John Jensen

I thought the two-part series on drunk driving in the North Shore was quite good, revealing a number of things of which I wasn't quite aware.  I didn't know the number of convictions was so high, as well as the number of appeals and successful plea bargains.

While Tumblr seems to be the trendiest blogstream platform these days, it was having severe performance problems when I was trying to work with it a few days ago, so I decided to use Posterous.  I wanted to use a hosting platform that would automagically let me make smaller posts more frequently, handle images and videos cleanly, and just generally be easier to use.  So Posterous it is.

The agenda for Monday's council meeting is available.  There are a number of interesting issues up for discussion:

1. Council will be asked, for I think the first time, to formally endorse incineration ("waste-to-energy") as the preferred option for Metro Vancouver's future solid waste strategy, with a further recommendation that such facilities be integrated into district energy systems.
2. What looks to be an interesting presentation on financing affordable housing from Vancity.
   
3. A Temporary Use Permit for the Lion's Gate Christian Academy to use some vacant waterfront land in the Harbourview area for their school.  The information presented to council indicates that the City will likely lose about $34K in tax revenue if this proceeds.  Given that the school and landowner are not interested in permanently locating there, and that the permit under consideration would only last for two years, I don't think that's too big a price to pay.  I would feel differently if this were a permanent request.
4. Bylaw 8086 is for a final vote.  This one requires that all new multifamily developments in the City must hook up to the Lonsdale Energy Corporation district heating system, unless the Finance Director of the City says that the costs of hooking up are too high.  I'm surprised that this has not prompted further discussion since my understanding is that hydronic heating is more expensive for developers to install than other (eg baseboard electric) systems.
5. Contributing $50-60,000 toward the cost of installing a sprinkler system in the brightly-coloured heritage building at 8th Street and St. Andrews.  Along with the project would be some streetscape upgrades as well as an official heritage designation for the property.
   
6. The City's 2009 Annual Municipal Report has been prepared and will be the subject of a Public Hearing on July 12th.  I'll comment more about this later.
   

http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/06/22/b-c-woman-hits-moose-on-way-to-visit-sister-who-hit-moose/

I was riding my bike by the convention center when Michael Ignatieff was making a speech about his upcoming trip to China.

http://sf.streetsblog.org/2010/06/01/the-heart-of-sfpark-finally-complete-with-vehicle-sensor-installation/

http://www.timescolonist.com/news/premier+slams+CSIS+director+over+foreign+infiltration+allegations/3191469/story.html

I don't understand why the North Vancouver school district's meetings are so poorly documented for the public using the web. The agendas are incredibly spartan, and none of the documents referred to in the agenda or the resulting minutes are available online. Compare this to pretty well any municipality, where nearly all reports are easily available on the web. Keeping everything secret does not do much to increase public understanding of or involvement in the public school system.

The B.C. Comptroller-General's special report on the finances and governance of the Vancouver School Board was publicly released yesterday, and as many other commentators have noted, it is absolutely scathing in its condemnation of the Board's management processes. I've read a lot of public sector reports and I don't think I've ever seen one as blunt. While there are many recommendations which are relevant for all school boards, and indeed many other types of public sector organizations, there were two that caught my eye when comparing to the North Vancouver School Board. Majority of Board members on subcommittees Some VSB subcommittees include a majority of Board (4 of 7 trustees) members. The Comptroller-General notes that

Good practice prescribes that the Board members on a Committee of the Board not constitute a majority of the Board as a whole; this is because any decision of a Committee comprising a majority of Board members is effectively a decision of the Board, meaning the Board‟s role becomes redundant.

I didn't look at all the North Vancouver School Board subcommittees, but saw that for arguably the most important one, the Finance and Facilities Standing Committee, a majority of Board members attend. For example, from reading the minutes of the subcommittee's meeting on May 4th one can see that Trustees Back, Buchanan, Forward, and Skinner were present. Blurred relationship with stakeholder members on subcommittees Similar, the Comptroller-General's report noted that at the VSB, subcommittees often included multiple stakeholders:

There is further concern with Committee structure as it relates to the relative roles of the voting (Trustee) and non-voting (stakeholder) members. While Committees members are provided on an annual basis with information from staff on the relative roles and responsibilities of the voting and non-voting members, there is little distinction between or separation of roles in practice. This is because the decision-making process in Committees is "by consensus", meaning that stakeholder groups can (and do) have considerable influence on the proceedings and decisions of the Committees diluting the accountability of the Trustees.

She goes on to recommend:

Changing the operations of the Committees to ensure that the participation of stakeholder representatives is restricted to the provision of input only, with no involvement in the decision-making process.

I have never attended one of these subcommittee meetings, and cannot find a written summary of the stakeholder review process on the NVSD's website, but it appears from reading meeting minutes that this approach is also in place at the NVSD. At the May 4th meeting, for example, attendees from most or all stakeholder groups were present at the meeting and even voted via a survey which of 21 possible budget directions should be prioritized. Before I read the Comptroller-General's report, I had assumed that the school board had a similar stakeholder advisory processes to that of most municipalities. Municipalities have a large number of official advisory bodies, but they sit quite separately from councils and their input is very clearly only advisory -- the council meets separately and makes all decisions. As the Comptroller-General notes, having this type of consensus decision-making, with vague boundaries between narrowly-focused stakeholders and (ideally) broader-minded trustees, makes it much more difficult to make tough decisions. It makes more palatable "lowest common denominator" options, like reducing the number of days in the school calendar, as the pain is evenly spread between all stakeholder groups. It reminds me of the "Rae Days" solution that the Ontario government instituted in the 1990s. All that said, the NVSD is in better shape than the VSB. It has made a number of tough school closure and new construction decisions. While there is a significant amount of Board advocacy from the Board to the Ministry of Education it does not appear to match the intensity or volume of that of the VSB. One would hope that the Board reviews these two particular recommendations from the Comptroller-General, as well as all the others, as it moves forward.