COMING SOON: A 12-PART SERIES ON VANCOUVER CITY HALL

 🤪 COMING SOON: A 12-PART SERIES ON VANCOUVER CITY HALL

There are a lot of questions being raised about transparency, accountability, public money, senior staff departures, development, public land and access to information at Vancouver City Hall.

Rather than make sweeping accusations, we're going to slow down and follow the paper trail.

Over the next 12 posts, we're going to examine what we can actually document — what we know, what we don't know, what City officials say, what independent investigations have found, and what questions remain unanswered.

🔎 THE SERIES

1. The $6 Million Question
Vancouver's extraordinary 2025 severance payments. Who received them, why, and what can the public actually find out?

2. Goodbye, QuickFind
An aging public employee directory disappeared in 2024. Was it simply obsolete? Probably. But why wasn't a modern replacement created?

3. Where Did All the Senior Officials Go?
A timeline of major departures from City Hall and what has — and hasn't — been publicly explained.

4. Who Watches the Watchers?
The City Clerk, Deputy City Clerk and their statutory responsibilities — and why their departures raised questions among councillors.

5. The Chief Building Official & The Single-Stair Debate
Building safety, development pressure, Space Efficient Stairs and the chronology surrounding the departure of Saul Schwebs.

6. 601 Beach Crescent: Follow the Money
The Auditor General's findings on one Vancouver land transaction — including the nearly $13-million calculation error and $12.1-million CAC issue.

7. The $26 Million Interest Question
What the Auditor General actually found about delayed land payments — and why calling it "$26 million lost" isn't quite accurate.

8. Vancouver's Public Land
How the City sells and manages public property, what the Auditor General found, and why this matters to every Vancouver taxpayer.

9. Warnings That Went Unheeded
Recommendations dating back to 2016 and 2018 — and the uncomfortable question of why problems identified years ago weren't fully addressed.

10. Transparency: Promise vs. Reality
What was promised during the 2022 election — and what the public can actually see four years later.

11. The Bigger Picture
Do the individual stories form a pattern? We'll look at the evidence without pretending that correlation automatically proves causation.

12. Who Is Watching City Hall?
The final piece: what does democratic accountability look like when citizens have difficulty seeing who is making decisions, who is leaving, how public money is being handled, and why?

🧐 AND WE WANT YOU TO JOIN US

Don't just take our word for it.

Read the documents. Check the sources. Follow the links. Look at Council minutes. Read the Auditor General's reports. Search the FOI releases. Ask questions.

If you find something we've missed — tell us.

If you disagree with our interpretation — tell us why.

If you have primary documents, firsthand knowledge or information that can be independently verified — share it.

The goal isn't to tell you what to think.

The goal is to make it possible for more people to see what is happening and decide for themselves.

Because City Hall belongs to the public.

And in a democracy, we are not just spectators. We are witnesses. 👀🏛️

#Vancouver #CityHall #Transparency #Accountability #CivicPolitics #FollowTheMoney