For nearly 75 years, the imposing grey art deco city hall building at the corner of 12th and Cambie has been a symbol of civic government in Vancouver. But for more than a year, city hall has harboured a secret, one created in the confusion of a growing and independent bureaucracy and complicated by changing politics and the 2010 Olympics. The upper seven floors of the 11-storey tower, built in 1936, are completely empty. Last summer the entire engineering department moved into a newly built 86,000-square-foot commercial space at Cambie and Broadway that the city has leased for $41 million over the next 10 years. The city spent another $7 million to outfit and move the department. The move came in the same year the city laid off 158 people and raised taxes by 2.26 per cent to cover a $61-million shortfall in its $961-million budget. That move, and another one this summer involving the social development, housing and cultural affairs departments moving into three city-owned floors of the renovated Woodward’s heritage building were done in the absence of any master plan, something city manager Penny Ballem says can’t happen again. She has now put a stop to departments making their own lease arrangements and wants to consolidate services back into a few city-owned buildings.
“I have never, ever, in my whole career — and I’ve worked in many public sector organizations — been in an organization where every department got to go out and lease their own space and make those kinds of decisions,” she said. (more)
2 comments:
Is this what you call the left hand not knowing what the right is doing.
The Engineering dept. must have been taking lessons from Obamination in Washington, DC.
Robert, your red neck is glowing!
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