ABC loses Park Board majority: Will Vancouver Mayor's political gamble pay off?

ABC loses majority in Park Board: Will Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim's big political gamble pay off?

Mayor Ken Sim, accompanied by ABC City councillors and Park Board commissioners, announcing his proposal to abolish the Vancouver Park Board during a press conference on December 6, 2023. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

Since being elected as the Mayor of Vancouver over a year ago, and throughout the election campaign, Ken Sim has repeatedly said he wants to be known for making bold moves to effect the kind of change previous groups were not willing to make.

Vancouver is one of the only two major cities in Canada and the United States with a separately elected body overseeing the parks and recreation system. Sim does not believe that has made Vancouver’s parks and community centres better.

With his proposal to abolish the Vancouver Park Board and transfer the entity’s responsibilities to the City of Vancouver and Vancouver City Council, Sim is stepping into uncharted political territory.

Sim’s reputation for wanting to use an entrepreneurial lens to streamline decision-making processes, enhance efficiency, and cut costs precedes him, but the latest move marks a daring political gamble.

So far, it has already cost Sim’s ABC Vancouver party their majority hold on the Park Board’s elected board of seven commissioners, as Scott Jensen, Laura Christensen, and Brennan Bastyovanszky are no longer part of ABC, and have indicated they will complete the remainder of their term as independents. The trio of former ABC commissioners have also announced that moving forward, they will side with the lone Green commissioner, Tom Digby, on more decisions, effectively forming a loose coalition or majority.

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Down from six, there are now just three Park Board commissioners under the ABC banner — Marie-Claire Howard, Jas Virdi, and Angela Haer.

Sim, however, appears undeterred by the short-term setback of relinquishing majority control of the Park Board, as part of the broader campaign to abolish the entity entirely. In a manner reminiscent of “losing the battle but winning the war,” Sim’s team seems to prioritize the long-term gain of consolidating the Park Board’s responsibilities within the purview of the Mayor’s Office and City Council for governance, and the City for operations.

All of this hinges on the provincial government being on the same side, with Sim expected to receive the green light this week from the ABC majority in City Council to formally request the province to amend legislation relating to the Vancouver Charter to remove the requirement for an elected body of commissioners for governing the parks and recreation system.

Municipal governments are creatures of the provincial government. If the pitch does not receive the blessing of Premier David Eby’s administration, Sim’s gamble goes awry.

Sim told Daily Hive Urbanized that based on his discussions with the provincial government, he expects it will take about six months for the province to change the Vancouver Charter. Coincidentally, the provincial government is also expected to make a deep dive into the Vancouver Charter in Spring 2024 to make some legislation amendments relating to housing.

While proponents argue that eliminating the Park Board could lead to a more cohesive and responsive municipal administration overseeing the parks and recreation system, critics have been quick to express concerns about the potential loss of community representation and the erosion of a longstanding institution.

In addition to interviewing Sim prior to last Wednesday’s press conference, Daily Hive Urbanized also interviewed each of the three former ABC — now independent — Park Board commissioners.

“When I ran, I knew there were a lot of flaws in the Park Board, but the efforts that we’ve put in over the past year have addressed those,” Scott Jensen told Daily Hive Urbanized in an interview just after Wednesday’s press conference, listing moves such as replacing the Park Board’s General Manager.

“The Park Board gives voices to those who often don’t get heard. With the rolling of this into the City, it is going to silent a lot of voices. I think it is important that we continue the work we’ve been doing the last year into the next three years.”

Jensen says he was informed in a closed meeting at 5:30 pm Tuesday of Sim’s decision to proceed with a strategy that the Mayor’s Office had been planning for months. None of the ABC commissioners were informed of the proposal well in advance, he says, for reasons that may include keeping it confidential.

Laura Christensen told Daily Hive Urbanized in an interview she was unable to attend the meeting in person, as she was at home with her baby.

“We didn’t always agree with everything, but we worked together well. All of us were trying to work together, and I’m not sure why the proposal had to come now or what the real reasoning is behind it,” Christensen told Daily Hive Urbanized on Wednesday after the press conference.

“That makes me concerned that they’re making such a large decision without the elected commissioners.”

Christensen asserts the problems with the Park Board and its performance in operating and building new and improved parks and recreation facilities deals not with broken governance, but with a historical decades-long pattern of underfunding by City Council.

She cited Park Board staff reports earlier this year that found the Park Board receives the lowest proportion of municipal funding compared to the parks and recreation systems of Calgary, Surrey, Toronto, San Francisco, and New York City.

Over half (54%) of the Park Board’s annual operating budget, now well over $100 million, comes from direct municipal funding such as taxation, while the remainder of 46% comes from Park Board-driven operating revenue, such as user fees for accessing facilities and programming. In comparison, Toronto’s budget for the parks and recreation system, which is under a City department, is covered by 71% municipal funding and 29% operating revenue.

“Vancouver has one of the lowest taxpayer dollars per capita spending on parks and recreation in North America. The Park Board has been working very little as it can’t raise its own taxes, so it is working on whatever meagre offering City Council will allow it,” said Christensen.

“If given more money, a lot of the problems with the Park Board cited by the Mayor can be solved simply with better funding. I don’t think those problems have anything to do with an elected Park Board. It has to do with the Park Board being chronically underfunded.”

Part of the reason for underfunding is with the way the governance system is currently structured. City Council does not have a direct political skin in the game for the outcomes and performance of Vancouver’s parks and recreation system, given that the Park Board sees itself as a completely separate entity of the municipal government. The Mayor, City Council, and the City administration do not have jurisdiction on the day-to-day operations and long-term strategies of the Park Board, even though the Park Board budget entirely depends on the Mayor and City Council’s approval.

The Mayor told Daily Hive Urbanized his move to fold the Park Board into the expanded responsibilities of his office, City Council, and City operations would provide a single source of accountability over parks and recreation.

But Christensen believes there is the potential for the Mayor and City Council to overlook the finer details of governing the parks and recreation system, especially when they are currently focusing on the larger priorities of housing and public safety.

“I think there’s value in having an elected Park Board. There was a reason why it was created, and it has done a great job in protecting Vancouver’s green spaces. City Council has a lot of competing priorities, and having a separate body that ensures our parks are protected is very invaluable,” she continued.

“Are there issues with the Park Board? Yes, there are definitely challenges with the Vancouver Charter and the relationship between the Park Board and City Council, but I don’t think those are insurmountable as we can improve the working relationship.”

On Thursday, Brennan Bastyovanszky told Daily Hive Urbanized he disputes the Mayor’s assertion that there would be significant cost savings in folding the Park Board into the City. The independent commissioner suggests the only resulting cost savings will be the combined total of about $140,000 in annual part-time job salaries the seven commissioners earn, and rejects the notion that there is significant duplication in the day-to-day operations and maintenance tasks of Park Board and City crews.

“To say this will save money is beyond belief. There are areas for improvement, but none of those require an opening of the Vancouver Charter,” Bastyovanszky told Daily Hive Urbanized in an interview. He asserts the Mayor’s listed issues with the Park Board deal with the dysfunction of the previous 2018-elected makeup of commissioners, and not the current Park Board that was under ABC’s control up until last week.

“He is making a lot of assumptions that are not true… There is a lot of progress, and there is a lot of work still to be done. We were told that we would have the term to be able to do it.”

Bastyovanszky asserts there are parallels between Sim’s proposal and Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke’s debacle with Surrey Police, suggesting that if the provincial government steps in without public consultation, the entire process could get bogged down in legal disputes between two levels of municipal government.

“We are elected officials, so it’s not proper procedure to move elected officials without some sort of public consultation, let alone a backdoor deal. Why is there a rush?” he continued.

Bastyovanszky also alleges there was mixed messaging provided by the Mayor’s Office to ABC city councillors and the provincial government ahead of Wednesday’s press conference.

Daily Hive Urbanized directly asked Sim, Jensen, Christensen, and Bastyovanszky whether there were any particular points of conflict in recent weeks and months that triggered the move for abolition. Only Bastyovanszky provided a specific example, pointing to a disagreement over the Mayor’s plan to direct City funding to install a new artificial turf field at Moberly Park in South Vancouver, with Park Board staff opposed to the project for the reasons that it would remove the existing grass field and could see operational challenges due to the park’s slope.

On the other hand, ABC commissioner Marie-Claire Howard believes abolition is “the right approach for the people of Vancouver” and amounts to fulfilling “what we were elected to do.”

“I don’t think anyone will miss us,” said Howard during Wednesday’s press conference. “I think they are missing their parks and community centres not being well kept, but they’re not going to miss us. We’re not making that difference. Doing this change will make things better.”

She doubled down on the Mayor’s messaging that this will save significant costs in administration, and that parks and recreation matters will be addressed “better and faster.”

“It has been very frustrating for us to watch how slow the process is in the Park Board,” said Howard, before stating it currently takes about 15 years to achieve a new public park because it has to go through both the Park Board and City processes.

“The Park Board is very limited in its autonomy because it is not raising its own tax, so it is a very complicated and antiquated system that only exists because it was created a long time ago.”

Howard also used the example of the public washroom at Spanish Banks West being closed for the past year because there are jurisdictional conflicts between the City and Park Board over the facility’s pipe.

Sarah Kirby-Yung, an ABC city councillor and a former Park Board commissioner, says she carries a unique perspective from her time in both elected bodies.

“I have seen the ongoing structural issues with having a separate elected Park Board and two elected bodies in one city. If I was to put it simply, the current structure has not worked as effectively as it could have been a long time. And like many people, community stakeholders, and community groups and users of the parks and recreation facilities, I’ve heard the ongoing frustration and dissatisfaction from community on this,” Kirby-Yung said during the press conference.

“It will remove redundancies and allow for more effective delivery of services. It will allow us to elevate the quality of services and delivery in our parks.”

The abolition proposal has the support of at least eight major stakeholders, such as Mobi Bike Share, Honda Celebration of Light fireworks, and Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden. Kirby-Yung says Mobi needs to achieve two different sets of contracts for its bike share operations, sometimes even waiting for years to receive a permit to install a bike share station at a community centre, while organizers of major events and festivals on Park Board jurisdiction need to go through two different processes for multiple sets of permits. As for the garden attraction in Chinatown, it has been waiting since 2016 for an updated lease agreement, which she says has “compromised the maintenance of that absolute classical jewel.”

To address potential development concerns, Sim says his proposal calls on the provincial government to implement new protections to maintain the use of parklands. If there were ever to be a non-park change in the use of park space, it would require an unanimous vote of City Council, including the Mayor, which would then trigger a public referendum for final approval.

Sim emphasized the provincial government is well aware of his proposal to abolish the Park Board, which is one of a number of changes to the Vancouver Charter being considered by both the municipal and provincial governments.

This very idea is not entirely new, however. In 2021, before the formation of the ABC party, Sim first proposed the abolition of the Park Board by recruiting candidates who would be committed to being the last elected commissioners.

He backtracked on the idea of abolition in early 2022. Instead of abolition, ABC at the time decided to focus on fixing the Park Board from within by fielding commissioner candidates to run in the civic election.

“We actually tried to fix the Park Board.. With the positive intent and spirit to try fixing it, the reality is the structure is broken, and it just doesn’t work. You could literally drop seven superstars in there, and it wouldn’t matter. It’s just too dysfunctional,” Sim told Daily Hive Urbanized in an interview.

“Make no mistake about it, as long as I’m mayor of Vancouver, parks will always be parks, and golf courses will always be golf courses. We’re going to ask the provincial government to actually strengthen the protections.”

Just ahead of this week’s separate deliberations in the Park Board and City Council on the Mayor’s abolition proposal, over two dozen past Park Board commissioners have signed a joint statement opposing the move. This includes former commissioners Tricia Barker, Sarah Blyth, John Coupar, Allan De Genova, Melissa De Genova, Camil Dumont, Aaron Jasper, Tim Louis, Stuart MacKinnon, Erin Shum, and Michael Wiebe.

“This move is unprecedented, and without mandate. It has not been part of an election platform and has no mandate from the people of Vancouver. The elected Park Board is a unique democratic and publicly accountable institution that has served the people of Vancouver for 130 years. It offers the community a chance for direct input on significant land use and recreation issues,” reads the joint statement released today.

The debates will unfold during the Park Board’s meeting on the evening of Monday, December 11, and during City Council’s meeting on the Mayor’s motion on Wednesday, December 13.

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