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Start your engines, Vancouver city staff

December 10th, 2008 · 6 Comments

The first raft of motions from the new council just hit the decks. Enjoy your holidays, city hall staffers, because you’ll be scrambling when you get back to come up with answers and options for your new bosses.

What the new council is asking for”

– a staff report on options for the Burrard Street bike-lane trial by mid-February

– a staff report on options for a city arts council that would be in charge of giving out culture grants, instead of being solely in the hands of culture planners, by end of February

– a motion to ask for changes to the Residential Tenancy Act to extend the eviction-notice period, to try to prevent “economic evictions” and to require landlords to report on a whole raft of things, including rent rolls and numbers of evictions.

– a staff report listing every order made to city landlords about complying with the city’s standards of maintenance bylaw, along with a report on who has complied and who hasn’t, and then another report asking what would be entailed in having the city complete repairs for those not done by the landlords. this by January.

– a motion to move the head of the sustainability office onto the corporate management team (a move that seems innocuous but is a direct contradiction of the prevailing city hall policy for years, which was that there was no need for that because “every department incorporates sustainability into its plans already”), to ask for a report on progress with farmers markets and urban agriculture, and a request for a staff report back on car-free days every Sunday in thre different commercial districts. The first two by Jan. 15, the last one by end of February.

– and, of course, the motion to kick start the homelessness emergency response team.

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