Take the Giant Screen Down Now: City Hall turns up the heat to protect local residents – PavCo to be told to deliver a sign bylaw compliance plan

Wednesday, 11 January 2012

City Hall turns up the heat to protect local residents – PavCo to be told to deliver a sign bylaw compliance plan

Liveable communities champion and City Councillor Geoff Meggs has tabled a sharply worded motion for discussion at the upcoming City Hall Council chamber session on January 17th. In the motion document posted on the City website (see ‘Motions on Notice’ at http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20120117/regu20120117ag.htm), Meggs outlines the various discussion items to be addressed regarding the BC Place Stadium Digital Signs, items which could not be less embarrassing and exposing for BC PavCo CEO Warren Buckley and his team. Among the shameful items to be reviewed is the categoric rebuttal of recent PavCo propaganda suggesting that fiddling with operating hours and/or brightness has reduced the daily torment felt by residents whose glass-enclosed living rooms, dining rooms and bedrooms are facing the giant illuminated screens. Also on the list-of-shame is the continued exposure of PavCo Minister Pat Bell’s non-collaboration with Mayor Robertson’s team, a subject on which Bell mislead the BC Legislative Assembly on November 17th, 2011.

As City Hall shines an even brighter spotlight on PavCo’s demonstrated contempt regarding the hundreds of complaints continuing to flood City and Provincial officials’ inboxes, it has become clear to Vancouverites that the leadership of this Crown agency lacks the very basic respect and concern for community values that citizens expect and demand in this day and age. This late and ugly discovery about PavCo’s lack of community concern becomes particularly alarming when one realises that this Crown agency wields such great influence over the shape and infrastructural character of our great city, a city whose world-class reputation has been painstakingly built on responsible principles of liveability, sustainability and harmony with our urban environment.

Next Tuesday morning promises to be an exciting chamber meeting for citizens concerned with protecting Vancouver residents’ quality of life, and a miserably painful day for disconnected officials PavCo Minister Pat Bell and CEO Warren Buckley.

(Please click on the Motion Notice image here below to enlarge the text)

Taking inventory of complaints received

The following agencies, departments and organisations have been made known to our organisation as having received complaints about the giant video screen at Terry Fox Plaza:

- Premier Christy Clark’s office
- Minister Pat Bell's office (PavCo Minister)
- Deputy Minister Dana Hayden’s office
- MLA Mary McNeil's office (False Creek N)
- MLA Adrian Dix (Vancouver Kingsway)
- MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert (West-End)
- MLA Jenny Kwan (Mount Pleasant)
- MP Libby Davies (Vancouver East)
- MP Hedy Fry (Vancouver Centre)
- BC Ombudsperson office

- BC Information and Privacy Commissioner
- BC PavCo’s Executive Management
- BC PavCo’s Chair and Board of Directors
- BC PavCo's marketing department
- BC PavCo's general inquiries office
- Pace Group Communications' office
- Mayor Gregor Robertson's office
- City Councillor Geoff Meggs' office
- City Councillor Andrea Reimer’s office
- Various other City Councillor's offices

- City Manager Penny Ballem

- City General Manager Brenda Prosken

- City Parks Commissioner Constance Barnes
- City Planning Department

- City Real Estate Services Department

- City Development Permit Board
- Enquiries Centre for Billboard Permitting
- City's Board of Variance office
- Chief Building Inspector's office
- Deputy Chief Building Official's office
- City Noise Complaints office
- City 311 Hotline

- City Legal Services Department

- Chief Medical Officer, Van Coastal Health
- Vancouver Police Department

- Insurance Corporation of BC (ICBC)

- False Creek Residents Association
- Vancouver Public Space Network
- Budweiser (Labatt)
- PepsiCo
- Dr Pepper (Snapple Group)
- The Province News
- Telus Corporation

Quick summary of the situation

BC PavCo, a BC provincial agency, decided in September 2011 to contravene several sections of the Vancouver City Signage By-laws (meant to protect citizens from exactly this type of billboard harassment) by erecting the biggest baddest high-definition LED giant video screen in all of Vancouver at Terry Fox Plaza. This was done for the sole purpose of generating revenues by forcibly pumping Telus, Budweiser and Pepsi advertising at the local community, with no consideration paid to the fact that this daily flashing assault would also be pumped into the living rooms, across dinner tables and into the children's bedrooms of residents in the immediately adjacent glass residential community. PavCo's response to the outcry from this community demanding that the screen be moved elsewhere so that it is not directly facing hundreds of glass residential homes? – ‘Too Bad For You’

BC PavCo's Freedom of Information Act violation

...BC PavCo CEO Warren Buckley was legally required to provide documents proving the ownership of the giant video screen at Terry Fox Plaza. Under a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by citizen’s group 'TtGSDN', PavCo’s deadline to confirm the identity of the screen’s true owner/operator was January 23, 2012. Remarkably, in December 2011 Deputy Minister of JTI Dana Hayden told MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert that Telus Corporation is the true owner and operator of all three outdoor screens at BC Place Stadium. Interestingly, neither Telus nor PavCo have since asked the press for a retraction of media reports suggesting the same. Will Warren Buckley try to continue hiding these documents from the public despite repeated attempts by the media and the public to acquire them? The Office of the Information & Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia is now investigating PavCo's non-compliance with the Freedom of Information Act.