Does cutting $7 million from a $2.2-billion City budget justify abolition of the democratically elected Park Board?
VANCOUVER (Nov. 25, 2024) – What price democracy? That’s the question TEAM for a Livable Vancouver is asking after Mayor Ken Sim revealed Thursday that his plan to eliminate the city’s elected Park Board will save the city about $7 million annually over the next 10 years.
That may sound like a lot to the average taxpayer, but it pales in comparison with City Hall’s annual budget of $2.2 billion. And it’s less than the $8 million Council has just approved for designing a new PNE Amphitheatre for FIFA World Cup watching parties. Abolishing the Park Board is an obvious attempt to distract attention from City Hall’s ever-expanding budget.
And it’s yet another example of ABC reducing citizen participation in civic governance. Sim and ABC have no mandate to eliminate the Park Board: that wasn’t part of the ABC platform in the last civic election.
TEAM for a Livable Vancouver, in contrast, believes in democracy. That includes saving the elected Park Board, a unique part of our civic heritage that has managed and expanded our precious parkland and kept it safe from profit-hungry developers since 1889.
The Park Board has been weakened by a series of irresponsible decisions in recent years. Instead of folding the Board’s responsibilities into the City’s, TEAM’s 2022 election platform promised to restore finance, operations and facilities to the Board’s jurisdiction. One example of the threat facing Vancouver’s parkland is a City staff recommendation that no part of Charleson Park in False Creek South be designated as Permanent Park.
Not everyone at ABC agrees with Sim’s attempt to silence citizens’ voices. Three ABC Park Board commissioners left the party last year to sit as independents because of the move to abolish the Board. They include Park Board Chair Brennan Bastyovanszky, who calls the report’s cost-saving claims “dubious.” He says the centralization of power that abolishing the Board represents won’t help the people of Vancouver, and will instead erode their trust in democracy.
The ball is now in the court of the provincial government, which alone has the power to change the Vancouver Charter and eliminate the Park Board. TEAM urges Premier David Eby to take note of the groundswell of opposition to eliminating a crucial part of Vancouver’s democracy – and do the right thing.