Report doesn't specify which assets could be sold. Could Queen Elizabeth Theatre and Nat Bailey Stadium be headed for the auction block?
Vancouver should consider selling off city-owned assets, a new report recommends. But it is unclear which kinds of property could be up for sale.
This week, the budget task force assembled last year by ABC Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim delivered its report with 17 recommendations on how the city could improve its financial health while reducing pressure to increase on property taxes.
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One recommendation suggests the city look at divesting some of its “non-core assets.”
The report defines “core assets” as those that are “critical to the city’s core mandate and long-term strategies, including essential infrastructure such as roads, water and sewer systems, parks and emergency services facilities.”
It does not define “non-core assets.” But Vancouver Coun. Brian Montague, one of two ABC councillors who served on the task force’s advisory panel, said: “If the report discusses what core assets are, then non-core assets would be assets other than those.”
Asked if that would then include community centres, libraries, civic theatres, and sports facilities, Montague said: “The report is general for a reason, it doesn’t give specifics for a reason. … I think that’s because it wasn’t the task force’s job to tell council and the city what to do with what assets.”
“I think it’s something we need to talk about, because there might be assets where divestment is the best approach,” said Montague, although he declined to say which types or categories of assets could be considered.
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“I don’t think I’d get into specifics,” he said. “You can’t get those assets back, so you have to make sure it’s the right decision. But I do think that there are potentially assets where divestment might be the right decision.”
The mayor’s budget task force was announced with some fanfare in April 2023 by Sim, an accountant and businessman before his election as mayor in 2022. At that time, Sim’s ABC-majority council had just recently approved its first operating budget, which was funded by a 10.7 property tax hike, the city’s largest increase in recent memory.
At that time, Sim said the task force, made up of accountants and other experts acting on a volunteer basis, would go through “city spending with a fine-tooth comb, identifying inefficiencies, potential revenue opportunities, and recommending ways that we can utilize your tax dollars more efficiently and responsibly.”
The expert group was originally mandated to deliver its final report by Oct. 3, 2023, with “actionable recommendations” for the 2024 budget. That timeline needed to be adjusted, task force chair Randy Pratt told council in a presentation in late November, as the group had “underestimated” the size and complexity of the city’s financial challenges. Council approved the 2024 budget in December, with a 7.5 per cent property tax increase.
The outside experts had initially hoped they might be able to find some relatively easy and quick ways to improve city finances, Pratt said in November. Instead, he said, as they dug into the budget, they found: “The solution to a problem is easier the further away you are from it.”
OneCity Coun. Christine Boyle, one of three councillors not affiliated with ABC, said the final report’s recommendations “range from cliché to concerning, and a little comical. … None of it struck me as new ideas.”
The lack of specificity in the task force report and in Montague’s comments is concerning, Boyle said.
“In not naming specifically what assets they think we should be looking at divesting, that creates a ton of uncertainty and anxiety for residents who rely on those services,” Boyle said.
“What are the core services of a city? Are they the same as they were in the 1920s? Should it evolve? And who gets to define what our core services are?” Boyle said. “It will matter who you are and how you live in the city as to what counts as a core service. What a core service in Vancouver is for Brian Montague is not necessarily going to be the same as many other residents struggling to get by in Vancouver.”
Green Coun. Adriane Carr said: “It would be insanity to divest assets that serve as public amenities. … That’s penny-wise and pound-foolish.”
Many of the task force’s findings and recommendations are not new, Carr said. The report raises alarms about Vancouver’s massive infrastructure deficit and the city taking on responsibilities traditionally handled by senior levels of government, which Carr says have been recurring themes she has heard since she was first elected to council in 2011.
In addition to divesting non-core assets, the report recommends the city consider private management or public-private partnerships for them.
It also says the city could “generate additional revenue from civic assets through selling naming rights and running sponsorship campaigns for various city assets.”
Carr said she is generally uncomfortable with the idea of selling naming rights.
Boyle said she did not “want to say I’m for or against it ahead of the specifics — I don’t want ‘British Petroleum Park.’ But I’m not opposed to the conversation … if it helps further important city priorities and doesn’t come with strings attached that exclude people or get in the way of meeting the mandate and purpose.”
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