http://www.paulin08.com Candidate for Surrey City Council Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:11:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Smart growth around the downtown area. This will bring more customers and foot traffic into the area, which will stimulate reinvestment in the Town Centre.  The fasttracking of greenways in East Cloverdale, around West Cloverdale, in Clayton, and a connector to Fleetwood.  Complete the Fairgrounds Redevelopment plan, ensuring the community will reap ... http://www.paulin08.com/2008/08/my-vision-for-cloverdale/ I recently wrote a letter to the Editors of both of the Surrey Leader and The Now about the City's Newton Plan. Apparently both Laila Yuile and I agree that plants and banners don't help get to the core of the problems in this community. You can view pictures of ... http://www.paulin08.com/2008/07/improving-newton/ In a bid to protect its trees from developers who consider them nuisances, this city is assigning a monetary value to every tree in its 100,000-plus urban forest. The value is how much people will have to pay if they yield to the urge to play lumberjack. Bringing down one ... http://www.paulin08.com/2008/07/saskatoon-charges-by-the-tree/ According to some doomsday scenarios, spiking gas prices could turn the cul-de-sacs and two-car garages that surround North America's cities - built over the past 60 years and designed for the convenience of people with cars - into tomorrow's slums. The predictions for the most part come from subscribers to the ... http://www.paulin08.com/2008/06/todays-suburbs-tomorrows-slums/ The provincial government has legislated that all public sector organizations, including government ministries, school districts, health authorities, post-secondary institutions and Crown corporations achieve carbon neutrality by 2010! Of course, with such a short in which to develop and implement plans to become carbon neutral, this is putting huge strain on ... http://www.paulin08.com/2008/06/going-carbon-neutral/ When Shaun Yandell proposed to his longtime girlfriend Gina Marasco on the doorstep of their new home in the sunny suburb of Elk Grove, California, four years ago, he never imagined things would get this bad. But they did, and it happened almost overnight. "It is going to be heartbreak," Yandell ... http://www.paulin08.com/2008/06/americas-suburban-dream-becoming-nightmare/ There's a ton of reasons we are currently facing a housing affordability crisis in the Vancouver area, and I'll be the first to admit that I don't completely understand all the factors. One of the biggest reasons, I strongly believe, is due to high international demand to move to the ... http://www.paulin08.com/2008/06/understanding-the-affordability-crisis/ That's $2.11 per litre in metric calculation. This article is American, and thus doesn't completely match our situation up north, but there's still a ton of food for thought in this oped by Chris Pummer. You'll note that even though I may not specifically state that my platform is to confront the ... http://www.paulin08.com/2008/05/eight-reasons-to-love-8gallon-gas/ The article made me think about teen’s opinions and how many people ignore them. Many teenagers have great ideas about what can be improved in our city because we are the ones that use the transportation systems and use most public places. I say good for you Paul Hillsdon, I hope ... http://www.paulin08.com/2008/05/north-surrey-students-respond-to-council-run/ I was thinking today about how the city could provide more rec centres, and it passed my mind about the possibility of having smaller community rec centres with maybe a small studio and weight room - similar to the Houston Public Library's innovative Express branches. Then, as I turned my head ... http://www.paulin08.com/2008/05/recoordinate-schools-as-community-amenities/