We interrupt this headline to bring you the following:
Former mayor Michael Smith’s most consistent bitch in his seven-year tenure was that West Vancouverites were taxed too much for TransLink and got too little back.
Barely three weeks after Smith retired undefeated from the political ring – maybe a scar here or there – Metro’s public transit provider gave West Vancouver a gift it couldn’t refuse:
A North Shore B-Line. Politically correct bus lanes shrinking politically incorrect private vehicle traffic to one lane eastbound and one lane westbound through Dundarave and Ambleside for the express bus line to North Vancouver’s Phibbs Exchange.
And some West Vancouverites instantly bitched.
About 220, led by a scrappy leader that town hall may live to ignore at its peril, Nigel Malkin, showed up on a wet Saturday morning to protest TransLink’s project. He’s tangled with TransLink and personally counted and strongly disputed official traffic figures.
At one of two little-flagged TransLink information sessions late last month, Malkin recounted, as reported by Global News: “They advised us that they were going to close down two lanes of (Marine Drive) traffic and turn them into bus lanes. They went and said point-blank, staring us in the eye, that there was absolutely nothing that we could do about this.” (Not reported was that Malkin – owner of Malkin Cleaners, started by his great-grandfather as a hat-cleaning business in south London in 1909 and an Ambleside institution since 1978 – fired back: “You’ve said that to the wrong guy.”)
The plan of the traffic gods would graciously allow auto traffic’s use of bus lanes to cross for parking, for right turns, and for access to businesses and driveways.
In just days, the protest widened with (surprising) media coverage, petition signers and support from half a dozen organizations, Malkin claiming the opponents of the B-Line were “more than voted for Mary-Ann Booth.”
Of course the traffic doctors say the plan, like all bitter medicine, is good for you. (And here an interjection: More buses are needed, but in the right allocations and not at cost to present stressed auto traffic. Agreed, perfection is not an option.)
TransLink spokesman Chris Bryan gave assurances that WV business customers will continue to park along Marine Drive, and that the plan will separate left turners, right turners and through traffic – presto, faster overall travel times. Example: The 250 West Vancouver bus will arrive a big five minutes earlier in Downtown Vancouver. Whoopee.
Malkin retorts the B-Line will destroy the Ambleside-Dundarave shopping area. A pretty strong case: The buses, with only four stops on the WV stretch, would bypass many of WV’s central businesses.
But hold on. Won’t new Mayor Mary-Ann Booth and her freshened council stand up muscularly for West Van interests?
Booth’s response was feeble and disingenuous: “We are listening to the community, studying the details and considering how to best meet the community’s needs.” It’s preposterous that town hall, including then-mayor Smith and now Booth, were unaware that the B-Line was long being fine-tuned by the busy bureaucrats. Details apart, Booth and council are on side.
It’s a done deal, barring blood in the streets. A new council that with almost obscene haste held two closed meetings on sensitive matters – taxpayers underwriting two failed election recounts, covert demolition of the Brissenden house – mocks that tired campaign bleep vowing “clear, open and transparent” government.
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Agent 6Ckw5, who has some experience with the legislature, remarked recently that Speaker Darryl Plecas seemed to have “gone bonkers.”
Of course just a jest, “bonkers” being conversational slang for a condition not found in psychiatrists’ Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. But then came Plecas’s eccentric performance at a meeting of the legislative assembly management committee. This in the wake of the suspension of the legislature’s clerk and sergeant-at-arms.
Most unparliamentary of Plecas’s choice of words – to my old eye, strangely not right up in the first paragraph of press reports – was his statement regarding pertinent forensic audits: “If the outcome of those audits did not outrage the public, did not outrage taxpayers, did not make them throw up, I will resign as Speaker.” Throw up, sir?
In all fairness, the status of the legislative Speaker seems a lonely oddity, far more insulated from criticism – including of his or her accounts – than a premier or an MLA. It’s intriguing that the role is awarded with that capital “S” while generic references to the mere premier or prime minister are down-cased in most print media. There’s a dignity, almost aristocratic, afforded the bearer. Could be the hat.
And, more fairness, the Plecas saga is an unfinished work. West Vancouver-Capilano Liberal MLA Ralph Sultan had no doubt of this much: “At the legislative assembly management committee meeting, attempts to ask questions about finances and hiring in the Speaker’s office were shut down. It’s clear the New Democrats have no interest in giving the public the answers and transparency to which they are entitled.”
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And to think that I planned this column to be a merry Christmas of sage musings and witty epigrams – the definition of a chrestomathy (you knew that)! I’ll quote only this from my list – the other major Christmas figure, author of A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, as described by his artist daughter Katey: “He was not a good man, but he was wonderful.”
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