The sometimes chippy Mayor Sam Sullivan got his council off to a rough start in 2005 when he and his NPA colleagues appointed Vision Vancouver councillor Tim Stevenson to the board of Metro Vancouver.

As an MLA, Stevenson had a rotten attendance record as a TransLink director. But that didn't dissuade the NPA crew, which was more concerned about dividing the opposition.

It was  a slap in the faces of COPE councillor David Cadman and Vision Vancouver councillor Raymond Louie, who both worked extremely diligently as Metro Vancouver directors during the previous term.

Even if you didn't agree with their decisions, there was no questioning that Cadman and Louie read all the reports and  showed up at most meetings.

In this respect, they differed markedly from the mayor of the day, Larry Campbell, who skipped many regional committee meetings and who often spent his time at full board meetings chatting away with his friend Neil Boyd, an SFU criminologist who was then  a director from Bowen Island.

Now, Vision mayor-elect Gregor Robertson and his colleagues have an opportunity to demonstrate that they are above the NPA's partisan nonsense.

After they're sworn in on Monday (December 8), one of the first orders of business will be  to announce  who gets to sit on the board of Metro Vancouver.

Do they hog all the positions and the per-diem payments for themselves, filling the five Vancouver slots with Vision Vancouver  representatives?

Or will they save one spot for COPE's Cadman, who worked at Metro Vancouver for almost two decades, and who knows the organization inside-out?

If they appoint Cadman to the board, it will be a message to COPE and to the city's left that this Vision crew isn't the same Gang of Four that treated  transit riders  disrespectfully in 2004.

If they appoint Cadman to the board, it will also be a message to those who care about clean drinking water that Vancouver's  directors will press Metro Vancouver's chief administrative officer Johnny Carline to get on with fulfilling an earlier board promise to decommission logging roads in the watersheds.

To not press Carline on this issue will be  an invitation to log this area in the future, possibly jeopardizing drinking-water quality.

Cadman has played an instrumental role in the development of good regional planning policies and in preserving public control over Metro Vancouver's drinking-water supply.

Yes, this is the first test for Vision Vancouver and its mayor-elect Robertson. We'll be watching closely to see if Cadman gets  appointed to  the Metro Vancouver board.  For the Vision Vancouver council to  do otherwise would be a disservice to residents across the region.