Frances Bula header image 2

Vision Vancouver was facing “a shipwreck” as they went into final week of election

November 17th, 2014 · 12 Comments

When the Vision Vancouver team got into the elevator at the Wall Centre to travel down to the basement level where the victory party was going on, things looked pretty good. They were in charge of the school board, they had three people apparently in line for seats on the park board, and the councillor people had feared was a goner, Geoff Meggs, was 4,000 votes ahead of the 11th-place finisher.

By the time they got off the elevator, they’d lost the majority on school board, been all but wiped out on park board, and seen the gap between 10th and 11th place shrink to 600 votes, as a big advance poll dominated by NPA voters came in.

But it all could have been much worse, as various people from the party told me here.

I understand that Vision polling indicated early that the park board would be a struggle, as the aquarium’s people activated its considerable network to mobilize people to vote against the party that wanted to stop them from breeding cetaceans. (Maybe better for Trish Kelly that she got dropped.)

The school board and council were supposed to be okay, but then things got really tight in the second-to-last week before the election. The team — between leaking polls, getting Gregor to apologize and warn people not to split votes and elect the barbarians, and ramped-up advertising — managed to turn things around in the last week.

The school board’s odd results, by the way, are not an indictment of the Vision board. People who care the most about the school board have always skewed a bit more left — all those teachers who used to be in COPE have some pull. So the Vision loss of a majority at the school board is likely not a big swing right, but more a case of people who were voting Vision also throwing their votes around to COPE and the former COPE Public Education Project candidates. That was enough to see Ken Clement lose his seat by less than 300 votes.

 

 

Categories: Uncategorized

  • Salvaich

    We all wonder what is the difference between a political party led by a politician and a political party led by a statesman.

    I have no idea but if VISION intends to survive, it will have to look like the second rather than the first scenario.

  • peakie

    So the Abecedarians won again.
    Nice to see Niki Sharma defeated, but DeGenova fille will fill the ‘whiney’ role with ease, along with Carr (“Look at me!”).
    Does Andrea Reimer (“I can’t afford Vancouver”) look again at the Greens?

    Enough with the defeated, they can find other forums for the next term.

    And the by-election when Gregor Robertson resigns in 6 months will be interesting. *(@@# Meggs vs $*@(!! Louie?

    Four more blanketty-blank years! Oy!

  • peakie

    “The confusion in having 13 municipalities and a regional government run a place that’s one-seventh the size of Toronto by population was compounded when each of them was asked to something about the confusion. It just got more confusing. So Community, Sport and Cultural Development Minister [ of City government ] Coralee Oakes’ first job is to just establish what the partial referendum means.”

    No, not Metro Vancouver, but Les Leyne’s comment on another proposed civic-regional amalgamation.

    It’s time.

    http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/columnists/les-leyne-amalgamation-study-a-tangled-task-1.1590246

  • Warren12

    Bring on Rob Ford!

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    Barring a big scandal, not sure how incumbents lose when the local housing market is in the stratosphere. Especially in a city like ours where real estate is the DOW Jones and NASDAQ wrapped up into one.

    Vision has a ‘tower’ problem as was reported here in this blog a few entries down http://francesbula.com/uncategorized/former-city-planner-talks-for-first-time-about-how-grandview-woodlands-towers-got-shoved-into-plan/.

    The long and the short of it is this: towers are greenwash. The longer the Mayor and his party are associated with a ‘greenwash’ in building the city the louder they proclaim that they really don’t ‘get it’.

    The towers are a problem for Vision because an observer cannot be sure that they have the fortitude to turn the ship around on this one issue. It would appear as if it is too deeply ingrained in their methodology.

    http://lewisnvillegas.wordpress.com

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    I should make clear one distinction: towers in the central business district (CBD) are a different kettle of fish than towers in the neighbourhoods. The neighbourhoods are showing strong opposition and a growing consensus that condo towers are not needed to achieve hi-density, on the one hand. While on the other, they are concerned that the neighbourhood-plans-for-towers are ignoring the existing areas to focus exclusively on tower zones, and threatening to degrade the quality of already poorly functioning arterials and central destinations.

  • Warren12

    I heard you don’t like towers.

  • Brilliant

    Yeah heaven forbid we should have a government that actually reflects the whole metro region. Much better to have a patchwork of balkanized, inefficient little fiefdoms.

  • MB

    Well, Rob Ford until recently lorded it over a 7,124 km2 gelatenous mass noted as the most inefficient and biggest fiefdom in the nation.

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    We have a tower zone in the CBD. I don’t see the need to move them out of there and into the neighbourhoods where there is not the same level of transit and services. It would appear I am not alone thinking that way. Skytrain & Towers—on view in Burnaby and Surrey—clearly don’t work. Even in the CBD it is alarming to see how streets are being thrown into constant shadow.

    Is that your vision of Vancouver Warren12??

  • Warren12

    Shadows are the biggest problem? Give me a break.

    And please, tell me what is “clearly not working” about towers in Burnaby and Surrey?

  • Lewis_N_Villegas

    Yes. In the UK for example I am told that Common Law decrees that access to daylight on private property is not to be blocked.

    Let’s turn it around. Warren. You tell us what works in the tower zones in Brentwood, Metrotown, Edmonds and Surrey.