November 25, 2009 - 9:32 am |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
The financial bridges to Toronto's City Hall will be dramatically changed if City Council accepts the recommendations handed to them yesterday.
If you read Charlie Smith of the Georgia Straight or SFU Professor Kennedy Stewart with kind of regularity, you would think that the only type of electoral reform to consider for civic politics comes in the form of wards.
But as pointed out in Smith’s above-linked article, Vision is looking at other means of changing the parameters of voting in the City of Vancouver:
“Jang said the Vision caucus’s priority in electoral reform is to come up with a “comprehensive package” that covers issues like campaign finance and disclosure rules.”
If that is the case, Jang et al. should look east to the City of Toronto, where corporate and union donations are on the verge of being banned from civic elections.
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November 24, 2009 - 5:18 pm |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
“When you wean a baby, there’s inefficiencies there. But you have to go through that to get to the point where he knows how to eat. It’s the same with transit.” – Outgoing Translink CEO Tom Predergast
November 24, 2009 - 5:14 pm |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
Predergast is abandoning the Translink sinking ship, but not before giving Metro Vancouver mayors some crucial advice.
Outgoing TransLink CEO Tom Prendergast addressed civic and business leaders last Thursday at the Metro Cities Conference in Vancouver.
Now, of course he spoke about the importance of expanding the transit infrastructure to improve the region’s livability. That is nothing to write home about, as there seems to be broad agreement on that point.
Agreement, however, only goes so far before action (or lack thereof) speaks louder.
This quote from Prendergast should be a wake-up call for Metro Vancouver’s mayors:
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November 24, 2009 - 11:54 am |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
Is this the kind of offering we are going to be hosting our high level guests with?
When you invite someone over to your house, and happen to have a financial setback in between the invitation and the arrival, one might cancel the dinner until things become a little more stable.
In the case of the 2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver doesn’t have that option.
So, in light of the fact that Vancouver has joined with other municipalities to attract business interest in the region during the Olympics, aside from the fact that the City will be hosting many official delegations – whether political, diplomatic, sports-related or corporate – this criticism makes absolutely no sense to me.
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