In the News

MACLEANS: Vancouver gets new water rules

Nov 5, 2009 by Nancy Macdonald

Last month, in a special feature titled “One colossal waste,” Maclean’s noted that Vancouver, a city which routinely receives gushing praise for its green taxes, green jobs, and green buildings, is actually among the leading per-capita water consumers in the country. Residents pay a flat annual rate of $360 per household, and only 14 per cent of water customers in Vancouver are metered, most of them commercial users—that’s the lowest rate of any major Canadian city. This system, critics said, encourages waste, and contributes to the growing volume of sewage Canadians generate annually.

Now, it seems, the city agrees. Last week, a municipal report likened the fixed, flat-rate water delivery system to an “all-you-can-eat buffet,” noting that under metered regimes, customers use 60 per cent less water. That report, later presented to city council, also dubbed Vancouver’s water system “inefficient and unsustainable,” as well as “unfair”—since “households that waste water pay the same as those that conserve.” Fewer than 30 per cent of Canadians, it noted, still use Vancouver’s “archaic approach.”

STRAIGHT: City's former sustainability manager says Olympic Village had more green potential

By Matthew Burrows

The City of Vancouver’s former sustainability manager believes governments should be based on “bioregions”.

Tom Osdoba was in town this week and made these comments at an October 19 event, moderated by Vancouver environmentalist Rex Weyler, that was titled Reconciling the Economy with the Bio-Physical Reality of Nature.

NEWS 1130: Vancouver 'Green Team' proposes loan program for green retrofits

City hopes for 20 per cent of buildings retrofitted by 2020

Jill Drews VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) | Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 1:42 pm

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) - The City of Vancouver's Greenest City Action Team has unveiled more of its plan for making Vancouver the world's greenest city by 2020.  City council will be looking at a proposed loan program which would help the average homeowner save energy.

City Councillor and team member Andrea Reimer says the idea being presented to council this week would give home and business owners the chance to borrow money from the city to perform green retrofits on their buildings.  "You would get this loan from the city to reduce your energy use.  To do those, you know, to do windows, to do doors, to get a high efficiency furnace and then you would continue to pay $150 dollars a month, but instead of paying it for energy, you would be paying it back to pay off the cost of the loan."

She says the program could be modelled after existing programs in other cities.  The team hopes to see 20 per cent of Vancouver buildings retrofitted before 2020.

More information is available at the City of Vancouver website.

VANCOUVER MAGAZINE: Strong Medecine

By Frances Bula published Nov 1, 2009

To run the city’s bureaucracy, Gregor Robertson’s team wanted someone who could shake up city hall and forcefully drive their agenda. In Dr. Penny Ballem, they got what they wanted and then some.

The thousands lining streets during the Pride parade in August didn’t much notice the woman at the wheel of the tractor towing the float bearing His Rainbow-Shirt-Wearing Worship Gregor Robertson. If they’d looked closely, though, through the dancing flock of Vision Vancouver councillors, they’d have seen that the wiry woman with short grey hair and ball cap was $300,000-a-year city manager Penny Ballem. “Some of us were a little nervous because we weren’t aware of any background in heavy machinery,” councillor Andrea Reimer said later. But they needn’t have been. As it turns out, Ballem—doctor, researcher, skier, cyclist, roof repairer, health administrator, deputy health minister, very highly paid consultant, and, as of last December, Vancouver city manager—has had a lifelong passion for machinery, thanks to childhood experiences on her father’s hobby farm in Quebec. Her parting gift from colleagues at Women’s Hospital in 2001 was three hours with an excavator on a building site at Whistler. And so the city’s Pride parade committee decided Ballem, who turned 60 in October, was the perfect person to haul the city’s political elite through the crowds.

VANCOUVER OBSERVER: Councillor Andrea Reimer and the Shifting Paradigm of Homelessness

Christabel Shaler Posted: Oct 14th, 2009

VO: You were actually homeless as a teenager, but you managed to get off the streets and take on a successful career. How has your background affected your approach to politics? 

Reimer: A lot. But, I think the majority of elected officials are impacted by life experiences. I've realized that everyone has a story. Most people's lives have been touched by challenges such as, poverty, disempowerment or mental health issues. I think my colleagues can imagine what it is like to be homeless, and I think that they have compassion.  

I believe that as a benchmark, you should judge a society not by how far ahead you get, but how far behind you can get. It is important to look at the very last person in the line of society. We must ask ourselves: What's the floor we are willing to live with as a society? 

VANCOUVER OBSERVER: Vancouver Council and Mayor Lose in Soccer Against Downtown Eastsiders

April Smith Posted: Oct 10th, 2009

Saturday morning on October 9th came early for teams  as they prepared for what turned out to be a heated battle between Vancouver City Council and PHS from the Vancouver Downtown Eastside. No, this wasn't a city Hall meeting, ths was a rough, tough soccer game  betwen Portland FC and Team Vancouver.
 
Portland FC being led by Sarah Blyth, Team Captain and ever dominant Allan Bates, Team Coach, who even scored a couple of goals during today's game.
 
Team Vancouver was led by star striker Mayor Gregor Robertson and sem-pro goaltender Councillor Andrea Reimer. Other players included Councillors Ellen Woodsworth, Geoff Meggs, George Chow while  Dr. Kerry Jang led a rousing cheer with some of the neighborhood kids.

DRIVEN: Charge of the Electric Vehicle Brigade

http://issuu.com/drivenmagazine/docs/driven_29_oct_09

METRO: New site gives city information to the masses

jeff hodson

17 September 2009 05:19

Vancouver has quietly launched a humble website that could change the way citizens interact with their civic government.

Vancouver’s Open Data Catalogue contains 18 datasets (with more to come) on subjects ranging from the location of city drinking fountains to garbage-collection schedules.

“It was very exciting to click on the link today,” said Coun. Andrea Reimer, who proposed the open-data motion earlier this year.

“It’s a modest beginning … but this is like turning 6,000 employees into 600,000 employees.

Potentially, the whole city can participate more effectively in discussions, decisions and advising.”

Anyone can now download city data in a useable form, facilitating the creation of new services and ideas on ways to improve the city.

For individual citizens, the open-data portal will not be immediately life-changing — unless people are interested in “finding out where all the drinking fountains are,” Reimer quipped.

However, she added, the open data will make things easier for researchers and advocacy groups to access, which would hopefully lead to recommendations from those groups and better public policy.

SUN: City Hall has made progress on major issues

By Andrea Reimer, Special to the Sun September 10, 2009

After nine months in office, I'm proud to say that the Vision Vancouver city council, under the leadership of Mayor Gregor Robertson, has taken action on some of the toughest issues in Vancouver. On issues like homelessness and the environment, progress is steadily being made on a number of fronts.

All of this is being done under the unprecedented pressures of a global recession, a scaled-back provincial budget and preparations for the biggest event our city has ever seen -- the 2010 Winter Games.

As promised in last fall's election, we've taken real action on homelessness. City Hall is using legal injunctions on some of the worst-run rental buildings in the city to bring them up to code. We secured $170 million in funding from the provincial government to build over 500 new units of social housing.

STRAIGHT: City of Vancouver could open data for all

By Carlito Pablo

Publish Date: September 10, 2009

Planning a night out in the northwestern quadrant of Washington, D.C., is a breeze. On the Stumble Safely Web site, partygoers can see the locations of bars on a map and read Twitter messages about the action at these nightspots. The site also displays the dates, times, and locations of assaults and robberies in the area, information that barhoppers may want to consider when deciding where to hang out.

Stumble Safely is one of 47 iPhone, Facebook, and Web applications developed last year for D.C.’s first Apps for Democracy contest. The city had called on developers to make use of real-time data feeds emanating from various municipal agencies, which it releases to the public for free through an on-line catalogue.

“It’s kind of a site for bar crawlers to find a way to walk home safely,” Ian Cairns, project manager for Development Seed, the Web communications company that developed Stumble Safely, told the Georgia Straight by phone from his D.C. office. “You can’t imagine a police department ever spending time and money on that. But, at the same time, the flip side is we know and we’ve been told by the city government that the city police department is actually using that application to visualize crime in the neighbourhoods.”

According to Cairns, the site uses data from liquor licences, police reports, and the city’s road networks. He maintained that the city would never have thought to produce such an application with its own data. But since D.C. has opened up its data to the public, Cairns said, citizens are able to make applications that can improve the quality of life in the city.

Several North American cities, from New York to Calgary, are in different stages of following D.C.’s lead.

In Vancouver, Coun. Andrea Reimer expects city staff to submit a report to council early this fall regarding the implementation of the city’s support for open data, open standards, and open-source software. In May, council approved her motion to endorse these principles and make more of the city’s data freely available on the Internet.