A Vancouver city councillor is raising questions about the city’s expanding communications office.
NPA councillor George Affleck says in the four years since Gregor Robertson and Vision Vancouver took over the city hall, the communications department has more than doubled to 22 employees.
Affleck says anyone who wants information about city operations has to go through the huge bureaucracy and often runs into roadblocks.
Tonight, a group of over 200 residents from four Vancouver communities staged a rally near city hall demanding more consultation and transparency.
“The rally is an example of the frustration that citizens feel that they are not part of the process,” says Affleck. “That they are not being communicated to, that they are not being told about things that are happening in the length of time that they feel is appropriate.”
The city denies that the expansion of the communications department, saying the dramatic increase is due to an amalgamation of several departments. But, it doesn’t deny that the communications budget has shot up by about 60 percent.
“It is a challenge to meet people’s needs in the information age,” says councillor Andrea Reimer. “This wave has kind of hit us as it has different kinds of institutions all over the world. How do you provide people with that real-time, 24/7, 365 days a year information that people expect in a way now that they did not 5-7 years ago?”
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