Day One: Action, Lights, Briefs

For anyone wondering what happens between the election and the first day of office, I'm hoping that today's announcement of the Homeless Emergency Action Team and the first new shelter beds to be immediately opened helps answer that. More to come in the next few days including motions going to council which I'm told become public knowledge some time tomorrow on the city's website.

Although I literally raced through two hours of work at the Wilderness Committee to get to City Hall in time, I was only able to catch the tail end of the press conference. I was finally able to get into my email courtesy of two IT department helpers and my council assistant Marie. From there, it was onto the cafeteria where I negotiated successfully to take a real plate back to my office with promises to return it and a rather overwhelming 20 minute lunch/discovery of the emails I've been missing in my new clrreimer@vancouver.ca email address and a city council calendar with quite a few events that I didn't know about because -- you guessed it -- they were in my email.

From there, we had four hours of briefings on budgets, budget processes, capital financing funds, sinking funds, property endowment funds, legal, and HR (bet you didn't know over 70% of the city's workforce are men). Off to social planning social, a meeting with tenants worried about imminent evictions and capped off with the neighbourhoods for a sustainable vancouver open house. Much to be said about all but all that new email is calling...

Oh and the lights. Council offices come equipped with rather obnoxious overhead fluorescents giving me more sympathy for the mood of the councillors at some of the council meetings I've been at over the years. Before I hit the used furniture stores on Commercial this weekend, if anyone has a lamp or two they are dying to part with, drop me a line.

Comments

[Kristina Kearley]

Sounds like an intense first day at work. I just finished my second interview for a job as a front-desk support worker at one of Atira's DTES harm reduction SROs for women.

If/when you come across more info on the housing crisis pertaining to low income women in the DTES, flag'r for me...and feel free to drop me a line whenever to access all of the things I am learning on the subject.

I'm thrifting for the foxy house this weekend...I'll keep an eyeball out for a lamp for ya. :-D

[M]

just to comment on the HR bit "bet you didn't know over 70% of the city's workforce are men"

That makes sense when you realize Vancouver does all of it's roadwork, sewers, waterworks and the rest of the whole shebang in house, rather than hiring outside contractors. It's the only city in Metro Vancouver that does that. And alot of that work is hard physical labour, and for many women it's not the type of work they want to do.