Michael R. Barrick

While certainly an irritant, i think the Olympics allowed Vancouver for the most part to avoid the economic downturn.

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Avoid, or simply postpone? Or would Vancouver have been better off in the long run without the Olympics? Canada as a whole largely avoided the brunt of the global economic downturn due largely to the stringent regulations governing our banking system that have now become the model for the other G20 nations to follow. When the party is over, the tourists go home, and the cost of the debt load incurred by the games really hits, will we really better off than if we hadn't had a seven year run excessive speculative building that lead directly inflated building costs, which in turn lead to massive cost overruns on public projects (Canada Line, Olympic Village), the indefinite delay of other public projects with no Olympic benefit (Evergreen Line), the closure of unique and notable landmark institutions (Bloedel Conservatory), and the lay-offs and impending lay-offs of hundreds of civic employees?

Edited Date: 2010-02-10 09:11 am (UTC)

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Michael, you know how I am, fewer civil servants in my mind is always a good start, I support the smallest possible government doing the bare minimum. Or should that be the Pedobear minimum?

While you bring up a good point about delayed recession after the Olympics, given that the games have pretty much sold out and you can't find a hotel room in the City, while it is a concern given the history of the games in other cities, I honestly feel (just like the healing power of crystals) that we won't face the same problems, not to say that there won't be a deficit or other economic problems, but just not as bad.

Further, I would offer that without the Olympics, while we may have had the Evergreen line, we wouldn't have had the Canada Line.

As for the increase in building costs, the costs had been going up anyway, it was only in the last 2 years that costs have come down, it is not in my mind a big concern.

In regards to the Olympic village, isn't it all being turned into subsidized housing or sold as Condo?

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valerian.livejournal.com

In regards to the Olympic village, isn't it all being turned into subsidized housing or sold as Condo?

The final word on it being subsidized housing, the original promised intention, seems to be undecided (http://www2.canada.com/vancouvercourier/news/story.html?id=96bcd4d3-9246-4ea0-a454-c520c9a6a305) for the time being.

:/

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I am actually rather shocked that left leaning Vision is wavering on this.

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they don't have much of a choice...the city can't run a deficit due to provincial legislation and the city already has no money...i'm sure they'd have liked to keep or increase the social housing element but their hands are pretty well tied...hopefully they can come up with a creative solution, but i have my doubts...that is the reality of the games that they don't tell you when they sell them to you at the start...london was supposed to cost around $6 billion for infrastructure, and now it's nearing $20 billion...who will be able to afford to put the games on in the future at this rate???

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ztargazer.livejournal.com

OK, think about this scenario...

Olympics are done, meanwhile the global recovery is threatened with the fallout from the "PIIGS", how much fallout will be determined this week with the EU still trying to figure out how to hold things together. This happens to be when the US is forced to deal with option arm and alt-a mortgages resets, which at that point are picking up speed with many of them already under water. With the real unemployment rates at over 20% in the US, how will there not be a second wave of defaults. As for how it will affect Vancouver's markets, look no further than what happened the first time around, housing starts and purchases stopped dead in their tracks. The Olympics in China pretty much marked the point of no return in the first economic crisis, as will this one.

I am not sure how things will finally play out with this scenario but things are getting interesting again...

As for the Olympics and my opinion, f*ck em. If things go south financially there is the option to just pack up and head for another province, preferably one which did not f*ck their citizens over. Hard to collect on a tax base that moves out of province.

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The way economics works however, the top 1% of income earners are responsible for 50% of taxes collected where as the bottom 50% are responsible for 5% of taxes collected.

Thus the people who are most negatively affected by the Olympics and move out of province would actually cause a net increase available funds for the government as those are the same people who cost the most to the province.

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sovietnimrod.livejournal.com

I have generally opposed the Olympics but only quietly, because at the end of the day they have brought much-needed infrastructure building and revitalisation to the city which would not have occurred otherwise.

From a purely sports standpoint (since the Olympics is a sporting event), this has been most noticeable with many of Vancouver’s antiquated community facilities which needed drastic overhauls (Killarney and Trout Lake arenas come to mind) which would not have occurred otherwise because the City Parks Board pinkos don’t see the value in arenas and don’t have the funding nor willpower to invest in infrastructure projects of that scale. They were content with the existing earthquake deathtraps built in the early 1960s.

People seem to think that all the money spent on the Olympics could have been put to better use – and whilst I wish that were the case, let’s face it all those millions and millions were never going to be put into affordable housing or other non-profitable projects regardless whether Liberals or NDP were in power. ... See more

All the money which our Michael Barrick here (and sorry to point a finger, but he has made the point) says was diverted away from arts funding – it was never there to begin with. Governments, and certainly not centre-right governments, are not going to invest money on the scale of the Olympics on non-profitable, low-return activities such as the arts (unless it serves for them a propaganda purpose, such as the federal Liberal party's support of the multiculturalism ideology back in the 1960s and 1970s)

I dislike the BC Liberals and would never vote for them (nor the BC NDP for that matter) but at least they have been able to con private sector money and private sector buy-in for infrastructure projects like the Gateway Bridge, Sea-to-Sky Highway, etc. All the NDP would do is funnel more cash into the pockets of its wealthy union buddies and feel-good special interest and minority groups to buy votes they probably all ready have in their grasp. We have the legacy of fast ferries to see how well the NDP brainstrust can bungle and mess up major infrastructure projects.

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Really, Dave?

The Canada Line and the Evergreen Line were on the books long before the Olympic Bid, and they might have finished closer to on budget if construction costs hadn't skyrocketed from a labour shortages from excessive speculative building.

And the money spent on community services was well spent? The city was ready to tear down Nat Bailey Stadium for the new curling rink. Not that baseball is a terribly popular sport in Vancouver, but it sure has curling beat.

Port Moody, for another example, went from a surplus to taking on a $25 million debt to build a second ice rink right beside their old one, the new one being uselessly Olympic-sized since the Olympics will be having all the ice events on NHL-size rinks this year, yet Port Moody still doesn't have, for example, and indoor swimming pool and is still crying for road and transit upgrades that *specifically* got push aside for Olympic priorities.

Olympic blindness sent the politicians flailing off in bizarre directions.

But ultimately it's not that the Olympic money would have been spent elsewhere, the point *is* that most of it is now *debt* and shouldn't have been spent at all.

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sovietnimrod.livejournal.com

Actually Port Moody's new olympic arena ice sheet is convertable down to NHL rink sizes - although not sure when the olympic-size sheet would be used again unless as a practice facility for future olympic teams. I've played there and its actually quite a nice building, the convertable rink being the way to go. The old rink they had was a dump and needed replacement. Hockey rinks will always get more use than swimming pools. There is a dire shortage of floortime at rinks now due to kids and adult hockey.

As for curling, chances are the new curling rink will get used and pay for itself. There's some good money in curling in Canada, more so than baseball. Nat Bailey is quaint and all but I bet the building costs the City more to operate than the revenue it brings in. After all, it's only used for a few months of the year for Single Shit-A baseball - and then the rest of the time as a farmers' market during the summer.

I think the biggest white elephant has to be the Richmond skating oval. Now there's a building that was an absolute waste of money. It is too big to convert into ice rinks for hockey and no one is going to use it as a practise facility (unless the Winter Olympics are ever held in the Netherlands) because no one will train at a sea-level facility when most Olympiads are held at locations hundreds or thousands of feet above sea-level where the cardio effects will be worse or skaters.

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I know the Port Moody arena is convertible... remember where I used to work. Perhaps you are right, though. My view of the utility of a swimming pool over an ice-rink may be clouded by the fact that I used to be a competitive swimmer. The question remains, though, was it a good investment of money they didn't have? Will it continue to be profitable after the Olympics or will it be a drag on a tiny municipality with limited resources?

Nat Bailey is leased out to the owners of the Canadians. Whether they make a profit or not does not impact the city's coffers. Remember again that I have first-hand knowledge here, too.

I have no argument with you on the Richmond skating oval.

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i'm with michael on this one...do you really believe some of what you write here??? the ndp would have funneled the money to it's wealthy union buddies??? at least most union workers live in bc and would spend the money here...not like the liberals giving contracts to foreign companies who use foreign workers (think canada line) and have all those profits either go into the pockets of their rich buddies (who don't reinvest it here) or to other countries (which don't spend it here)...it has been shown in study after study that private/public partnerships always end up costing more and inflating the price of the project...i'm not aware of a study that shows them reducing costs or saving taxpayers money...the golden ears bridge and the canada line will be good examples of that once we get down the road...i certainly hope they aren't, but i don't have much hope of that...the only people who benefit from them are the shareholders of the private partner...same is happening with the run of the river projects which bc hydro has to overpay for at our expense...of course it will eventually bankrupt bc hydro and then they can claim they need to sell it off to private interests...

there would have been some stimulus spending, no government could avoid it and some of that infrastructure would have been built anyway...i've never understood your politics...you aren't rich and the last couple of decades have shown the rich are assaulting the middle class for all we are willing to give them...and most people seem willing to give them whatever they please to a point there almost isn't a middle class anymore...that is less true in canada for the moment, but looking south our turn is coming...the right will never have the common man's interests at heart, except as a good slave worker who knows their place in the world...the left has its problems, i'll admit, but they do have the correct core ideas...i'll leave it at that...

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Hi, I want to tell you that you're still making a mistake. You're using wrong name of the newspaper - the "Gazeta Olsztyn" is an extra to the "Gazeta Wyborcza" - a nationwide newspaper. Correct name of THAT polish local paper is the "Gazeta Olsztynska".

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I can't read Polish and didn't realize those were different papers. I will go back and correct the links and older posts.

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http://users.livejournal.com/_darkpixie_/

It is for a month and likely very inconvenient for those people in the middle to lower class, I don't have an issue with the athletic competition aspects or the Olympics in general. I do however think Vancouver could/should have pulled this off with a MUCH lower pricetag and taken better care not to adversely affect its residents. Or at the very least built any new structures in such a way that they could be converted post-olympics into affordable housing and other services that are desparately needed in the lower mainland.

Unfortunately the 'glitz and glam' aspect of the Vancouver Ego completely took over early in the planning stages, and if any benefit is to be found it would be to the credit of the already wealthy by stablizing a now plummeting housing market (hooray!) or causing further increases to an already impossible market. But the housing market could go the other way too (rising property taxes are already cutting into the bottom line of rental properties pushing rents upwards into a market that can not bear it). In fact if you do a little looking around you will see a ton of rental units up for sale, at rediculously low prices (for Vancouver anyways).

For example, the average slum 3br single family home in Vancouver is valued anywhere from $750,000 to a cool Million. Property taxes on that would range any where from $5000 to $7500 or so. The majority of renters are willing pay $1500 or so for rent on such a place. Which amounts to $18,000 per year. Deduct your taxes and you are left with just over $10,000 possible profit. Deduct further for general yearly maintenance (IE. Plumbing systems, heating systems, yard maintenance etc) and then again for expenses derived from actually renting the place and you will probably see that $10,000 cut in half. And if this were a rising housing market it may be an ok investment. But as housing prices decrease many property owners are now seeing its better to liquidate the asset, pop that million in a savings account and save themselves the hassles.... See More

So at present although it is a massve pain in the ass, there are really only two possible outcomes. 1. Another massive influx of immigrants who appear to have a license to print money or 2. A long awaited and desparately needed crash of the housing market.

I'm voting for option 2.

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i would hope for option 2 as well...it wasn't vancouver's ego that got in the way...it was the fact that many of the early bid project were developers, and they are the ones who make out big in these kind of events...jack poole didn't just do this for posterity and to give something back to the city...he benefited greatly from this...what worries me is just how austere the provincial and federal budgets will be because of all the overspending they did on these games...

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you know with each passing day my concerns grow more and more grave over this...i can see this costing us regular folk a ton in city, provincial and federal service cuts...after all we pay for everything no matter who profits...and then those below us, the poor, seniors on fixed incomes and the like are really fucked...i never imagined i'd see really hard times in my lifetime in this country...but now i'm starting to wonder...how long can they keep propping up the facade of the markets??? they suck ever more money from the common man in there and one day it's all going to go up in smoke...and it's tough for me because at heart i'm an optimist...but that is tempered with a good does of realism...and they just don't get along well when things are tough...

i'm with you on the ridiculous overspending...true maybe some of the money would have never been spent, but the overwhelming debt isn't worth the product...if we were going to incur debt i would have rather had useful infrastructure...yeh new rinks are nice, but there are so many other areas which could have used the money and attention...

i'm very worried about what measures they will implement using the economic downturn and olympic costs to further their right wing agenda, that's both provincial and federal...i already went through 3 years of no wage increases and not even the yearly increments most groups get...i see that coming again...

and don't even get me started on the security overload...they are going to check every truck coming downtown with the bomb squad...reminds me of the simpsons episode with the bear patrol...and lisa using the rock to illustrate specious reasoning to ward off tigers and homer wanting to buy the rock...they are slowly destroying the airline industry by making flying as unpleasant as possible...i was reading today how you now have to stick your hands in your pockets or down your pants if there are no pockets so they can swab for explosives...so then people stay home...or travel much less...then the airlines need bailouts or fold...and prices on the remaining ones will skyrocket to pay for the added "security"...

i was somewhat open to the olympics at one point...i didn't vote for them and figured they would overrun their costs...now i really worry how this will affect the city we live in...i could write forever on this subject...the only highlight so far is the pedobear stuff...at least i can laugh at that aspect...

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