Vancouver City Council's first meeting, Dec. 8th.

The short version: It was boring and lasted 25 minutes. You can watch the action here.

Slightly longer version:

Democracy in action, folks. Welcome to the boring side of civic politics. The exciting bits happen in the media, I gather. For instance: Frances Bula reports yesterday about the projects that city staff will be undertaking in the near future, and some of it is pretty exciting stuff (if you're a civic politics nerd): establishing the Homeless Emergency Action Team (HEAT), moving the sustainability office into the main corporate management office, and creating a list of all the landlords who have had orders from the city to comply with city maintenance standards, including the outcomes of those complaints. Scintillating stuff there.

In the council meeting nothing really happened. (See the meeting agenda and minutes.) There was motion after motion adopting recommendations for appointments to committee and regional bodies. That's it. There was some joking about Raymond Louie's penchant for seconding, and Gregor jokingly hoped that all meetings would be so easy.

I didn't think it would be a razzle-dazzle affair, but I did expect a bit more... I don't know what. I also expected that more people would be there watching. Maybe they all knew it would be boring.


Our new Vancouver City Council: Starting from the bottom, going clockwise:
Geoff Meggs, Kerry Jang, George Chow, David Cadman (away), Gregor Robertson, Tim Stevenson, Heather Deal, Suzanne Anton, Andrea Reimer, Ellen Woodsworth.


Mayor Gregor Robertson, complete with the chains of office.


A sceptre for bonking councillors if they step out of line.

The Geography of Hope cont'd

I have decided that after the November elections I am going to give each new (or renewed) member of City Council a copy of The Geography of Hope. It's an inspiring and utterly practical book about how small projects will be how we reach our sustainability goals.

Vancouver is doing a pretty good job, but more can and should be done. New developments could be held to the LEED Gold standard, as has been proposed. The fleet of vehicles could be downsized and fully converted to biodiesel. Our system of bike lanes could be heavily expanded, with routes entirely free of cars. Translink could further increase bus access. And, from reading the book, some industries could collaborate on energy use/production to greatly reduce waste/expenditure.

I am excited to put into practice some of the ideas from the book, but don't have a focus. I live in an apartment building with a landlord that doesn't seem so open to ideas of spending to save on energy. I'm pretty sure we can't install a garden on our roof, or even solar panels. I wonder how much effort it takes to put up some solar panels and hook them into the circuitry of the house. Research, anyone?

I'm a tool. Solar energy on such a small scale is not worth it at all. Boo.