Architect & charter TEAM for a Livable Vancouver member Brian Palmquist speaks at TEAM’s AGM
Team for a Livable Vancouver, our town’s newest political party, held it’s first AGM on Sunday evening, an event open only to members of the nascent political party.
Jak King, a longtime Grandview-Woodland and community activist, was one of 12 policy committee speakers addressing Sunday evening’s AGM.
Vancouver City Councillor Colleen Hardwick was the evening’s keynote speaker.
Brian Palmquist, an award-winning architect, provided an Affordability Policy analysis at Sunday evening’s founding event, which took place at the Anza Club on 3 West 8th Avenue. Mr. Palmquist is the author of the substack newsletter, The PATH Project, where he reflects regularly on development in the city of Vancouver, recently emerging — along with UBC’s Patrick Condon — as an increasingly important voice in civic politics, and as a regular speaker at Vancouver City Hall debates.
Unlike the fancy soirées conducted by Ken Sim and his newly-formed A Better City municipal party, or Mark Marissen’s Progress Vancouver event, both of which drew dozens of well-heeled supporters — as well as all the press that matters (no journalist worth her or his salt foregoes a free meal), the founding TEAM AGM was — surprising to many — a members only event, a decidedly déclassé affair, with a solid and upbeat attendance, nonetheless, of those party members who’ve been working with Team for a Livable Vancouver founder, Vancouver City Councillor Colleen Hardwick, to transform Vancouver into a more “livable city” for all.
367 days before the municipal election, and we have our first big event of the campaign: a dinner to formally nominate Ken Sim (who lost by 1,000 votes to Kennedy Stewart in 2018) as the mayoral candidate for the new A Better City party. pic.twitter.com/1A3RU2EdGy
— Justin McElroy (@j_mcelroy) October 14, 2021
Ex-B.C. Premier Christy Clark, Trudeau Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal and others at Mayoral Wannabe Mark Marissen’s maskless #cashforaccess banquet. #vanpoli #vanRE #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/8zBnGgY1oF
— Bob Mackin (@bobmackin) October 29, 2021
Sunday evening’s founding TEAM AGM — which, in the early going, would seem to be a no press ‘we don’t want any of those stinkin’ wretches‘ allowed — which for us would seem to comprise an kind of odd, almost stealth campaign for office, a members only ‘ if you don’t love us, we don’t love you’ civic party that somehow possesses definitive plans on sweeping to office at Vancouver City Hall, at Park Board and at School Board, come Saturday, October 15, 2022. Sunday’s AGM follows on the heels of a series of policy workshops organized by Councillor Hardwick in October. VanRamblings was unable to find anyone in Team for a Livable Vancouver to speak on, or off, the record about Sunday’s AGM.
Allow VanRamblings to say that we believe that come the latter part of September 2022, leading up to October 15th Vancouver civic election day, a groundswell of support for Team for a Livable Vancouver will embolden voters to cast their ballot for TEAM — despite whatever jerks like VanRamblings have to say on the matter, in the months leading up to next year’s Vancouver municipal election — and that TEAM will sweep to victory, in the same manner COPE did in 2002, and Vision Vancouver achieved in 2008, surprising many.
TEAM’s October 24th Policy Conference, where 12 groups developed TEAM party policy
VanRamblings was told, simply, to wait for a series of announcements and a new and dynamic party website that will emerge throughout the month of December.
TEAM’s founding Board of Directors, former Green Party civic candidate and architect, David Wong; longtime community activist Sal Robinson; current Vancouver City Councillor Colleen Hardwick; founder of the VanPoli Facebook group, community activist, and Oscar-winning animator (and probable TEAM Park Board candidate), David Fine; and outgoing TEAM Board member, Sean Nardi.
As Sean Nardi wrote in the hours following the TEAM founding AGM …
“TEAM elected its first, 9-member Board of Directors, a talented, concerned group who bring a diversity of skills, experience, knowledge and perspectives to guide TEAM’s evolution.”
For the moment, the party is playing its cards close to the vest, and at least for now the party has taken down both of its websites, the initial https://voteforteam.ca/, and more recently, http://www.teamlivablevancouver.ca/.
It would seem that, arising from VanRamblings persnicketyness (there are those who employ harsher language), Team for a Livable Vancouver moved up the début of its audacious and snazzy new website, which may be found at …
VanRamblings had been told that TEAM’s webmaster was something of a perfectionist — you can see for yourself what that means (pretty great, we think).
VanRamblings received a call from a TEAM founding member, this a.m. …
“Ray, I think you’re going to be impressed with who the nine people are who were selected as TEAM’s new Board members. They’re a pretty impressive group, who in the days and weeks to come will play an ever increasingly important role in working to develop policy, and a narrative on what TEAM stands for. Over time, Colleen will play an ever diminishing role in directing the affairs of the civic party she has worked so hard to create. Colleen will turn her focus to becoming Vancouver’s next Mayor on Saturday, October 15, 2022, and carrying her team to office.
The announcement of the new Board members, and the launch of the new website , will occur in short order, perhaps as soon as next week. The launch of Team for a Livable Vancouver bodes well for all of us, and most particularly, for the citizens of Vancouver.”
VanRamblings awaits future Team for a Livable Vancouver announcements.
