I’ll always remember the first day of Occupy Vancouver, and how impressed I was with the city’s level of preparedness. They grounds were cleaned-up, there were professionally made signs warning people not to use tent pegs, and there was steel fencing installed over a what I think was a stairwell- protecting people from falling into it.
The fencing Gregor may have approved of "just to make someone happy…". Or, for insurance… Notice the man carrying the barrel- the pic was lifted from CTV's website, it appears that CTV threw a #SacredProvocation at us!
I met one of the senior members of the Engineering department that day- the same man who later told me how the city believes Occupy Vancouver was co-opted by a potentially dangerous group of people. I congratulated him for having the foresight to install the fencing- assuming it was to keep us safe. His response was “I’ve been wanting to do that one for a while now!”
One thing I really noticed at OV is how happy and friendly the city staff were with us. I expected them to be unhappy that they were being distracted from their daily grinds- it didn’t make any sense until this evening when I read an article in the Vancouver Sun that discusses a ‘leaked’ memorandum from Penny Ballem and Sadhu Johnston about the CoV’s costs that were related to OV.
VPD: $590,000
Engineering: $345,878
Emergency Management: $28,494
Fire and Rescue Services: $16,730
Total: $981,102
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