For us here down on the southern West Coast, we're shaking off 2015 with gusto, thanks to a short but rather violent jolting earthquake last night. Or was that the sound of Premier Clarks LNG Dream bubble bursting? Ah well, 2015 has been a really interesting year for politics, for people and for the blog! …
Category: Civic Affairs- 24Hrs Vancouver
Dear Lord, you can’t make this stuff up. Seriously.
Want to know the definition of irony? Peter Fassbender, minister of everything under the kitchen sink, a man who, in his own word, is "one who believes strongly in democracy and people’s right to be engaged" using his concern over free speech and democratic rights to defend the reason he will not ban or limit …
Continue reading Dear Lord, you can’t make this stuff up. Seriously.
This weeks column for 24Hours Vancouver: BC keeps Richmond in the dark on Massey
With all the pet projects, contentious developments and questionable spending happening in cities across Metro Vancouver, it’s a rare day I find myself feeling sympathetic for local mayors and councils. However, when it comes to how the provincial and federal governments seemingly steamroll local governments with their own projects and, at times, leave them out …
Continue reading This weeks column for 24Hours Vancouver: BC keeps Richmond in the dark on Massey
Last weeks column for 24Hrs Vancouver City Hall: Take big money out of civic campaigns
Forgive me for the lack of recent posts other than my columns; summer is here and there are many other things to do in the warm summer evening than sit and blog on a hot sweaty desk chair....I'll post soon and there are several things I want to write about. For now, this was Thursday's …
Last weeks City Hall column for 24Hrs Vancouver: Surrey LRT plans scary expensive!
In the iconic movie Field of Dreams, farmer Ray Kinsella hears a voice whispering every time he walks through his corn field: “If you build it, he will come.” But only in the movies could a farmer plow a cash crop, build a baseball field for ghosts and have everything turn out OK. In reality, …
Continue reading Last weeks City Hall column for 24Hrs Vancouver: Surrey LRT plans scary expensive!
This weeks City Hall column for 24Hrs Vancouver: Regional politicians deserve more scrutiny
If you’ve ever played roulette, you might have heard the old phrase describing the popular game of chance: “Round and round and round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows.” It also describes how I feel when I look at the many ways local governments go about spending the hard-earned tax dollars we all contribute. …
Last weeks column for 24Hrs Vancouver: Transparency hit new low during plebiscite
http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/2015/06/17/transparency-hit-new-low-during-plebiscite Twenty-three is the number of elected representatives in Metro Vancouver who are members of the Mayors’ Council on Transportation — 21 members are mayors, one represents Electoral area ‘A’, and another is the chief of the Tsawwassen First Nation. Collectively, they are supposed to represent the views and interests of the citizens of the …
Continue reading Last weeks column for 24Hrs Vancouver: Transparency hit new low during plebiscite
Last weeks column for 24Hrs Vancouver: ‘Hump’ clear cut could be tipping point
Sorry for failing to post this my friends, an oversight on my part now that this weeks column will be out shortly. When it comes to civic affairs, the big city politics in Vancouver and Surrey often dominate the news, leaving smaller municipalities largely exempt from public scrutiny. Yet small city politics are no less …
Continue reading Last weeks column for 24Hrs Vancouver: ‘Hump’ clear cut could be tipping point
This weeks columns for 24Hrs Vancouver: Time to look at mail-in elections
As voting closed in the transit plebiscite, the numbers surprised many. In every Metro Vancouver municipality, the turnout surpassed the number of registered voters who cast a ballot in the 2014 municipal elections. According to numbers from Elections BC — as of May 27 — nearly 45% of registered voters mailed their ballots in. Some …
Continue reading This weeks columns for 24Hrs Vancouver: Time to look at mail-in elections
This weeks column for 24Hrs Vancouver: Cities shying away from the public
Over the last two years of writing the Duel, the lack of accountability in government at every level has come up often. But as prior City Hall writers have discovered, there’s never a lack of material when it comes to civic politics. So why are so many people asleep at the wheel? The people you …
Continue reading This weeks column for 24Hrs Vancouver: Cities shying away from the public
