Street trash, unsightly streetscapes, boulevards left unkempt with uncut grass and strewn with trash, overflowing waste receptacles, poor parks maintenance that make them unsafe for use by families — this is the legacy of Vision Vancouver, this is how our majority municipal government realizes its much touted greenest city action plan, yet another obfuscation, among many more, that belies the reality of Vision governance, as over the course of the past six years of a two-term Vision Vancouver administration, Canada’s west coast paradise has become a blighted, third world landscape.
In his weekly column in the Vancouver Courier, Michael Geller writes …

In the past, I was generally proud of how our city was maintained.

However, in recent years, I have noticed a general decline. Weeds are growing in street medians and sidewalks. Boulevards and parks appear overgrown, and more cigarette butts, chewing gum and garbage are strewn about.

There is also an increase in the number of unkempt properties, presumably slated for redevelopment or unoccupied, which become scars on otherwise beautiful, well-maintained streetscapes.

On a recent visit to C Restaurant at the foot of Howe Street, I was disgusted by the neglect of a once-prized waterfront walkway. Weeds were growing through pavers, under benches and around tree grates.

A couple of weeks ago, Park Board Commissioner John Coupar asked us to join him on a walk along the pathway from the Olympic Village to Yaletown.

“Invasive species have grown up all along the shoreline of False Creek, choking out the trees that were planted to enhance the livability of the Village,” John pointed out to us. “From Granville Island to the Olympic Village, through to Yaletown, Park Board maintenance has become near non-existent. A beautiful waterfront area that was meant to be enjoyed by the people of Vancouver is becoming overgrown and covered with invasives, including blackberry, morning glory, broom …”

Nearing the controversial Concord Pacific sales centre opposite the Village, John pointed out a blighted landscape of broken bottles, shopping carts, discarded mattresses, and refuse of every description, carelessly scattered all along the fenced off area on the north shore of False Creek.

“Governance is all about setting priorities. It is clear to me that Vision Vancouver has not prioritized Parks and Gardens. Cuts to operating budgets in Vision’s first term have not been restored. A structural deficit in the Park Board maintenance budget remains. While from a distance all looks green, a close inspection of our parks all around Vancouver reveal standards have slipped drastically. Our staff are under siege, are working hard, but without the boots on the ground to keep up, it’s clear that a proud history of horticultural excellence has slipped away.”

“The lack of respect for the legacy and history of the Vancouver Park Board system continues unabated. I am very concerned about the future of Park Board, which cannot survive in a meaningful way with four more years of Vision neglect.”

Recently, VanRamblings had the opportunity to speak with former Park Board chair, the Coalition of Progressive Electors’ Anita Romaniuk, on the topic of park maintenance. Here’s, in part, what Ms. Romaniuk had to say:

“At Douglas Park, near my home, families in the neighbourhood have told me they feel the park has become unsafe. Park Board maintenance — weeding, the cutting of the tall grasses, and attention to the bushes around the periphery — has gone by the wayside with the Vision Vancouver-led majority Park Board, a Park Board that while politicizing the institution has cut nearly $3 million annually from the budget.”

“Parents have reported to me that children running through the tall grass and bush area of the park have emerged — much to the horror of their caregivers — covered in dog feces. Who’s maintaining our parks? The present circumstance is unacceptable, unsafe and unconscionable.”

Reports from friends living nearby John Hendry Park, on Vancouver’s eastside, tell us the situation is no better at Trout Lake. Says a friend:

“Over the past few years, I’ve noticed that the grass in the park is rarely cut and tended to, and the park poorly maintained, which has lead to a situation where teenagers partying on weekends casually throw their discarded beer bottles into the tall grasses. Broken glass is everywhere — creating an unsafe situation for park users. We used to love to picnic in the park with our friends and family; not any more.”

In his weekly column published in today’s Vancouver Courier, civic affairs commentator Allen Garr covers the selection of the “dream team” slate of Vision Vancouver Park Board candidates seeking office this November 15th.
A question: Do you honestly believe that the cynical, one issue identity politics new faces of the probably well-meaning, but misguided Vision Vancouver Park Board slate would do anything at all to remedy the years of neglect our parks have suffered under a Vision-led municipal government, that Coree Tull, Trish Kelly, Naveen Girn or Sammie Jo Rumbaua would, for one moment, consider themselves stewards of our parks system?
Or, do you believe, as Park Board watchdog Jamie Lee Hamilton does, that:

(These four political naifs were nothing) other than … willing participants to the deal-making of the (Vision Vancouver) backroom … no different than the current Vision Commissioners, who always and still do as they are told … this new younger crop (constituting) the new faces of Vision, but sadly for voters (members of) … the same old Vision. (With these four) … the only outcome of moving forward with Vision will be the complete dismantling of an independent Park Board.

In the past, self-serving Vision Vancouver councillor Raymond Louie hit the airwaves, blaming Mother Nature, claiming that spring and summer rains caused the grasses to grow “a bit longer than normal,” all the while failing to acknowledge the $3-plus million annual cut to the Park Board budget.
Louie has even gone so far as to cite an opinion survey that says an overwhelming majority of Vancouver citizens are happy with the level of trash pickup in the city — none of which squares with Bal Brach’s story for the CBC last evening, when she reported that complaints to the city about neglect of our streets and our parks is up six per cent this year alone.
More than a few Vancouver citizens would beg to differ with Louie’s assessment of the state of disrepair of our streetscape, and our parks.
In fact, one person went so far as to write an e-mail to Vancouver City Councillor George Affleck, and City Hall, writing …

“To tell the truth, we have been looking to move to West Van as it is so much cleaner over there. Even in the busy areas of Ambleside. North Van is much cleaner also, just check out Lonsdale Ave. It’s such a pity Vancouver has been allowed to get so bad.”

As far as basic street maintenance is concerned, Charles Gauthier, president of the Downtown Vancouver Improvement Association, says the city no longer spends the budget on cleaning like it used to. He has noticed a significant decline in those funds in the last 10 years.

“Power-washing sidewalks, removing gum from sidewalks, trimming around the tree wells where there has been weeds,” he lists. “Grasses grown has reached heights that are unacceptable,” says Gauthier.

Former 24 Hours civic affairs columnist Daniel Fontaine has written …

Long grass and overflowing garbage bins do appear more acute in Vancouver than other neighbouring jurisdictions. While most of us expect West Vancouver to look picture perfect, even Coquitlam, Burnaby and Richmond are doing a better job of keeping their cities looking clean and green.

Few could have predicted when Vancouver set a target of becoming the greenest city in the world it would translate into poorly maintained boulevards.

Michael Geller told News1130 reporter Alison Bailey, last evening, that he wants the City to openly admit if it doesn’t have the money to properly maintain streets and parks, or tell the public if it’s a deliberate strategy in keeping with the goal of making Vancouver a greener city. Geller also commented that a public discussion is both timely and necessary on what Vancouver citizens believe is important in terms of keeping the city clean.

For those of us who spend any time at all on social media, or online news sites (including The Straight and The Tyee), one can hardly avoid the plethora of online ads touting Vision Vancouver — focusing mainly on the chiseled features of Mayor Gregor Robertson, and the campaign’s initial Go Forward branding — supplemented by sponsored ads (such as the one above for current Park Board Commissioner / acclaimed Vision Vancouver Council candidate, lawyer Niki ‘she doesn’t suffer fools gladly‘ Sharma).
Even for those of us whose lives revolve around a consuming interest in municipal political affairs, the deluge of Vision Vancouver ads wherever you turn online is, well, a bit much, too many ads, too soon, long before the campaign for civic elected office is set to get underway in earnest this fall.
For some of those among us, the every other Facebook posting-sponsored Vision Vancouver ads have about them an unpleasant sense of electoral desperation, as per putative NPA candidate / former Park Board chair Ian Robertson’s comments to The Straight’s Carlito Pablo today, “Vision Vancouver are nervous … are scared, and quite frankly, they have every reason to be nervous and scared about this upcoming election.”
Honest, Mike and Kevin, those ads are too much, too soon. It’s summer time, after all, beach time, family time, and generally considered to be the silly season in politics. Do you really want to position Vision Vancouver as silly this early in the 2014 municipal election campaign? Nope, thought not.
Helpful hint: For those of you looking to avoid those mass hypnosis Vision Vancouver ads — particularly on Facebook — correspondent / Kits Beach environmental activist Elvira Lount posted the following advice today …

Sick of seeing Gregor’s face & the Vision Team ad in your newstream? Well — it’s easy to get rid of them! Click the little down arrow on the top right of the ad and click on “hide all ads from Gregor Robertson and the Vision Team”. Presto. No more Gregor ads. Big relief. Couldn’t stand 5½ more months of those. Hurray!”

Well, there you go — problem solved. Thanks Elvira!

Word has filtered through to VanRamblings that yet another lawsuit directed at Vision Vancouver is in the works — this latest proposed legal action concerning the issue of campaign spending (can you just imagine how much those Tyee / Straight / Facebook ads cost, in heavy rotation — none of which fund expenditure requires disclosure by Vision Vancouver).

Word on the street is that, contrary to multiple published reports in the media, former Vision Critical CEO, longtime respected pollster Dr. Angus Reid, was escorted from the premises of the market research company that, as the company’s website states, “builds engaged, secure communities of customers … for ongoing, real-time feedback and insight.”
According to our sources, both company management and staff had lost faith in Vision Critical to perform to expectation on the community consultation front — manipulation of community engagement data was never a core economic component that contributed to Vision Critical’s bottom line, and the cloud-based community forum software developed by Angus Reid was, at best, an adjunct function for the company, whose main business is designed to conduct closed market research for multi-national companies, to build product/company loyalty among members of the public.
Vision Critical was co-founded by Angus Reid, with his son Andrew, in 2000. The Reid family remain the company’s largest shareholder.
In August 2012, Vision Critical received a $20 million investment from OMERS Ventures, an arm of the Ontario municipal employees’ pension fund.
At the time of this writing, there remains widespread speculation in the investment community that Vision Critical is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO), or stock launch, where shares of stock in the company will be sold to the general public — we have been told that many in Vision Critical feel the company’s largely unsuccessful, and far from lucrative, foray into the political, local-based community consultation realm was hurting the prospects for a successful IPO, necessary to raise expansion capital to consolidate the company’s future as a global marketing player.

What does all of the above have to do with Vancouver municipal politics?
In their most recent term of office, in particular, the Vision Vancouver-led majority Vancouver City Council has consistently taken hits from neighbourhood activists for their sham community consultation process.
In order to shore up the optics on the community engagement front, the Vision-led Council awarded an untendered contract to Vision Critical, to launch Talk Vancouver.com, a cloud-based community consultation forum.
Quoting from Bob Mackin’s January 2nd story in the Vancouver Courier …

Vision Critical, PlaceSpeak.com, Gravit-e Technologies, Mustel Research and Sentis Market Research were among 22 companies pre-qualified in 2012 for city hall communications and research projects. When it pondered a citizen engagement website in early 2013, city staff considered only Vision Critical.

An open, public call normally happens for city contracts worth $75,000 and up. The price for the two-year Vision Critical contract is $152,080.

By comparison, the City of Toronto published a Dec. 13 (2013) notice seeking quotations from companies for “provision of an online consultation tool” for the City Manager’s office. The bid deadline is Jan. 8, 2014 for a one-year contract with a one-year option.

Note: subsequent to the letting of the consultation tool request for proposal (RFP), the City of Toronto cancelled its call for the development of an online consultation tool, stating privacy concerns, as well as a lack of confidence that cloud-based engagement software could meet the City’s mandate for “open, fair, and transparent municipal consultation processes.”
From the outset, many in the public have expressed concern that the Vision Critical developed Talk Vancouver cloud-based community consultation software was little more than a taxpayer-funded, underhanded attempt by Vision Vancouver to data mine information about, and manufacturer the consent of, the Vancouver electorate, in the lead up to the November 15, 2014 civic election — Talk Vancouver, then, as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and a data-mining community consultation masquerade.
Dr. Angus Reid has “retired” from an active role in Vision Critical, a company he co-founded. An untendered contract was awarded to the company’s former CEO. Does Dr. Reid remain, as stated in the Mackin story, Mayor Gregor Robertson’s “dollar-a-year technology and citizen engagement adviser?” Will the company fulfill the terms of its contract, or was it ever even intended to do so? And, what happens to the “intelligence” that is gathered through Talk Vancouver, where’s the transparency in the reporting out, and what role has the cloud-based software played, if any role at all, in determining policy development in the City of Vancouver?