Category — 2010 Olympic Games

Council’s midnight decision last Thursday to inject a further $32 million into social housing at the Olympic Village was one of the most difficult Gregor Robertson’s Vision team has confronted. I summarized the reasons why we did what we did here in this morning’s Province.

This should be last major financial decision arising from the NPA’s colossal mismanagement of the Olympic Village file. Almost a year ago, council approved a proposal to step into the village’s financing, moving out a New York hedge fund and saving taxpayers as much as $90 million. In about 60 days, the market units will go on sale. If all goes well, the city’s financial investment will be repaid.

Unlike VANOC and even the Province of BC, the City of Vancouver never had an overall budget for its Olympic expenditures. That dispiriting conclusion, obvious from a close review of the city’s report on overall expenditures, was confirmed at council yesterday by City Manager Penny Ballem.

Nor, despite claims to the contrary from Councillor Suzanne Anton, is there evidence of a coherent budgetting process for individual Olympic projects, whether we’re discussing the Olympic Village or infrastructure like the Hillcrest curling centre, which was the subject of massive overruns the Park Board will be paying off for years.

As Ballem told council, projects were undertaken, designed and paid for, all in a single process. If costs rose, the bills were paid, often behind closed doors. Details were only released with the election of the Vision council in November 2008.

The latest and one of the largest bills to come due is the $32 million council is asked to approve Thursday to meet the very minimal commitments for affordable housing the NPA had incorporated in the Southeast False Creek Olympic Village.

The COPE Vision council had hoped to make at least one-third of the units subsidized, a middle range accessible at lower market rents and one-third at full market prices. Rolling back that commitment was literally the first order of business for the Sam Sullivan NPA council in November 2005. The new, reduced goal was 20 per cent affordable housing with half of that amount market rental.

Although Millennium paid the highest price ever paid for land in Vancouver up to that date, the NPA quickly allowed the entire project to go into the ditch. Overruns on the Salt Building and the Civic Centre amounted to tens of millions of dollars, but the worst mismanagement occurred on the affordable housing.

The preliminary budget there was $65 million but that soared to $95 million by the end of 2007 (approved in camera) and finally to $110 million. To achieve even the NPA’s vision of affordability will cost $32 million more.

The fateful December 2007 in camera meeting that quietly shovelled tens of millions of dollars into the Olympic Village program also directed the SEFC program manager to negotiate with BC Housing “with the expectation of recovery” of some of these funds.

However, this week’s report says, “it is noted that no agreement was ever negotiated with BC Housing.” Why bother? It seemed the NPA council never met an overrun it couldn’t approve.

Today on the The Tyee, my take on a largely unnoticed Olympic legacy: the real-life experience of society organized, even if only briefly, around goals more positive than money, work and consumption.

Granville Mall without trolleys: a pedestrian thoroughfare with great views of the north shore mountains. Richard Campbell photo.

Cycling and transportation advocate Richard Campbell is urging Vancouver City Council to keep Translink’s trolleys off Granville Mall as an easy and popular way to create a pedestrian thoroughfare through the downtown core.

Campbell is speaking for many in an e-mail to council when he hails the beauty of the newly-designed street, particularly its striking views to the north shore mountains, now unencumbered by a spider’s nest of trolley wires.

But city transportation engineer Jerry Dobrovolny has reminded councillors that Translink invested $10.4 million into the mall’s renewal to preserve transit access, particularly close to Skytrain and Canada Line stations.

Work to restore the trolley wires will begin next week, but the existing wires on Seymour and Howe will remain. That will give the city tremendous flexibility to close Granville, with minimal transit impact, for street festivals or other activities.

The Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association, which feared Olympic street closures would hurt business, is now on the record favouring more such events to enliven the area.