Vancouver's mayor-elect promises hearing on Olympic village deal

Vancouver's mayor-elect is promising a publichearing on the controversial Olympic athletes village fundingdealas soon as he takes office in December.

Gregor Robertson, who ran for the Vision Vancouver party, soundly defeated the Non-Partisan Association's Peter Ladner in Saturday's civic election afterit was revealedthe outgoing city council quietly agreed last month to loan $100-million to bail out the developers of the Olympic athletes village.

Robertson, who was not on council at the time his own party members approved the deal, said his first order of business is to hold a public meeting on the bailout.

"I've made a commitment to hold a public council meeting within 30 days of being sworn in to put all the appropriate information on the table, so we can start restoring public confidence in the Olympic village dealand make sure taxpayers know how money is being spent without jeopardizing the deal or compromising any of thecity's legal obligations," said Robertson.

Some of the details of the deal were leaked to the media by an undisclosed source in the weeks leading up to the civic election on Saturday.

NPA councillor questions public airing of deal

Meanwhile Suzanne Anton, the only NPA member elected to city council in Saturday's election, said she's watching the new Vision-dominated council closely to see how it handles negotiations around the city's controversial bailout of Millennium Development, the builders of OlympicVillage.

Suzanne Anton was a councillor when the previous city council unanimously approved the $100-million loan behind closed doors.

Anton said Vision Vancouver was wrong tosupport making details of the loan in public before the negotiations are over, and she's concerned about how they're going to handle the continuing negotiations.

"They threw a hand grenade into a very delicate negotiation that's going on between our staff, the developer and the lender, and I think that was extremely irresponsible and very problematic, and I don't know how they're going to now reconcile that when they're newly elected," said Anton on Monday.

Outgoing Mayor Sam Sullivan will hand over the keys to the office to Robertson on Dec. 8.

Robertson said his other priority will be to establish an emergency task force on homelessness his first day in office, with the aim of ending homelessness in Vancouver by 2015.