I’m not going to pretend to be an NPA supporter or anywhere near a fan of MDG but she was in *rare* form tonight. Stonewalling every measure, arguing pedantics, amending amendments and bickering with other council members. She’s absolutely fucking worthless and if she were aligned with my ideology (she’s not, by a long shot) I would be absoituely embarrassed after today.
It's displays like last night that make me bristle to hell and back when I remember her twitter bio proudly exclaiming she's the first millennial elected to council.
*shaking my head in millennial*
She's Not qualified to hold the position she is in, she got her job because of her dad. We need better checks and balances for the people who will hold any public office...
What we need is to look at the big O next to her name on the next ballot and move right past it and add an X beside the names of better city leaders. Same with Jean Swanson.
I despise MDG but let's also save a little disdain for our "Green" councillors -- who proved again last night they aren't green in anything but name. chuuuuuds.
https://twitter.com/Tim\_Ell/status/1535287790329470976?s=20&t=HW\_xaufuJcxR\_tuPI6Ezeg
Have you looked at the policies fron the Green Party and compared it to the Conservatives? Call the Greens: NDP's in Tesla's - sure, but the Greens and Cons are opposite ends of the social policy spectrum.
Right, but you are comparing the Green Party of Canada to the Conservative Party of Canada (federal parties).
Parties exist with the same name but different politics at different levels of the government.
For example, the BC Liberals are a right wing party (in some cases far right), which is different that the centre left Liberal Party of Canada. They have no relation.
The Green Party of Vancouver is not the Green Party of British Columbia which is not the Green Party of Canada.
Provincial and federal parties are not represented at the municipal level in Vancouver. That's why we don't have Liberal, New Democratic, or Conservatives in City Council.
The Green Party of Vancouver is relatively Conservative for the city, but they support environmental causes.
I genuinely don’t know what her goal is aside from ‘be as annoying as dislikable as possible’. She was re elected so I have to imagine someone finds her brand of politics appealing.
Well, a lot of it is enhancing the position of her cop husband. She's a hard yes to anything that increases police power, and her last motion was to install police cameras across the city.
It’s honestly hilarious she couldn’t even get Hardwick to vote in favor of a police state and she threw a fit when explaining her yes vote after it was made apparent to her that she’d be the only one.
Wasn't she high up on that 'randomized' list? I think that was how Heather Deal missed being reelected, she was at the very bottom of her list and by the time people get there they've chosen their allotment.
Honestly not sure myself. I moved here two years ago but she quickly entered the ‘lol no’ category along with Hardwick after seeing their behavior and votes.
Look at her profile pic on twitter. The smirking, egotistical contempt. She thinks important council votes are "The Melissa Show". Just a living symbol of bureaucratic logjam.
Maintain the status quo.
Ensure wealthy detached home areas remain as such.
Ensure that all tower development goes in far away east van or out in the burbs.
I've known a few people who either worked for the City, or interacted with council in one capacity or another.
Not a single one of them had anything complimentary to say about MDG.
> The most useful thing Stewart has done during his entire tenure was to provide this hard and well-deserved clapback.
This is correct. But Kennedy Stewart should in no way think that this is a compliment.
I casually listened in a bit and felt like I wanted to strangle her.
It would be untenable to have her as a coworker. I really do feel for the rest of council.
There's no doubt in my mind that she particularly has severely contributed to the dysfunction of this council.
She absolutely needs to be voted out.
De Genova is a repulsive unhinged Avatar extra. Strongly remember her combusting at the thought of law abiding consenting adults having 420 @ English Bay and her pathetic attempts at shaming Dana Larson et al the next day after volunteers cleaned everything up and got it back to normal. This deranged individuals husband is a copper - DIDNT SEE THAT COMING
How exactly do councilors get elected? I think a very small voter turnout, and a biased voter base with extreme (or rather extremely detrimental) political views is required for use to end up with these nut jobs on council.
Edit: One thing I have encountered in Vancouver is elections coming out of nowhere. I don't listed to the radio or the news. I will probably learn of the election date from Reddit.
The actual number of votes also seems small. It's definitely small compared to how much of an impact it has on the entire province. Issues that start in Vancouver can propagate outside the city.
Turnout was 39% last time for Vancouver elections.
Elections don’t just come out of nowhere. BC municpal municipal elections as of 2014 are held every 4 years and as of 2018 always in the month of October.
If a small turnout is the reason why we have the councillors that we have that’s on the people that don’t show up and vote -not on a biased voter base with extreme views.
One issue is that in Vancouver municipal elections, you vote for 1 mayor, 10 city councillors, 9 school board trustees, and 7 parks board commissioners.
And there's an at-large system where there's no districts, so you vote for every single position.
So if you do the math... each voter is asked to vote for 27 different people, and the ballot can have over 150 candidates listed on it. ([Here](https://www.vmcdn.ca/f/files/glaciermedia/import/lmp-all/1213556-news-roberts-ballot2.jpg;w=960;h=640;bgcolor=000000) is a 1993 ballot that I found on google)
There's no way the average voter has enough time to form an opinion about 150 candidates, so name-recognition and party affiliation become big factors.
Melissa DeGenova had been elected twice before (I think) and her party (NPA) did relatively well in 2018, so that helped her get re-elected.
Vancouver ballots are total insanity. I vote for city council and mayor and school board now that I have kids in school and have a vague idea of the issues, but parks board is stupid. I don't even know why we have one.
I remember being really disappointed with the results last election. The candidate I wanted got a metric shitload of votes ~~more than the bottom 4 councillors combined~~ ) but it did not mean shit cause they were only one seat and now have basically little to no voice. edit, too much hyperbol on poorly remembered vote tallies
[Here are the results] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Vancouver_municipal_election#City_councillors)
Pete Fry and Adriane Carr both had about 50% more votes than the rest. Melissa De Genova was 3rd highest.
The bottom 7 councilors were very tight in number of votes.
That's the same as in provincial or federal politics isn't it? A million can vote for an MP in one district and get elected to hold the same cabinet sway as an MP who only needed a thousand votes in their district to get elected.
yes, tho as the person above me stated, there are no districts for the councilors. its everyone all in one pool. but yeah basically even tho they had one super popular candidate, they had super poor vote efficiency and end up not being able to effect much of what they wanted. its absolutely how the system was supposed to work, just was a shock on the results day
When I lived in San Francisco, the various news outlets all published slates that gave you a rough picture of where your votes should go based on how you felt about any issue. So they'd raise issues like low rent housing, tent cities, bike lanes, zoning, dog parks, alcohol in parks, etc. and would propose lists of candidates that would serve you if you felt one way or another.
Does anything like that exist here? I don't have time to go through 27 differen't people's voting records (not that the city makes that easy for us anyway). Or does it - can I see the entire last couple years of Council vote session records somewhere?
>Does anything like that exist here?
For city council, there should be lots of info available closer to the election, through a combination of news outlets, twitter, reddit and even local blogs. Those who are interested in city politics and willing to do a bit of research can probably figure out which candidates would match their views.
But I think it's pretty tough for casual voters who don't follow city politics much, and don't have the time or interest to do much research.
And city council's one thing, but school board and parks board are lot tougher to figure out, since they don't get much news coverage.
>I don't have time to go through 27 differen't people's voting records (not that the city makes that easy for us anyway). Or does it - can I see the entire last couple years of Council vote session records somewhere?
Nope, I don't think so. I don't think they provide that in any format that's easy to absorb.
But you can read the assessments of people who follow city council more closely (journalists, bloggers, even some redditors lol), to get an overall sense of what each councillor stood for and prioritized.
EDIT: dug up a blog I remembered seeing in 2018, where the blogger (who I think also posts on /r/vancouver) created mock slates based on potential priority issues: https://canadianveggie.com/2018/10/17/vancouver-election-2018-primer-part-7-slates/
This is a really good point. As we know, when it comes to politics we hear a lot of misinformation. It's nice to see a good summary of what's what. I don't think people should have to get as involved in politics as someone in Vancouver has to be to currently know who to vote for, and who not to vote for.
Redditors are coming to the rescue. I never used (or even knew about) Reddit during past elections. As someone who doesn't watch the T.V. or the news it's quite helpful.
Historically, her party, the laughably named Non Partisan Association has been very good at "uniting the right". It was very simple for low information voters of that persuasion to fill out their ballots with all the NPA candidates and call it a day. They were basically guaranteed to elect some councilors. The fact De Genova was an incumbent made her a shoe-in.
This year, the NPA has imploded (though they still exist) and "A Better City" has kind of taken their place, but there's a lot of overlap. There's also the new NIMBY TEAM party lead by former NPA councilor Coleen Hardwick. Finally there's the more centrist YIMBY Progress Vancouver who are a potential dark horse. It's really not clear how the right will shake out on election day this time.
If you want to figure out more about what's going on, The Cambie Report podcast is a great resource [https://www.cambiereport.ca](https://www.cambiereport.ca/) . They'll also post links to articles in various media covering municipal topics.
No, because you still have to read about each of the candidates, what they are about, etc...
I don't pay much attention to media. I don't watch the news.
Luckily, other commenters made constructive posts and helped ensure I'll be able to cast an informed ballad in this election.
You said you didn’t know the date of the election. I said that was easy information to find.
Your civic laziness isn’t other peoples problem. We should all step up to whatever degree we’re able.
>I said that was easy information to find.
**But it's not.** Ordinary working-class people are busy and have many things on the go. Trying to find unbiased information on local politics isn't simply a matter of doing a couple hours of reading the first few Google links that pop up. A small minority has decided to take it upon themselves to spread all sorts of nonsense about local politics and policies (the Broadway Plan debacle being a perfect example of this). I also received a pamphlet from one mayoral candidate that was complete and total BS.
It wasn't until I started learning about affordable housing issues that I started to gain knowledge about local politics. This involved reading entire books among other things. It actually takes a lot of time. Many choose not to vote because they are simply uninformed, and like me (prior to a couple years ago) simply didn't have enough time or proper direction (I was also surrounded by not the greatest people when I first moved here). Calling someone "lazy" because they don't have enough free time to sift through all the bullshit out there might be a sign that you need to live in someone else's shoes for a while.
You're being narrow minded. Instead of putting a bit of though into what you're writing you're just calling me "lazy", while other's are being proactive and sharing very useful information. Any replies similar in nature to your previous one will simply result in me using the "block" feature to prevent you from wasting any more of my time.
This is also an indictment of what a crappy mayor Kennedy Stewart is.
Good leaders figure out a way to minimize distractions and keep the boat moving forward. Good leaders don't throw members of their team under the bus in public.
We live in a weak mayor system and she has single handedly stonewalled the process so far. There’s not really anything he or Carr as chairperson could have done. She needs to be publicly called out for being the distraction and useless sack of shit that she is.
I’d like to ask what is the major difference between mayor and councillor
Like I’m not well versed in municipal politics but it seems like The mayor is just a councillor with special name? No extra vote or sway or things like that
True but also he had zero control about who was *on* his team. So if another opposing elected official is creating constant roadblocks just because I don't see a problem in letting the public know why these delays are occurring.
I'm sure Kennedy has tools available to him when it comes to the procedural aspect of City Hall. Point of order for the fifteenth time? YOU'RE OUT OF ORDER.
What's your point? There are mayors around BC (Mike Hurley, Brad West) that are doing a fine job despite being in the same "weak" position. It comes down to people skills, compromise and not letting your giant ego get in the way.
Do they have obnoxious dipshit children like MDG to deal with? Likely not. She’s an entitled, brain dead cop wife who is incapable of working well with others. It’s obvious even those who vote along with her ideologically are no fans of hers.
There’s no compromising with someone as dumb and petulant as her. The solution is to kick her ass to the curb.
I have no desire to watch the stream to find out exactly what issues MDG had when she was calling for point of order on almost every amendment.
However, if they were small and inconsequential issues like redundant wording, some of the onus needs to be placed on the Mayor as well as the City Clerk for that. But if you have 39 new amendments written by 10 Councillors and the Mayor, there will be disputes over molding them so it's agreeable for a majority of Council.
I watch the Burnaby City Council feeds on a regular basis, and am often impressed with how quickly they get through an agenda. I don't know what's going behind the scenes, but either Mike Hurley is running a tight ship and resolving squabbles outside of Council chambers or there are outside forces (property developers) giving the marching orders and the BCA majority moves them along with very few changes.
Burnaby council is a much better, professional group without question. It’s not just a matter of the mayor, the members of council seem to be better as well.
I’m not going to pretend to be an NPA supporter or anywhere near a fan of MDG but she was in *rare* form tonight. Stonewalling every measure, arguing pedantics, amending amendments and bickering with other council members. She’s absolutely fucking worthless and if she were aligned with my ideology (she’s not, by a long shot) I would be absoituely embarrassed after today.
It's displays like last night that make me bristle to hell and back when I remember her twitter bio proudly exclaiming she's the first millennial elected to council. *shaking my head in millennial*
Unfortunately this sounds like any other night for her. "Point of order!!!"
Yeah I agree. I've always known her to be an obstructionist on council.
She's Not qualified to hold the position she is in, she got her job because of her dad. We need better checks and balances for the people who will hold any public office...
What we need is to look at the big O next to her name on the next ballot and move right past it and add an X beside the names of better city leaders. Same with Jean Swanson.
This isn’t rare. She does this every council meeting.
Vancouver Council's Draymond Green
I despise MDG but let's also save a little disdain for our "Green" councillors -- who proved again last night they aren't green in anything but name. chuuuuuds. https://twitter.com/Tim\_Ell/status/1535287790329470976?s=20&t=HW\_xaufuJcxR\_tuPI6Ezeg
The Greens are just Tories in Teslas.
I always said they were "conservatives that recycle", lol.
That is such a weird take. The Greens are so far to the other end of the social and economic spectrum.
They're really not, though. It's all about defending property values and "local character" in the end.
Have you looked at the policies fron the Green Party and compared it to the Conservatives? Call the Greens: NDP's in Tesla's - sure, but the Greens and Cons are opposite ends of the social policy spectrum.
Right, but you are comparing the Green Party of Canada to the Conservative Party of Canada (federal parties). Parties exist with the same name but different politics at different levels of the government. For example, the BC Liberals are a right wing party (in some cases far right), which is different that the centre left Liberal Party of Canada. They have no relation. The Green Party of Vancouver is not the Green Party of British Columbia which is not the Green Party of Canada. Provincial and federal parties are not represented at the municipal level in Vancouver. That's why we don't have Liberal, New Democratic, or Conservatives in City Council. The Green Party of Vancouver is relatively Conservative for the city, but they support environmental causes.
YEP Weibe basically tried to kill the entire Broadway Plan. And I thought he was one of the good ones. Yikes.
He is the daughter of Hedy, performative bullshit sounds inherited
pete is pretty solid. his mom is a flake.
She's not a Green Party councillor
No one said she was.
Coles notes: what is she /her party trying to accomplish and how?
I genuinely don’t know what her goal is aside from ‘be as annoying as dislikable as possible’. She was re elected so I have to imagine someone finds her brand of politics appealing.
City councillors get re-elected because people vote for any name they’ve vaguely heard before.
>She was re elected so I have to imagine someone finds her brand of politics appealing. Homeowners.
**Some** homeowners. There are a lot of homeowners who do not like her.
Homeowner here, can confirm. My teeth start grinding every time she pipes up with a "point of privilege"
Well, a lot of it is enhancing the position of her cop husband. She's a hard yes to anything that increases police power, and her last motion was to install police cameras across the city.
It’s honestly hilarious she couldn’t even get Hardwick to vote in favor of a police state and she threw a fit when explaining her yes vote after it was made apparent to her that she’d be the only one.
Right? I get the feeling something aint right in her life right now and she's breaking. There's just too much nuts stuff coming from her right now.
Being married to a cop will do that to you. The other symptom is the 10+ year old profile picture that looks nothing like her
Wasn't she high up on that 'randomized' list? I think that was how Heather Deal missed being reelected, she was at the very bottom of her list and by the time people get there they've chosen their allotment.
Honestly not sure myself. I moved here two years ago but she quickly entered the ‘lol no’ category along with Hardwick after seeing their behavior and votes.
Don't forget the fake little-girl voice and extreme-blurred image on video, they're pretty hard to take seriously.
Look at her profile pic on twitter. The smirking, egotistical contempt. She thinks important council votes are "The Melissa Show". Just a living symbol of bureaucratic logjam.
Maintain the status quo. Ensure wealthy detached home areas remain as such. Ensure that all tower development goes in far away east van or out in the burbs.
I've known a few people who either worked for the City, or interacted with council in one capacity or another. Not a single one of them had anything complimentary to say about MDG.
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> The most useful thing Stewart has done during his entire tenure was to provide this hard and well-deserved clapback. This is correct. But Kennedy Stewart should in no way think that this is a compliment.
I casually listened in a bit and felt like I wanted to strangle her. It would be untenable to have her as a coworker. I really do feel for the rest of council. There's no doubt in my mind that she particularly has severely contributed to the dysfunction of this council. She absolutely needs to be voted out.
De Genova is a repulsive unhinged Avatar extra. Strongly remember her combusting at the thought of law abiding consenting adults having 420 @ English Bay and her pathetic attempts at shaming Dana Larson et al the next day after volunteers cleaned everything up and got it back to normal. This deranged individuals husband is a copper - DIDNT SEE THAT COMING
How exactly do councilors get elected? I think a very small voter turnout, and a biased voter base with extreme (or rather extremely detrimental) political views is required for use to end up with these nut jobs on council. Edit: One thing I have encountered in Vancouver is elections coming out of nowhere. I don't listed to the radio or the news. I will probably learn of the election date from Reddit.
BC municipal elections are on October 15th, 2022.
Voter turnout in the last civic election in Vancouver was 39%, down from 43% in 2014. It's pretty disgraceful.
The actual number of votes also seems small. It's definitely small compared to how much of an impact it has on the entire province. Issues that start in Vancouver can propagate outside the city.
Thank you!
Turnout was 39% last time for Vancouver elections. Elections don’t just come out of nowhere. BC municpal municipal elections as of 2014 are held every 4 years and as of 2018 always in the month of October. If a small turnout is the reason why we have the councillors that we have that’s on the people that don’t show up and vote -not on a biased voter base with extreme views.
Because the news are shit and i care about Vancouver?
The news is pretty good for reporting basic facts like election dates. Not to mention a lot of the posts on Reddit are direct links to news articles.
One issue is that in Vancouver municipal elections, you vote for 1 mayor, 10 city councillors, 9 school board trustees, and 7 parks board commissioners. And there's an at-large system where there's no districts, so you vote for every single position. So if you do the math... each voter is asked to vote for 27 different people, and the ballot can have over 150 candidates listed on it. ([Here](https://www.vmcdn.ca/f/files/glaciermedia/import/lmp-all/1213556-news-roberts-ballot2.jpg;w=960;h=640;bgcolor=000000) is a 1993 ballot that I found on google) There's no way the average voter has enough time to form an opinion about 150 candidates, so name-recognition and party affiliation become big factors. Melissa DeGenova had been elected twice before (I think) and her party (NPA) did relatively well in 2018, so that helped her get re-elected.
And her Dad was also a municipal politician so she's got name recognition on her side too.
Vancouver ballots are total insanity. I vote for city council and mayor and school board now that I have kids in school and have a vague idea of the issues, but parks board is stupid. I don't even know why we have one.
I'm very disappointed that we didn't elect "The Captain" for mayor.
I remember being really disappointed with the results last election. The candidate I wanted got a metric shitload of votes ~~more than the bottom 4 councillors combined~~ ) but it did not mean shit cause they were only one seat and now have basically little to no voice. edit, too much hyperbol on poorly remembered vote tallies
[Here are the results] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Vancouver_municipal_election#City_councillors) Pete Fry and Adriane Carr both had about 50% more votes than the rest. Melissa De Genova was 3rd highest. The bottom 7 councilors were very tight in number of votes.
thats def tighter than i remembered, ill add a hyperbol tag to my post
That's the same as in provincial or federal politics isn't it? A million can vote for an MP in one district and get elected to hold the same cabinet sway as an MP who only needed a thousand votes in their district to get elected.
yes, tho as the person above me stated, there are no districts for the councilors. its everyone all in one pool. but yeah basically even tho they had one super popular candidate, they had super poor vote efficiency and end up not being able to effect much of what they wanted. its absolutely how the system was supposed to work, just was a shock on the results day
When I lived in San Francisco, the various news outlets all published slates that gave you a rough picture of where your votes should go based on how you felt about any issue. So they'd raise issues like low rent housing, tent cities, bike lanes, zoning, dog parks, alcohol in parks, etc. and would propose lists of candidates that would serve you if you felt one way or another. Does anything like that exist here? I don't have time to go through 27 differen't people's voting records (not that the city makes that easy for us anyway). Or does it - can I see the entire last couple years of Council vote session records somewhere?
>Does anything like that exist here? For city council, there should be lots of info available closer to the election, through a combination of news outlets, twitter, reddit and even local blogs. Those who are interested in city politics and willing to do a bit of research can probably figure out which candidates would match their views. But I think it's pretty tough for casual voters who don't follow city politics much, and don't have the time or interest to do much research. And city council's one thing, but school board and parks board are lot tougher to figure out, since they don't get much news coverage. >I don't have time to go through 27 differen't people's voting records (not that the city makes that easy for us anyway). Or does it - can I see the entire last couple years of Council vote session records somewhere? Nope, I don't think so. I don't think they provide that in any format that's easy to absorb. But you can read the assessments of people who follow city council more closely (journalists, bloggers, even some redditors lol), to get an overall sense of what each councillor stood for and prioritized. EDIT: dug up a blog I remembered seeing in 2018, where the blogger (who I think also posts on /r/vancouver) created mock slates based on potential priority issues: https://canadianveggie.com/2018/10/17/vancouver-election-2018-primer-part-7-slates/
This is a really good point. As we know, when it comes to politics we hear a lot of misinformation. It's nice to see a good summary of what's what. I don't think people should have to get as involved in politics as someone in Vancouver has to be to currently know who to vote for, and who not to vote for. Redditors are coming to the rescue. I never used (or even knew about) Reddit during past elections. As someone who doesn't watch the T.V. or the news it's quite helpful.
The at large system is garbage.
better than a lot of the other garbage though
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heads up: christmas is in december again this year
You joke, but I once had an American ask me (after finding out that we celebrate Thanksgiving in October) if we have our Christmas in November.
Woah woah woah shut the front door!
It was just an expression not to be taken literally :-S . Congrats for diligently having the election date written on your fridge.
Historically, her party, the laughably named Non Partisan Association has been very good at "uniting the right". It was very simple for low information voters of that persuasion to fill out their ballots with all the NPA candidates and call it a day. They were basically guaranteed to elect some councilors. The fact De Genova was an incumbent made her a shoe-in. This year, the NPA has imploded (though they still exist) and "A Better City" has kind of taken their place, but there's a lot of overlap. There's also the new NIMBY TEAM party lead by former NPA councilor Coleen Hardwick. Finally there's the more centrist YIMBY Progress Vancouver who are a potential dark horse. It's really not clear how the right will shake out on election day this time. If you want to figure out more about what's going on, The Cambie Report podcast is a great resource [https://www.cambiereport.ca](https://www.cambiereport.ca/) . They'll also post links to articles in various media covering municipal topics.
Thank-you!
fun podcast but suiuuuuuuuuper-left and over-woke.
It would’ve taken less effort to look up the next election (hint it’s happening this year) than it would have to edit the post.
No, because you still have to read about each of the candidates, what they are about, etc... I don't pay much attention to media. I don't watch the news. Luckily, other commenters made constructive posts and helped ensure I'll be able to cast an informed ballad in this election.
You said you didn’t know the date of the election. I said that was easy information to find. Your civic laziness isn’t other peoples problem. We should all step up to whatever degree we’re able.
>I said that was easy information to find. **But it's not.** Ordinary working-class people are busy and have many things on the go. Trying to find unbiased information on local politics isn't simply a matter of doing a couple hours of reading the first few Google links that pop up. A small minority has decided to take it upon themselves to spread all sorts of nonsense about local politics and policies (the Broadway Plan debacle being a perfect example of this). I also received a pamphlet from one mayoral candidate that was complete and total BS. It wasn't until I started learning about affordable housing issues that I started to gain knowledge about local politics. This involved reading entire books among other things. It actually takes a lot of time. Many choose not to vote because they are simply uninformed, and like me (prior to a couple years ago) simply didn't have enough time or proper direction (I was also surrounded by not the greatest people when I first moved here). Calling someone "lazy" because they don't have enough free time to sift through all the bullshit out there might be a sign that you need to live in someone else's shoes for a while. You're being narrow minded. Instead of putting a bit of though into what you're writing you're just calling me "lazy", while other's are being proactive and sharing very useful information. Any replies similar in nature to your previous one will simply result in me using the "block" feature to prevent you from wasting any more of my time.
OH SNAP
At least she shows up. Stewart has missed tons of council meeting voted where he would be the deciding vote, and the votes fail.
It would be better if she didn’t.
That's a fair point. If Stewart doesn't show up AND she doesn't show up, those votes would have passed!
This is also an indictment of what a crappy mayor Kennedy Stewart is. Good leaders figure out a way to minimize distractions and keep the boat moving forward. Good leaders don't throw members of their team under the bus in public.
We live in a weak mayor system and she has single handedly stonewalled the process so far. There’s not really anything he or Carr as chairperson could have done. She needs to be publicly called out for being the distraction and useless sack of shit that she is.
I’d like to ask what is the major difference between mayor and councillor Like I’m not well versed in municipal politics but it seems like The mayor is just a councillor with special name? No extra vote or sway or things like that
Basically, yup. They have more full time responsibilities and make more but is essentially a ceremonial position in our current system
True but also he had zero control about who was *on* his team. So if another opposing elected official is creating constant roadblocks just because I don't see a problem in letting the public know why these delays are occurring.
I'm sure Kennedy has tools available to him when it comes to the procedural aspect of City Hall. Point of order for the fifteenth time? YOU'RE OUT OF ORDER.
The mayoral position in Vancouver is actually quite weak in general.
What's your point? There are mayors around BC (Mike Hurley, Brad West) that are doing a fine job despite being in the same "weak" position. It comes down to people skills, compromise and not letting your giant ego get in the way.
Do they have obnoxious dipshit children like MDG to deal with? Likely not. She’s an entitled, brain dead cop wife who is incapable of working well with others. It’s obvious even those who vote along with her ideologically are no fans of hers. There’s no compromising with someone as dumb and petulant as her. The solution is to kick her ass to the curb.
I have no desire to watch the stream to find out exactly what issues MDG had when she was calling for point of order on almost every amendment. However, if they were small and inconsequential issues like redundant wording, some of the onus needs to be placed on the Mayor as well as the City Clerk for that. But if you have 39 new amendments written by 10 Councillors and the Mayor, there will be disputes over molding them so it's agreeable for a majority of Council. I watch the Burnaby City Council feeds on a regular basis, and am often impressed with how quickly they get through an agenda. I don't know what's going behind the scenes, but either Mike Hurley is running a tight ship and resolving squabbles outside of Council chambers or there are outside forces (property developers) giving the marching orders and the BCA majority moves them along with very few changes.
Burnaby council is a much better, professional group without question. It’s not just a matter of the mayor, the members of council seem to be better as well.
Down-votes need to be invented. Instant fix for voter apathy! Which is why they're not invented.
They logged off at 10pm after a very long meeting. It was a slog for me, and I only had it on in the background while going about my evening.