Tagged: NPA

Childcare in Vancouver

This is about an item that appeared in the Georgia Straight last week, but I’m still a bit steamed about it. Melissa De Genova, newly elected NPA Parks Board Commissioner had this to say on childcare in Parks Board facilities:

“During the election, the whole entire election, I said, ‘I support our space, our community centres or recreation facilities—if we have the space, we would provide that for child care,’” De Genova told the Straight by phone.

Great! But the election is over. And here’s what she thinks now:

“But I do not feel that it’s appropriate that park board operates child-care facilities. And then the questions that I have are, with this joint council on childcare, how much money is this going to cost? And we’ve already had so many budget cuts, so I think that we have to work with what we have right now, instead of creating new councils.”

De Genova is righteously raked over the coals by her fellow Commissioners and in the comments of the Straight piece. In addition to points and factual corrections made there, here are a few other things:

The City of Vancouver’s Childcare Protocol of 2004 notes There are currently about 9,200 licensed child care spaces, with a capacity of about 12,000 children in Vancouver. These spaces are either full or part time group care, preschool, child minding and family child care for children ages birth to 12 years. There are, however, 28,535 children under the age of 6 and an additional 43,830 children between 6 and 14 years of age. Crude calculations, using labour force participation rates only, would suggest that conservatively, Vancouver is serving about 15% of the potential need.

I am one of those parents who use a childcare program operated out of a Parks Board facility. Here’s what I had to do to be one of lucky 15%: on the day of registration get up at 3am on two occasions (once for Kindercare and once for After School Care) to procure one of the two openings that year at this facility. On both occasions I was not the first in line. About 30 people came after me (none of whom got a spot). One woman was in tears – she was certain she would be forced to quit her job to take care of her children and this would destroy her economically.

The fees for these programs, while less than daycare, is high.

De Genova, to my knowledge, never voiced this concern during the election campaign. This is, obviously, an issue that is of paramount concern for many voters with young children in Vancouver. If De Genova’s position had been known I am certain she would not have been elected.

Congratulations Melissa.

Vancouver, Kingdom by the Sea

“If you want to get stuff done, you hang around people with money. I’m not going to hang around with people who can’t make stuff happen.”

-Sam Sullivan, Citizen Sam

Frances Bula has an excellent article in Vancouver Magazine recounting the history of civic political party, the Non-Partisan Association.

Born as an anti-Communist coalition in 1937, the NPA has dominated Vancouver post-war politics.

Bula’s article is ostensibly about the NPA’s chances in the upcoming election this November, but I found it very informing. I’ll cut to the money quote:

Insurgent movements like TEAM and Vision don’t get what politics in this city is all about, [Mike] Francis says. They think it’s about ideals and reform and missions. They don’t understand that the NPA has been able to rule for so long because it perpetually attracts people who want to make connections with the city’s most powerful. An election campaign allows a 25-year-old to work alongside a Rob Macdonald or a Peter Armstrong. “The core of it is upwardly mobile yuppies. It’s just their home, and there’s lots of them.”

That’s the NPA in an NPA insider’s own words. It’s not about an underlying ideology or a set of policy goals – even today’s right-wing, free-marketism. Those – and progressive ideas – will be adopted and discarded as necessary. It’s more basic.

It’s raison d’être is power. Access to for supporters and maintenance of for backers.

It’s almost feudal.

The squires pay homage to the knights, the knights serve the lords, and the lords maintain their grip on the land.

The NPA has misread Machiavelli

Here is a comment [allegedly] left by Dave Weir, Kurt Heinrich’s predecessor at the VSB. I’m going to post it in it’s entirety:

I have refrained from engaging in the debate about the Vancouver School Board cuts because I wanted to put the situation behind me, but I feel the need to defend myself given the change in messaging from the school district.

When I lost my job, I was told it was strictly budget related. The superintendent, in handing me my termination letter, said that he had told the board that eliminating the communications department was an “unacceptable risk” for the district, but that the board had decided to proceed nonetheless in order to save money.

Within weeks, the district’s financial picture improved and they revised their deficit projection to a $1.5-million surplus for 2010-11. Suddenly, the school district needed to re-establish communications. It had only been two months since we were severed.

At the same time, the messaging changed. The elimination of communications was no longer about budget, but part of a restructuring plan and that they never intended to leave the position vacant for long. Suddenly, talk was about how the job descriptions had not changed in a number of years and that the way communications needs to be done is not the way it used to be done.

Readers are left to believe that we were not being progressive with our communications program. Let me remind everyone that Twitter celebrated its fifth birthday this past week, and it’s only been a year since the superintendent ordered the district’s Internet access opened up to social media. Communications responded to the changing landscape by drafting a social media strategy last summer that garnered attention because we were leading the way among school districts.

Were we as successful as we wanted. No. We did not have the time needed to evolve our social media strategy given the demands placed on us by various departments and trustees. The reality of those demands from trustees were detailed in the Special Advisor’s report when she criticized trustees for the volume of work we were tasked with doing to support trustee advocacy.

And thus the problem with the current focus in messaging from the school district. A job description is only the starting point for work. A job description establishes where a position sits in an organization, and the level of remuneration. It does not create day-to-day duties. Those are set given the demands and priorities of an organization.

If we are to believe the current messaging, then why wasn’t the communications department tasked with a renewed focus. Instead, we spent hours upon hours supporting issues such as the school closure consultation because that’s what we were directed to do.

VSB Insider was right to ask whether I was contacted with a recall offer, since I was supposedly laid off due a budget shortfall, and therefore had recall provisions within the terms and conditions of employment for exempt staff. To answer VSB Insider: No, I was not approached about being recalled.

I will leave it for everyone to draw their own conclusion. .

That’s rough. I feel for Mr. Weir. For the sake of argument, let’s assume the worst and say the But I personally know why I was targeted for elimination was because Weir was an NPA’er.

That’s not Kurt Heinrich’s fault. Gregor Robertson, Penny Ballem, Patti Bacchus – they’re fair game. Being held up to public scrutiny is part of their job description. But Kurt simply applied for a communications job and – lacking any evidence to the contrary – won the competition fair and square.

And yet he, and his family, have to endure his name dragged through the public mud all  because he participated in the political process. “Hack”. “No experience”. Etc. Here’s “Glissando Remmy”, the Vancouver blogosphere’s alleged poet laureate, “Cosmopolitan #Vancouver Writer and Political Satirist”…

He lives in Vancouver and apparently he’s not so busy that he can’t bully a non-public figure on Twitter (In a comment on the same City Caucus thread Glissando is surprised, surprised I say, that his Twitter comments were found thuggish and objectionable by others. He is shocked and horrified and wonders if he needs to reinforce the walls of his echo chamber).

I don’t know what they are hoping to accomplish. Oh “the base” will be worked up into a froth, but it just takes a gentle breeze from the east to accomplish that. The rest of us? I’m no expert, but it seems to me you, you know, shouldn’t introduce a subject that has the potential to produce blowback. For example, here’s Alex Tsakumis on Mike Klassen:

Very quickly, because it’s as thin as a razor, here’s Klassen’s public portfolio of accomplishment: Sullivan gifted him a plum patronage appointment to the Planning Commission while Sullivan was Mayor. This was strictly for being a Sullivan waterboy, as Klassen has NO EXPERIENCE in real estate matters–ever. His credentials in this regard extended to picking up the occasional copy of ‘Architectural Digest‘ from the news rack at Starbucks after ordering a double dummy. Worse yet, to listen to some of his fellow planning commissioners, the learning curve for Klassen was enough to have most people catching up on their sleep while he used regular meetings as tutorials.

That’s it. He’s done nothing else

The Commission is supposed to be made up on member of the general public. In a startling coincidnce it would seem a member of  “general public” was also “the Mayor’s webmaster”. This was, of course, to pack the Commssion with friendly bodies so the Mayor’s pet EcoDensity would have smooth sailing simply a coincidence. It strike me as very unwise for Mike Klassen to bring up the subject of experience.

Political instincts seem to be lacking here. It’s like they only read the part of Machiavelli that says you should exhibit ruthlessness and not the other part that says you should only exhibit ruthlessness when all other options have failed.

But then, this is the same braintrust that turned this:

…into this…

Editor’s note: I’ve said it many times publically, but I’ll repeat it again -> I don’t work for, volunteer for, am “directed by” or donate to any political party. Anywhere. I’m writing this because this sort of nonsense fucking pisses me off. I’ve tried suggesting many times in the past both publically and privately the perils of collateral damage.

Obviously it’s fallen on deaf, or obtuse, ears.

Klassen the [Character] Assassin

I’m so old I remember when Mike thought it was a “hatchet job” to point out a) he was Colin “HST” Hansen’s campaign manager, and b) was the recipient of a no-bid contract [correction: received payments without a written contract] for Mayor Sam Sullivan’s web communications. Indeed, he felt very passionately about the perceived injustice.

And yet here he is, mere weeks after repeating the hatchet job claim in Business In Vancouver, attacking – not the Mayor…not another of his fellow candidates – but some poor mid-level schmuck.

Really?

I mean I can understand why Mike might be unhappy with Ian Reid – not that Ian Reid said anything inaccurate – but what’s his beef with Kurt Heinrich? Is his thirst for power so great (or his polling numbers so low) that he’ll try to destroy the career of anyone? What’s Kurt’s great crime, anyway? Well there’s this:

“I didn’t do a lot of media [for Vision Vancouver] —here and there we’d do some releases, but the majority of it was web communications, so I’d update the website and I did writing and support for the board.”

Outrageous! The man obviously travelled back in time and was trained in Stalin’s Kremlin! No, no…don’t laugh, Ken Denike knows what going on. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge…

He has continuously displayed his partisanship over his @kurtgheinrich Twitter account, attacking NPA elected officials as recently as a few weeks ago.

Shocking. Let’s check this out…

Oh, well, that’s not so bad. But there is this one:

Oh. Hmmm. Wait! Here we go!

Ah-hah! You invoked The Mike by name! Shame on you!

And…according to City Caucus…

…he was “given” the job. Not “earned”, but “given”. Obstensibly for “services rendered”. But from the Courier…

Cardwell later told the Courier the VSB had 20 applicants for the job, plus a number beyond that who were deemed by human resources as not qualified based on the posting.

The human resource/senior management team does the hiring for all board office management jobs.

“Trustees are informed and the board could have a say in any management hire. In this case, as with other [similar] hires, the board was informed of the hire,” Cardwell said in an email. “The process was a completely open competition from start to finish

Well maybe that’s not true. Strange shit happens. And in that regard, City Caucus and Candidate Klassen offer up strong, irrefutable evidence to the contrary of….[crickets chirp]

And in the face of that…well…gee…as far as I can see Kurt Heinrich exercised his constitutional right to participate in the political process. And then later had the gall to win a job competition between 20 candidates. But that’s beyond the pale for this crowd. Me, oh, my…donate a measly $200 to the communists…well…you get your own expose.

Hope? A positive future? Actual policies? Fuhgitaboutit. Bullying. Intimidation. That’s the currency they trade in. That’s all they got. The message is clear: occupied the same room as Gregor Robertson once upon the time and they will come after you. (After this I’m pretty sure they’ll come after me…but I don’t care anymore…I’m sick of it)

It’s funny because they rail against the “politicization of City Hall”…and yet they’re the only one’s who actually advocate purges and political tests:

The next government’s job will require a merciless house cleaning of anyone with direct ties to Vision Vancouver. If you’ve handed over a donation to Vision, like for example Lesli Boldt in the city’s Olympic communications, or worked on a Vision campaign like the new Director of Communications Ryan Merkley (who by the way was late for work on his first day according to this photo), then don’t count on being kept on.

Did they do a good job? Irrelevant! They’re the “enemy”!

Our future. Or not.

What do Sean Bickerton and Bill McCreery think? Individuals whom I continue to have a modicum of respect for. I would like to think they’re holding their noses. But I’m probably…sadly…wrong.

Update: Share. Tweet. I’m not the best writer or the most informed about civic affairs, but it’s time to stand up for civility.

Vancouver’s bright future…in mining and forestry

Mining and forestry are certainly big *B.C.* industries, and Vancouver benefits indirectly from them. But they are not Vancouver industries. People don’t wake up in the morning in the City of Vancouver and drive to work on a clearcut or an open air mine. Not for, oh,100 years.

Mining and forestry are notoriously not green industries.

What is going on? Is Suzanne Anton going to log Stanley Park? (that’s a joke Daniel)

It makes no sense.

Update: Candidate Klassen:

“Don’t you think he should be focusing on job creation in the resources sector, in the film industry and in high-tech?

One, I’m not sure how being green and supporting the film industry and high-tech are mutually exclusive (and just how is Klassen propose to “support” them – yet more breaks for Hollywood millionaires?). But…resources sector? Er, for the City of Vancouver? Maybe they are going to clearcut Stanley Park. I hear there’s gold under Queen Elizabeth Park too.

Rhetoric and Collateral Damage

Okay, here is a real pet peeve of mine. Criticizing policy and questioning spending priorities of government programs and initiatives is, of course, the duty of an opposition party. But if you do, it’s also your public duty to criticize the program or initiative accurately. And when you start labelling something “goofy”, you better be damn sure, especially when a third non-governmental party is involved.

We, alas, have a case of rhetorical collateral damage with Vancouver civic party the NPA’s heaping abuse on a $5000 grant to something called “Lawn to Loaves”, run by the Environmental Youth Alliance. I’m not going to argue the merits of this program. I’m not because the NPA doesn’t. Mayoralty candidate Suzanne Anton has labelled the program “goofy”, as has Daniel Fountaine at City Caucus. Both describe the goal of the program as “whether it’s feasible to grow wheat on the front lawns and boulevards of Vancouver homeowners.”

Actually the goals are:

  • To successfully cultivate a hundred pounds of organic spring wheat within the city of Vancouver
  • To engage our progressive city in a thought experiment regarding what defines a farm and to symbolically challenge the dominant scale of grain production
  • To overlook traditional notions of efficiency and productivity for a moment in favor of the power of symbolism
  • To teach, engage, and excite all those who encounter this project at any and every stage

In other words, it’s not about actual food production which the NPA characterizes it time and time again, it’s about education.

“This is not going to replace the wheat belt, by any stretch,” said Ms. Bellamy, who planted wheat next to a community garden and the West House, a sustainable laneway house formerly showcased at the 2010 Olympics. “It’s a symbolic gesture, and hopefully getting people to think.”

Still, that hasn’t stopped them from tweeting or retweeting how a cup of flour will cost $333/cup or a loaf $1250. No monetary value attached to the educational component, etc. If they want to change or distort the nature of a program, that is their prerogative. It’s all too common in politics. But I just don’t know if they realize when they take to the pages of the Sun, the Globe and 24hours and label something “goofy”, they aren’t just attacking the Mayor and the Mayor’s party. They’re attacking and publicly mocking the people behind “Lawn to Loaves”. They’re attacking Revel Warkentin, Andrea Bellamy,& Julia Smith. And they’re not being accurate doing it.

Still, maybe they’re fine with all that. I would like to think maybe they haven’t thought it quite through. I hope so, because mocking in the media sincere motivated youth who are walking the walk on their beliefs – even if you disagree with them – is kind of mean. Kind of really mean.

Sadly though, it’s not isolated. Daniel did the same thing to the YMCA’s plan for a community garden on Sunset Beach – a plan part of initiative to help immigrants acclimatize to their new country.