New funding is necessary if the region is to avoid a further property tax increase next year to pay for transit expansion, including the Evergreen Line.

Victoria is already celebrating construction of the Evergreen Line in advance of the upcoming Port Moody by-election, but the mayors, led by Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and Surrey Mayor Diane Watts, don’t think they can get taxpayers to agree to a new source of funds if they don’t have proof the money will be well-spent.

No doubt Translink will agree to seek the audit, the provincial Auditor General will conduct it, and the real debate will begin. The mayors meet again today to consider all options.

Will it be carbon tax? Vehicle levy, anyone? Area-benefitting tax? Regional bridge tolls? Time will tell.

Corporate executives across North America cheered, hoping for similar battles in their own local markets.

But now, in a dramatic example of how nothing in US politics stays the same, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is facing recall. The state’s unions, given up for dead, needed 540,000 signatures, but they gathered more than one million, weighing 1.5 tonnes, in a state with only three million voters.

It’s a plot Gordon Campbell would recognize, although he dodged recall. Not Walker, who must now face a mid-term vote along with four senators and the lieutenant governor. A state-wide referendum in Ohio defeated an anti-union initiative there, and Indiana is in turmoil over similar legislation.

Crushing the labour movement is always easier said than done.

At last some non-political news from Florida, where this remarkable illusion of a 3D Lego army, a direct descendant of China’s terra cotta warriors, has been found under the street in Sarasota, the astonishing creation of a Dutch team competing in a street art festival. Beats sand castle contests, in my book.

It could also be more critical than a “rendering farm,” the massive computer hardware installation that makes data-heavy industries like digital special effects firms happy to be here. (The VEDC is working on one of those as well.)

Lee Malleau, who was unveiling the VEDC’s Economic Action Strategy, said Vancouver is emerging as a key hub of the video and digital special effects sector, along with Los Angeles and London. But unlike those two cities, Vancouver lacks reasonably-priced housing.

Creating that housing will be essential, Malleau said, if the city is to continue to attract international talent, whose wages will go much further in cities with cheaper homes.

One mile of the Seattle Viaduct came down in nine days last October, without the chaos drivers always anticipate on such occasions. Latest updates from Seattle show the city is moving ahead with new traffic patterns to clear the way for the tunnel, which will ensure good connections remain to the port and other arterials.

But city after city is putting a freeway on death row.

The Seattle project is just one of a wave of removals right across America, homeland of the car. According to this update in Atlantic Cities, the battle is moving to the neighbourhood level, where more and more communities are debating the shape of their future. If a freeway can come down, why not an overpass? Well, in fact, it can.

That’s well above the 65 additional cabs approved last year by Victoria’s Passenger Transportation Board on a trial basis. The Vancouver Taxi Association says Chow’s findings are so conclusive that the firms are seeking an extension of the 65-cab trial program until the full 99 taxis are approved. According to the report, the temporary permits reduced wait times and increased customer satisfaction substantially.

Under the program, the additional capacity is available Friday and Saturday nights, when customers have reported serious problems finding taxis prepared to take them out of the downtown core.

(Mayor Gregor Robertson is also urging Translink to consider expanded night bus and Skytrain service to help with the problem.)

The answer is no, according to research conducted by Duncan Low, former executive director of the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. His careful assessment, set out in this paper, was submitted in 2010 as part of his Masters of Arts research in the SFU Urban Studies Program.

Low traces the story of Larwill Park from Olympic live site to empty lot to projected location of a new Vancouver Art Gallery as part of the grand “cultural precinct” study launched by Sam Sullivan’s NPA council. (There is much more, but Larwill Park is a key part of the story.)

The site for millions of dollars of “cultural” investment for the live site next to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Larwill Park now sits empty. Sports legacies, in contrast, are obvious at the Richmond Oval, Hillcrest and elsewhere.

Here’s Low’s provocative and thoughtful conclusion at the end of nearly 100 pages of analysis:

This is the crux of the Olympic arts and cultural disconnect: that subsidy for the creation of a cultural precinct and the re-housing of the new VAG to meet the demands of an urban tourism destination is considered prudent government policy.

At the same time, the majority of Vancouver’s professional arts and cultural sector endures increasing hardship with budget cuts and recession. In a Vancouver Foundation report “Weathering the Storm,” published in October 2009, Expectations for 2010 stated,” 73% of Arts & Culture organizations expect a decrease in their revenue from government sources, higher than any other sector.”

It is true to say that the millions of Olympic dollars invested may not have ended up in a cultural budget. But it is also true to say that having spent the money on the construction and deconstruction of various buildings on Larwill Park those dollars will never provide an artistic legacy.

The same argument could be made in relation to the temporary installation of the Olympic streetcar in relation to transit legacy.

Given the research question and the data collected it is fair, at this point to say, that there is little evidence in the data to support the premise that hosting a Cultural Olympiad provided Vancouver’s professional arts and cultural sector as a whole with increased national and international profile nor sustained material and financial benefits.

Ultimately, the crown corporation can do what it wishes as a creature of the provincial government, but that has never been PAVCO’s approach.

From the very beginning of the rezoning process that led to the construction of the new roof, PAVCO worked through the city’s rezoning processes.

Just how that would happen was laid out in an Upgrade Commitment Agreement attached to council approval of the project. (The highlights, including PAVCO’s agreement “not to fetter council discretion regarding False Creek North Official Development Plan Amendments or otherwise,” are on page 40.)

The city has been a strong partner, agreeing to wave all community amenity charges in consideration of the roof construction and approving a whole range of new policies under the Northeast False Creek High Level Review to facilitate development. PAVCO overlooked the sign issue. It’s not too late to seek a resolution satisfactory to residents.

The pilot program  was an election commitment by Mayor Gregor Robertson, who was responding to a long-standing call for such action from taxi owners, who point out that similar rules are in place all over the world.

Here in Vancouver, however, riders would sit fuming in traffic while the bus lane next to them sat empty. Robertson secured a green light from provincial transport minister Blair Lekstrom and Translink is on board.

With more than 700,000 taxi trips a year in Vancouver, the impact could be significant. Where congestion is heavy, particularly downtown, taxis will be able to move into bus lanes, reducing travel times and trip costs.

Thanks to new measures introduced by the hospitals, police officers are waiting an average 60 minutes to hand off a patient, down from 71 minutes before the new program.

Nonetheless, this memo from VPD Inspector Ralph Pauw, prepared for council at the request of Councillor Kerry Jang, makes it clear that city taxpayers are still paying a high policing cost to fill gaps in the province’s patchwork mental health system. VPD pays police officers for hundreds of hours a year to stand waiting at the hospital for the hand-off.

Pauw advocates a simple change to regulations to allow qualified nurses, not just busy physicians, to determine that admission to hospital is required. Once that decision is made, police officers could go back to their real jobs — and much faster.