Original sentence: At the time, power at City Hall was not in the hands of the elected mayor and aldermen, but in those of two appointed city commissioners.By the fourth quarter of 1967, a public hearing on how the route was chosen turned into one of the “wildest, most stormy meetings ever seen at city hall," wrote The Province's Bud Elsie.In 1959, one of the commissioners, chief planner Gerald Sutton-Brown, generated a city plan that former TEAM alderman and transportation engineer Setty Pendakur described as "completely automobile and freeway oriented.The catalyst for the creation of TEAM was a proposal to build a freeway through historic Chinatown.The nearly 500 people who attended, most of whom were opposed to freeways, turned it into a networking opportunity, “and, with their vest pocket diaries in hand, eagerly arranged to meet again for further discussion.While such freeways were being built in major cities throughout North America at that time, in Vancouver, opposition grew as the plans progressed
Edited sentence: "  The freeway debate is important as it was the catalyst for the creation of TEAM." The evening served as a networking opportunity, where "dissidents chatted busily among themselves and, with their vest pocket diaries in hand, eagerly arranged to meet again for further discussion.Bud Elsie of The Province described how "city council and its officials were pounded [...] for their freeway decisions in the wildest, most stormy meetings ever seen at city hall.By the fourth quarter of 1967, plans for the waterfront freeway through downtown Vancouver had progressed to the point of a public hearing to explain how the route had been chosen.In 1959, one of these, chief planner Gerald Sutton-Brown, generated a city plan that was "completely automobile and freeway oriented.In the years before Vancouver's freeway debate where a proposal would see a freeway built through  historic Chinatown, power at City Hall was not in the hands of the elected mayor and alderman, but in those of the two appointed city commissioners.Nearly 500 people jammed rooms and corridors and almost all of them appeared opposed to council's actions on freeways