VANCOUVER – The city should cancel plans to expand mayor Gregor Robertson’s office as well as create a lunchroom for councillors, two Vancouver councillors said Tuesday.
Ellen Woodsworth and Suzanne Anton are questioning why the city needs to spend a total of $260,000 to create a lunchroom and move city manager Penny Ballem’s office to the empty sixth floor in order to make room for new offices for Robertson.
But Ballem said plans for the modest renovations – of which $107,000 is for the mayor’s and councillors’ renovations and $153,000 is for her offices – are instead being accelerated to have the work done before council reconvenes in late September.
As part of that push, Ballem’s office is temporarily moving down one floor for six weeks while her new offices undergo extensive renovations.
Ballem said she moved up the renovation timetable two weeks ago to have the work done during a traditionally quiet period before fall sittings of council. She said no renovations are being done to her interim offices and the cost of the move is minimal. The permanent offices are getting upgrades to remove asbestos and install water pipes and new floors and ceilings.
“The mayor’s renovations of my office are dead simple. In my [old] office, the mayor will get nothing. He will move on to my desk, my round cheapo glass desk with the film on it to keep the fingerprints off,” she said.
The moves come while seven of city hall’s 11 floors remain empty following the departure last year of the engineering department to leased offices at Cambie and Broadway, while several other departments moved into city-owned floors in the Woodward’s building downtown.
Neither Anton nor Woodsworth is convinced the renovations are necessary.
“I never voted on any of this,” said Woodsworth, one of two Coalition of Progressive Electors councillors. She said she was shocked to discover many floors of city hall were left vacant after the engineering department’s move.
“I wonder why we are moving people down to the Woodward’s building when we have so much space. I am also getting complaints from staff who say it is a waste of their time having to travel back and forth to city hall.”
She said there are enough small committee rooms on the third floor for councillors to find a place to eat. “This is not, in my mind, a priority issue … when we are cutting staff and services.”
Anton, the only Non-Partisan Association councillor, is on vacation bicycling through Germany. She issued a statement calling for Robertson to cancel his expansion.
“I’m troubled by this swift move during the summer months while council are on a break, to uproot the city manager and her staff in order to meet an arbitrary deadline set by Mayor Robertson,” she said. “The optics of this decision by the mayor and his staff, however well-intentioned, are terrible. We’ve had to tighten our belts at city hall, and his office should be no different. I very much hope he reconsiders this move.”
Robertson was not available for comment.
Kerry Jang, one of seven Vision Vancouver councillors, supported the renos.
“Currently we don’t have any place to eat outside of our desks and the food cart is in the back hallway and it sits there overnight and stinks up all of the third floor until it is picked up,” he said.
“In terms of the mayor’s office, it is a wide open space that is always busy and the guy has nowhere to work, I mean, outside of the bathroom.”
Ballem said the only major renovation being done of her old office is the creation of two doorways to allow Robertson to move from his new offices to council chambers without having to walk through public corridors.
Two walls are also being built to create offices for two of his political staff. Total cost is about $47,000.
At the same time, a small committee room is being converted into a council lunchroom with a small kitchen. The estimated cost is $60,000. It will cost another $153,000 to renovate sixth-floor offices for Ballem.
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