The city had its own homeless count, a first, yesterday, which everyone covered. Here’s my version. Interesting to note that the city’s numbers will be out in a couple of weeks — just before the five community emergency shelters are set to close April 30. I await developments on this front.

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I’ve been hearing about Tom Timm’s impending retirement for a year, one of the names that kept popping up on the list of “people most likely to get fed up and quit after Vision and Penny Ballem took over.” Then I also heard that he’d been saying even before that he was only going to [...]

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For years, I’ve heard that business leaders in the city are itching to give millions to solve homelessness and, related to that, the problems of the Downtown Eastside. And many have tried to tap into that. Former mayor Philip Owen and others started a fund through the Vancouver Foundation to try to encourage donations for [...]

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Well, all I can say is Yikes. One more city manager bails, Kevin Ramsay, the recently hired head of HR. He’d replaced Mike Zora, who had become the object of union unhappiness, and from what I had heard, was doing a good job and managing to calm things down a little. But not any more. [...]

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This memo from city manager Penny Ballem is making the rounds today at city hall. I’m curious about the hint when it comes to the new deputy city manager. Who could it be? There have been rumours of at least one strong internal candidate for this one. We await the news. OFFICE OF THE CITY [...]

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Sorry, I’m a bit behind on posting this, but here’s the story Rod Mickleburgh and I had in the Globe today on the mounting bills for Southeast False Creek. This comes from city manager Penny Ballem’s report that came out late Monday, where she tried to round up the total costs for all the city [...]

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For those of you without Penny Ballem on your Google alert, this story just popped up on the Globe’s website.

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It’s been a gloomy time around city hall lately, with the hiring freeze having stalled many initiatives in their tracks and hit some departments, which had always operated with a lot of temp-contract people particularly hard. Then there’s been a lot of turmoil, with people leaving or hinting that they’re open to leaving. To provide [...]

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In the steady march of the 60s generation out of city hall doors the last couple of years, two more left or are leaving this month. One was Trish French, the scarily smart senior planner who terrified more than one councillor, I am positive, with her incisive answers to their wandering questions. Her last day [...]

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This went out at 10:11 today (while the civics panel was on at CKNW with Bill Good — how handy) and has quickly spread all over town. CKNW’s Janet Brown is reporting that Ridge is leaving because of “politicization” at city hall, though no word that Ridge is talking directly to anyone. Not a total [...]

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