As of Dec. 1, an electronic news summary that goes out to councillors no longer included reports on bloggers, as has been the practice in the past. (See the full message on the next page.) Kind of odd, as it’s not really that hard to keep track of the four blogs that cover the city [...]

[Read more →]

When I started working the city-hall beat in 1994, I was plunged into furious debates about casinos. The Mike Harcourt NDP government was entertaining a proposal to have a big, destination casino on the waterfront behind Gastown. The NPA city council of the day took the public opposition to that and ran furiously with it, [...]

[Read more →]

Sorry for posting this so late … a very busy day today for many reasons, which also caused me to miss council so I’m hoping people will post on what they think came out of the various council meetings. But anyway, here is my story with a round-up of people’s thoughts on what is happening [...]

[Read more →]

While many of you were watching a couple of hockey teams face off on Tuesday night, there were two other teams facing off at city council over an issue that is key to what kind of city people think Vancouver is about: how much housing should be allowed downtown and how much of the downtown [...]

[Read more →]

It looked like it was going to ho-hum day at city council, with councillors Suzanne Anton and Raymond Louie continuing their energetic pillow fighting over the the budget, the Olympic village, the kinds of candies given out for free in the mayor’s office, and so on. But, instead, at the end of the budget presentation, [...]

[Read more →]

I really think there should have been a sports commentator at today’s first meeting of the new Vision-controlled council. Or several really, to handle the various rounds that ensued as council proceeded through the many motions put forward to kickstart the Vision agenda. We could have started with one of those hushed-voice golf types for [...]

[Read more →]

The Christmas party season kicked off last night with a bang. I was invited to, ran into or heard about six Christmas parties just in my own circle — everyone trying to get a jump on the main Christmas season, I guess. One of the more amusing double-events of the night was the B.C. Federation [...]

[Read more →]

The agenda for Monday’s meeting is up and the new council has put out its recommendations for who will sit on which boards and committees, which you can go through here if you’re that kind of detail-obsessed person. Interesting things of note: Gregor and the most senior members of the Vision team are going en [...]

[Read more →]

In what seems to be a determined effort by Vision Vancouver to reprise 2002 but do it better, the team has decided to have its inaugural ceremony at Bing Thom’s beautiful new Sunset Community Centre. For those with short memories, i.e. most of us, the winning COPE crew in 2002 decided to take government out [...]

[Read more →]

While controversy over the city’s $100-million loan is raging in the media/blogosphere, the campaign is still winding along on the lower levels for many people. And, at those lower levels, one of the more fun moments of the past week was the Last Candidate Standing event organized Friday night by Vancouver Public Space Network and [...]

[Read more →]