Category — 2010 Olympic Games
City’s court petition details events that triggered receivership decision
Here, for those interested in the difficult road the Vision council has been forced to travel to unravel the Olympic Village problems left by Sam Sullivan’s NPA, is the petition filed in court yesterday by the City of Vancouver.
It includes a useful and detailed summary of the events that brought us here.
November 18, 2010
Geller seeks end to OV social housing “political football”
Jim Green’s Sun op-ed on the Olympic Village social housing controversy, linked here yesterday, touched off unprecedented huffing and puffing from the individuals targetted.
NPA blogonaut Mike Klassen found the piece “abhorrent,” demanded an apology and declared the whole affair another product of the “Vision Vancouver bully machine.” (You can find the link for yourself.) All I can say is, these guys can dish it out, but they sure can’t take it.
Michael Geller, once alerted to my post, e-mailed me directly, saying “Geoff, if you were a mensch, you would link to my response.”
Who wouldn’t want to be a mensch, particularly when unmensch means “evil” and “cruel?” So here you go. Scroll down far enough and you’ll find a useful list of 12 reasons for the very difficult situation the Vision found when it took office from . . . the other guys.
Deep within the thousands of words flooding the blogosphere on this topic, I found these from Mr. Geller:
It is time for politicians and former politicians, worried about the next election, to stop treating this [Olympic Village] community as a political football. I am concerned that Vancouver’s international reputation is suffering in part due to the unfounded accusations against the community.
Amen. I assume this is the last we will hear from him on this topic.
October 10, 2010
Forward-looking questions about what happened during development of the Olympic Village
In the welter of weekend Olympic Village analysis, Sun columnist Bob Ransford’s comments, buried deep in the Home Section, stand out both for their clarity and for Ransford’s willingness to consider what lessons the city needs to learn from the unfolding crisis that first came into public view during the 2008 election.
(Ransford is a consultant who does a lot of work in the development industry and helped lead Peter Ladner’s NPA mayoral bid.)
For those who don’t want to read the entire article, consider this excerpt, which summarizes some of the questions Ransford wants answered:
They are questions about how a city government conceived, planned, approved, structured, financed and managed a mammoth public project, risking hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars. They are questions about showcase projects and models of sustainability and about the financial viability of attempting to achieve multiple green-building and sustainable-development objectives on one project.
They are questions about how civic governance works, whether politicians had the information they needed to make decisions, about how that information was managed and presented and how decisions were made. They are questions about the structure of the public service in city hall, about what expert resources are available to decision-makers, about accountability, oversight and the ability to call on outside expertise.
I agree with what I believe Ransford is implying: that the OV problems were the product of a city hall political and managerial culture that was not up to the task. Ultimately, those at the top — mayor and council — are accountable for those failures, whether we like it or not.
But if we’re to avoid these problems in the future, voters need to understand what went wrong, why and how the problems can be fixed. Better city government should be one of the silver linings in what seems like a very dark cloud.
October 3, 2010
The case for social housing at the Olympic Village
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.
April 27, 2010
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