Tuesday the numbers from the annual homeless count were released. The headlines say it all: “Record number of homeless on Vancouver streets“. For those of us who genuinely believe there is absolutely no excuse for homelessness in any society, let alone a society as rich as ours, the numbers were not just bad, they were…
Category: Vancouver
Vision-run public hearings: From bad to worse
Tuesday night the City of Vancouver held a Public Hearing on a controversial rezoning application for a Cressey development at East 18th and Commercial Drive in the Cedar Cottage area. Many citizens took time out of their busy schedules to attend the Public Hearing, which was chaired by Raymond Louie, one of Vision Vancouver’s councillors….
City Hall’s secret cash machine
Did you know that our Vision-Vancouver-dominated City Council has a Bid Committee that operates in secret? Council gave it authority to award contracts of any size without going out to tender whenever Council is on summer break. The Bid Committee — composed of City Hall bureaucrats (namely the city manager, director of finance, and voting department heads) — can also award contracts of up to $2 million in value at any time. That added up to 39 contracts…
A true hero’s tale
Tuesday night I had the honour and privilege of speaking at an event celebrating the freedom of one of the “Cuban Five” heroes, Gerardo Hernández. You might ask, who are the Cuban Five heroes? Let me tell you. (And let me give you a heads up. What you’re about to read is a long story,…
Has TransLink turned the corner?
On Wednesday, March 30, a number of HandyDART users spoke to the TransLink board at their monthly meeting in New Westminster. Together with HandyDART drivers, we were lobbying TransLink to bring HandyDART service in-house. Whereas conventional public transit is operated by TransLink through a number of wholly owned subsidiaries — Coast Mountain Bus Company operates…
City council: rewarding inefficiency
City council’s pay was in the news recently — city councillors will receive a whopping $9,000 annual raise, moving their salaries to roughly $80,000 a year. Allowing people to give themselves a raise for taking longer to do the same job doesn’t make much sense. Remember, this raise was approved by the councillors themselves. When…
Arbutus Corridor: Making housing out of thin air
At long last there is some very significant progress on the Arbutus Corridor. Just last week the City of Vancouver and CP Rail, the owner of the land, reached an agreement. CP will sell this 9-km rail corridor, stretching from Marpole to south False Creek, to the city for $55 million. Many years ago the…