Posts from — September 2011

Vancouver’s growing collection of neighbourhood murals can now be explored through an online interactive guide that offers four different tours to the dozens of remarkable installations around the city.

The many art works have been created in the community with a three-year, $10 million program that had support both from the federal government and the City of Vancouver. The new website opens the door to an outdoor autumn art experience like no other.

A clear commitment to energy retrofit BC’s existing housing stock while changing energy pricing could reduce poverty, cut a leading source of greenhouse gas emissions and create up to 12,000 new jobs province-wide, according to a compelling new study from the Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The CCPA analysis is the first to look carefully at the social justice side of energy pricing to create a program that could reduce poverty and global warming at the same time.

It’s entirely consistent with Mayor Gregor Robertson’s Greenest City Action Plan and a challenge to make such a plan province-wide in scope.

Contrary to claims by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the share of the municipal tax burden born by businesses in BC has actually declined during the last 20 years, according to UBCM president Barbara Steele.

The UBCM  has warned that  the CFIB’s call for a freeze on business property taxes would drive up the burden on homeowners by 14.5 percent or $230 a year.

Steele was repeating the findings of a UBCM study of municipal spending released in May in response to the call for a municipal auditor general. That study found that the increaasing cost of protective services and parks and recreation is increasing municipal spending, not waste.

In fact, the portion of total spending to basic overhead has actually declined. Why didn’t the CFIB know this? That’s not clear, given that 72 percent of mayors have private sector backgrounds.

News that Credit Suisse proposes to build a 400,000 square foot LEED platinum double office tower at the site of the old Vancouver Stock Exchange should convince sceptics that Vancouver’s commitment to “green jobs” is producing results.

The Stock Exchange project is just one of a new wave of construction of office and job space projects in the Downtown Core that will exceed two million feet very quickly.

The announcement should raise confidence about four key council policies:

• the decision several years ago to impose a moratorium on condo construction in a key section of the downtown core so there would be room for the jobs needed to make the city economy tick;
• the decision to adopt other jobs-friendly land use policies of the Core Jobs Review;
• the requirement for green building construction at LEED gold levels, which this project will exceed; and
• Mayor Gregor Robertson’s drive to commit the city to “green jobs” as a strategy to move Vancouver forward.

The result is a rash of office construction exceeding two million square feet that is riding these policies as well as the wave built up by the city’s very competitive tax structure, rapid transit and our general economic stability.

The only cloud on the horizon? Housing prices, which more and more employers are learning can be a deal-breaker even when recruiting high priced help that can work anywhere but earn much more where housing costs are lower.