Archive for February, 2009
The reno tax credit: how it works
Friday, February 27th, 2009‘Condo King’ Rennie hit with more than 200 parking tickets since 2004
Friday, February 27th, 2009Top Vancouver realtor describes the situation as ’embarrassing,’ but says ‘I think it’s just a cost of being busy’
Chad Skelton
Sun
Hummers are ticketed nine times as often as Smart cars. Photograph by: Roger Watanabe, Vancouver sun
Realtor Bob Rennie, known by many as Vancouver‘s “condo king,” may have to get used to another nickname: the prince of parking tickets.
Using parking-violation data for the past five years, The Vancouver Sun compiled a list of the 10 most-ticketed licence plates in the city.
Nine of those plates belong to commercial vehicles such as armoured cars and parcel-delivery trucks, which often find themselves dinged for stopping where they shouldn’t.
Only one of the 10 is a personal vehicle: Bob Rennie’s luxury car.
Since Jan. 1, 2004, Rennie has racked up 204 parking tickets.
Almost all of the tickets are for sitting at an expired meter and more than a third were received in the block where Rennie’s office is located.
In fact, 37 of the tickets were written at the exact same meter: the one right in front of Rennie’s office.
“It’s embarrassing,” Rennie conceded. “But I think it’s just a cost of being busy.”
Rennie said he doesn’t even drive the ticketed car to work that often.
He said he couldn’t recall how much he paid for it (the retail price is upwards of $150,000).
Rennie said that on the rare days he drives the car to work, he finds it convenient to park right by his office and usually pays by phone for the first couple of hours.
But then he gets busy with meetings or phone calls and forgets to plug the meter.
City records show Rennie has paid all his tickets and he says he never gives the parking officers who ticket him a hard time.
“The guys are doing their jobs,” he said. “I don’t get upset when I get a ticket.”
Rennie refused to say exactly how much he has spent on parking tickets — other than it’s “too much” — but, assuming he paid each ticket within 34 days, the total bill is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $6,000.
Rennie’s not convinced he has spent that much more on tickets than he would have if he’d parked in a downtown lot.
“If you just broke it down in business terms, if I kept a parking spot in a Triple A location, in Wall Centre or at Bentall Centre, it would far exceed — or be equal to — the sporadic tickets,” he said. “And [you have] the convenience of parking exactly where you want.”
Nonetheless, Rennie said he’ll be more careful about his parking in the future.
“I think that I should just start dialing up that number and paying for the parking,” he said, then added jokingly: “[Or] maybe I should negotiate with the city and see if I can buy that meter.”
The parking-violation data obtained by The Sun included the licence plate number, and make, for every ticketed vehicle, but not the owner’s name.
Aside from Rennie — who The Sun was able to track down because he drives an unusual vehicle and was ticketed so close to his office — the identity of most of the other worst parkers remains a mystery.
However, court records reviewed by The Sun reveal that the absolute worst parker on the list — with 446 tickets in all — is an armoured car owned by Brink’s Canada.
Those same court records show Brink’s owns two other vehicles in the Top 20, with 184 and 161 tickets.
No. 3 on the list, with 344 tickets, just happened to be ticketed by parking officer Steve Goldie when a Sun reporter and photographer were tagging along on his Robson rush-hour route.
It, too, is a Brink’s armoured car.
Brink’s Canada refused to comment for this story.
Like the owners of the other vehicles in the top 10, records show Brink’s has paid most of its tickets.
Given the company’s history with parking tickets, that’s not surprising.
In 2005, Brinks got into hot water when it went to Vancouver traffic court on 99 separate tickets received by its armoured vehicles.
The company admitted it committed the violations, but argued it should get a 50-per-cent break on the fines, noting that in other cities, such as Toronto, armoured cars are exempt from parking rules.
“Well, that is Toronto,” justice of the peace Zahid Makhdoom said in his judgment. “We don’t live in Toronto, we live in Vancouver.”
Makhdoom noted that while he was inclined to give a break to people who appeared in his court with one or two violations, he had little sympathy for a company with nearly 100 tickets.
“Brink’s Canada is not engaged in some sort of altruistic pursuit such as a ‘meals on wheels’ program. They are not delivering food from a soup kitchen to some infirm person’s home. … They are transferring money from point A to B for profit,” Makhdoom said.
“In my respectful view, when a for-profit corporation knowingly breaks the law and then uses the judicial system to get away from it while clogging the court system, [it] must be subjected to a reasonable penalty.”
Rather than giving the company a break, Makhdoom decided to increase the fines, to $75 for each meter offence and $200 for each other ticket.
In total, the company was on the hook for up to $19,000.
Makhdoom also warned the company not to appear before him again, saying if it showed up a second time with a “stack of tickets” like that, he would consider imposing the maximum penalty for each one: $2,000.
Parking Secret No. 8: Night owls can rest easy. The first shift of parking officers starts at 6:15 a.m. and the last clocks off at 10:30 p.m. There are some exceptions for special events, but for the most part there is little to no parking enforcement overnight. However, this could change: a report has gone to city council proposing a new shift that would run until 2 a.m.
Parking Secret No. 9: A five-minute grace period exists in most no-parking areas, such as permit zones and commercial loading areas, so you’re allowed to stop briefly to pick someone up or drop them off. That also means a parking officer has to observe you sitting in such a spot for at least five minutes before writing you a ticket. Be warned, though: no such grace period exists for areas where you’re not allowed to stop at all — like rush-hour routes or bus zones — or for spots with a meter.
Parking Secret No. 10: All parking meters are not created equal. Downtown, where there are dedicated meter-checking foot patrols, the typical meter is usually checked by a parking officer at least once every two hours. In contrast, the meters along Commercial Drive and in Kerrisdale don’t have dedicated foot patrols and so may be checked as little as once a day.
Parking Secret No. 11: If you’re going to park illegally, don’t put on your four-way flashers. It provides no legal protection and just draws attention to your offence. “What it says to me is: I know it’s illegal, but I’m only doing it for awhile,” said parking officer Sherry Wevill.
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
Menu on the move
Thursday, February 26th, 2009R.TL plans to keep changing its fare every three months
Mia Stainsby
Sun
Alain Canuel, general manager at Regional Tasting Lounge, sets paella cake in front of Christine Monk (left) and Mikki Litzenberger. Photograph by: Stuart Davis, Vancouver Sun
R.TL
Overall 3 ½
Food 3 ½
Ambience 3 ½
Service 3 1/2
1130 Mainland St.
604-638-1549
www.r.tl
Open for dinner daily
Restaurant visits are conducted anonymously and interviews are done by phone. Restaurants are rated out of five stars.
– – –
It’s not a bad concept, especially in Yaletown, where diners form posses, moving from trend to trend. The menu at R.TL (awkward shorthand for Regional Tasting Lounge) highlights different world cuisines, changing them every three months but keeping B.C. food permanently in the mix.
It’s a risky move because the chef will be moving out of his comfort zone into areas that are not of his heart and soul. Right now the dining public, cowed by troubling times, is not particularly adventurous either, leaning toward comforting French bistro and Italian trattoria kind of food.
They soothe a jittery populace. (On cue, owners of the fine dining Parkside restaurant have just announced they will be changing its format and opening their second La Buca with its rustic Italian cuisine.)
But tapas like that at R.TL does have its place, especially in Yaletown, where dining out is recreation and entertainment.
Chef Erik Smith does some dishes very well, others need tweaks as simple as better seasoning or toning down acidity.
He starts on the right foot with good ingredients, including a number of products from Oyama Sausage. The price is right, too. Some of the dishes are quite generous and the average price is $12 or $13. Four to six dishes should feed two.
General manager Alain Canuel is polished and knows what he’s doing. He’s managed or done sommelier stints at Diva at The Met, Burrowing Owl in Oliver and Araxi in Whistler and he infuses the room with his passion for food and wine. There are 30 wines by the glass on offer thanks to the Enomatic wine preserving technology using a controlled environment and argon — a good thing for this style of eating.
Spain and the Middle East (as well as B.C.) were the featured cuisines when I visited. Chickpeas with Andalusian sausage was surprisingly yummy with currants and pine nuts. Sherry vinegar pulled the dish together. Paella cakes packed traditional paella into a puck shape with a crusty surface and a crisp wafer of Serrano ham inserted like a feather in a cap. Saffron aioli adds a soft layer of flavour. A half-dozen small lamb, pork and veal meatballs were satisfying, especially with the cinnamon-infused tomato sauce.
Malaspina mussels with Oyama chorizo in savoury saffron sabayon would have been delicious but the sabayon (made in an aerating whiz machine called Frix Air) was a touch too sweet.
Braised lamb cheeks rubbed with ras el hanout (a Moroccan spice-herb blend) were tender and tasty and served atop apricot and fig couscous and with caraway raita. Port-soaked figs on goat-cheese-slathered baguette sets you up for a nice hit of port but it didn’t deliver.
B.C. scallops are encrusted with chia seeds, which Smith says are loaded with Omega 3 oils.
They came with carrot puree, quince confit and pickled torpedo onions.
A very nice dish which would have been better with more seasoning on the scallops.
Fesenjun, usually an Iranian stew, is deconstructed into its parts — sliced organic chicken breast, toasted walnut puree, pomegranate syrup. While the chicken was very good, the pomegranate syrup tasted highly acidic and vinegary.
Desserts need editing.
Two-thirds of a chocolate trio were very good. The sticky toffee mousse with corn gelato (yummy!) and mint chocolate semi-freddo were delicious, but the truffle and chocolate malt was a surprise; it was a beverage with chocolate, malt flavour and the mushroom kind of truffle flavour.
It didn’t work.
And a lemon tart was exceptional only in that the crust was hard as concrete.
Still, if prices are kept in check, it’s a welcoming place to spend an evening and the menu is an adventure.
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
Samurai of the seven seas
Thursday, February 26th, 2009With Tojo, expect the unexpected and expect it to be brilliant
Mark Laba
Province
Hidekazu Tojo regaled the company at our table with rare antics. Photograph by: Gerry Kahrmann, The Province
Tojo’s
Where: 1133 West Broadway, Vancouver
Payment/reservations: Major credit cards, 604-872-8050
Drinks: Fully licensed.
Hours: Mon.-Sat., 5 p.m.-late, closed Sun.
It’s not often you see a famous chef yank down his own pants in the middle of his restaurant. But during a visit to the famed Tojo’s, as the restaurant was winding down with the last diners of the evening, our table was honoured by a visit from the master chef himself, Hidekazu Tojo. After regaling us with stories of the celebrities and rock stars he has cooked for, he then shifted to a darker theme of how to deal with hoodlums looking to mug inebriated folk tottering along downtown sidewalks after a night of wining and dining. His self-defence system seemed to have been based on a real-life experience.
“Take shirt, rip, then pants, pull down like so,” whereupon Tojo yanked his pants down to his knees, boxer shorts beneath hanging on for dear life and stumbled around the rear of the dining room. “Look very bad, like street person, ask them for change.”
“I think I just saw Tojo’s butt,” said North Shore Girl, one of the nine people at our table, gathered at the behest of our host, the mysterious Mr. Bentley, who was springing for the entire shindig. No small feat when you realize the prices here are equivalent to the U.S. Stimulus Package. Across the table, the Karate Kid (another dinner guest) nodded his head in agreement with Tojo’s evasive tactics.
Just part and parcel of the Tojo’s experience, where the unexpected is expected, whether it’s from the chef or on your plate. The room is huge and yet has a feeling of both community and intimacy, and strikes a balance between traditional and modern.
We began our journey with Tojo’s special sake and his signature tuna sashimi with special sesame and wasabi sauce ($15). Hint of sweetness lulls the senses along with the luscious tuna flesh, as soft and supple as Angelina Jolie’s lips and kind of similar in appearance until the hit of wasabi blasts through the nasal passages.
Next up, baked local sablefish ($27), so succulent it almost seemed sinful on the palate, finished with Tojo’s secret marinade and topped with a tiny nest of shredded yuzu for a citrus counterbalance, making this dish a textural and tasteful masterpiece.
The dishes kept on coming and my mind began to blur around the edges with the sake, lichee martinis and calvacade of culinary pleasures. So let it be known that I ate the gonads of a sea creature — sea urchin nigiri to be precise — because that’s what I discovered uni is. But these were the finest and freshest sea urchin gonads I’ve ever tasted, straight from Neptune‘s larder and about the same price as a Jacque Cousteau expedition. The eel nigiri was equally tasty.
There was also wild-prawn tempura and assorted veggie tempura (both $28), followed by three selections from Tojo’s Original Rolls. The Great BC Roll ($18) with barbecued salmon skin, salmon and cucumber, the salmon served warm to create a miniature temperate rainforest on the plate, the Tojo Roll ($12) with Dungeness crab, avocado, spinach and egg, and The Northern Light Roll ($14) with wild prawn tempura, avocado and a tinge of pineapple, all rolled into a thin cucumber crêpe.
My only beef was with the poultry course. In this case, a kind of teriyaki creation ($28) had chicken tougher than Colonel Sanders in a death cage match with Foghorn Leghorn. But the Japanese plum brandy was excellent and the delicate black-sesame panacotta dessert wondrous.
From the sublime to the downright strange, the bawdy to the beatified, all part of the mystery and mystique of this man and the special world he has created. Although you’ll pay through the nose and every other orifice you own for the experience.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
Charlie the Tuna couldn’t even get a job valet parking at this place.
RATINGS: Food: A Service: A Atmosphere: A
© Copyright (c) The Province
VANCOUVER’S PARKING SECRETS REVEALED
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009Freedom of Information Act data help Sun steer readers away from problems
CHAD SKELTON
Sun
It’s Friday evening and you’re picking up some takeout food from your favourite restaurant on Commercial Drive.
You pull into a space right in front and wonder: Should I plug the meter?
After all, you’re only going to be a few minutes, 10 tops.
But is it worth risking a $ 60 ticket just to save a few cents?
If only there was some way of finding out what your chances are of getting a ticket. Now there is. Over the next three days, The Vancouver Sun will let you in on the secrets of parking in our increasingly crowded city.
Through the Freedom of Information Act, The Sun has obtained a computer database of every parking ticket written in the City of Vancouver since 2004: 1.6 million tickets in all.
Using that data, The Sun has been able to pinpoint which city blocks you’re most likely to get a ticket on and — with minute-by-minute precision — what times of day parking officers are at their busiest.
We’ll let you in on some tricks of the parking game, such as which days of the year there aren’t any parking officers on duty at all and why checking your tires for chalk isn’t a foolproof strategy.
And we’ll get to the truth of some of the urban myths of parking enforcement, such as whether parking officers have a daily ticket quota they have to fill and whether you can get a discount on your parking fines by going to court.
Beginning today, The Sun is also launching a series of online tools — at vancouversun. com/ parking/ — where you can get even more information about what parking enforcement is up to in your neighbourhood.
The site includes an interactive map, where you can see — block by block — where parking officers write the most tickets and an online database of all 1.6 million tickets that you can search yours elf by street address or licence plate number.
Over the coming days you’ll also meet:
The parking officer who takes his job so seriously he writes twice as many tickets a day as some of his colleagues.
The people who fight their parking tickets in court and the judicial justices of the peace who decide whether or not to give them a break.
The famous Vancouver businessman who has racked up more than 200 parking tickets, many of them at the meter right in front of his office.
The database obtained by The Sun includes only municipal parking offences, such as expired meters, stopping in nostopping zones or parking in a residential spot without a permit.
Fines received in off-street parking lots — whether owned by the city or a private company — are not included.
So what about that meter on Commercial Drive?
The city’s parking enforcement unit acknowledges that meters in “ isolated” locations such as Commercial Drive or Kerrisdale are checked far less frequently than those in the downtown core.
That’s because while there are dedicated foot patrols checking meters downtown, those along Commercial are the responsibility of officers in cars covering a much larger area.
So while a downtown meter might get passed by a parking officer every couple of hours, some meters on Commercial are checked as rarely as once a day.
As a result, while a busy downtown block might see up to 20 expired-meter tickets a week, a typical block on Commercial has just two or three.
Parking at an unpaid meter is always a gamble, of course.
But your odds are a lot better on Commercial than downtown.
Where and when you’re most likely to get ticketed, based on a review of 1.6 million parking tickets issued in Vancouver since 2004
Jan. sales plummet as plunging home prices don’t sway buyers
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009Stephanie Armour
USA Today
A price reduction sale tops the sale sign of an existing home on the market in a south Denver suburb. By David Zalubowski, AP
Sales of existing homes plunged unexpectedly in January to the lowest level since 1997, a sign that even bargain-barrel prices aren’t doing enough to draw home buyers into the dismal housing market.
Existing home sales, which had been predicted to rise, tumbled 5.3% to an annual rate of 4.49 million in January, down from 4.74 million properties in December, according to a Wednesday report by the National Association of Realtors.
And in the second largest drop ever, home prices sank nearly 14% to a median of $170,300 in January from $199,800 a year ago.
Several factors are behind the surprising slump:
•Foreclosure moratoriums. Many lenders —— including mortgage titans Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac —— have instituted moratoriums on foreclosures, which means sales of foreclosed homes have stalled.
“It’s somewhat of a surprise,” says Brian Bethune, with IHS Global Insight, adding that the most recent report on pending home sales showed an increase. “But existing home sales are driven by foreclosures, and moratoriums on foreclosures will reduce the numbers. That was what had been driving some of the gains.”
•Housing rescue plan. Wary buyers were holding off purchases until after the announcement of the Obama administration’s housing rescue plan. The home price and sales data from NAR captures activity before last week’s announcement by Obama.
The $75 billion plan, among other things, will include an up to $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers that many economists expect will help spur sales later this year.
“The economic situation deteriorated due to the jobless rate and consumer confidence down,” says Lawrence Yun, chief economist with the National Association of Realtors. “But serious buyers wanted to know what was going to be in the stimulus bill before they signed a contract. They were waiting.”
•Interest rate volatility. So many issues are in flux, including weekly volatility in interest rates and uncertainty about the effect of Obama’s housing affordability plan, and indicators such as home sales are reflecting the ongoing uncertainty over the housing market.
Mortgage applications dropped 15.1% for the week ending Feb. 20 and refinancing activity also declined 19%, according to a Wednesday report by the Mortgage Bankers Association. The average interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages increased to 5.07% from 4.99% the week earlier.
Most recently, home sales had been on the rise. The last report by NAR found existing home sales rose 6.5% to 4.74 mill ion properties in December from 4.45 million in November.
But home prices toppled at a record pace in December, based on a report Tuesday by S&P/Case Shiller index. They dropped 18.5% in December compared to a year earlier — the biggest decline in more than 20 years.
