Vancouver’s Non-Partisan Association (NPA) candidates for school board are proposing a new way to pay for future city schools: public/private partnerships. “We have been promoting [the ‘no-cost’ model] and it’s no different from what we’ve done in the past. It’s just that we need to get it out there,” said the NPA’s Ken Denike. The [...]
With a municipal election looming, opponents to the Vancouver Park Board’s elected officials are alleging that the organization has lost its independence from City Hall. At the heart of the matter are $5.2 million in city-approved cuts to the parks and recreation operating budget since 2009, for which political adversaries blame a “lack of advocacy” [...]
Vision Vancouver’s proposal for an online apartment database is intended to pressure negligent landlords to clean up their act. But Downtown Eastside housing activists are worried that forced renovations in single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels could result in higher rents, evictions and a loss of low-income housing units. The proposed database is based on a successful model from [...]
Advocates of the Little Mountain social housing site and local MPs are calling on the B.C. government to stop selling off public lands as a strategy to fund social housing. The Community Advocates for Little Mountain (CALM) held a news conference at the site near Main and 33rd Street on Nov. 9. The date marked [...]
Plans by Vancouver’s major political parties to improve transit along the Broadway corridor have some worried about the fallout on their businesses. City transit is a top priority in election platforms, with the parties putting forward proposals to increase capacity and speed up service along Broadway. The route stretching west from Broadway-Commercial station to UBC [...]
Vancouver politicians are sparring over the terms of upcoming community plans for Grandview-Woodland, the West End and Marpole. City planners said the new plans, now under consultation, replace existing ones, some as old as 20 years, which are out of tune with neighbourhood needs for amenities and housing. The status quo has left gaps in [...]
Who says politics can’t be fun? Vancouver’s civic candidates let loose at the Creative City Cabaret on Saturday evening – singing, dancing, and making their political points. Local arts management group Left Right Minds hosted the event at the Roundhouse Community Centre. They were hoping to address issues in the arts community and collect donations [...]
Community leaders are dreaming of what they could do with $100 million following last week’s revelation that the City of Vancouver had offered a loan guarantee for that amount to developers of the 2010 Olympic Village. A national newspaper revealed last week that Vancouver’s City Council had unanimously agreed in a secret meeting to bail [...]
Vancouver city politicians may be looking to churches to do what they won’t be able to afford in a deep recession: build housing. “A lot of churches and other institutions have parking lots,” says Non-Partisan Association council candidate Michael Geller. “Why not build housing on those parking lots?” Geller might be on to something. With [...]
Organizers of the Vancouver Pride Parade are urging mayoral candidates to back their demand for the city to grant the annual event civic status and underpin its financial survival. The Pride Festival – a celebration of gay, bisexual, lesbian and transgender culture – attracted half a million people in 2008. But the 30 year-old parade [...]
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