"We spent a year and a bit trying to fix it, it's not working," said Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim. "We deserve world-class parks and recreational facilities, and so we need to change the structure."
For a long time, Vancouver has been B.C.’s only city with an elected park board.
But it won’t be much longer, if the mayor has his way.
ABC Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim plans to introduce a motion at a meeting next week seeking council’s approval to move towards abolishing the city’s elected park board.
Other than Cultus Lake Park in B.C.’s Fraser Valley, and the U.S. city of Minneapolis, Vancouver has the continent’s only park board officials elected by the public, Sim says.
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“Everyone else in North America has figured out that it doesn’t work because no one’s rushing to set up an elected park board — because it’s so problematic.
“It doesn’t matter who you bring in. The structure is broken. You could literally put in seven superstars in that chamber, but because the system’s broken and it’s fragmented, it just adds too many problems,” Sim said in an interview this week. “So we’re going to fix the structure … and fold it into City of Vancouver operations with the oversight of council.”
Considering Sim’s ABC party has a super-majority on council, his motion seems likely to pass next week. But the final decision will not be council’s to make. Abolition of the elected park board would require a change to the Vancouver charter, which means it would be up to the provincial government. Sim will seek council’s approval next week to send a formal request to the province.
“The province is not going to be surprised,” Sim said, explaining that his office has already been discussing the matter with provincial counterparts.
He did not answer whether the province seems receptive to the idea, saying only they have been “a great partner” and that the park board’s dissolution is just one of “a bunch of charter changes” under discussion.
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He did not share information about the other possible changes to the Vancouver charter, the piece of legislation governing the city.
Sim has raised this idea before.
In April 2021, when ABC Vancouver first announced its launch, Sim, who had finished a close second in 2018 running for mayor with the Non-Partisan Association, said he’d seek the upstart ABC’s mayoral nomination. Two days after ABC’s launch, and 18 months ahead of the October 2022 election, Sim made headlines with what he called his “first policy commitment.” Sim announced: “If I become the mayor of our city, my goal is to make sure that the next park board will be the last elected park board.”
At that time, Sim cited concerns he’d heard from the public over the previous park board, including their handling of encampments in Strathcona and Oppenheimer parks, and their decision to transfer ownership of the Vancouver Aquarium to a U.S-based entertainment company.
But as the October 2022 election approached, Sim’s position pivoted. By that July, when ABC announced its slate of six park board candidates, Sim told CBC News reporter Justin McElroy that he expected the city might not get the province’s “immediate time and attention” for the needed legislative change, “so what we’re going to do is we’re going to run a bunch of strong candidates to win a majority on the elected park board, people with incredible lived experiences who have the skills to fix our parks.”
Every one of the party’s six park board commissioners was elected: Scott Jensen, Angela Haer, Laura Christensen, Marie-Claire Howard, Jas Virdi and Brennan Bastyovanszky. (The Greens’ Tom Digby is the board’s seventh and only non-ABC commissioner.)
Since then, the ABC-majority park board has kept busy with some high-profile files: plans to transform the West End waterfront, removing a bike lane in Stanley Park, legalizing booze in parks and beaches, and exploring more revenue-generation and sponsorship strategies.
Asked if he could point to any specific park board decisions, incidents or outcomes in the past 13 months that convinced him this was the correct course of action, Sim emphasized his decision was not based on the conduct or competency of the park board’s staff or elected commissioners, but the realization the governance system itself is “broken.”
“We spent a year and a bit trying to fix it, it’s not working,” he said. “We’re a world-class city, we deserve world-class parks and recreational facilities, and so we need to change the structure.”
Sim proposes codified “protections” that would mean converting any Vancouver parks to other uses — such as the frequently raised idea of building housing on a city-owned golf course — would require unanimous approval by mayor and council. He also envisions a “transition operating group” to oversee that change, consisting of himself, his chief of staff Trevor Ford, city manager Paul Mochrie, the park board’s new general manager, an elected park board commissioner, two city councillors and up to six members of the public.
Sim said it’s too early to answer some questions, such as whether this change would entail the creation of a new staff position, or when the current elected commissioners might finish their work.
“It’s too early to know how the process will unfold … but to get this legislative change through the province, we’re estimating about six months,” Sim said.
Park board commissioners, who earn $18,743 a year for their work, typically hold down other jobs. The chair earns $23,428.
The history of Vancouver’s park board, unique in Canada, was outlined in a 1972 publication from the city. Vancouver’s first park board was appointed by council in 1888, consisting of three aldermen (as city councillors were then known) and three citizens appointed by the mayor.
By 1890, Vancouver had three elected park board commissioners. While the number of commissioners and frequency of civic elections has changed a few times since then, the city’s parks and recreation has been overseen by this unique elected body for the last 133 years.
But it seems like the elected board’s 134th year might just be its last.
More to come …
dfumano@postmedia.com
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