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West End Neighbours — many applicants rejected, but wishing mayor’s committee the best

October 9th, 2010 · 15 Comments

The West End Neighbours, a resident group that sprang up to oppose the new rental towers being proposed under Vision Vancouver’s new program to encourage rental housing, essentially forced the VV council to slow down and do more consultation.

As half the world knows (or at least people who read this blog), they kicked off a media uproar when they caught tape of Mayor Gregor Robertson, thinking the mikes were off after a meeting had ended with them, wondering if some of them were “NPA hacks.” That comment came at the end of a difficult night where WEN members were questioning how politically neutral a mayor’s advisory committee on the West End would be.

I have heard that at least eight people from WEN, including the most vocal spokesman, Randy Helten, applied to be on the committee and weren’t chosen. The only known WEN member was Tiko Kerr, an artist who supported Vision in the last election and is likely the most Vision-friendly, non-confrontational member of the WEN group.

In spite of that, the WEN group is wishing the committee the best, as per their response from their website appended below here.

1. Mayor announced members of Committee (Oct. 8, 2010): Notice here. Members are Christine Ackermann, Tony Clark, Marlann Cooper, Jim Deva, Michelle Fortin, Rob Hines, Lena Hozaima, Peter Jackman, Tiko Kerr, Dean Malone, Cherie Payne, Carol Reardon.
2. Reportedly, 78 people applied. These 12 were selected by the Councillors Andrea Reimer and Tim Stevenson.
3. Our messages to the members: (1) Congratulations! (2) In every action and word in connection with the Committee you will do well if you ask yourself this: “Will what I do and say build trust and serve the public interest?” (3) Note that 11,000 people have now signed the petition “No Rezoning Without a Comprehensive Plan.” Please familiarize yourself with the wishes of so many in the community.
4. Much misinformation has been circulating about rezonings in the West End. We hope this Committee will seek out all the key facts, and share everything openly with the public in a timely way.
5. One of the first tasks of the commitee members will be to decide how it will function. We hope they will decide to make every meeting and document open to the public. This should not be a secret committee to rubberstamp rezoning applications in their recommendations to the Mayor.
6. About the member selection: We are sure these are all committed members of the community. We hope the Mayor will show how their criteria were applied to ensure a good balance of representation.
7. About the Committee: The creation of this committee is very unusual for Vancouver. Two politicians hand-picked members of an advisory committee — where usually the selection for advisory committees is done by Council. The Committee is extremely important, as it could affect hundreds of millions of dollars of investment and corporate profits from the West End through rezoning, and also it is being presented as a pilot for several other Vancouver neighbourhoods.
8. Most of all, we wish the Committee members the best. WEN and the community will be watching with great interest, and ready to support the committee’s open and transparent deliberations.

Categories: Uncategorized

  • Westender1

    Just to clarify a bit – West End Neighbours did not spring up specifically “to oppose the new rental towers being proposed” – it sprang up to oppose rezonings that are not based on a community plan. The rezoning proposals underway in the West End are a mix of rental and condominium towers.

  • ThinkOutsideABox

    Non-confrontational??

    Tiko Kerr waged a war against the federal government to gain access to drugs to save his life from succumbing to AIDS. He’s made several provocative paintings of the spot rezoning sites in the West End, and he’s quoted regarding this issue in the Sept 24, 2010 24Hrs saying, “Don’t screw around with someone who had to fight for his life.”

    You may also want to review again the video on the night of “f__king hacks” where his statement was read to council calling Tim Stevenson to the carpet for the campaign promise to West End residents that if Vision was elected we would see transparency, and it hasn’t happened.

    The wit is running particularly dry today?

  • Janice

    Frances conveniently omitted the colourful word “fu^*ing” preceeding “NPA hacks” as uttered by the mayor @ that meeting. Why try to cover up the full amount of contempt this mayor has for his constituents?

    Bear in mind his MO is divide & conquer – do not expect this Advisory Committee to yield genuine results or consideration.

    More likely that as with other City issues, the decisions have been made, the press releases are already written and excavators ready to go. Why I’ll bet this MAC is declared a “huge success” before even beginning.

  • Frances Bula

    @ Janice. The mayor actually didn’t say “f*ing NPA hacks.” He said, at one point, something like “who were those f*ing hacks?” and then at another point “were they NPA hacks?” Although these have become blended in the public mind in a well-known phenomenon of memory processing (just like Humphrey Bogart never said “Play it again, Sam”), I am going to go with a policy of alternating between the two every time I refer to his now Historic Incident.

  • Glissando Remmy

    The Thought of The Day

    “AURELIO – ‘Who is this f*ckin’… who is this whore man? Is she… that Volpina whore?’
    FF Notes: (Too long. CUT )
    AURELIO -‘Who is this f*ckin’ … that Volpina whore?”
    FF Notes: ( Too long. CUT)
    AURELIO: ‘this f*ckin’… Volpina whore?’
    VOLPINA: ‘Fu Manchu!'”
    FF Notes: (IT’S A WRAP)”

    That was from Federico Fellini’s scripted dialogue on Amarcord – I remember!

    Frances, your little comment @ Janice, is both disgraceful and misleading. Shame on you. How could you fall so low on the journalistic scale and continue to defend a bunch of proven liars and let’s say it, political hooligans, is beyond me.

    This are your own words: “He said, at one point, something like…”
    Something like?
    Oh common, we can’t remember?
    Not a biggie.
    In five seconds anyone can have the recording and the transcript on a search engine. There, I’ll do your job. And BTW, I dunno for some reason I feel I am doing it anyways.
    So, in order to refresh our memory for everyone’s enjoyment:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IDcmUQa0WM&feature=player_embedded#!

    TRANSCRIPT

    Robertson: “Who are all these f*ckin’… who are these hacks man? Are they… they NPA hacks?”

    Heather Deal: “They’re owners”
    Stevenson: “Oh no, no they…” (inaudible)
    Robertson: “What’s that?”
    Stevenson: “Carol Walker was a COPE candidate”
    Robertson: “Who was?”
    Stevenson: “Carol Walker”
    Deal: “The last speaker”
    Stevenson: “But they’re all… you know… who knows really…”
    Stevenson: “But it’s 100% owners…”
    Stevenson: “Every one… there’s not a renter… and that’s what they’re upset about… they don’t like”
    Robertson: “They don’t want renters in the, in the mix.”
    Stevenson: “Ya”
    Stevenson: “You can’t railroad us…”
    Robertson, Deal, Stevenson: (laughter)
    Robertson: (mocking) “You’re trying to subvert process here, damn it… We want consultation. They want…”
    Deal: “Democracy cubed”
    Robertson, Deal, Stevenson: (laughter)
    Robertson: “God, we’re just tryin’ to have a little advisory committee, for f*ck sakes”

    Fefe says Ciao!

    We live in Vancouver and this keeps us busy.

  • SV

    Glissandro- I know you live in Vancouver but perhaps you’ll find some time in your busy schedule to learn some manners.

    While you’re at it you might want to have your scale recalibrated as it seems to be tilting one way.

  • Jo-Anne Pringle

    Maybe I’ve managed to miss this information somewhere – but does anyone know what process was used to select the members of the Mayor’s Advisory Council? I see that they had to apply. But were they interviewed one by one? What was the criteria that was used to determine who they would accept and who they wouldn’t? And finally, specifically who reviewed the applications and then ultimately made the decision on who made the cut? Does anyone have these answers, or know where I can go to find them?

  • City Observer

    Jo-anne, the Community Service Selection Committee (called that, or some such similar appellation), at Vancouver City Hall, is chaired by Councillor Ellen Woodsworth, and includes on the Committee Vision Councillors Kerry Jang and George Chow. If City Council had held true to form, that’s who would have made the decision as to who is to be selected to sit on the West End Advisory Committee.

    Instead, according to Item 7 above, “The creation of this committee is very unusual for Vancouver. Two politicians hand-picked members of an advisory committee — where usually the selection for advisory committees is done by Council.” At this point, we don’t know which Councillors were assigned the task of choosing members for the WEAC.

    What you can be assured of, though, is that a majority of those members selected have ties to Vision Vancouver (e.g., Carol Reardon and her husband Dermot Foley are best friends with Park Board Chair Aaron Jasper, and his wife, Arminder Randhawa, a member of Vancouver’s Board of Variance), that the decisions made as to who was appointed to the WEAC were entirely political.

    Vision Vancouver gets what Vision Vancouver wants, riding roughshod over process, diminishing always the notion of civic democracy, and true and representative input from a broad cross-section of citizens of our community who represent varied interests.

  • Jo-Anne Pringle

    City Observer – do you know what the selection criteria was, or the Terms of Reference? Is this information available anywhere for the average citizen to read? Any links to this would be greatly appreciated.

  • ThinkOutsideABox

    The link to the resolution & terms of reference is found here:

    http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20100708/documents/penv6.pdf

  • Dan Cooper

    So, Frances doesn’t include one word in this particular post, and that makes some think she’s a Vision stooge? Even though she’s included the word repeatedly in previous coverage; every single person reading this blog knows the word was used, who used it, and who it was directed at; and the overall tone of this post is mixed or a bit negative toward Vision? Wow.

  • Jo-Anne Pringle

    ThinkOutsideABox – thanks for the link. The TOR indicates what the composition of the committee should/will look like, but it doesn’t clearly indicate what the selection criteria is/was. In a former life, I handled employee recruitment on a large scale – we always had a our TOR, but then we also had selection criteria that helped us to narrow down the field and to ultimately make a staffing decision. That criteria seems to be absent here, or perhaps unavailable. Did they conduct interviews? I’m just trying to get a handle on this process, as it appears Council may wish to introduce this process to other neighbourhoods.

  • Victor

    J0-Anne,
    No interview process or phone call. Just a “Dear John/Jane” email from the Mayor.
    The appointments are of concern that so many of them have ties to Vision Vancouver and or work for organisationsor sit on Boards that are funded by the City.
    The process, so far is a sham and shows how low Vision will go to bend the rules of the makeup of Advisory Committees.
    Watch out…one coming near you 🙁

  • Bill McCreery

    @Vic 13.
    Maybe I missed it but, is there a proper summary of who / what these people are? I do not make it my life’s work & do not have the ‘e’skills of some here to search properly for this kind of info. If that info was available it would be possible for anyone to evaluate whether they thought the committee &/or the process to be valid & fair.

  • Victor

    A belated answer McC #14.
    No one was interviewed for the WEMAC committee. No skills identified as to why these folks and not others.
    So far 3 people have resigned and not been replaced. Names still listed as members.
    Meeting Minutes take for ever to be posted. Looks like future meeting dates have been decided…but this comes months after committee founded.
    Still dithering around about structure, spokesperson etc. Have not asked for an interview with WEN members yet
    Would it be too much to ask whether or not this Board is a waste of time and money and just one of the Mayors stalling tactics so he doesn’t have to address the issue of working with all citizens to develop a neighbourhood plan?
    Some days the hypocrisy from people like Cllr Stevenson brings bile to my mouth. Grrrr…….