Frances Bula header image 4

Entries from January 2016

Vancouver wants homeless shelters open to April 2010

April 30th, 2009 · 3 Comments

A big report on the city’s homelessness efforts is on the agenda for next week. Most of it states a lot of what we’ve heard throughout the last few months in terms of the state of affairs here in Vancouver re homelessness and where the city would like to go. A new squib that was […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

$1.5 million for Burrard bike-lane trial

April 29th, 2009 · 52 Comments

Weirdly, the long-awaited report on the Burrard bike-lane trial is available on Councillor Geoff Meggs’ website here but it’s not available on the city website yet. This will likely fuel [yet more] speculation in certain quarters that Commissar Meggs is secretly running city hall, though I suspect it’s just he got the report along with […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Cultural planning director moves out temporarily

April 29th, 2009 · No Comments

There had been many rumours that the head of Vancouver’s cultural planning department, Sue Harvey, might be ousted by the new council when it came in. Those rumours went to sleep for a while, leading many to wonder what was happening. Latest news in is that Sue is decamping from cultural planning — but only […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Full text quotes: Gregor Robertson, Suzanne Anton, James Ridge

April 28th, 2009 · 6 Comments

Because this topic seems to be generating a lot of controversy, I will do a bit of notebook dumping here to give everyone all the evidence available before they come to a verdict.  And then we can move on to other things.

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Mayor’s comments about departing bureaucrats rile many

April 28th, 2009 · 32 Comments

Mayor Gregor Robertson’s comments that city hall bureaucrats are leaving because they can’t handle the pace of his aggressive agenda are really kicking up a s**storm. The comments, for those who haven’t seen them, are in Jeff Lee’s story in the Sun here and the mayor said substantially the same thing to me, which will […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Tracking the warning emails on Olympic village

April 28th, 2009 · 6 Comments

The wheels of Freedom of Information grind slowly, slowly, but I finally got an answer last week to two questions: What record was there of meetings attended by the city’s chief financial officer, Estelle Lo, related to the Olympic Village? And what emails did she send to city hall staffers or councillors about the village? […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Second deputy city manager resigns

April 28th, 2009 · 22 Comments

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 […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Idea camp for rental housing prompts many suggestions and many questions

April 26th, 2009 · 22 Comments

It was quite the scene at the stunning new Celebration Hall in Mountain View cemetery Saturday — I definitely want to be buried there now with the great views and lovely, modernist new hall for all my friends to party at when they send me on my way — as developers, architects, and housing advocates […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Open meeting on how to create affordable housing

April 24th, 2009 · 21 Comments

If you’d like to spend a sunny Saturday afternoon at the cemetery listening to people talk about how to create affordable housing in Vancouver, you can. The Vision Vancouver council’s latest task force/brainstorming/collective put in place to hone in on an issue — in this case, how to create affordable and rental housing — is […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

You are still paying Judy Rogers’ salary

April 23rd, 2009 · No Comments

Oh, poor Paul Hancock, the city’s Freedom of Information officer. He must be working overtime these days, dealing with all the FOIs that have flooded in in the last four months. Here are the latest results from one of my requests. The details of Judy Rogers’ severance agreement. Not much new in terms of the […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized