A summary of this event is available here

What’s their plan for your neighbourhood?

Here is the scoop on the great Council candidate debate this Wednesday at Heritage Hall, where Mount Pleasant residents and others will seek answers to the question “What’s their plan for our neighbourhood?”

The doors of Heritage Hall will open at 6:30 for early arrivals, and coffee and snacks will be provided by many of Main Street’s great small businesses.

RAMP has selected an independent, non-political moderator in Ross Moster of Village Vancouver. He will lead eight impaneled Council candidates through four questions on planning issues, all culled from numerous public submissions solicited via the RAMP website. The eight candidates will be comprised of two each from the citywide parties currently on Council plus one Green Party and one NSV candidate.

Council candidates from all major parties–Vision Vancouver (Geoff Meggs, Heather Deal), the Non Partisan Association (Bill McCreery, Jason Lamarche), the Coalition of Progressive Electors (Ellen Woodsworth), the Green Party (Adriane Carr) and from Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver (Elizabeth Murphy)–have confirmed their attendance.

Each impaneled candidate will have 90 seconds to respond to each of the four debate questions, which will only be released in writing and all at once to the panel at the start of the debate. The order of response will rotate so a different candidate will provide the first answer to each succeeding question. There will be no rebuttals.

Subsequent to this initial formal section of the debate, which should last just over an hour, each other candidate attending the debate–but not on the panel–will be asked to stand and will be introduced to the crowd. If there is time, these candidates will be allowed a very brief, 15-second reflection or comment on the debate thus far.

Then the floor will be opened for the audience to pose questions to the entire panel or to a specific candidate. This 30-45 minute portion of the debate will be moderated to ensure all candidates will be allotted roughly equal time to respond.

Following this audience-driven portion of the event at between 9 and 9:30 PM, the audience will be asked to join the candidates for an hour over more coffee and snacks to discuss issues further in an informal and more personal atmosphere until as late as 10:30.

The debate will be live-streamed on this website–on the home page during the debate–and a Twitter feed will flow from the floor using the hashtag #vandb8 and tweeted from the account @RAMPVancouver.

There will be no better debate to attend this campaign season, and word is that community groups from all over Vancouver really do want to know, “What’s their plan for our neighbourhood?”

Come find out for yourself!

The RAMP Vancouver Board

(email your questions regarding city planning issues affecting your neighbourhood to questions@rampvancouver.com)

download the poster and help poster around your neighbourhood