NPA's Kirk Lapointe promises better maintenance of parks, recreational facilities

Are Vancouver’s parks, green spaces and recreational facilities in dire need of proper maintenance? Non-Partisan Association (NPA) mayoral candidate Kirk Lapointe has unveiled a plan that will ensure the city’s public spaces are properly kept.

In a statement released yesterday, Lapointe and NPA Park Board candidates announced that an NPA dominated municipal government will maintain city parks and gardens to “reliable service levels” through the creation of defined service levels for cleaning up parks.

Currently, the City of Vancouver employes just 33 gardeners for 230 parks, including Stanley Park, Queen Elizabeth Park and VanDusen Gardens.

In addition, the number of outdoor swimming pools will double across the city and a $10.2-million fund will be restored for the new Marpole-Oakridge Community Centre at the redevelopment of Oakridge Centre.

“Vancouver is a great city, with a wonderful outdoors” says LaPointe. “But under Vision the grass isn’t getting cut, our playing fields are falling apart and our trees are neglected. That’s bad management and we will change that.”

The NPA is also promising to fix the municipal government’s broken relationships with community centre associations. The Vision Vancouver dominated Park Board is currently engaged in a lawsuit with six community centre associations over jurisdiction conflicts following the controversy over the implementation of the OneCard.

“Forcing volunteers and our community members into expensive and time-consuming lawsuits as Gregor Roberston and Vision have done is not the way to run our communities.  We need new Joint Operating Agreements that are not imposed by City Hall,” says NPA Park Board candidate John Coupar. “The NPA will work with the community centres to modernize Agreements that ensure universal access across the network.”

Feature Image: weeds via Shutterstock