The Week's Best Late-Night Jokes

About.com has their usual list of the week's best late-night jokes. Here's one from Jimmy Kimmel: "Rush Limbaugh says if the health care bill passes, he will leave the country. The Democrats are upset, because if they knew that, they would have passed the bill years ago."

Why do people make goofy statements like that? It seems like every couple of years, we get a goofball like Limbaugh or Barbra Streisand (or was it Susan Sarandon?) come out and promise to leave the country if such-and-such happens. But they never do.

Due Date News

The baby is due today, but we have no news to report. However, Jenny is now Bob Groeneveld's favorite Twitterer (Advance blog).

The Vancouver Courier, who I thought would love the idea to tear down the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts, doesn't seem so keen on the plan (Courier).

Sacha Peter has posted his submission to the Local Government Elections Task Force (Double Blind). It's a good reminder that I need to finish mine up.

The City of Langley has released a recent opinion survey done by Ipsos Reid (Advance website).

Township Follow-Up

The newspaper websites have several stories of interest to Township readers this morning, including a Times piece on two upcoming traffic calming meetings:

For the area of 32 Avenue in Aldergrove, the open house will be Wednesday, March 17 at Parkside Centennial Elementary School from 5 to 8 p.m.

For Nash Street, the open house is on Tuesday, March 23 from 5 to 8 p.m. It will be held at the Langley Fine Arts School gymnasium.

Mayor Rick Green won't be getting a ceremonial chain of office like he wanted (Times).

The BC Summer Games crew is back from Terrace and it sounds like a productive trip (Advance).

And Times editor Frank Bucholtz has a nice column on the opening of Avalon Gardens, a significant seniors' development in the Murrayville core. You'd be hard-pressed to find a better spot for a facility like this in Langley--close to the hospital and emergency services, next door to IGA and Shoppers' Drug Mart, WC Blair Recreation Centre, the Murrayville Library, and other amenities.

The Premier made an appearance at Mary Polak's fundraiser Friday night (Times).

Meggs Hospitalized

Best wishes for a speedy recovery go out to Vancouver City Councillor Geoff Meggs, who was hospitalized after he was knocked off his bike by a car yesterday. The Globe and Mail has more details.

Online Voting, Rapid Transit, and more

No baby yet...

The Tyee has an interesting piece from Michael Geist on why voting via the Internet is a bad idea for democracy. I tend to agree--there are just too many things that can go wrong. Geist is a computer guru and at the forefront of innovative thinking in the technology world, so his voice carries a lot of weight.

SFU's Kennedy Stewart thinks the Province needs to put together a group of experts to hash out a regional economic growth strategy for the Lower Mainland (Sun blog).

The Langley School District is restructuring (Advance). Insert your own deck-chairs-on-the-Titanic joke here.

TransLink wants to hear from stakeholders on the future of Surrey and Langley rapid transit (TransLink).

Sunday Soapbox

Here is our weekly open thread to discuss whatever is on your mind.

Sunday Stuff

No news on the Bateman baby front...

I've blogged about Barry Penner is Awesome before, but its awesomeness has reached a new level with this post:

Okay, so the Winter Olympics have come and gone, and are generally regarded as a huge success. Best ever, some would argue. Barry Penner has an idea why:
"It seems to me these Olympics have been like Expo on steroids," he said (in the Chilliwack Progress).

Way to go, Barry. I think you just disqualified the Olympics from themselves. How embarrassing.

The debate continues over what closing the Langley Centennial Museum on off-season Sundays and Mondays will actually mean (Times and Advance). Reading the Township tea leaves, I'm pretty sure the closure will be reversed by Council. Probably by a 7-2 or even 8-1 vote. The vote comes on Monday, March 15.

At that same March 15th meeting, I plan to bring back my motion to send the Township Page out for bids from the local newspapers--an idea which could save $120,000 annually. That motion failed in a 3-3 tie last month, but I'm hoping at least two of the three (Green, Richter, and Dornan) who were absent will see the wisdom of trimming that cost.

Frank Bucholtz liked the fact that Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff visited Langley last month (Times).

The Langley Arts Council made a presentation to Council last week (Advance).

The Week's Best Late-Night Jokes

About.com has their usual list of the week's best late-night political jokes, including this one from David Letterman: "Talking about presidents who smoked. You remember George W. Bush? Remember him? He's saying while he was president he would enjoy the occasional cigar. On a rare occasion, he would have a cigar because he said it helped him think. I want to tell you, occasions don't get more rare than that, ladies and gentlemen."

Thursday News Notes

It looks like the City has sold the old Langley Prairie school site to a developer with a plan for 254 low-rise condos (Advance).

Tourism Langley has issued their latest quarterly newsletter update (Tourism Langley).

In Langley Township, we call it a long term financial plan. In Surrey, they dress it up as "Build Surrey"(Civic Surrey).

Apparently the School District is still using the antiquated accounting system that helped get them into their mess (Times).

Open For Business Newsletter #1

A few weeks ago, Rich Coleman and I were talking about small businesses in Langley and commiserating that, often times, we have information from our respective governments that we wish we could get out to business people.

So we decided to do something about it.

Today, we launched our first-ever Open For Business newsletter and sent it out to a number of local businesses. We hope it will be a useful tool for these business owners. Over the coming months, we plan to share information about what the provincial and municipal governments are doing to help and encourage business and economic development.

A PDF of the first issue (where Rich writes about the 2010 BC Budget, and I introduce my small business background and preview future newsletters) can be found here.

If you didn't receive it, but would like to get future Open For Business emails, sign up in the box below:

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