This is one of those epic stories that happen to cities only every so often, as one group or another launches a major effort to remake a neighbourhood, create a grand new institution or take the city in a new direction. Our neighbours to the south of us in Seattle have been doing quite a bit of cultural monument building in the last couple of decades — library, art gallery, theatre, music museum –  thanks to a lot of Microsoft money floating around.

But we really haven’t had a big debate over a cultural building since the new central library was built. The art gallery promises to generate that kind of heated discussion and more, as it lobbies for the land and, if that’s successful, runs a no-doubt international architectural competition to get a design for the new building.

Here’s my latest info on the gallery move, after a lengthy interview Monday with the heavy hitters there. And, just randomly, I found this story elsewhere about the mistake one architecture critic thinks the Seattle Art Museum made by agreeing to co-exist with an office tower in downtown Seattle — something that the city is pushing the local gallery to do on its 150 Dunsmuir site, rather than taking over the whole block for itself.

One of my favourite places that I’ve visited in my travels the last few years is Telluride, because they don’t allow any chains. (Though tragically they do allow multi-millionaires to build ginormous third or fourth vacation homes there.) And it’s why Silver Star is one of my favourite ski resorts, where you get to eat in quirky places that are resolutely home-grown.

Former mayor Philip Owen and others started a fund through the Vancouver Foundation to try to encourage donations for the Downtown Eastside. Various housing groups have charitable arms to encourage donations. And especially during the Sam Sullivan administration at city hall, I heard a lot about how there were businesses waiting in the wings to give to the right project.

The Streetohome Foundation, brought to life through former city manager Judy Rogers and former former city manager Ken Dobell, was supposed to funnel all of that goodwill. It may yet do it, but it has had a rocky start the foundation’s business leaders grapple with the complexity and politics around homelessness. I explored the whole issue in my latest Vancouver magazine column here.

From: Ballem, Penny
To: [deleted]
Sent: Thu Mar 04 16:01:48 2010
Subject: For your info – this is going to council tonight pb

I would like to provide you with an update on communication that will be sent out to all staff this Friday regarding HR changes related to the 2010 Budget.

As you are aware, in December, we estimated 109 positions would be impacted through the service level adjustments as a result of the 2010 Budget. We also announced that an additional 14 impacted positions had been identified within Engineering Services, Equipment Services Branch and Mountain View Cemetery due to a decrease in work load within these areas. Thus, a total of 123 positions would be potentially impacted out of our 10,000 member workforce.  At that time, CMT established a committee with membership from across the City to work to mitigate the impact on staff.

In January following a lot of hard work by our committee, managers and unions, we announced that only 44 employees were subject to the group termination notice under provincial labour legislation. Shortly after the communication in January, an additional three positions within Equipment Services and Mountain View Cemetery were identified, bringing our total number to 47 employees covered by the group notice.

Since that time, our HR Transition Team, Vacancy Management Committee, Unions and managers have worked together to further reduce the impact on staff.  Our goal has been to have as few people as possible leave the organization while ensuring we meet our budget targets.

Through the Section 54 process which is mandated under provincial labour legislation, we have been involved in discussions with our unions to develop labour adjustment plans.  We have reached an agreement with CUPE 15 to develop a number of placement mechanisms that will help to lessen the impact on staff.  Under the adjustment plan for CUPE 15, employees who accept placement offers to available vacant positions (including temporary assignments) that are at a lesser pay grade than their current position, will receive wage protection, continue to work the same (or greater) number of daily/weekly hours, and will have a priority right of return to their former pay grade and Service group for a period of up to a maximum of 18 months.  Employees represented by CUPE 15 who choose not to accept a placement offer, or where an offer is not made, will retain all of their existing rights under the collective agreement.

We continue to participate in Section 54 discussions with CUPE 1004 and IBEW.  I am hopeful that we will have agreements with those unions shortly and will communicate those at that time.

The very encouraging news is that as a result of a lot of hard work on the part of our city-wide committee, managers, and our Unions, to date we have been able to find placements through retirements or vacancies for a total of 112 employees, meaning that at this point in time, only 14 employees our of the original 126 will receive actual layoff notice.

For those of you who might have a particular interest in the Park Board’s changes, I am pleased to report that through financial commitments by Community Centre Associations and identification of transfer opportunities for staff, there will be no layoffs in the Park Board at this time.

Finally, last week we met with our Unions to give them an overview of the status of the VSR projects.  We continue to assess and evaluate the impact that these projects may have on staff.  More information specifically relating to the IT Shared Services project, as well as the Procurement project will be communicated sometime this month and we will of course, continue to keep you apprised of those developments.

I want to express my appreciation for the tremendous amount of work done by our union colleagues, our HR department and all of our managers in making sure we did everything possible to support our staff and broad organization through this challenging process. This commitment will continue and Council’s support is much appreciated.

Thank you,

Penny Ballem, MD FRCP
City Manager
tel: 604.873.7626
fax: 604.873.7641
penny.ballem@vancouver.ca

Thanks to them, we went into the Games with incredibly low expectations. And I think it’s what contributed to the emotional highs that people felt. They weren’t expected and so they had much more impact than if we had all been drumming our fingers for the past four years waiting impatiently for the greatest party of our lives.

(And also, thanks to them and their kicking up of such a fuss, there was hyper-vigilance about all of the above.)

If only they had predicted what a downer it would be afterwards.

Lara Honrado is the co-founder of Kina Social Ventures, a registered Canadian charity that supports women’s literacy, girls’ education and mountain porter communities in rural Nepal.

She began her career in public relations as media director for the first global Microcredit Summit in Washington, DC. Since then, she has worked as a communications strategist in the corporate sector and for a leading international activist media foundation. She has served on the boards of two leading AIDS organizations: Pediatric AIDS/HIV Care in the U.S. and Positive Women’s Network in Canada.

Currently, Lara runs mango, a multicultural communications and social marketing firm based in Vancouver, where she lives with her husband and daughter.

The issue has flared up again with the news that the VAG has turned down a site on False Creek announced by the premier two years ago and has now re-opened negotiations to move to the empty block next to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

This was a story all week. The latest complication I discovered on Friday was that the city has already committed to using $48 million of the development profits from the site (most if not all of them) to pay for the QE Theatre renovation that happened in the past couple of years. More details on this confusing tale here.

That never happened. There was the odd piece here and there in the bigger newspapers, but it never really picked up steam. It just became one of the deck of predictable stories that media outlets did about Vancouver. The great restaurants? Check. Vancouverism? Check. Downtown Eastside and homelessness? Check.

There was coverage of the tent city camp and the various protests, but except for the window-smashing at the Bay on the Saturday after opening ceremonies, it was pretty perfunctory.

I talked to some of the usual suspects about why they think that was and what that means for the future.