I love reading, and a most interesting title recently arrived on my desk. I’d like to share some excerpts now.
It’s called the City of Vancouver Language and Terminology Guide, Vol. 2017.
The glossary of terms reveals much and helps translate some of the confusion. My mind opened considerably after absorbing it. Let’s run through some of the glossary alphabetically:
Affordable Housing: A term to describe the capacity of a developer to build and profit; that is, affordable to the builder. Not to be confused with housing one might find affordable to buy (see Smithers Housing).
Aquarium: The city’s second most popular cultural destination (see Dispensary) that receives no subsidies, pays significant taxes, employs hundreds of people, develops scientific knowledge, rescues distressed cetaceans and is repaid by a grateful city in the middle of a $100 million capital campaign with a threatened bylaw to end its most popular attraction.
Broadway Subway: A transit line in Manhattan, and only in Manhattan, for a long time.
Coat of Arms: By Sea and Land We Prosper. Not to be confused with city’s motto: We’re not happy until you’re not happy.
Communications Staff: A term to describe the result of consistent and earnest investment in municipal personnel infrastructure.
Consultation: A process in which the City of Vancouver’s governing party meets, directs staff, approves its report, then holds public meetings to validate the meeting, direction and approval.
Council Majority: See Patterned Marine Mammals.
Developer: A term to describe the cohort most confused by the rules of the road they are supposed to cruise. See Permits.
Dispensary: An after-school community centre off limits to police supplied ostensibly by organized crime that soothes evidence-free conditions in which a medical professional is enlisted to privilege hypocrisy over the Hippocratic oath.
Greenest City Strategy: A term to describe the effort to finish first in something other than Most Unaffordable City competitions.
Homelessness: An important commitment to be solved the next time 2015 rolls around.
Mobi: A term to describe the program of citywide public art exhibits.
Motorist: A term to describe the insurgent force fought successfully since 2008’s regime change.
Natural Gas: A banned (but not) commodity that will be phased out (but not) in certain buildings (perhaps not) and replaced by renewable energy (maybe not) by 2050 (or not), most certainly.
Permits: A considered and time-tested process in which a received application to build or renovate is assigned a loaf of bread that must convert fully to penicillin, then be applied to the next infection of the applicant, who must then apply again.
Planning: A term to describe how the city is proud of tomorrow but preparing for yesterday.
Point Grey Road: A venerable gated community in which time stood still but housing assessments didn’t.
Reset: A new term recently coined to describe the next phase of the city’s Affordable Housing strategy, borrowed from the old technique of inserting a paper clip into a small hole in your computer to revive its prospects when, through systemic mishandling, it has broken down and failed to deliver, and in prayer one will grasp at anything to just keep it alive.
Senior Government: A term to describe those to be blamed, pointed at, told to step up, but not engaged.
Small Business: A term to describe the result of city taxes on medium-sized business.
Transparency: A term to describe some other government’s idiocy in releasing information.
Vacant-Home Tax: In which the City of Vancouver aims to collect just enough tax to convince voters something is being done and assure owners nothing will be.
Viaducts: An imminent teardown that will lead to over-budget environmental reclamation, oversized and expensive accommodation and overhyped commitment to recreation and culture. See Consultation.
Kirk LaPointe is Business in Vancouver’s vice-president of audience and business development.
