Vancouver council passes motion asking province to dissolve elected park board
Mayor Ken Sim revealed plan last week, says park board is outdated and councillors should make decisions
Vancouver city council has passed a motion that formally asks the province to dissolve the city's elected park board and shift its responsibilities to council, while the province's premier says he expects a detailed plan over the proposed transition.
In a marathon meeting Wednesday, Mayor Ken Sim's motion was passed in a 8–3 vote.
Dozens of speakers turned up in opposition to the move, which was first revealed last week.
Vancouver is the largest city in Canada that has an independently elected board to look after parks and recreation. It has existed since 1888.
A majority of its commissioners voted Monday to continue the board's work in defiance of the mayor's plans, though Sim's motion asks for a six-month transition committee to be convened to start the process of dissolving the board.
"The arguments for keeping an elected park board were based on tradition and the past," Sim said before the motion passed on Wednesday night. "And while we should celebrate tradition and the past, that is not a reason for keeping the elected park board."
Sim said the current governance structure of Vancouver's parks is "set up to fail," and compared trying to fix the park board to repairing a fax machine in the age of AI.
Proponents of the park board have argued that having a body dedicated to green spaces means there is more attention to ensuring they are well maintained.
Green Coun. Adriane Carr said the decision on the fate of the park board was made "behind closed doors."
"The process to me is shocking," she said. "I have to say I have never heard of a case where a duly elected body was eliminated by another elected body, midterm, with a stroke of a pen."
Carr was one of three councillors who opposed Sim's motion. Sim and seven councillors with his ABC party voted in favour.
Motion asking for referendum fails
Carr and fellow Green councillor Pete Fry failed with amendments to ask for a binding referendum on the issue and for transition committee appointments to be made during council meetings.
The mayor's motion asks the province to amend the Vancouver Charter, the legislation that regulates the city's functions and created the park board in the first place.
While council is in charge of setting the parks budget and approving a capital plan, oversight of the city's 240-plus parks and dozens of recreation facilities falls to seven elected park commissioners and separate park board management.
In his motion, the mayor says any plans to cancel park designations for any green space would have to be approved by a unanimous council vote.
Earlier this month, park board commissioners endorsed a performance audit conducted by the city's auditor general over its revenue management.
It found that the board did not operate an effective framework over realizing revenue-related objectives to maintain its assets and provide services. The audit made six recommendations, including more engagement with council over management plans.
Sim's principal argument for the abolition of the park board is that it would save money and be more efficient.
However, he has not yet provided a cost estimate for how much the city would save if the park board was abolished.
'Many steps to go': Eby
B.C.'s Ministry of Municipal Affairs said last week that the future of the park board was up to Vancouver city council, but would "take the necessary steps to implement the decision of their elected city council."
On Thursday, Eby told reporters at a tour of the future site of the new St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver that the province would need to see a detailed plan from the city about how it would engage with First Nations over the proposed change plus how to transition its facilities under city governance and how the changes would affect Park Board staff.
"We understand and we expect that the city will be putting together a transition plan so that we can understand how they anticipate dealing with the Indigenous engagement issue, the future of the staff, the future of the facilities. They took the first step ... but there are many steps to go."
Eby did not say how long the province would take to make any amendments to the Vancouver Charter over the matter.
With files from Justin McElroy, Akshay Kulkarni and Chad Pawson