The folks who are seeking political office as members of the Non-Partisan Association, and have put their names forward in this 2014 Vancouver civic election campaign to garner your vote, constitute a retinue of decent, humble, and very bright, publically-minded servants of the public interest.
From the outset of the current Vancouver civic election campaign, NPA mayoralty candidate Kirk LaPointe made it clear that his party would run a “clean campaign”. All NPA candidates would be required to sign (and did so) an “issues not insults” code of conduct pledging that there would be no personal attacks by members of his party that would be directed to their “political foes”. As LaPointe stated when signing the pledge, “There is a very clear intersection with your conduct and your ability to perform your duties. All of us feel quite comfortable in the idea we’ve got rich, fertile territory to criticize policy, we don’t ever have to go into personal lives.”
In this 2014 Vancouver civic election campaign, mayoral hopeful Kirk LaPointe has made liberal use of a withering line about Vision Vancouver’s wrong-headed six years in power: “Vancouver is a great city, badly run.”
Who knows where the NPA grabbed that tag line — it’s effective, though.
On the face of it, “Vancouver is a great city, badly run” would seem to suggest that those running with the Non-Partisan Association would be better city managers, and more astute protectors of the public purse.
In practice, though, “Vancouver is a great city, badly run” serves as a reminder to voters, who have repeatedly taken Vision Vancouver to task for their egregiously “bad”, anti-neighbourhood, tower-driven, anti-park decisions. “Vancouver is a great city, badly run” implores us not to forget about just how unhappy we’ve been with Vision Vancouver in power.
Those living in the Langara neighbourhood were apoplectic about Mayor Robertson’s proposal to hive off half of the Langara Golf Course to sell to developers, while turning the other half of the golf course into a “park”.
A bad proposal with no support from neighbours of the golf course, and the residents of Langara, who saw through the sham, and realized that Vision’s actual intent was to diminish already scarce green space in their under-parked neighbourhood. Women who spoke up at Park Board were adamant that the trails around the golf course were safer as a consequence of the eyes of golfers on the runners and walkers. There was even a young Olympic medalist who told Park Board she trained on those trails as a child.
In this instance, as will be the case in so many other neighbourhoods across our city, “Vancouver is a great city, badly run” only serves to remind Langara residents about the anti-neighbourhood, anti-park policies of the Vision Vancouver civic administration, and the resource they could very well have lost, and might still lose if rumours of Vision’s intent to follow through on their original plans prove to be true, should Vision be re-elected.
And it’s not just Langara residents who will recall with ill feeling Vision’s “in the pocket of developers” ethos.
- Mount Pleasant residents mounted a vigorous opposition to the Rize Development at Kingsway and Broadway, and lost;
- Grandview Woodland residents decried Vision’s plan for massive tower complexes at both Clark Drive and Commercial Drive, six storey townhouses along Nanaimo Street, stacked townhouses along East 1st Avenue, and increased heights along East Hastings Street;
- Hastings Sunrise residents won’t soon forget Vision Council’s decision to block Park Board from taking control of Hastings Park, in order that a “massive $310.5 million redevelopment” of the park might continue. You can bet that there aren’t going be a great number of Hastings Sunrise residents who’ll being casting a vote for Vision in 2014.
Whether you live in Kitsilano, where Vision Vancouver sought to pave large portions of Kitsilano Beach and Hadden Park.
Or you’re a West End resident who was opposed to STIR (the city’s wildly unpopular Short Term Incentives for Rental Housing programme, a giveaway to developers), which resulted in the tearing down of a church at 1401 Comox (originally slated for park space), putting up a 22-storey tower in its place, while at the same time adding a sixth tower to the Beach Towers complex, to name just a couple of examples of Vision development plans that met with West End neighbourhood opposition.
Or you’re a former resident of the Downtown Eastside who lost their affordable housing when Vision Vancouver failed to respond to adamant opposition to Wall Corp’s proposal to build a massive condominium complex at 955 East Hastings — which, when it was approved by a thoughtless Vancouver Council, displaced 200 longtime DTES residents.
Or, you’re one of the residents of the Fairview neighbourhood’s affordable housing development, Heather Place, who will be displaced as a consequence of Vision Vancouver’s decision to redevelop the site as a “market rental” development — effectively doubling tenants’ rents …
You can bet that with the litany of secretive, wrong-headed, non-consultative, anti-neighbourhood proposals that became fact over the course of Vision Vancouver’s six years in power that “Vancouver is a great city, badly run” will almost certainly emerge as the devastatingly powerful and understated meme of the 2014 Vancouver civic election campaign, a constant, daily reminder by Kirk LaPointe, and his Non-Partisan Association colleagues, that Vision Vancouver is not a municipal political party that is on your side, or was ever on your side, that indeed Vancouver was a great city, but under Vision Vancouver our city has been unforgivably badly and terribly run, and not run for you, but rather in the interests of developers.
“Vancouver is a great city, badly run” offers cogent, reflective comment — and a devastating indictment of Vision Vancouver’s six years in power, and a reminder that with Vision Vancouver gone from the municipal political landscape come the evening of November 15th that under a revitalized Non-Partisan Association municipal administration (members of the NPA would suggest), Vancouver might once again become a truly great city.
