Justin McElroy

A decade ago, the $2.50 per hour fee for non-locals to park at West Vancouver’s Ambleside Beach would have been among the most expensive fees in Metro Vancouver. Now, it’s one of the cheapest — and it’s part of a complicated debate in West Vancouver over whether the fee is achieving its stated aims.

Four years ago, Delta had one of the sleepiest elections in Metro Vancouver: incumbent Mayor George Harvie was re-elected with 75 per cent of the vote, all six elected councillors came from his Achieving for Delta slate and voter turnover was just 29 per cent.

Sim, who spoke for more than 40 minutes before a question-and-answer session with the Vancouver Board of Trade CEO, spent much of his time framing the last three years of ABC’s majority on council as making hard but necessary choices.

Plenty of people write about how they don’t like the mayor of their city. Kirk Lapointe decided to go a step further and run against incumbent West Vancouver Mayor Mark Sager.

Most of the time, mayors and councillors across B.C. vote on issues that will have a direct impact on large numbers of people in their community. And sometimes, they vote on whether one homeowner needs to get rid of one dog.

Metro Vancouver’s unwieldy governance structure has repeatedly been highlighted as a thing for the regional government to reform — but the board says it needs more debate and consultation to come up with a solution.

While the eventual vote may be for a unique proposal, it will be about the age-old question in Vancouver of who the waterfront is for — and who gets to decide.

It’s worth noting when Vancouver city council doesn’t give the green light to two high-profile proposals in a week, in part because it happens so rarely.

A former logging centre of approximately 350 people in northern Vancouver Island, Sayward has less than $2 million remaining in financial assets, the lowest number of any municipality in the province.

Coun. Lenny Zhou did not respond to an immediate request for comment, but three hours later, the mayor's office released a statement with an apology from him.