John Jensen

The City has just added Council Expenses to the Open Data web site. These are the expenses that each Council member has incurred while conducting business on behalf of the City.  Summary information is available for years 2002 - 2009 and detailed expense transactions are available starting in year 2010.  For more information, visit the Council expenses page on Open Data catalogue (http://data.vancouver.ca/datacatalogue/councilExpenses.htm).

Cost proposals to upgrade the North White's sewage treatment infrastructure range from $400m to $2.8b

http://www.bclocalnews.com/greater_vancouver/northshoreoutlook/news/120393869.html

In my twitter feed today...

"jeffnagel: Cities outside Vancouver brace for new casino hunt: Downtown rejection means game may be afoot elsewhere http://t.co/r2Tyb01"

http://twitter.com/jeffnagel/status/60845501792256000

For the last half of 2010 I helped to create and was a member of the City of North Vancouver's Civic Engagement Task Force, charged with improving civic engagement and, ultimately, voter turnout in the City. We met every few weeks and produced a lengthy report. One of its many recommendations was that the City should produce a simple map on the website showing all the proposed development projects that were working their way through the system.

In early April the City staff presented council with a report that summarized the costs and other implications of the recommendations in our report. While I was pleased to see that staff and council supported nearly all of our suggestions, I was surprised to see that the cost of providing this web map was listed at $40,000, particularly when the raw data necessary for creating it is already available on the City's website.

So I thought I would put one together myself.  You can see it at http://map.jjensen.ca.

I've set it to update twice per day, so it will always be up-to-date.  Those (few?) of you who follow these things may find it interesting.