Two for the price of... two

So I forgot to post this yesterday, save a brief blurb in this morning's 24 hours, but yes indeed, Vancouver is still on the hook for former city manager Judy Rogers' salary until May 30, 2009.

It's part of her severance agreement, which presumably every city reporter in Vancouver FOI'd a few months back but didn't receive until yesterday.

We already knew her total severance package was worth $571,788, thanks to previously released minutes.

But the newly released documents show Rogers will be paid every two weeks until May 30. Rogers also gets her health and welfare benefits until this time and can exercise her option to buy her company lease vehicle. She'll also get the monthly car allowance payments she would have gotten had she not left by "mutual agreement" when Mayor Gregor Robertson took over last year.

The agreement says payments will stop on May 30 if Rogers has found a new job.

But there isn't a lot of incentive for her to do so.

"If Ms. Rogers has not obtained alternate employment prior to May 30, 2009 the city will, on that date, pay her an amount equivalent to 15 months base salary," the agreement reads.

"The city will also pay Ms. Rogers the sum of $30,000.00 in respect of foregone pension accrual."

According to the mayor's office, Rogers' ongoing paychecks this year are a part of the $571,788 severance package revealed earlier this year.

Want to compare a city manager's severance package to yours? Download a copy here. (Yes that's my address there. Don't send me junkmail.)

Carbon tax should fund transit: Mayors

Metro Vancouver mayors look ready to give an early thumbs up to a plan that would increase TransLink¹s budget by nearly 50 per cent ­ so long as the money comes from the province¹s controversial carbon tax.

Members of TransLink's Mayor's Council on Regional Transportation have called a press conference for Wednesday at noon, where it's expected the mayors will wade into the highly-charged issue of who pays for the Lower Mainland's transit network.

The mayors are expected to tentatively endorse a plan for cash-strapped TransLink to boost its yearly revenues by $450 million over its current $1-billion budget. But the mayors want new ideas like the provincial carbon tax and a proposed port container tax to pay for a chunk of it, not a smorgasbord of raised property taxes, fare hikes and proposed vehicle levies.

Carbon tax revenue now goes towards tax reductions in B.C.'s effort to label the controversial fee as "revenue-neutral."

"This does nothing towards moving Metro Vancouver residents from their cars towards public transportation," a proposal to be discussed by the mayors before Wednesday¹s press conference states.

"... Applying the carbon tax revenue collected from the Metro region directly toward the broadening of transportation options will directly benefit the public.

Wednesday's announcement will come amidst a provincial election campaign that has seen the carbon tax issue already spark debate.

The timing isn¹t coincidental.

"There¹s a very strong feeling on the part of the mayors that the provincial and the federal government should be taking a hard look at what they're going to do to provide sustainable funding for the operations of transit."

But the main purpose of the mayors' closed-door meeting Wednesday is to present a unified lobby on how TransLink should be funded. The message is: Not with more local tax dollars.

Click to read more ...

Carole Taylor: Not a fan of Canada Line P3

Former B.C. Finance Minister Carole Taylor says she was surprised by how “disruptive” construction of the Canada Line rapid transit project was to local merchants, but felt the provincial government was powerless to intervene.

It’s part of testimony Wednesday from Taylor, the B.C. Liberal MLA for Vancouver-Langara during the peak of construction along Cambie Street, at a small business owner’s lawsuit against the proponents of the rapid transit project.

Taylor said construction outside her former constituency office at 41st Ave and Cambie lasted longer than two years.

"It was far more disruptive than anyone had anticipated," Taylor said.

The former MLA insisted she tried to broker communication between struggling business owners, TransLink and the private consortium building the Canada Line, but her efforts weren’t “very successful."

Taylor said the province never sought to compensate the business owners, insisting TransLink had control of the project. And the minister was further handcuffed by a public-private partnership, or P3, agreement that, she said, placed control in the hands of TransLink and the Canada Line Rapid Transit Co.

"This particular model of P3 really concerned me," Taylor said, adding that the model saw the province holding the purse strings but none of the say on the project.

"The government gets all the blame," she said.

"I would say that this particular P3 model is not one that makes me feel very comfortable."

Taylor was the first witness called in a trial brought forth by small business owner Susan Heyes, who claims her former Cambie-based business, Hazel & Co., lost $900,000 in gross profit as a result of the Canada Line’s controversial cut-and-cover construction method.

"This case," her lawyer Cameron Ward told the court, "is about a small business that was crushed and financially devastated by the irresponsible and the wrongful actions of big business and big government."

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, who formerly advocated for Cambie merchants as an NDP MLA but now leads the city named as a defendant in the lawsuit, is expected to testify on Monday.

LATEN: Lamest Action Team Ever Named

What happened to the days when Lower Mainland mayors would use snappy, copyrighted new buzzwords to name their pet projects?

Port Coquitlam Mayor Greg Moore is the latest mayor to go acronym happy. The name for Moore's new action team on homelessness? MATH (Mayor's Action Team on Homelessness). That's right: The lamest action team ever.

Gregor Robertson has HEAT, MAGOV and now, the hip hop inspired GCAT.

PoCo's Moore, on the other hand, can only offer up an acronym for every kid's least favourite subject.

CITY OF PORT COQUITLAM MEDIA ADVISORY

February 26, 2009

Attention Assignment Editors

WHAT: Port Coquitlam Mayor, Greg Moore, will launch his new Mayor’s Action Team on Homelessness (MATH), a group tasked with creating and implementing a strategy to end homelessness in Port Coquitlam.
WHEN: Monday, March 2, 2009, 9:30 am
WHERE: Heritage Room, 3rd Floor, Port Coquitlam City Hall, 2580 Shaughnessy Street, Port Coquitlam
WHO: Members of the Mayor’s Action Team on Homelessness:
· Greg Moore – City of Port Coquitlam, Team Chair
· Sandy Burpee and Dave Teixeira – Tri-Cities Homelessness Task Group, Chair and Deputy Chair
· William Hue – Hue Mobile, Owner
· Peter Kobayashi – G & F Financial Group, Branch Manager
· Alison Ferguson – Every Little Bit, Co-Founder and Soroptimist International, Member
· Rolof Veld -– Sutton Group-1st West Realty, Managing Broker
· Ali Syndergy – SAMZ Pub, Owner
· Ravi Panwar – Park Georgia Realty Ltd., Realtor
· Chris Seppelt – Archbishop Carney High School, Teacher of Social Justice Class
· Harris Kidd – Archbishop Carney High School, student
· Erin Ireland – REACH (Realizing Empowerment and Community Help), Program Facilitator
· Doug Stead – Tri-M Systems, Owner
· Four homeless Port Coquitlam residents

Homelessness is one of the most significant social problems in Port Coquitlam.

The members of the Mayor's Action Team on Homelessness (MATH) represent a range of backgrounds, ages, perspectives and experiences. They include representatives from the Tri-Cities Homelessness Task Group, the business community, schools, community agencies and the homeless population.

The Mayor’s Action Team on Homelessness (MATH) will hold its first meeting at Port Coquitlam City Hall from 8:30 to 9:30 am on Monday, March 2, 2009. Following the meeting, Mayor Moore and members of the Action Team will be available to the media to provide an overview of MATH’s mandate and objectives for the coming year.

- 30 -

Condos for sale!

I can't for the life of me fathom why, but it seems pre-sales on condos at Vancouver's Olympic Village have been a bit sluggish of late.

In fact, last fall, only two of the Bob Rennie-marketed homes were scooped up, leaving 480 or so units still on the market at what's being called Millennium Water - Vancouver's Last Waterfront Community.

Ken Bayne, the city's GM of business planning and services, broke the news delicately to council Wednesday.

"There's little uptake on that at this point," he said, serving his sales update with a slice of understatement.

But at this point, the folks at city hall would appear to be breathing a sigh of relief with today's news that it had bought out the loan on the Olympic Village project from struggling New York-based hedge fund Fortress Investments.

For a sum of $319.5 million, the city now holds the purse strings on the project, effectively becoming the banker for developers Millennium.

The deal, officials are quick to point out, saves taxpayers $90 million in interest payments compared to what it would have cost the city to stick with Fortress. I suppose that's kind of like finding a dollar-off-coupon outside a theatre showing a movie you don't really want to watch.

"For the first time since taking office ten weeks ago, we are finally able to share some good news with the taxpayers of Vancouver on the financing of the Olympic Village project," Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson gushed in his press release today.

In person, councillors were a bit more subdued.

"This is the best of a bad situation," said Vision colleague Raymond Louie.

In any case, it appears some at city hall suspected all along that Fortress may not have been the "ideal choice" to back Millennium's loan.

It was Millennium that first brought the U.S. firm to the table. The financier was willing to take the project from a pre-design stage to completion.

"That was a very attractive looking arrangement of the day, for the developer," said Bayne.

The only problem, as far as the city was concerned, was that Fortress required some kind of guarantee to get involved, since Millennium didn't technically own the land.

Fast forward to today, and as of 10 a.m. this morning, Fortress is no longer in the picture.

Now the concern seems to be that Millennium, anxious to get some cash flow going in what may still be a murky residential sales market, doesn't end up holding a fire sale on its condos.

Not to worry, councillors were told. The original Fortress loan agreement, which Vancouver now inherits, contains wording that limits how low the prices can go.

Now, what should we do about that other multi-million-dollar problem at the Olympic Village?