SULLIVAN KEEPS HIS EYE ON THE PRIZE

Mayor Knows There's Been Criticism, But Expects His Plans To Show
Results In The Next 18 Months

VANCOUVER - Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan knows there's been a lot of
criticism about his first 18 months in office. But he's not paying
attention to that.

And he thinks the public won't either, when they see his plans start
to show results in the next 18 months.

By November 2008, Vancouver will have a minimum of 1,000 people
enrolled in a series of unprecedented drug-substitution trials, which
will make an immediate impact on crime levels, homelessness, and the
city's drug market, Sullivan says.

There will be community courts to deal with chronic offenders and a
new police chief. The city's bylaw powers will have been strengthened
to deal with everything from panhandling to street fighting, and the
city and province will be well on their way with a plan to re-open
Riverview for 500 of Vancouver's worst cases of mental illness.

There will be, if all goes well, 2,400 more units of social housing
than there were in November 2005.

And, finally, Vancouver will have taken a radical step forward in
urban planning by endorsing a policy that says that environmental
impact, not livability, is the top priority in any new city
development.

Those will be the concrete results of his many ambitious initiatives
with their catchy names -- EcoDensity, Project Civil City, Inner
Change Society -- that were launched in the first half of his term.

UNIQUE INITIATIVES

"When these start to bear fruit, it will be pretty obvious to people
what it was all about," Sullivan said in a Vancouver Sun interview at
the mid-point of his term.

Sullivan's supporters have to be hoping all of that comes
true.

Because even they acknowledge that things have not gone as well as
could be hoped so far.

That's in spite of any number of accomplishments a mayor should be
able to brag about. Sullivan has managed to get a wide range of
prominent people and groups, some of them not traditionally supporters
of centre-right governments, to endorse his unique
initiatives.

He can and does claim that he's been able to get major housing money
from the province and $2 million from the federal government for
Stanley Park.

In spite of occasional signs of internal dissension that bubble to the
surface, he and his party, the Non-Partisan Association, have so far
been able to head off an eruption of the kind of all-out warfare that
damaged their opposition in the last term and their own party the term
before.

And he has worked like the proverbial canine.

But that's being overshadowed by confusion about his wide-ranging
agenda, his insistence on loading every report and communication with
an encyclopedia's worth of ideas and goals, and his predilection for
thinking out loud.

As a result, he's not just getting criticism from the expected
sources, like opposition parties, civil-liberties and housing
advocates, and city unions.

Critics repeatedly make the point that Sullivan is ineffective and
full of rambling talk that is leading nowhere.

"There are a lot of media releases, but we're no further ahead than we
were in 2005," says Vision Vancouver Coun. Raymond Louie. "Rather than
taking concrete action, he's contracted out city business to others.
And when you talk to Housing Minister Rich Coleman, he says his
housing buys had nothing to do with the city."

What's of greater concern in the Sullivan regime is that it's his own
natural allies who have concerns about where the mayor is headed.

Bob Ransford, a developer, former Conservative party organizer and
one-time adviser to former premier Bill Vander Zalm, says Sullivan is
not where a rookie mayor should be at the midpoint.

"I don't know if there is a clear agenda. He floats a lot of big ideas
for the sake of floating them," says Ransford, who says Sullivan's
style is reminiscent of Vander Zalm's and the opposite of the steady,
clearly articulated course set by someone like Prime Minister Stephen
Harper. EcoDensity "was a very brilliant slogan but then he turned it
all over to the bureaucracy. And I think they resented he created that
slogan without giving them credit."

Ransford says that private conversations he's had with Sullivan lead
him to worry that Sullivan is hesitant about following through with
his bold plans.

Project Civil City is another confusing project, Ransford
says.

"Other than appointing [former attorney-general Geoff] Plant [as the
civil city commissioner], I don't know what it was about."

And, says Ransford, Sullivan's approach to federal and provincial
governments has been scattergun and, so far, ineffective.

"What's he got so far? The 10 hotels are just a Band-Aid
solution."

Former mayor Philip Owen, who came out strongly in support of Sullivan
during the election, also worries about where he is headed. "There's a
lot of good things he's suggested and got started, but there's too
many of them. There's an awful lot of unfinished business floating up
in the air."

Former mayor Mike Harcourt is a big fan of Sullivan's EcoDensity plan.
But, he says, it's too early to tell how Sullivan is doing because
nothing tangible is in place yet and "everything depends on the execution."

Former councillor Gordon Price believes Sullivan has set major and
solid policy planks in place and they will be followed by tangible
results.

But even he, like other supporters, acknowledges there's a lack of
public enthusiasm for Sullivan. Some blame it on his staff. Some blame
it on the media. Some say it's Sullivan himself.

He can be boyishly personable one-on-one. He's got a disarming
willingness to expose himself in a way most mayors won't, from
thinking aloud in ways that make his media handlers cringe to taking a
bath onscreen in the documentary Citizen Sam. And he gets standing
ovations at gatherings in the Chinese community from audiences
enchanted with his ability to give long speeches in Cantonese.

But something is not connecting when it comes to his ability to
connect to the larger public, which is an essential function of the
mayor's job.

"He doesn't have the strength or the charisma of mayors in the past,"
says Price, who is no fan of the cult of celebrity politicians. But if
Sullivan is going to succeed, "he has to make himself better liked.
Charisma and image count and he's missing that."

To Price, Sullivan has mastered the art of being a progressive
right-wing mayor in the same way Gordon Campbell did. That's not just
a good political tactic that outflanks the opposition but it's the
only way to get the public on board with needed social reforms.

"It's the right that can more effectively bring in change than the
left," Price says.

DEVELOPER DISMAYED

He has certainly been willing to alienate the developer community --
again, something that only a right-wing government can typically do
because, really, where else do the developers have to go?

Certainly David Negrin, a vice-president at Concord Pacific and the
head of the Urban Development Institute, is not sounding positive these
days.

Negrin started off cautiously optimistic about Sullivan, although
worried that he did not seem to be making any efforts to establish a
relationship with the city's development community.

In the last month, that cautious optimism has changed to dismay.
Negrin says the door continues to remain mostly closed at city hall.
That's especially a problem because the city has lost a lot of senior
staff, like head planner Larry Beasley and deputy city manager Brent
MacGregor, who had the authority to make decisions that the new and
younger staff don't.

Recently, the council's decision to impose a temporary ban on
conversion or demolition of any rental-housing buildings in key parts
of the city, without even a phone call to the development community to
talk with them about it, was a shock.

"The biggest disappointment to us is that he did not work with the
development community on the moratorium," Negrin said.

Developers, like the political strategists, also remain confused by
Sullivan's EcoDensity initiative. At a speech this spring, the city's
new head planner, Brent Toderian, asked a room of 300 people from the
development industry if they knew what EcoDensity meant. Not a single
hand went up.

"The jury is still out on it right now," says Peter Simpson of the
Greater Vancouver Home Builders' Association. "Not everybody knows
exactly what it means. It's just a lot of buzzwords flying around right
now."

But, Simpson says, the concrete decisions coming out of council are
positive and unambiguous. Last month, the city approved a townhouse
development at 37th and Dunbar -- a first for that area. That was a
clear signal that the NPA council is willing to uphold its support for
density in the heart of its voting bloc, in spite of some vocal opposition.

"I will give him full marks for that. It's given our members hope and
applications are starting to come in when people see decisions like
that."

If there's one group that's solidly approving of what Sullivan has
done, it's the non-developer business community.

Bill Rempel of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association
says Sullivan has done all the right things. He has moved to make
taxes fairer for businesses and focused on the public-disorder issue
that is a huge concern. And he's approached those issues with "outside
the box" solutions that are different from the usual city reports,
Rempel says.

"Project Civil City is thinking outside the box. The drug plan, that
was a big one to get our minds around. But the mayor has done a great
job of convincing us we can improve the quality of life this way and
it has to be a holistic approach."

Rempel does admit it would be nice if there were more immediate
change. But he believes the mayor is taking the right approach by
developing his plans and working methodically through them. He has
faith that it's all going to come through.

So, back in his office at city hall, does the mayor. It's all
perfectly clear to him that it's going to work out.

SAM SULLIVAN

2005

NOVEMBER

- - Sam Sullivan wins against Vision Vancouver's Jim Green by 3,647
votes amid controversy over the role played by independent candidate
James Green, who got 4,273 votes.

- - Vancouver Police Chief Jamie Graham asks the RCMP to investigate
Sullivan because of media reports that he had helped drug users buy
illegal drugs.

DECEMBER

- - All city advisory committees are terminated.

- - The plan to convert two lanes of Burrard Bridge to bike lanes is
scrapped.

2006

JANUARY

- - City advisory committees are restored after protest from the
community.

- - Modest-income housing is removed as a requirement from the Olympic
village plan and social housing is reduced.

FEBRUARY

- - Sullivan goes to Turin for Olympics, gets international attention by
waving the flag from his wheelchair.

APRIL

- - Mayor says he's willing to risk his political career to provide
drugs to addicts

JUNE

- - Sullivan orders Falun Gong hut removed from street in front of
Chinese consulate.

- - Announces EcoDensity initiative at the opening of the World Urban
Forum.

OCTOBER

- - Council agrees in camera to hire Ken Dobell to come up with new
strategies for homelessness problem.

NOVEMBER

- - Sullivan announces Project Civil City, aimed at cutting
homelessness, panhandling, open drug-dealing, and public disorder by
half in time for 2010.

2007

MARCH

- - Sullivan rolls out a series of announcements about a new non-profit
agency focused on pushing for a drug-treatment program that would give
substitute drugs to addicts.

APRIL

- - Coun. Peter Ladner's team wins seats at NPA board meeting over
Sullivan's team.

- - Province announces it has bought 10 Downtown Eastside hotels to be
used for supportive housing.

MAY

- - Former attorney-general Geoff Plant is named as Project Civil City
commissioner.

VANCOUVER

Population in 2006: 578,041

Land area: 115 square kilometres

Population density per square kilometre: 5,039

2001 to 2006 population change: 5.9 per cent

Number of registered vehicles: 316,954

Number of property crimes in 2006: 49,736

Hectares of parks: 1,298