A week before this issue hit the street, the Georgia Straight sent an e-mail to Mayor Sam Sullivan and all 10 Vancouver city councillors. They were asked to respond to four questions by a deadline of Monday afternoon.

1. How would you rate your performance during the past year on council?

2. Name three things you’ve done or three votes you’ve cast that demonstrated your attempt to make this a better city.

3. Who are the most impressive and least impressive members of council belonging to the other parties, and why?

4. Tell a story about how you helped an average citizen solve a problem that he or she might have had with Vancouver city hall over the past year.

Only four of the 11 members of Vancouver city council met the deadline: the NPA’s Kim Capri, B.C. Lee, and Peter Ladner, and Vision Vancouver Coun. Raymond Louie. Other responses came in later from Vision Vancouver’s George Chow, NPA Mayor Sam Sullivan, and the NPA’s Elizabeth Ball. Chow was the only one of the seven respondents who adequately addressed question three, which was designed to test their honesty. Candid politicians should have no qualms providing an honest evaluation of their opponents.

Four other members of council—COPE’s David Cadman, the NPA’s Suzanne Anton, and Vision Vancouver’s Heather Deal and Tim Stevenson—failed to respond at all by the time the paper went to press on November 15. Ignoring an e-mail is not a chief determinant of a politician’s competence, but it might make some wonder about their priorities.

One of the hallmarks of an ineffective politician is sloth. Conversely, there are several qualities that characterize effective politicians. They are strong advocates for the public in dealing with the bureaucracy. They are outstanding researchers, capable of digging up their own information rather than relying on handouts from civil servants. The best politicians are keen students of public policy, and they regularly use the media to educate the public about important issues. They listen to good ideas from ordinary citizens. And they understand the legislative process, enabling them to create laws that bring about positive changes.

Every three years, municipal elections in B.C. are held on the third Saturday of November. So as we approach the third Saturday of November, we’ve decided to prepare a report card to commemorate their first year in office after the last election. For space reasons, we stuck to Vancouver and the inner suburbs—the area covered by one-zone and two-zone transit fares.

Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan: D

It was tempting to give Sullivan a failing grade for firing the board of variance, scrapping the women’s advisory committee, breaking a promise to work for lower transit fares, eliminating the child and youth advocate, slashing the percentage of units set aside for nonmarket housing at Southeast False Creek, and for basically being a do-nothing libertarian on the issue of homelessness.

But when Sullivan started talking about allowing surveillance cameras on Granville Street, he lost any street cred he had as a libertarian.

Sullivan started talking about homelessness after Vision Vancouver politicians began highlighting the fact that 350 units had been lost on the Downtown Eastside. The Vancouver 2010 Bid Corporation had promised the International Olympic Committee that this wouldn’t occur, but somehow that escaped Sullivan’s attention until this autumn.

One of Sullivan’s lows was kicking a popular park commissioner, Al De Genova, out of the NPA caucus because De Genova had the temerity to speak his mind. Despite all this, Sullivan avoided an F for his approach to policing. He deserves credit for engineering the replacement of former police board members who kowtowed to Chief Jamie Graham. New board member Jerry Adams, the veteran executive director of the Urban Native Youth Association, can help bridge the gap between urban aboriginal youth and the VPD. Sullivan also tried to pare down Chief Graham’s request for more uniformed officers, but the mayor was undercut by NPA Coun. Kim Capri.

In addition, Sullivan has also been very progressive on drug issues, working behind the scenes to help persuade Prime Minister Stephen Harper that Vancouver’s supervised injection site should remain open.

Sullivan’s “EcoDensity” initiative sounds positive on the surface, even though it’s likely to result in major developers and campaign contributors being allowed to build taller residential towers in areas outside of the downtown core. The public will go berserk, but Sullivan will justify voting in favour of skyscrapers by saying it’s all for the sake of the environment and reducing residents’ ecological footprint.

NPA Coun.Suzanne Anton: C

As chair of the planning and environment committee, Anton is a power broker at Vancouver City Hall and a potential threat to Sullivan’s mayoral position if the NPA ever tires of his dithering.

Anton voted to reduce space set aside for social housing at Southeast False Creek to 20 percent of all units, rather than support a plan for one-third market, one-third for middle income, and one-third for social housing.

As a GVRD director, Anton has been quite critical of the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge, and she voted for GVRD motions “strongly opposing” the B.C. Liberal government’s plan. As a TransLink director, she has usually gone along with staff recommendations.

Here in Vancouver, she strongly opposed the previous COPE-controlled council’s plan to convert two traffic lanes on the Burrard Bridge into bicycle-only lanes on a trial basis, which had the potential to save taxpayers $13 million.

Anton has gone along with the NPA council’s more troubling decisions, such as firing the child and youth advocate. Prior to the election, Anton made a big deal about her interest in environmental issues, and since then, she has become the chief cheerleader of the mayor’s EcoDensity initiative. Council voted to retain the city’s sustainability office, which is working to create an energy utility in the False Creek area. It was one of the few COPE innovations that survived the NPA victory.

Anton, a former park commissioner, might have qualified for a C+ or even a B- had she spoken out against the mayor’s disgraceful sacking of De Genova from the NPA caucus. One can only imagine how Anton would have reacted had she been kicked out of caucus when she demonstrated an independent mind as a park commissioner.

NPA Coun. Elizabeth Ball: C–

Ball ran on a platform of providing a voice for the arts on city council. But she hasn’t had much to say publicly about VANOC’s tardiness in bringing the supposed four-year Cultural Olympiad to life. Ball introduced a motion to get the ball rolling on a yearlong celebration of arts and culture in 2011 to commemorate the city’s 125th birthday. She also promoted the creation of a poet laureate to champion poetry and literacy.

Ball has provided a channel for arts and cultural groups to have an impact on council decisions. She has also taken up the cause of the local film industry. But her overall voting record has been less than stellar. It’s surprising that someone who describes herself as being interested in youth issues would vote with her NPA peers in dumping the city’s child and youth advocate.

Ball and Anton also voted at the GVRD to retain new vehicles’ seven-year exemption from AirCare testing. Environmentally minded GVRD directors, such as Peter Ladner, Tim Stevenson, and B.C. Lee, preferred a four-to-five-year exemption for new vehicles. The dinosaurs carried the day, which could have disturbing implications for air quality.

COPE Coun.David Cadman: B

Cadman has no difficulty wrapping his big brain around complex subjects such as global warming, international-trade agreements, war and peace, transportation, and the likelihood of future energy shortages. He is an articulate critic of the NPA’s policies, and he sometimes is the sole voice voting against regressive policies supported by both Vision Vancouver and NPA politicians. For example, Cadman was the only member of council to vote against shifting property taxes from business to residential.

Cadman has raised concerns about the role of the public-relations firm Reputations Corp., which worked for Wal-Mart and whose president and “chief reputation officer”, Wayne Hartwick, also helped NPA Mayor Sam Sullivan get elected. Cadman also made hay about the NPA-controlled council’s new “code of conduct” for members of council advisory committees, city staff, and even members of council. It’s too bad that Cadman doesn’t devote more time to working with media to ensure these issues get more public attention. If he did, he might have gotten a higher mark on this year’s report card.

NPA Coun. Kim Capri: C

Capri stated in an e-mail to the Straight that she was proud of how she “hit the ground running” by dealing with social housing, community safety, and animal-welfare issues. However, it’s questionable whether or not some of her solutions will achieve the desired outcomes.

Capri is a big fan of the “broken window” theory of crime prevention. American academics James Q. Wilson and George Kelling theorized that when authorities intervene to fix small problems, such as broken windows, the number of large crimes also falls. It was cited as a factor in New York City’s drop in crime during the 1990s.

To achieve a similar outcome here, Capri has suggested that police start ticketing jaywalkers. Her supporters in local business-improvement associations have called for crackdowns on panhandlers, again citing the broken-window theory. The broken-window approach is a terrific justification for cracking down on the homeless.

The only problem is that, contrary to popular belief, the broken-window theory wasn’t necessarily the cause of the drop in crime in New York City. According to economist Steven Levitt, coauthor of the bestseller Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (HarperTorch, 2005), there was “frighteningly little evidence” that the broken-window theory is a panacea. That’s because crime rates fell everywhere else during the 1990s, including in areas that didn’t employ this approach.

However, Levitt concluded that there was a relationship between the addition of more police officers and falling crime rates. And early in her first term, Capri voted with the five Vision Vancouver and COPE councillors to boost the police force by 50 uniformed officers. The mayor and the rest of the NPA caucus wanted to cap the increase this year at 31 new officers.

Capri has also asked staff to look into a ban on the sale and ownership of exotic animals. Animal-welfare groups have been calling for this for years, and for this Capri deserves some credit.

She likes talking about how she also introduced a two-page motion to address homelessness. However, it little to anyone currently living on the streets. Capri and the NPA have claimed that they tried to address daycare by voting to revisit guidelines preventing Natasha Beim from opening a child-care facility in Yaletown. However, the same crew slashed the number of daycare spaces at Southeast False Creek by 40 percent.

Vision Vancouver Coun. George Chow: C

This city council has more than its share of boring speakers, but Chow is a refreshing exception, often peppering his remarks with humorous observations. He has been a fairly low-profile councillor in the English-language media, though he gets more attention in the city’s Chinese-language outlets. Chow got into electoral politics in 2002 as an independent candidate, opposing the four-pillars (enforcement, treatment, prevention, and harm reduction) approach to dealing with drug abuse. Since then, he has moderated his views on the city’s supervised injection site.

Chow voted against cancelling multilingual phone lines at City Hall, and he also voted against the Burrard Bridge sidewalk expansion in order to preserve the heritage value of the bridge, which could have saved $13 million. He admits that his first year on council has been a steep learning curve. So far, as an opposition councillor, he hasn’t had a major impact on most city policies.

Vision Vancouver Coun. Heather Deal: C

Deal is a strong advocate of green buildings, which are going to be crucial for our economic future if energy prices continue escalating. She is also an adept and intelligent debater, effectively criticizing the NPA’s decision to kill the women’s advisory committee.

But for the most part, Deal has kept a fairly low profile over the past year, popping up during the World Peace Forum and in connection with some housing issues.

The Vision Vancouver platform was exceptionally conservative for a party that was supported by many provincial New Democrats. Deal and her colleagues supported a significant increase in police officers, which she voted for in the council chamber. Vision politicians tried without success to retain a higher percentage of units set aside for nonmarket housing at Southeast False Creek.

Deal has the intellect and the speaking skills to leave a bigger mark on the local political scene, but only if she’s prepared to take some risks and start creating waves larger than a few millimetres high.

NPA Coun. Peter Ladner: B–

Ladner is probably the best NPA councillor, and he consistently comes up with positive initiatives rather than just dismantling what the previous government has done. Over the past year he has established a goal of 2,010 new food-producing garden plots by 2010. He claims credit for creating economic principles for the city, including making Vancouver a global leader in sustainability.

Ladner has also championed turning Vancouver into a city with affordable wireless technology available everywhere, which should delight thousands of laptop-computer owners. The issue is expected to be addressed at council before the end of the month, and could have positive long-term economic effects.

Ladner is a good guardian of taxpayers’ dollars on a smaller level. But he rarely criticizes the really big boondoggles supported by the Vancouver Board of Trade. He was a relentless promoter of the $2-billion Canada Line, breathlessly repeating propaganda put out by RAVCo, a TransLink subsidiary.

On the upside, Ladner is an honest politician who generally sticks to the issues in the council chamber. He has tried to raise concerns about the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge, though this has had little effect on Victoria. The NPA council has also followed through on expanding the city’s network of bike lanes, thanks in part to Ladner, who is an avid cyclist.

NPA Coun. B.C. Lee: C–

Lee wrote an absurdly positive article about Sullivan in the Vancouver Sun. Lee can be counted on to support Sullivan’s most unpopular initiatives, such as the elimination of the women’s advisory committee.

Lee says he is proud of his role in ensuring the city will complete a feasibility study on the application of a new 311 number. Lee claimed that the 311 line represents a new philosophy to the delivery of city services, promoting a standardized process regardless of language. Critics say it’s a huge waste of money.

Lee also emphasized that as cochair of the mayor’s working group on immigration, he has gathered information from council stakeholders and advanced their concerns to senior levels of government. As a member of the GVRD board, Lee has voted with his council colleagues to strongly oppose the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge and Highway 1 west of the bridge.

Vision Vancouver Coun. Raymond Louie: B

Louie gave a remarkably honest response when asked to evaluate his performance. “Although I have worked hard this year to hold the Mayor and his NPA Councillors accountable, I cannot give myself a high mark as overall this council has not produced enough results to reduce homelessness or improve the affordability of our city,” Louie wrote in his e-mail to the Straight.

Some observers feel that Louie and Cadman are the two most effective council critics of the NPA regime. Louie reads reports closely and he has no trouble eviscerating NPA politicians for their refusal to pay more attention to housing issues.

Louie also takes credit for helping to organize more than 100 community-service grant applicants to help retain their funding.

Vision Vancouver Coun. Tim Stevenson: C+

In the face of NPA inaction on homelessness and evictions of people from single-room-occupancy hotels, Stevenson brought forward a motion calling for a moratorium on SRO demolitions on the Downtown Eastside. It’s a heavy-handed approach and has the potential to create a lot of trouble for small businesspeople who own some of these buildings. But something had to be done to get the mayor’s attention.

As a GVRD director, Stevenson demonstrated independence from the NPA councillors on one key issue. The Wreck Beach Preservation Society sent several speakers to the February 17 meeting to oppose UBC’s plan for an 18-storey and a 17-storey tower for new student residences. WBPS spokesperson Judy Williams urged the board to drop the height to 14-storeys, claiming that Wreck Beach is a world-renowned tourist destination. Other WBPS members claimed that the towers would be visible from the beach.

The majority of directors, including NPA councillors Anton, Capri, Lee, and Ladner, voted for a motion saying that UBC’s plan was “consistent with the protection of Pacific Spirit Regional Park values and the Official Community Plan”. Stevenson was one of the few who sided with the Wreck Beach Preservation Society. He has also been a reliable advocate for the gay and lesbian community.

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan: A–

The City of Burnaby has consistently led the region in environmental protection and in the quality of its staff reports on regional transportation issues. Earlier this year, Burnaby was the first municipality to examine the potential impact of peak oil (a term used to describe when global oil production will peak). Corrigan has often emphasized preserving green space. For example, the UniverCity development at SFU includes smart planning principles, bringing environmental groups to the process.

On the downside, Burnaby has dithered on the creation of a homeless shelter after years of discussion and preparations. On the upside, Mayor Corrigan has been the GVRD’s foremost proponent of preserving a livable region. On September 22, he voted to amend a motion to ensure the GVRD “strongly opposes” the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge and the widening of Highway 1 west of the bridge. It narrowly passed.

Corrigan, a New Democrat, has also been a voice of fiscal sanity on the TransLink board, which too often ignores the concerns of bus riders in favour of gold-plated rapid-transit projects. For example, on July 19 Corrigan was the only TransLink director to vote against allocating up to $3 million (excluding interest) for design changes to the Canada Line’s Broadway station and the Richmond-Brighouse bus loop. Corrigan also voted against TransLink collecting the parking tax this year, which effectively shovels more money at the Canada Line.

Corrigan is particularly adept at explaining the risks of public-private partnerships and international trade agreements, which makes him a necessary voice at the GVRD and on the TransLink board.

North Van District Mayor Richard Walton: C

Council watchdog Corrie Kost and former councillor Ernie Crist have raised concerns about Walton’s alleged predilection for curtailing public comments at public hearings, though Walton wrote a letter to the North Shore News denying it.

Walton has been a fairly visible mayor, even though some critics have complained that the district isn’t sharing some information about mudslides with local homeowners. Earlier this year, Walton travelled to Hong Kong, which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on landslide prevention, to evaluate how it deals with this issue. Critics on council derided the move, but the trip could pay for itself if it helps prevent future landslides.

Walton has also constructively pushed the federal government and the Squamish First Nation about the band’s plan to place huge electronic billboards on North Shore roads.

As a GVRD director, Walton voted against a motion to “strongly oppose the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge”. Walton also voted against the motion to rescind the GVRD’s exemption of new vehicles from AirCare testing for seven years.

On July 26, however, Walton demonstrated that he wasn’t a complete troglodyte on transportation issues when he voted for a GVRD motion to incorporate a regionwide road-pricing system (often a euphemism for road tolls) prior to construction of a twinned Port Mann Bridge.

One of council’s silliest fiascos this year concerned a proposed TransLink bus depot on BC Rail land near the waterfront. Walton and the rest of council, except for Janice Harris, voted to overturn an earlier decision to approve the depot.

City of North Van Mayor Darrell Mussatto: A–

The City of North Vancouver has always been one of the region’s best-planned municipalities; it has emphasized smart growth ever since the days when Jack Loucks was mayor. The redevelopment of the Lower Lonsdale area continues in that tradition, notwithstanding the high cost of some of the condos going up in the neighbourhood. Mussatto has restored a sense of civility and openness to City Hall, which is a welcome change from the days when former mayor Barbara Sharp ruled the roost.

Mussatto, unlike the two other North Shore mayors, voted at the GVRD to “strongly oppose” the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge and widening of Highway 1 west of the bridge. However, as a GVRD director, Mussatto didn’t heed the advice of members of the Wreck Beach Preservation Society and voted for a motion saying UBC’s development plans were consistent with the protection of Pacific Spirit Regional Park values. Two North Shore mayors, Walton and West Vancouver’s Pamela Goldsmith-Jones, also voted with the majority on this issue.

West Van Mayor Pamela Goldsmith-Jones: C

Goldsmith-Jones started with a lot of potential. She knocked off long-time mayor Ron Wood by promising more open government and more sensible planning. As a councillor, she impressed environmentalists by spearheading a ban on pesticides.

Since the election, Goldsmith-Jones has supported a less formal committee system to allow for more public input. But she has been a disappointment at the GVRD, refusing to support a motion strongly opposing the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge and endorsing UBC’s proposed towers near Wreck Beach. After becoming mayor, she lost some of her zeal to save Eagleridge Bluffs from being destroyed to make room for an expanded highway to Whistler.

Things got a lot worse for Goldsmith-Jones after it was recently revealed that West Vancouver police Const. Lisa Alford was put in line for a promotion after being convicted of impaired driving. Alford got drunk in the West Vancouver police station in the presence of her colleages on the force.

Goldsmith-Jones is chair of the police board. Now police complaint commissioner Dirk Ryneveld’s office is investigating why it wasn’t told that Alford was consuming alcohol at the cop shop. If Ryneveld delivers a damning indictment of the police board’s conduct, it could have unpleasant ramifications for Goldsmith-Jones’s political career.

Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie: D

Since the last election, Richmond has been swirling in controversy, which is a little surprising given the city’s relative wealth and nondescript nature. Over the past year, citizens across the region have heard plenty about the Richmond Olympic oval, which is an emerging financial debacle. As David Berner wrote in last week’s Straight, the final bill should exceed $200 million after including all the costs—twice the price of Turin’s Olympic oval.

Brodie has been pilloried by former political allies, including Bob Ransford, who helped get him elected mayor. As the chair of TransLink, Brodie has continued supporting shovelling more money at the Canada Line. His municipal government hasn’t exactly been a champion of preserving farmland, which could hurt all of us if oil prices rise sharply, raising the cost of imported produce from California. Brodie has also been a steadfast proponent of twinning the Port Mann Bridge and expanding Highway 1, despite evidence that building more roads won’t have any serious impact on traffic congestion after three or four years.

Moreover, the Richmond fire department continues attracting headlines for its alleged treatment of female members. The City of Richmond’s solution: government-funded unisex boxer shorts for the firefighters. It’s enough to make any taxpayer weep.