The state of my life over the past few days as I pack up my life for new digs.
Moving for an archivist (my wife and the rest of my family might use a different term) of my ilk is an all-consuming job full of memories and decisions of what to keep and what to chuck, hence, my lack of posts yesterday and today. But tomorrow I will be back with some thoughts on the Park Board, MMA in Vancouver, and the ongoing electric soap opera at City Hall.
Don't count out the possibility that Vancouver might still be seeing this Ortiz vs. Liddell rematch in June.
UFC officially dead? Not quite yet folks. Keep checking back to CivicScene throughout the day for updates as things develop. I am not sure where Joe Ferraro is getting his information, in spite of his claims.
A fire at one of the Olympic venues? Try again, Alex.
The picture above was supposed to be a smoking gun of damnation in the Ark Tsisserev affair, according to Alex Tsakumis.
As he claimed when he first posted the photo:
“The picture…is from this last weekend. It’s a fire that started because of faulty wiring at one of the Olympic venues–clearly uninspected. Copies have been circulated to the appropriate authorities including the Vancouver Fire Department and Vancouver Police Department.”
Yet, like I questioned in an earlier post, I doubted whether a fire had actually started at any of the venues that the public streamed into during the Olympics.
And now an internal document from Vancouver City Hall confirms my suspicions.
Scenes like this were apparently not as prevalent during the City of Vancouver's homeless count yesterday.
The preliminary and anecdotal response from Mayor Gregor Robertson on yesterday’s homeless count was that “[t]here were not very many people sleeping outside where we were.”
So on one side of the political equation, this is good for short term vindication of the shelter strategy. And although the Mayor is most definitely aware that the HEAT shelters are by no means a long-term solution, he can take solace in the fact that he has at least for the short term got people under a roof and off of the the streets.
My concern, however, is the justification this might hand the provincial government for backing away from future housing-related funding.
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Vancouver’s West End is 204 hectares and is home to 44,000 people (as at 2006) and has increased 5.8% in the previous 5 years and 66% moved since the last census. 61% speak English as their mother tongue. The majority are in the 20-39 year old age group. 59% are one person households, with 8,710 families and an average household inome of $38,000. There is a total of over 28,000 private households.
“We’re really asking people to be respectful of the diversity of our community. People live down here because of the diversity, they feel safe within diversity, and that’s a really important value for us.” – Brent Granby, West End Resident’s Association
