivable for most Vancouverites to leisurely take time off of work and stroll around showing off the city to rich out-of-towners and visitors. They simple can’t AFFORD IT.

The Olympic spirit is a charade. Montreal learned the hard way. It spent massive quantities of money on the summer Olympics in 1976. It took until December of 2006 Quebecers to finally pay off their $1.5-billion debt from the 1976 Summer Games. They would have been much wiser spending that money on infrastructure.

Sound familiar? That’s because it is; Vancouver has a decaying infrastructure. How will we pay for it? Will the Olympic profits make all the problems go away?

Dream on… maybe with enough marijuana ingestion Vancouverites will be able to forget all of these problems. It’s worked well so far.

Bill Lee:
I do like your taste in reading!! That’s a superb book (love your “adaptation” as well). Not to mention appropriate to the current situation… (have you ever visited the monument to the Communards in Pere-Lachaise, by the way?)
gmgw

To think, believe and/or hope that healthcare or social services or the homeless problem would be any better today without the Olympics coming here, is complete horse manure. No disrespect is intended to the horse or its excrement.

The healthcare system is already the province’s biggest expenditure and most successful money vortex. So we dump an additional one time $?? billion into those two budget items (social services) and what do we have? Nothing more than MORE wasted money.

How much more money is being spent in the DTES today, than 15 years ago? Has it improved? No, it’s become worse. Philip Owen says it’s as bad or worse than its ever been. I’m not of the belief its from a lack of money, the problems are much deeper than that.

The healthcare budget has grown volumes since 2000, and where are we today? Lets take the Olympic money and build a new hospital for $?? billion. Great we have a hospital but we wouldn’t have the money to staff it or fill the beds without adding significantly to the yearly budget.

I don’t buy the argument that this $?? billion spent on the Olympics should be handed out to ministries that can’t manage what they have. Thanks but no thanks. Before we drop another untold billions into social services or healthcare, we need to rip them up and start over again.

British Columbians and Canadians need to stop this charade and believing that our social values and medicare, which were crafted decades ago are suitable today. But of course most of you commenting above would prefer to just keep on going with the charade as long as the Olympics had never set foot in our province.

I certainly am not proud of a healthcare system ranked below countries like Cuba. I am certainly not proud of medicare which has been ordered changed in the province of quebec, but not the rest of Canada. Nor am I proud that bullshit povertarians continue to waste more money than can be counted on the homeless in this city while the problem becomes worse. But apparently that answer is money and not a different system.

The problem is that these bloody Olympics are taking away more $400K suites for the homeless, more wasted money in a healthcare system built for the 1960’s and lets not forget more chicken coops and bike lanes. Yeah, right.

Our problems in healthcare, social services and the homeless aren’t going anywhere, and frankly I think it’s time we all had something else a little more positive to focus on. I’m with the majority on this one. I’m going to enjoy the Olympics, and be proud of them.

Hey Gmgw…..64% voted for the Olympics in the plebicite.
Gregor and Vision got elected with far less, yet the Vision and petty socialists tell us to suck it up when they push something through.
It’s a 2 week showcase like this city will never see. Suck it up.

RF sternly intoned:
“It’s a 2 week showcase like this city will never see.”

And, god willing, never will again.

“Suck it up”.

Gee, thanks for the fatherly advice, RF. Like I’m being offered a friggin’ choice??

PS: If the plebiscite was re-staged tomorrow, what do you think the “Yes” vote might be, based on what we now know? Considerably south of 64%, I suspect.
gmgw

I’m all for the Olympics way over 100%% My family loves sports, encourage our own children to be active and when we watch any professional sports, show them what they could strive for.

Most of you guys are just grumps! Christ, I hope you leave town when the Olympics are here. Continuously bitching about something that is coming regardless is useless and quite frankly, tiring to keep reading about.

Michael Geller inquired:
“Out of interest how many of you who oppose the Olympics also opposed Expo. And in hindsight, do you feel it too was a mistake?”

I strongly opposed Expo up until it opened, feeling, as with the Olympics, that it was a massive waste of money and resources that would be far better spent on alleviating our far more urgent social needs; then I completely sold out, got a job there, and worked there for the fair’s entire run. I’d love to be able to say that the experience converted me to the Expo cause like Saul on the road to Tarsus, but I merely felt like a massive hypocrite. What can I say? As my partner was frequently reminding me at the time, I needed a job.

I’d also like to be able to say that the experience changed my life for the better, but…nah. It was a gig. I did experience moments of fleeting glory, however; I got to shake Jim Pattison’s hand (impresive, huh?), as well as stand within four feet of both Princess Diana and George H. W. Bush; and I saw the astounding Urban Sax troupe (from France) perform in the Plaza of Nations; it was undoubtedly the most impressive work of performance art/theatre I’ve ever seen in my life. I was also well-situated to readily discern the rot behind the Expo tinsel, so to speak.

What particularly bemuses me about the Olympics hype is its eerie familiarity: “It’s going to put Vancouver on the map! It’s Vancouver’s chance to shine on the world stage!” and so on. Exactly the same phrases were used to tout Expo 86. I mean, what happened? Did that mythical table shift some time in the past 23 years? Did we roll off it like a pencil, plunging back into (horrors!) obscurity? Did we emerge grandly onto the world stage, only to take a clumsy pratfall before the august assemblage of all those Really Important People, who apparently expressed their contempt by getting up and leaving en masse, carrying the tale of our ignominy and unworthiness to the World we’d so hoped to impress?

I mean, what happened to that glorious Expo legacy we were promised, if we now need a massive booster shot? Will we be told in 20 years that we need another one, and will the same rhetoric be used to sell it?

Michael, with all due respect, I think your position re the Olympics, their projected “legacy”, and that of Expo 86, is a classic illustration of Miles’ Law: “Where you stand depends on where you sit”. I can understand how, considering the circles you move in, you can look at the north shore of False Creek, 23 years on, and see that forest of towers as a positive outgrowth of Expo 86. Why wouldn’t you? You hang with the development crowd. I should think a good many people of your acquaintance have made a considerable amount of money from the post-Expo boom(s), (though none more than the Li family). Supply-siders to the last, you hope that lightning will strike once again in 2010, and you once again present arguments that it will benefit us all. Somehow. Eventually. (I’m sure I’ve quoted this line before, but it’s too good a refutation of the trickle-down theory to not repeat– it was voiced by a housing activist in San Francisco a decade or so ago: “A rising tide may lift all boats, but if you haven’t got a boat, you’re f**ked”.) Was Expo a mistake, you ask? Not for you, bubeleh. Not for you.

Frankly, Michael, I don’t think you have any subjective understanding of what it is to be poor, whether unemployed or working poor. There are a great many people in and around this city who received little or no direct benefit from Expo, and even fewer who will directly benefit from the Olympics. Skating rinks don’t put food on the table or put roofs over heads, unless you happen to work in one. Most of us will simply go on living our “lives of quiet desperation” while you and your friends enjoy your big party. Among my own circles, I know of no one that’s been invited. I guess we’re supposed to be hoping that there’ll be a few table scraps left over when you’ve finished. And then we can look forward to paying the bill(s), for god knows how long.

Looking at your blog, I came upon this phrase under “about us”:

“Much of this blog is devoted to an around-the-world sabbatical my wife and I took in 2007. It was written to inspire others to arrange a sabbatical or quit their jobs, pack their bags, and take a trip around the world.”

Well, obviously your blog is not meant for the likes of me and mine. Frankly, Michael, I don’t think that anyone who could write those words with a straight face has a hope in hell of understanding those of us out here who can’t afford to attend your party, and oppose the entire event as obscenely wasteful. It’s all very Marie Antoinette of you, to be sure, that intro. If only more of us could live in a comfortable world like yours, just for a while.

For now though, we must continue to demand: “Bread, not circuses!”

One final note; You want to know what, for me, is the most meaningful, significant legacy of Expo 86? Here it is, via a link to an article that appeared at the time in (oh, the shame of it) a Major Newspaper In A Big Important American City (how annoyed the Expo godlings must have been!). Note that the article is four pages long.

Some of us still remember him. I wonder if Jim Green does?
http://articles.latimes.com/1986-04-26/news/mn-2210_1_hotel-owners

gmgw

I volunteered to drive the Swedish girls ski team around. They never got back to me on that one…..

I don’t know if it could be legally done under the City charter, but one thing I think the city– or, failing that, the Province– should have done years ago is expropriated and restored the entire south side of the 100 block west Hastings, along with sundry other locales in the DTES. The 100 block is emblematic of the whole tragedy of the DTES’s accelerating slide. The way Hastings has been allowed to deteriorate since the closure of Woodwards is an absolute obscenity. It wasn’t that long ago when the 100 block was still a– well, I was going to say “vibrant”, but maybe “viable” would be closer to the truth– mix of street-level retail outlets, including what was at the time the largest Chinese restaurant in Vancouver.

One of the biggest challenges the DTES has had to face in its long struggle for survival is greed-sucking landlords who’ve bought properties there and then engaged in classic New York-style blockbusting practices: Let those properties deteriorate through conscious neglect until they’re uninhabitable, then apply to the City for a demolition permit. The only reason the structures in the 100 block have survived (by now they may well be too far gone for rehabilitation) is that enough slumlords have engaged in this pracitice that they’ve undermined each other, and their properties still show no substantial appreciation in value; hence the entire area has deteriorated enough to still resist its long-awaited gentrification. Now everyone awaits the hoped-for restorative power of the Woodward’s development. We’ll see.

DERA and other groups have fought the long struggle to retain some measure of livability in the DTES, but they have had to step on so many official toes to do so, and had to engage in so many political battles, both internal and external, that each new opportunity to create an affordable residential redevelopment has become a titanic struggle to secure funding. And so it goes (sorry– coffee break’s over).
gmgw

> Now that Woodwards is about to
> bring engery and $$$

I didn’t laugh when I read that. Really.

Well, Darcy, I sure laughed.

Perhaps Mr. Geller, you were focusing your developer’s talents on the wrong DTES issue? Surely you know how exasperated Salient’s Fung is with the VDP’s horrible mismanagement of the Heritage Density Transfer Program? Despite JJJ’s rosy proclamation that the new Money Mart on the 100 Block is heralding a more enlightened era of heritage revitalization and $$$, the reality is the exact opposite.

In July, VDP recommended that Council pass a 3-5 year MORATORIUM on all Heritage Density Transfers, which effectively means that the most environmentally-sound form of development – reusing old buildings – has been effectively kyboshed for the rest of Vision’s term and beyond.

The decision to impose a moratorium “with no exceptions” kills restoration efforts on numerous invaluable Public Heritage Assets that are already in appalling shape and likely won’t survive 3 more winters (ie. Pantages, parts of the 100 Block, some Chinatown Societies, etc.). The decision also stalls a key component of the DTES Revitalization Plan and the upgrading and maintenance standards of high-density SRO housing in the area.

The moratorium is the direct result of the VDP’s horrible mismanagement of the Density Transfer Program, and their reluctance to do anything meaningful to fix the program’s many structural weaknesses. Without proper mechanisms to land density, the market for transfers has become wildly imbalanced. This has happened despite the fact that Vancouver has just come through an historic building boom. Conditions from 2003-2007 were ideal for this program, and had it been managed properly it could have produced far more successes, and made a huge difference to the economic and social well-being of the area.

The exasperation with VDP’s poor handling of the Heritage Density Transfer Program was evident in the presentations of Fung, Leto, Mah and all the other public speakers whose vision for Vancouver extends beyond façadism and glass tower redundancy. Unsurprisingly, all of their recommendations to make more substantive changes to the program to get it fixed quickly were not supported by Mr. Toderian, who consistently messaged to Council that he didn’t want to do anything that involved “more work”.

In my humble opinion, this moratorium is just the dog’s tail wagging before the Historic Area Height Review and View Corridor and Capacity Review….

I believe, Mr. Geller, it was you who warned: “Be very afraid.”

sorry, that message was intended for GJG.

JJJ, GJG, GMGW…one day, I hope to meet you all!

“Take a breather”, JJJ? The target of 200,000 sq feet landed per year if met (and I doubt it will be for the next few years) will take 6 to 7 years to rebalance, not the 3-5 Toderian suggests. That’s not “a breather”, that’s a kybosh! Mr. T admitted, if I remember correctly, that this year only 40,000 has been landed so far. Many of our heritage landmarks are at imminent risk (the Pantages is on Heritage Canada’s Top Ten endangered list) we can’t wait another 5+ years to save these buildings.

As I tried to point out back in May on this blog, the density transfer program’s structural problems are fixable and, if done correctly, the Density Bank could produce far more and higher quality amenities for the City of Vancouver. Fung, Leto and other speakers in the meeting had clear recommendations to speed up the Bank’s rebalancing – all were argued against by VDP. Why?

Furthermore, all speakers complained that VDP did not consult with them – the main stakeholders and users of the Program – about the recommendations presented to Council (because, well, that would involve both “more work” and some listening on the part of the VDP). People with vision for a City legacy and projects READY TO GO have been strung along and strung along by VDP, then suddenly: MORATORIUM. No exceptions. Ouch.

That’s the dog’s tail wagging, eh?

The larger DTES issue of revitalization, as Mr. Fung pointed out in Council, has been discussed and reported on within City Hall for years and years. It is clearly identified as a TOP PRIORITY for the City and Planning Dept. and the Heritage Density Transfer program was a key tool to make this happen. For every dollar in incentives, 4 dollars in investment has been realized on the projects to date. Killing this already existing program – especially in light of the goals for STIR and HEAT – makes absolutely no sense at all. Council appears to be clueless about the implications of their decision and how it contradicts their own stated aims.

So one step forward, two steps back. And area problems fester and worsen.

I think it’s pretty telling that a man like Mr. Geller with wealth, community stature and numerous connections within the City and development community can, like so many before him, become so exasperated that within a year he gives up trying to make a positive difference in the DTES.

Clearly, VDP is a big part of the problem. This moratorium, and its even uglier twin sister the Historic Area Height Review, are not the solution.

What is the solution? How do we make sure the density in the bank doesn’t become worthless due to oversupply? Where do we transfer all that density to? How do we make developers want to buy it in this market when they aren’t building period? I’m not pretending there isn’t a solution out there, I just have not heard of one that is realistic and better then what the city has purposed. I’m all ears though.

Michael Geller said:

“JJJ, GJG, GMGW…one day, I hope to meet you all!”

When we all do, you’re buying, Michael.
gmgw