Category Archives: Vancouver Votes 2018

#VanPoli Civic Politics | The Death of Cynicism | Part 1 of 4

May 6, 2019#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Canada, Environment, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

Vancouver City Council, 2018 - 2022 | Sarah Kirby-Yung, Christine Boyle, Pete Fry Vancouver City Council, to serve from 2018 thru October 2022, clockwise: Councillors Rebecca Bligh, Christine Boyle, Adriane Carr, Melissa De Genova, Lisa Dominato, Michael Wiebe, Jean Swanson, Sarah Kirby-Yung, Colleen Hardwick, and Pete Fry.

The time has arrived once again for VanRamblings to weigh in on the state and nature of civic politics, as practiced in the City of Vancouver.
Today’s post will begin a brief insight into the 10 City Councillors who were elected this past October, and how each is faring in the current term.

As per the graphic above, Councillor Rebecca Bligh is Vancouver City Council’s delegate to, and a Board member of, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, replacing retired City Councillor Raymond Louie in that role.
The socially-skilled Ms. Bligh has emerged, as might well be expected given her background in business, as one of the more conservative voices on Council — although, as is the case with her Non-Partisan Association colleagues, a fiscal conservative and certainly not a social conservative.
Working with her fellow elected, progressive and feminist NPA City Councillors, Council Finance Chair Melissa De Genova, Lisa Dominato, Colleen Hardwick and Sarah Kirby-Yung, Ms. Bligh’s focus has tended towards looking after the public purse, keeping taxes low and, most recently, championing the shifting of the tax burden away from small business owners — who you may have noticed have been going out of business in record numbers these past months, with vacancy signs on arterials throughout the city — to homeowners — receiving support for this important initiative from councillors Sarah Kirby-Young, Lisa Dominato, Michael Wiebe, Adriane Carr and Pete Fry. Note should be made that small business bears up to 49% of the tax burden in the City of Vancouver.
Note should also be made that the passage of the tax shift motion represented the first time this current term Councillors voted contrary to staff wishes, who unsurprisingly emerged as the only voices in opposition to the tax shift — for a Council that has tended to be in sway to City staff, Councillors’ decision to act in the public interest rather than bureaucratic staff interest, represents hope on the horizon that Council, in future, may more consistently vote for us, rather than adhere to bureaucratic wishes.

Councillor Christine Boyle (pictured above) has emerged as Vancouver City Council and our city’s leading climate change warrior, this past January introducing a ground-breaking, precedent-setting motion that in the process of declaring a climate emergency, mandated Six Big Moves …

1. That 90% of Vancouver citizens will eventually live within an easy walk or stroll of their daily needs. That implies much more densification in South Vancouver, where this is mostly not the case — apart from in Marpole, Oakridge, Dunbar, Kerrisdale, and South Hill;

2. Council will set a target of 50% of kilometres driven in 2030 will be made in zero-emission vehicles. This implies a sharp increase in electric-vehicle charging stations and far more extensive efforts to make these available to tenants, who comprise 53 percent of the city’s population;

3. By 2030, two-thirds of trips will be by walking, cycling, rollerblading, and transit. This implies that more road space for motor vehicles will be taken away to accommodate non-motorists. This process has already begun on the Granville Street bridge;

4. That all new replacement heating and hot water systems will deliver zero emissions, which implies a sharp expansion of neighbourhood energy utilities and the use of heat pumps;

5. Setting a target of reducing embedded emissions in new buildings and construction projects to 40% of 2018 levels by 2030, which as Georgia Straight editor Charlie Smith writes, “would inevitably lead to far more wood construction and far less use of cement, as well as fewer underground parkades”;

6. Passing policies that will remove one million tonnes of carbon annually by 2060 through regeneration of local forests and coastal ecosystems, which as Mr. Smith writes, “… implies a whole lot of tree planting.”

This past week Council unanimously approved the climate action initiative.
As VanRamblings has long contended, 34-year-old Councillor Christine Boyle represents the hope of our future, a visionary leader made for our times, a humble political figure who surveys a broad cross-section of public opinion (listening, really listening) before acting, a Tommy Douglas-like figure (although, she’s not there yet — but she will be!) who inspires, has consistently proven she can work productively with others, and whose clarion voice — as is the case with many of her Council colleagues — is undeniable, honest and true & in Ms. Boyle’s case, authentically her own.

Vancouver City Councillor Adriane Carr celebrating Pride Day in our city, in 2018.

After serving two terms in office leading the charge at City Council on behalf of citizen interests, three-term Councillor Adriane Carr has taken somewhat of a back seat to her more vocal, recently-elected, activist, and ambitious colleagues on Council: think Councillors Christine Boyle, Sarah Kirby-Yung and Ms. Carr’s Green colleague, Pete Fry, in particular — all of whom have proved, as well might be expected to anyone in the know, as the most media savvy of our Vancouver councillors, consistently articulate, the most progressive and forward thinking, plain spoken and engaged councillors, and absolutely tireless in their service of the public interest, out and about our city engaging with the broadest range of citizens in every neighbourhood across our city every opportunity they get … and who, for the record, constitute VanRamblings’ favourite councillors.
Still and all, we’re talking Vancouver City Councillor Adriane Carr here — two elections in a row emerging as Vancouver’s most beloved City Councillor, reflected in poll topping numbers on election day in both 2014 and 2018 — no piker she. As the Chairperson of Vancouver City Council’s Standing Committee on Policy and Strategic Priorities (Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung is vice-chair), chairperson of the Metro Vancouver Board Climate Action Committee, and since 2009 the co-chair of the Canadian Women Voters’ Congress non-partisan Women’s Campaign School, Ms. Carr has long worked on behalf of citizens, as she continues to do to this day.
Councillor Carr has argued articulately and well in the current term for awarding extra density to developers in exchange for renting 20% of the suites in new construction at CMHC (and Council’s) “moderate rental” / median market rental rents, rents well below market, the best example of which is the proposed Kitsilano development at 2nd and Larch.
Let us all hope that Councillor Carr carries the day on this important initiative, a constituent element of a broader affordable housing strategy.
At present, under the existing Vision Vancouver-initiated Rental 100 programme, in exchange for extra density, developers offer rents only slightly below market rates (e.g. $1,768 for a studio, $2,056 for one bedroom, $2,703 for two bedrooms, and $3,559 for three bedrooms), as opposed to $950 for a studio unit; $1,200, one bedroom; $1,600, two bedrooms; and $2,000, three bedrooms (with lower “moderate rents” on Vancouver’s eastside), as the “moderate rental rates” proposed by Councillor Adriane Carr, for those earning between $30,000 and $80,000.
In case you were wondering: yes, Adriane Carr remains very much on our side, as we presume will continue to be the case throughout the term.

For anyone paying attention to the goings-on at Vancouver City Hall this past six months, you have to know that our new Council is the most action-oriented, public interest serving, neighbourhood-consulting and activist City Council Vancouver voters have elected to municipal office in years.
Although, the new Council members sometimes lose the thread of the argument that got them elected (which we’ll write about on Thursday), most Councillors consistently finding themselves in these early days of their four-year term too often in the sway of bureaucratic staff. In consequence, even given their activist bent, our new Council has emerged as quiescent.
VanRamblings believes that our current very bright and dedicated group of Councillors by this autumn will finally have begun to find their feet (and independent activist, community-serving voices), leading to a new era of hope in our city, and as we suggest in the headline of today’s VanRamblings’ posting, the death of cynicism in Vancouver civic politics.

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#VanPoli | Planning | How Did We Get Ourselves into This Pickle?

November 28, 2018#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

Harland Bartholomew (September 14, 1889 – December 2, 1989) was an American urban planner. Although a civil engineer by training & disposition, from 1911 through until the mid-1950s, Mr. Bartholomew emerged as the most influential urban planner of the first half of the 20th century, his considerable influence now thought to have had a profoundly negative impact on city development, administrative evil masked as “moral good”.
During the course of his lifetime, Mr. Bartholomew created comprehensive city plans for urban centres across North America, including …

1911-1915 Newark, New Jersey;
1916-1920 St.Louis, Missouri;
1920 Memphis, Tennessee;
1920-1921 Lansing, Michigan;
1921-1922 Wichita, Kansas;
1926-1930 Vancouver, BC;
1930 San Antonio, Texas;
1930-1934 St.Louis, Missouri;
1932 Louisville, Kentucky The Negro Housing Problem;
1953-1959 Washington, DC.

Before, during and after WWII, Mr. Bartholomew was appointed to the United States’ Federal Planning Committee by three Presidents, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1952, President Eisenhower appointed Mr. Bartholomew chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission, a position he held for seven years.
Mr. Bartholomew was an early advocate of slum clearance & city planning, serving on the U.S. Slum Clearance Advisory Committee. His ideas helped shape the Housing Act of 1937 & the Housing Act of 1949, and had a profound effect on the segregation of city neighbourhoods, ensuring that immigrants and the urban poor would be designated to one blighted city neighbourhood — including in Vancouver, skid row (now called the Downtown Eastside), the urban planning handiwork of Mr. Bartholomew.

In his June 17, 2017 essay on Vancouver’s Abundant Housing website, urbanist Reilly Wood records the following …

“When Bartholomew asked what abuses he should consider in the interim zoning by-law of 1927 he was preparing, the chairman replied that ‘the only serious abuse… is the intrusion of undesirable apartment houses into residential districts'” (Zoning and the Single-Family Landscape, p. 60)

Recently, at the November 13th meeting of Vancouver City Council, newly-elected OneCity Vancouver Councillor Christine Boyle moved an amendment to a motion calling for an updated City Plan that would have included in its mandate “a city for all, such that all neighbourhoods in Vancouver would include all types of housing, rental, co-and-co-op housing, and social housing.” Councillor Boyle’s amendment was supported only by Mayor Kennedy Stewart and COPE City Councillor Jean Swanson.
Old ideas die hard, it would seem, and the legacy of Harland Bartholomew looms large in the planning process within the City of Vancouver.
Nonetheless, VanRamblings believes that as a new, inclusive and neighbourhood sensitive City Plan is developed, the intent of Councillor Boyle’s heartening and necessary amendment will carry the day, with the near unanimous consent of the Mayor & her fellow City Councillors, persons of conscience, grit & integrity to their core, who mean well for our city, not just over the course of the next four years, but for generations to come.
How did Harland Bartholomew’s Ideas Shape Vancouver?

“Few cities possess such a combination of nearby natural resources, a splendid harbour, a terrain ideally suited for urban use, an equable climate and a setting of great natural beauty.

Vancouver is the most important Pacific port of a great country. Here, if anywhere, should develop a great city. Circumstances of such character call for a city plan of substantial scale.”

A Plan for the City of Vancouver, Harland Bartholomew & Associates, 1928, p. 10

From the outset, Harland Bartholomew was clear in stating his preference for single-family homes throughout the city, with Vancouver Town Planning Commission chairman Arthur Smith setting the tone by praising Point Grey’s early bylaw, explicitly segregating Vancouver by class, and noting the retention of single-family homes as a major goal …

“The wise foresight which Point Grey has used in planning at an early stage of its growth should provide Vancouver with one of the most desirable residential districts possessed by any city on the Continent, and those who have to gain their livelihood by manual labor should find in Hastings Townsite, and in a replanned South Vancouver, a place where they can build up modest homes which should differ only in size from that of the more opulent employers. The retention of Vancouver as a city of single family homes has always been close to the heart of those engaged in the preparation of this plan.” (A Plan for the City of Vancouver, p. 26)

Bartholomew further clarified his preference for single-family homes …

“As has been mentioned, Vancouver is largely a city of one-family homes and is surrounded by similar development in the adjoining municipalities. Large areas are now available for such development, though a considerable proportion has yet to be served by utilities. That the one-family dwelling is the desirable unit for happy living is the general concensus (sic) of opinion of all authorities. (A Plan for the City of Vancouver, p. 233-234)

Bartholomew was keen to keep stores out of residential neighbourhoods …

“The scattering of stores promiscuously throughout residence districts has done considerable damage to the city’s appearance. The nearly universal custom of building stores out to the street line has hurt the appearance of a good many residence streets and at the same time has injured adjoining lots by making them less desirable for living purposes and reducing their saleable value. The zoning by-law will remedy this condition and tend to prevent residence districts from becoming blighted.” (A Plan for the City of Vancouver, p. 247)

As Reilly Wood writes in his Abundant Housing essay …

“The contrast with modern-day Vancouver is remarkable, given that neighbourhood stores built before Bartholomew’s Plan are now many neighbourhoods’ most cherished jewels. Who would prefer the East Side without the Marché St. George, or the West Side without Arbutus Coffee? Bartholomew sought to completely eradicate small-scale retailers and meeting places from residential neighbourhoods, without questioning whether people might want to live near such amenities.”

Bartholomew advocated for and succeeded in creating exclusionary neighbourhoods, imposing extravagantly large minimum lot sizes and yards, and as Wood writes could “be more accurately described as a suburban plan, designed by a man with a profoundly anti-urban bias. It would be laughable if we weren’t still living in its shadow.”

Franklin Avenue looking East from 9th, 1928. Landmarks Association of St Louis.

Bartholomew’s urban plan for St. Louis, Missouri, is particularly instructive:

“City planner Harland Bartholomew rose in prominence along with the popularity of scientific city-efficient planning during the early to mid-twentieth century. In the pursuit of solutions to urban problems, Bartholomew concluded that the most efficient way to revitalize St. Louis, Missouri, was through the clearing of slums. In an attempt to solve the city’s economic and demographic problems, slum clearance destroyed and displaced Black neighborhoods whose 70,000 residents were seen as detrimental to the city’s success.”

In fact, as Dan Chapman of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, writes …

“The region’s psychic scars run deeper. St. Louis once was the nation’s fourth most populated city, a manufacturing and transportation colossus. It was the proud Gateway to the West, idealized by the soaring steel Arch along the banks of the Mississippi River.

A century ago, city fathers realized that blight, traffic, poverty, and fragmented government threatened St. Louis’ success. They hired a city planner in 1916 who, a year later, published the “Problems of St. Louis.” The city was at a critical juncture, an inflection point where long-term success might be guaranteed if the right civic decisions were made.

Harland Bartholomew, the planner, hoped that his report would “ultimately result in some action and action is St. Louis’ greatest need.” Action ensued, but not always the right kind.

St. Louis today ranks 27th in population and 45th in job growth among the top 50 metro areas. In hindsight, few imagined that the year 1916 would figure so prominently. Bartholomew’s embrace of urban renewal and highways-to-the-suburbs fueled the exodus from St. Louis as well as the region’s fragmentation and racism.

A residential segregation law passed that year established an ongoing pattern of racial separateness. The law was overturned, but the scars remain. Ferguson, for example, is two-thirds black, yet at the time of the shooting the mayor and five of six council members were white.

“Ferguson affirms that we in St. Louis are in the geographic and cultural heart of America with all its issues and foibles,” said the Rev. Starsky Wilson, pastor of St. John’s United Church of Christ in St. Louis. “These are American problems.”

Vancouver’s Strathcona neighbourhood was developed with narrow lots before Harland Bartholomew’s ideas were adopted. UBC urban geography professor Patrick Condon wants it known that in the 1960s, consequent of a state-sponsored urban renewal initiative, government sought to declare Strathcona a “slum”. David Gibson wants it known that “Strathcona was saved by the Strathcona Property Owners and Tenants’ Association (SPOTA), The Electors’ Action Movement (T.E.A.M.) Council of the early 1970s, supplemented by federal Opportunities for Youth (OFY) & Local Initiatives Projects (LIP) grants, “such that Strathcona continues to thrive to this day.

Blatantly racist development policy, intolerance, exclusive neighbourhoods where the working poor, persons with disabilities, seniors, those on social assistance, immigrants and refugees are all but forbidden from residence, and a blighted downtown neighbourhood riven with crime, hopelessness and an opioid crisis that is killing our city’s residents by the thousands — these are the critical challenges faced by our new Mayor and City Council.
A good place to start?
Undo and reverse the legacy of Harland Bartholomew, and begin anew.

#VanPoli | Orientation | Happiness | Collegiality | City Council

November 26, 2018#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

The glorious, thrilling and edifying 30-day orientation for the members of our new Vancouver City Council continues first thing this morning.
Clearly, Vancouver Non-Partisan Association Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung and OneCity Vancouver Councillor Christine Boyle have proven to be the best communicators among our new crop of electeds — their social media feeds informative and an absolute delight to follow, with first-rate reportage to the tens of thousands of you who voted them into office. Good on them.

If you’re not already following Councillor Christine Boyle on Twitter, you can do so at @christineboyle, while the incredibly wonderful Sarah Kirby-Yung at @sarahkirby_yung is another must follow — which you ought to do.

#VanPoli | Hope | City Council Finds Collegial Transcendence

November 19, 2018#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver Votes 2018, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

Here they are: your new Mayor & City Councillors, in chambers and ready to get to work

Last Tuesday morning, November 13th, the first “business meeting” for Vancouver’s new Mayor and eight recently-elected, and two re-elected City Councillors, VanRamblings was seated in the balcony area above the round that is the seating of council chambers at Vancouver City Hall.
At 9:29am, standing for just a moment, peering over the guard rail down onto the now seated Mayor and Council, we glanced over to our left to see Christine Boyle turning to her seat mate, Rebecca Bligh, seated to her right, when a smile washed over Ms. Boyle’s face that simply lit up the room, the smile wordless, but saying so much: “Well, Rebecca, the next phase of our lives is about to begin. I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know this: we’re in this together, all of us in this room.”
Rebecca Bligh smiled back at Christine Boyle, centred and calming and utterly supportive of her new Council colleague, a zen presence in Council chambers, as serene as we’ve ever seen anyone around the Council “table”, utterly poised and composed, prepared for life to unfold before her.
VanRamblings then looked over at the new Mayor and each of the other Councillors who, although they may not have witnessed Christine Boyle’s beatific and reassuring smile, felt the impact of that smile, Colleen Hardwick also serene, as was the case with Pete Fry sitting next to her, Adriane Carr away for the first part of the meeting, fulfilling her responsibility as a Councillor to be present at the provincial government’s announcement of 4,950 new units of affordable housing across the province, a good number of which will begin construction in neighbourhoods across the City of Vancouver in the months to come.
Looking to our right, Sarah Kirby-Yung could also be seen smiling, utterly at peace around the Council table, as was the case with the seatmates to her right, Lisa Dominato, Michael Wiebe, Jean Swanson and Melissa De Genova.
The Vancouver Courier’s very fine civic affairs reporter, Mike Howell, yesterday published a column titled, Top 20 observations of new Vancouver council. We had already planned to do something similar today — but it would be unfair not to acknowledge that Mike got their first.
Last week, on Twitter, we published the following …

Now, we got heck for posting the above Twitter comment, as if somehow we were being critical of our new, well-intentioned, wholesomely democratic Vancouver City Council — which observations by our critics couldn’t be further from the truth. Rather, our intention was to point out that during the course of a 12+ hour initial Council meeting, not a lot got done, the meeting bogged down (as pointed out by the observant Mr. Howell) in amendments, amendments to amendments, and a well-intentioned procedural hell that was not only frustrating for observers and Councillors, but for those reporters covering that first meeting.
All of us reporting out on, and observing, that first Council meeting realize that these are early days, and given the wit, the intelligence, the heart, the collegiality and the good will clearly evident around the Council table, sooner than later, the new Council will find their feet, accomplish that which needs doing, and build for themselves, and for all of us, a legacy of achievement that will stand in Vancouver civic history as an outstanding contribution to the livability of our city, towards building the city we need.
So, that’s the pre-amble to today’s column …
Random Observations on Vancouver City Council’s first week …

Colleen Hardwick was mute throughout the entirety of the morning of the first Council meeting. In meetings such as this, Councillors most often feel compelled to weigh in on issues that come before Council — but, as we say, Ms. Hardwick remained mute the entire morning;
When Council broke for lunch, just outside of Council chambers, Colleen (we’ve been friends, so we’re going to refer her by her Christian name) greeted us warmly and in a friendly manner, for the first time in months. We were both bowled over, and grateful. Then Councillor Hardwick proceeded to initiate a scrum with reporters in the third floor foyer, where she blasted her Council mates. More on this in a moment;
On the second morning, Christine Boyle moved a motion that would ensure that all of Vancouver’s 23 neighbourhoods would be participant in a “building out” of affordable housing. Pete Fry, in support of Ms. Boyle’s motion, suggested an amendment that would include the words spatial justice, a term with which the distaff Councillor was obviously unfamiliar, as she rejected the suggested amendment by her colleague outright;
Later on that second day, Ms. Boyle suggested a supportive amendment to the wording of a motion placed before Council on 58 West Hastings. Christine Boyle’s suggested amendment was entirely supportive of the intent of Jean Swanson’s motion, but Ms. Swanson swatted away Ms. Boyle’s suggested amendment, as if it was the most irksome thing she’d heard at Council that day, or on any other day of her life;
Sarah Kirby-Yung, as may well be expected, emerged as the most articulate, well-reasoned Councillor, and contrary to her usual habit of speaking just a tad too quickly, around the Council table she spoke more slowly, injecting both a gravitas and authority that was quite something to witness (may we say, “Good on you, Sarah!” — note should be made that Ms. Kirby-Yung is pretty much the only Councillor that can stand to be around us, although the rest of the Councillors make a game effort to be kind to this old, if voluble, gentleman);
In the zen sweepstakes, Mayor Kennedy Stewart — who we have to say just knocked our socks off, friendly, reasonable, articulate, bright, and zen to a degree that is took more than a year for Gregor Robertson to develop (which he did, very much to his credit) in the Chair, and around the Council table the next couple of days — would seem to have competition from Rebecca Bligh. Now, as we’ve written previously, we were admiring of Ms. Bligh the first time we met her, as the most authentic and socially skilled person with whom we’d come into contact in years (there is greatness in this woman).
Now, as anyone who knows us soon realizes, VanRamblings is bereft of even a hint of social skills (alas) — we tend to greatly admire those possessed of skills of which VanRamblings is completely incapable (another example: we will never be as articulate, well-spoken or as superb a writer as Pete Fry — it just is, and we’re grateful that his voice will be heard in Vancouver’s, and British Columbia’s, civic affairs) — the fact that Ms. Bligh also brings a zen approach to matters before Council, as well as a fine intellect, an ability to listen & peer into your soul, and a well-developed social conscience … just colour us mightily impressed!;
Back to Colleen Hardwick for a moment. VanRamblings officially calls for a truce between Ms. Hardwick and VanRamblings. Here’s what we figure about Colleen Hardwick on Council: Ms. Hardwick does not suffer fools gladly (those not agreeing with her fall into the category of ‘fools’). Ms. Hardwick was elected because she is outspoken — we believe that’s what those who supported her and voted for her expect, that she’ll speak her mind, and although she may be viewed as being impolitic from time to time, clearly Colleen believes there’s work to be done, and has every intention of lighting a fire under Council to get moving on her agenda, for which she expects Council’s co-operation. Council’s unanimous support for her call for development of a City Plan must be seen as a win for Councillor Hardwick — even if her motion calling for the revocation of duplexes as a housing type would seem destined for defeat (the motion was referred to staff — a general sign of death for a motion as originally drafted). Colleen Hardwick will be just fine on Council. As we say: truce;
For us, the most heartening development on Council is the well-deserved respect that Lisa Dominato is being afforded by her Council mates, something that we thought was unforgivably missing during her brief tenure on School Board. We continue to believe that Ms. Dominato is, and will be seen to be, a powerhouse on Council. We will live to our dying day regretting not endorsing her candidacy for Council — one cannot ask for forgiveness for the unforgivable, though, so we’ll simply be tremendously supportive of Councillor Dominato going forward, in all she does (reserving the right, of course, to be critical — as would be the case with her fellow Councillors — from time to time — but, respectfully);
We’ve already elucidated how we feel about Councillor Pete Fry — our enthusiasm for the work Pete will take on at Council is boundless, our good will for Councillor Fry unrelenting.
And, oh yes, Councillor Fry missed a portion of the meeting last week: Pete was off doing work with the Union of B.C. Municipalities, to which body he is Council’s delegate. And, oh yes, part deux, Councillor Bligh missed a bit of Thursday’s Council tête-à-tête, as she was back east as Council’s delegate to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities;
We have to say, we feel pretty much the same thing about Councillor Michael Wiebe, who each hour and each day moves from strength to strength to strength. Michael’s potential to do good is … limitless;
Councillor Melissa De Genova — long one of our favourite electeds, for the record — moved the motion to refer Jean Swanson’s 58 West Hastings motion to staff, but while doing so and in her capacity as City Hall Budget Director stated her full and unwavering support for Councillor Swanson’s motion — although Ms. Swanson may not get the 130 units of income assistance level supportive housing she and others have so long fought for, we’re willing to bet that Council will achieve something pretty darn close to that, finally moving on a project that Vision Vancouver had kept in abeyance for seven years;
Adriane Carr: democrat.
The voice of the people. Honestly, does anything more have to be said about Vancouver’s favourite City Councillor? Nope. Continue your good work, Councillor Carr.

And, finally, on the other good news front: Councillors Pete Fry and Christine Boyle’s motion to establish a Renter’s Office at City Hall (more on this another time) passed with flying colours, which is to say, unanimously — which is good for all of us, and most particularly, renters.
When most of the rest of the world seems to be falling apart, we here in Vancouver and in British Columbia, seem to be doing just fine — for which the voters and the citizens of our city and of our province, and the members of our new City Council and our new and glorious and humane NDP government, deserve our undying gratitude.
As Mike Howell writes … the next Council meeting, December 4th.