Council then reconvened for one minute, where it was explained the public would have another 15 minutes to provide feedback, as day three of this public hearing turns into day four.
Council is now in break again.
This is the 17th time in the last 17 months Vancouver Council has had a meeting scheduled for a single day take at least three days to complete.
One meeting a month, taking triple the time scheduled.
It is hard to imagine another city council in Canada that comes close.
What have been the biggest stories to come out of these 17 meetings?
- Four properties rezoned
- Motions to lobby higher levels of government on things
- Staff asked to study things further (affordability, climate emergency, etc.)
- The 2021 budget was passed
That's it.
It is now 12:03 am on the 4th day of this public hearing.
Councillors are now arguing with the mayor whether the 5th day of the meeting will happen next week, or in December.
The mayor says there is no time to continue the meeting until then.
The agenda is packed until then.
council has adjourned for the night
the meeting, the 17th one to go more than three days in the last 17 months, will continue five weeks from now.
it's beautiful to see
it's always going to be
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was not planning on reading a 72 page book tonight but i'm a sucker for punishment
The question to the government, if one remembers (I do! life was painful!) was simple:
- Did it collect #COVID19 data on a NEIGHBOURHOOD level on a weekly basis?
Seemed like basic information about a deadly pandemic the public would want to know.
So I asked.
Less than AN HOUR LATER, the BC Centre for Disease Control had a response: it didn't "produce a regular data file", but did once, and was balancing privacy concerns.
Which is not super satisfying, but a) was true, b) provided quickly.
At a time when every other province has much lower per capita case counts, or a trendline that's been going significantly down, B.C.'s rolling average went up 13%, with active case counts and hospitalizations essentially static.
Not great!
Most of this is due to another big surge in Northern B.C., which is seeing transmission similar to Alberta and Saskatchewan at the moment.
But none of the other four health authorities saw a real decline this week, and a couple saw a gentle rise.
"Look at my phone," says John Horgan, as he defends the province's FOI proposals.
he turns his smartphone to media
"I play Scrabble, I have Spotify ... I know what the weather is going to be like in Prince Rupert."
what...what is happening
Horgan also says that the FOI fee has not been settled, and in fact there may be no fee, and then argues what he says are good parts of the proposal that have nothing to do with the fee.
this is just such an awkward retreat
For context: the B.C. government says the opposition makes FOI requests for screenshots of Ministers' home screens, and it's an abuse of the system.
The question was about the proposed $25 fee for all requests.
The story quotes a UBC mathematician who’s helped with official modelling and says these numbers are hard to measure, and I’ve mentioned a few times the limits of B.C.’s IT.
But I think it’s more germane that the government said something was accurate when it clearly wasn’t.
Overall a moderately encouraging week in B.C. for reducing transmission, with the rolling average down 5% and active cases essentially stable, despite ongoing weird data corrections in different regions
The B.C. government provided the figures for one day of the number people still in hospital originally for #COVID19, but who no longer count to the daily total.
So we can't really chart that, but here's what it looks like in comparison for one day.
Here's a tiny story about everybody's favourite show: British Columbia, pandemic data, and government transparency.
Today's episode: the case of the 99% vaccination rate!
It took some time, but the government now breaks down % of people vaccinated in a pretty detailed way: not just by local health area, but by age and by health region.
And that publicly available data says that 99% of people 18-29 in Coastal Health have gotten a vaccine dose.
99% of people 18-29 in Vancouver Coastal Health vaccinated would be an amazing story, and an unbelievable success for public health officials in convincing a demographic that across the world has been a bit slower to get a shot.