May 21, 2010 - 1:28 pm |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
I am in and out of meetings today, so I will leave a link to Allen Garr’s latest piece in the Vancouver Courier for readers to digest.
Some of it is explainable, and other aspects are harder to define, but the unqualified support that people are showing towards Vision Vancouver’s moderate political agenda dwarfs all others that I can remember in recent memory.
This quote from Garr perfectly sums up my feelings for the malcontents in the blogosphere without a civic political home:
“Laugh if you want at community gardens, backyard chickens and separated bike lanes, but the public is eating it up–putting Vision and Robertson just where they want to be.”
This weekend I will engage in an analysis of Vision’s appeal, and suggest some potential potholes that they must flag in the road ahead over the next year and a half.
March 16, 2010 - 9:29 am |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
City Council doesn't seem to be getting a full picture on a number of issues within City Hall.
Far be it from me to try and rival what Tsakumis is doing with this story, because his investigation over the past month and a half has been quite extensive.
For those unfamiliar with the issue, here is the Vancouver Courier’s Allen Garr and his account of the situation.
But in the vein of last week’s Vancouver Sun column, I am specifically interested in the January 21 in-camera City Council meeting that notified Council of Tsisserev’s departure and suggested Will Johnston, former Chief Building Official, as his replacement.
More specifically, I want to know what city staff conveyed to the electeds.
Read the rest of this entry »
March 12, 2010 - 7:35 am |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
It seems that yesterdays’ post on Paralympic snubs, which was sent out to a whole slew of local and national media outlets, has had an impact.
Notice the following pieces here, here and here, which seemed to have used CivicScene’s analysis of CTV’s alternative scheduling as the basis for their story.
Now comes word from a friend who caught CTV’s News at 11:30pm last night that there will now indeed by live coverage from the Paralympic Opening Ceremony, although a call to CTV National News in Toronto at 5:30am PST was met with a producer that said he had no idea nor any knowledge regarding sports coverage (odd in consideration of their official Olympic broadcaster status), nor have I been able to track down anything online to confirm this claim.
If anyone has any information, please shoot it over to civicscene at gmail dot com.
On a side note, Allen Garr from the Vancouver Courier also seems to agree with CivicScene’s take on the culpability of Sam Sullivan in the Olympic Village “scandal” over the inaccessibility of the balconies:
“Federal Paralympics ambassador and former mayor Sam Sullivan told the Courier it is a “scandal” that balconies in the Athletes Village are not wheelchair accessible. The real scandal is that Sullivan can get away with this. The decisions leading to the current balcony design, including a discussion over accessibility and a unanimously supported motion on the issue brought forward by council’s Disability Committee liaison Heather Deal all took place under Sullivan’s watch as mayor.”
December 29, 2009 - 11:36 am |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
CivicScene is back in the saddle with a holiday diet and a blogging schedule that once again need a steady regimen.
I have returned to the blogging horse, a little more weighty from no less than three holiday dinners within four days – a condition, I might add, that I fully intend to begin working off sometime today.
Today I am struck by two columns by two of Vancouver’s most respected scribes – Rod Mickleburgh of the Globe and Mail and Allen Garr of the Vancouver Courier – that offer assessments on two of Mayor Gregor Robertson’s most prominent and contentious policy directions over the past year.
There can be little argument with the fact that Vision Vancouver’s victory in last year’s civic election was predicated on a strong commitment to tackle homelessness in addition to a stated intention to create dedicated bike lanes on the Burrard Bridge (the former obviously having a far greater impact than the latter).
So if both of these policies were clearly articulated within the context of an election campaign that returned a decisive victory for the party proposing them, then it is safe to say that a majority of Vancouver’s electorate embraced them as something they were willing to see implemented.
This of course didn’t stop certain members of the outgoing regime from doing their damnedest to work up fervour to the contrary.
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