irwinloy

From Facebook.comA local environment advocate and frequent political candidate will be barred from running in the next municipal contest.

Ben West failed to file his campaign financing disclosure statement for the 2008 municipal elections, in which he came within 10 votes from becoming director of the anomalous Electoral Area A.

After years in student politics, West has run in virtually every federal, provincial or municipal election in the region since 2005.

He ran for the mayor's seat in Vancouver that year, finishing well back, but in front of anyone not named Sullivan or Green.

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There will now be two parallel investigations into Vancouver’s $100-million Olympic Village loan saga, after council unanimously voted to hire its own lawyer to explore how sensitive city information was leaked.

It extends a controversy that exploded in the middle of the civic election campaign and threatens to drag on as a new council begins its term. The investigation was pushed by NPA Coun. Peter Ladner, who lost a bid for the mayor’s seat this month.

“I'm not trying to re-fight the election here or suggest that this issue was a determining factor in the election. I don't believe it was,” Ladner said.

“But I do think there was an ethical breach here, the likes of which I have never seen since I've been in this council chamber."

Opposition councillors, however, called the move “sour grapes” while voting to support it.

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Dear Mayor and Council

I would like to thank you for the confidence and support you had given me over the years. I have enjoyed working with you over the past ten years, and appreciate the many long hours and strong leadership you have all contributed. I will miss your smiling faces, the challenges, the exciting projects and will continue to watch Vancouver's continuing growth.

I wish you all well in your endeavors.

Sincerely,

Estelle Lo

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This is just getting silly now.

Thursday's update from the Olympic Village loan saga is Vision Coun. Raymond Louie's terse reaction to a Global TV report that stops just short of blaming him in this political Whodunnit.

“Someone at city hall is maliciously putting out false information to the media in an attempt to destroy my reputation,” Louie told a Thursday afternoon news conference, as reported by my esteemed colleague Monte Paulsen at The Tyee. [Myself, I was at my desk ostensibly trying to work on a story about light rail. How foolish.]

“The story that aired at 6 p.m. last night on Global TV casts aspersions on me that are completely untrue,” Louie said. “I am considering legal action over the insinuation that I had any involvement with regards to Coun. Ladner’s in-camera document.”

Monte will have more on The Tyee tomorrow. The no-less esteemed Frances Bula also opines on this "bizarre twist."

"City managers are clearly leaking negative information about Vision councillors to the media," she writes. "Now city staff are getting embroiled.

"This can’t end well."

It can, however, end.

Who are you voting for?

Vancouver's firefighters union is endorsing Gregor Robertson for mayor, as well as every single Vision council candidate - but one.

Vision candidate Kashmir Dhaliwal is the only council candidate who didn't get the thumbs up from the union. Instead, IAFF local 18 endorsed the NPA's Michael Geller as its only NPA candidate.

Dhaliwal's omission came down to "familiarity," said union president Rod McDonald.

"We weren't too sure about where we were on him so much," MacDonald said. "We had much more familiarity with the other candidates."

On the other hand, McDonald said firefighters were hopeful that Geller wouldn't be governed by political ideology.

"He seemed to be an open-minded free-thinking type of person," McDonald said. "He just gave us a strong indication that he would vote on issues, rather than by party lines."

Here's a list of the union endorsements:

For Mayor:
Gregor Robertson (Vision)
For Council:
David Cadman (COPE)
George Chow (Vision)
Heather Deal (Vision)
Michael Geller (NPA)
Kerry Jang (Vision)
Raymond Louie (Vision)
Geoff Meggs (Vision)
Andrea Reimer (Vision)
Tim Stevenson (Vision)
Ellen Woodsworth (COPE)

In 2005, the union decided not to back Chow, instead picking the NPA's Kim Capri. Both councillors were elected and are running for re-election.

Firefighters have been without a contract for almost two years now.

"The morale in our department with our members, I have never in my 29 years on the job seen anything like it," McDonald said.

"It's all about our labour relations and the fact our radios don't work properly and we don't get any training ... It goes on and on and on. We're not happy about it."