What's going on, Alan DeGenova's the hardest working politician in town, and a true leader. Here he is, doing the right thing for the entire community and the NPA want to crucify him. Hey Sam, cut the guy some slack, and get yourself a little more focused, on the real job of leadership.

Would Vision even want him? Parties want team players, not divas.

The only time Alan DeGenova hasn't felt "positive" (sic) about a proposal is when his name isn't attached to the press release.

The Vancouver Aquarium has a "review" ever year, when just over one million visitors (primarily our children) enjoy the wonderful facilities and appreciate the incredible research committed to by the world class staff.

Alan DeGenova should just admit that ever since Heather Holden was elected Chair, his little heart just won't mend. Over-qualified, frankly, by some margin indeed, she is one of the best public servants in this Province and her star simply outshines Alan's tiresome vaudeville act. Backslapping and vacant nonsense in trying to be everything to everyone will only get you so far. Juxtaposition someone like a Suzanne Anton or a Peter Ladner with DeGenova, and, absolutely, he doesn't belong anywhere near the NPA. He has never been one of substance. Ask him if he's ever committed to spearheading a project in a polling area that he doesn't rate in.

Transparent and feeble.

Frankly, if DeGenova leaves: good riddance.

"Parties want team players, not divas". You know, that's just what Larry and Jim used to say.

Oh great - another game of musical chairs is afoot. Warn the kids!

How long has Heather lived in Vancouver anyways? A year or so, not long enough to run for election! If Degenova doesnt hold her to her election promises who will?

DeGenova feels isolated and shunned?

Puuuuleeeze!

If you would stop defecating in the bed Alan, you wouldn't need to complain about the smell!

what comes out of this pitiful story is the (unbelievable) sheilding of the mayor by his staff. if it's true that degenova had to wait months to get a call back from sam or not get one at all, then whoever was responsible for that should be fired. you've had more than ample time to learn how to do your job at taxpayers expense. if anyone as squirrely as degenova is to be kept in line in line you have to do the basics (and if you don't know them go do something else). junior prpeople=fartcatchers. if the mayor is sealed off from his caucus by his staff like he was sealed off from many insiders with lies and stories, then the npa are headed for disaster since the same problem on parks exists on council. right kimbo?

"The unbelievable shielding of the mayor by his staff"? Give me a break! Does anyone actually think a mayor of a major city should be picking up the phone to make his own appointments, or wasting his time coddling whiny members of his caucus, like DeGenova, every time they throw a tantrum?

I think the real issue here is that DeGenova is doing his supporters and the public a disservice by playing the diva yet again... just another distraction and attention grab when he should be finding ways to work with his park board colleagues. There are constructive ways to deal with disagreement, without pissing in the tent and trying to bring others down. DeGenova has been in politics long enough to know better. What is his end game here?

No wonder he feels shunned. Who the hell would want to work with a guy like that?

Dear ' he's a loose cannon', there is no doubt that deGenova is a loose cannon. but you have missed my point. media, non-council caucus members, past and present npa board members, insiders, people who were responsible for electing sam sullivan, all agree almost unanimously that the mayor is sealed shut by his staff. this is extremely unhealthy and shows a complete lack of understanding of the mayor or worse, no confidence in him as a mayor. it shows that staff either do not know how to manage the mayor or.....or maybe that's the intent all along, so that one or two might keep their jobs when their first choice for mayor is elected next election. there are better ways to accomplish this, but this is what you get when you put a sixteen year old in the driver seat of a ferrari. crash. is degenova an ass and a diva, sure he is, he always has been, he should have been tossed out of the party during the election, but if as a caucus member he has to go through staff to speak to his boss about a key political issue and doesn't get any call back from him, then there's a real problem here, what's the point of having a caucus. you set the guy up to play the martyr and that's what he's doing. he wasn't trying to make an appointment, that's different, nice spin. you don't happen to work from sam's office do you? it's high time the amateur hour stopped. the mayor's staff were warned about degenova a long time ago, they were warned about board issues related to the agm, they were warned about many matters. well, it turns out they were either too lazy or didn't no how to do any heavy lifting at the time. now they're in to it up to there necks and are playing catch up. amateur hour doesn't even begin to cover it. save sam, he's being drowned by the hidden agendas and the games. shiny happy people is great if you work on a cruise boat.

the real test here is for sam himself. show us you are in command. kick degenova out of the npa and end his tirade once and for all.

Personalities and axes to grind aside, is not the following, taken directly from the parks board website, the crux of this issue:

Heather..{snip}...currently directs research at the Vancouver Aquarium.

If this is, indeed, a staff position, which appears to be supported by the CV posted by Ms. Holden at her own website (warning:pdf), is it not a valid point that there is, at the very least, a perceived conflict of interest if she does not recuse herself from votes that impact the Aquarium?

.

RossK: The question, though, is whether she has a pecuniary interest in the decisions the Park Board takes, i.e., will she receive direct or indirect financial benefit from the results of a vote. I can't see how (in most circumstances) her votes would result in a pay gain or loss on her part.

Ross K is an obliviot.

Heather Holden has been consistent from the getgo...she will not and has not participated in any votes with respect to the Aquarium.

I love the spin Ross! But as per your own blog connection, you have no balance, only bias. If this were Jim Green in the soup, you'd be fumbling for an excuse.

Instead, you've decided to go around the issue and start digging up websites for irrelavent information.

Say, who does your thinking for you? Jamie Lee Hamilton??? AGH!

It's got that familiar foul wind.

This whole issue was created by DeGenova so that he can play the martyr again. It's obvious.

I will agree on the point above though, that if he has to beg the Mayor for a call back, and the staff are standing in the way, that's pretty damn bad.

Is there no plan to deal with this stuff?

Hey, hey, ho, ho, DeGenovaz gotta go!

NPA'ers, old and new, like it or not, Al deGenova has been the people's choice for 4 terms. Maybe we ought to analyze what Al is doing right. He survived the multitudes of past park board chairs in all the elections, in particular the memorable 2002 fiasco. If you talk to community people they will tell you that Al's priority is on how to make the city's communities better, not to cowtow to the ego's and power aspirations of NPA colleagues, elected and non elected. For those who call Al a diva, if you asked people who know Al and have met the "over qualified for the job, best public servant in BC" chair of the PB then you might be surprised by what your hear.

Carmen

Holden has impressive credentials, but she has also shown she has an arrogant attitude. She would be right at home in the Liberal Party! The NPA is going to have to send her into the shop before she embarasses the entire team. Having a chat with De Genova is going about things totally backwards.

Carmen who? Carmen Miranda??? Sing us another song! De Genova's past work is not in question here, nor is his commitment to communities.

What is in question is why someone with the body of work you described would take such blatantly unfair shots at Holden (and his own party), when she has said time and again that she will not participate in the Aquarium vote?

What is further in question is why De Genova, as someone who should understand real estate and best use planning, will move to vote against an expansion that essentially reclaims (at the Aquarium's sole expense) all the sitting-there, decaying concrete slabs formerly occupied by the Zoo?

Further still, why would De Genova want a referendum on the Aquarium issues to satisfy the enviroNazis, who never address the very important work the Aquarium does to better the lives of the aquatic life it studies? It's true that Vanaqua takes in more than one million visitors a year, mostly kids, who learn during their most cognitive, impressionable years of the delicate symbiosis between man, animals and the environment. Where will they learn of such respect? Nowhere else.

Al wanted the Chair, he may have thought he earned it. And had he not grotesquely backstabbed his NPA team in the the middle of the election last fall, he may have had it. Allan's is a very old school somewhat populist approach to politics, which doesn't work anymore. You cannot be everything to everyone. Demands have now outrun consumption even, as people are jilted before any issue is out of the gate. Straddling the fence can be a risky proposition at the best of times. He's on it all the time. Eventually, you have to land on one side or the other.

The posters above are right. This entire matter was created by Allan, whom, admittedly, I quite like on a personal basis. Though, he has blown it irreparably this time, and on Monday night will only make matters worse--if that's at all possible.

The real fools in this entire affair are Woodcock & Denser, er, sorry, Spencer, who have no valid argument to go against the proposals forwarded by the Aquarium. Vanaqua is paying their own way, entirely. If their gate receipts were plummeting, sure, call for a plebiscite, but why now?

No, this whole thing boils down to politics as usual, which all three parties campaigned against. De Genova thinks he can lie his way into people's hearts, and COPE (along with Vision Vancouver) are the same ideologically cancered group they always were. No reason to screw the Aquarium except that a political opponent works for them.

The end game will be that De Genova will vote with COPE tomorrow night. Sam will be pressured by the genius strategist in his office to do nothing (so what else is new?!) and, as a result, her advice will make him look terribly weak, again.

Carmen, if De Genova was this noble individual you claim he is, he would not have prostituted his political career in one transparent move to act with spite and malice against a team that, in large part, carried him many times and provided him great platform. I am not an advocate of blind party solidarity. But on this issue Allan has made this the tipping point for his departure. He is pushing as far as he can, knowing full well that if he is asked to leave, he still holds the cards. That's not nobility, that's acididity--he's become toxic. If the genius strategists were really genius, they would have turned the tables on De Genova and asked for a meeting after tomorrow night, in the aftermath, and not before.

As someone mentioned above, now he's made out to be a martyr, but solely based on a false pretense. The Mayor's office have known of Allan's discontent from before January, and are only dealing with it now. Great stuff. Political pressure would not have been necessary if some courtesy (hey, how 'bout a returned call!) had been extended months ago. This is yet another glaring example of the child's play that is being passed off as capable assistance to the Mayor. And if something isn't done pronto, it will only get worse. The agendas are no longer hidden.

If Al had any honour left at all, he would have resigned from the NPA long ago, but he needed them, he used them.

He is indeed being a DIVA, a drama queen, and not much else as he has sadly made himself so.

Let's see what he does tomorrrow night. The writing's on the wall.

To whoever said Al's priority is "to make the city's communities better", do you really believe that? For as long as I can remember, Al Diva-Nova's number one priority has been himself.

During the election Heather Holden promised the citizens of Vancouver (the voters) that she would conflict out of ALL aquarium related matters addressed by the Parks Board. However, the recent Georgia Straight article, as addressed in Degenova's interview she voted with her NPA colleagues for privatization of food and beverage concessions. However, how can this not be a conflict given that the aquarium has their own concession.
Holden also in the Georgia Straight mentioned that it was no one's business what her salary is, perhaps Holden should not have run for election if she wanted to keep her life so private?????? How can the public verify that she has not or will not benefit from her influence on issues that directly affect the aquarium if we have no idea what her salary was before? If less that a year into term as a Commissioner she has gone back on her election promises, whats next???

Yoicks!!! I am surrounded by amateurs.

Please can we manage our repetoire of insults a little better, particulary those at the expense of politicians who are doing what is essentially volunteer work for residents of the city and having knives thrown at them on a daily basis.

Being a life long resident of the city I know that strong political biases on either side of the fence are erased by the magnificence of the city.

Perhaps there are Americans in the crowd: people who demand they be right even at the cost to others.

I know nothing about the chair of the Parks Board, but do know both DeGenova and Sullivan; and know they both spend far more hours working for the city than one might suspect.

anni