Opinion: Vancouver would be better off without its elected Park Board

A partial collapse of the exterior wall near the main entrance of the aging Vancouver Aquatic Centre in March 2022. (Daily Hive)

“The City of Vancouver should eliminate the Board of Parks and Recreation, and place public parks and the public recreation system under the jurisdiction of Vancouver City Council.”

In a survey in June 2022, half (52%) of voters agreed with this statement to put an end to the elected body of commissioners that govern the Vancouver Park Board and transfer its governance and responsibilities to City Council — a governance system that is just like every other municipal government in Metro Vancouver.

In fact, Vancouver is the only city in Canada with an elected body — a legacy of the federal government’s designation in 1888 to gift 1,000 acres of its First Narrows military reserve for the purpose of a public park. The earliest iteration of the Park Board was formed that year to manage Stanley Park, and the committee was permanently replaced with an elected body starting in 1890.

This separate governing entity was needed given that the young city at the time was still finding its bearings. But that no longer remains the case — it should be abundantly clear by now that there is no need for the Park Board structure that exists today.

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While there is certainly some degree of collaboration and cooperation between the Park Board and City Council, and between Park Board staff and City staff, Park Board decisions are often made in the narrow silo of the elected body’s purview, without considering other complex and diverse needs of the city as a whole and the constraints.

And the same is true of City Council, given that the mayor and City Council touching anything dealing with the operations of parks and recreation is usually seen as trespassing into Park Board jurisdiction. It prevents the mayor and City Council from being able to deliver policy with a more holistic approach, with traditional municipal responsibilities uniquely split between Vancouver City Hall at the corner of Cambie Street and West 12th Avenue, and Park Board headquarters on Park Lake at the edge of Stanley Park.

The Park Board’s budget — both operational (e.g., level of services and programmings) and capital (e.g., building new and expanded parks and recreational facilities) — largely depends on City Council’s final approval for inclusion in the overall City of Vancouver budget.

Even though it does not control its own financial levers, the Park Board has been pumping out new major strategic plans to improve the city’s parks and recreational facilities — without any real plan to cover costs that now come to an excess of $1 billion.

These plans are well-intentioned for a growing City with aging facilities and changing needs, but they amount to being essentially long wish lists given that City Council ultimately needs to approve the Park Board’s projects by approving the requested budget and consider the merits and tradeoffs from the perspective of the city as a whole. Wish lists are useless without any funding attached.

In 2019, Park Board commissioners approved the $350 million “VanSplash: Vancouver Aquatics Strategy” of improving and expanding the city’s swimming pools, and upgrading beaches.

Since then, they have also green-lighted other city-wide strategies for track-and-field, non-motorized watercraft strategy, and public washrooms, and most recently a skateboarding facilities strategy, which could cost up to $20 million alone. They also want to redesign the West End’s waterfront of English Bay and Sunset Beach parks.

vancouver park board headquarters office 2099 Beach Avenue f

Headquarters office and chambers for the Vancouver Park Board at 2099 Beach Avenue in Stanley Park. (Google Maps)

Vancouver Technical Secondary School track and field

Artistic rendering of the new regulation competitive track-and-field training facility at Vancouver Technical Secondary School. (Vancouver Park Board)

Artistic rendering of the new Jericho Pier at Jericho Beach in Vancouver. (Vancouver Park Board)

In April, the commissioners approved a report by Park Board staff that identified 11 community centres that are either in “poor” or “very poor” condition, and require major investments for complete renovations or a replacement over the next 10 to 20 years. There was no cost estimate for this renewal strategy, but this is expected to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And by the time all 11 community centres are renewed, other existing facilities will likely reach a condition requiring upgrades as well.

Most of the 24 community centres under Park Board’s jurisdiction were built between 1945 and 1980, and many of these facilities have varying high degrees of seismic risk.

These community and recreation centres, along with the parks system, are of course core to the Park Board’s entire mandate.

The mayor and City Council hold the purse strings that make possible quality programming, maintaining facilities in a state of good repair, and building new facilities to replace aging facilities or to expand facilities. But there are limited incentives for Vancouver’s mayor and City Council to put any real political capital into Park Board responsibilities. There is no skin in the game; they are not directly politically rewarded for championing and driving projects — at least not to the same extent as their counterparts in suburban municipal governments. And this has become very evident in the 2022 civic election campaign.

Vancouver has not built a major community and recreational centre in 15 years — since the construction of Hillcrest Community Centre, which was aided by VANOC’s investments in time for the 2010 Olympics.

If all goes as planned, after more than a decade of planning, construction could begin soon on the fully funded new replacement Marpole community centre and outdoor aquatic centre. The $70 million project is timed for a Spring 2023 construction start and a 2025 completion.

marpole-oakridge community centre vancouver 2022 design

2022 concept for the new Marpole-Oakridge Community Centre in Vancouver’s Oak Park. (Diamond Schmitt Architects/City of Vancouver)

Following Marpole, the next short- and medium-term priorities are the replacement of two aging facilities in downtown Vancouver’s West End — Vancouver Aquatic Centre, which saw a portion of its exterior wall crumble in March 2022, and West End Community Centre. The construction budget of both facilities depends on the level of community amenity contributions (CACs) generated by rezonings under the City’s West End Plan. CACs and other developer-driven fees are of course dictated by the mayor and City Council, certainly not the Park Board.

Contrast this with neighbouring Burnaby, which appears to have much more success with expanding and renewing its community and recreational facilities under the direct purview of its mayor and City Council. Approved by Burnaby City Council in January, Burnaby’s five-year capital plan sets aside one-third or about $500 million of the budget to cover the cost of building five new major facilities to serve its growing population. City Council has directed $435 million in cash CACs raised from developers towards covering the cost of these new community and recreational centres.

In Surrey, under the direction of its mayor and City Council, construction on four long-planned major facilities — Cloverdale Sport & Ice Complex, Bear Creek Athletic Centre, North Surrey Outdoor Sport Complex, and Newton Community Centre — “coincidentally” began between August 24 and September 14, just weeks before the 2022 civic election. Each construction start had its own groundbreaking ceremony, with the mayor and City Councillors posing for photo opportunities.

Cloverdale Sport Ice Complex Groundbreaking August 24 2022

Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum and city councillors posing at the groundbreaking of Cloverdale Sport & Ice Complex on August 24, 2022. (City of Surrey)

Bear Creek Athletics Centre Groundbreaking September 7 2022

Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum and city councillors posing at the groundbreaking of Bear Creek Athletic Centre on September 7, 2022. (City of Surrey)

north surrey outdoor sport complex groundbreaking september 13 2022

Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum and city councillors posing at the groundbreaking of North Surrey Outdoor Sport Complex on September 13, 2022. (City of Surrey)

Newton Community Centre Groundbreaking September 14 2022

Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum and city councillors posing at the groundbreaking of Newton Community Centre on September 14, 2022. (City of Surrey)

Whereas in Vancouver, the accountability for the state of the parks and recreation is somewhat lost with lesser-known elected officials, which have a tendency of wanting to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to protecting Park Board jurisdiction.

In September 2019, Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart reportedly reached out to the Park Board to offer to have the City take over jurisdiction of Oppenheimer Park due to the Park Board’s apparent inability with managing the encampment. The City has significantly more resources to help address the issues than the Park Board. But the Park Board’s elected body refused, and instead asked the City to produce a plan of action to their liking.

On the matter of jurisdiction, one also has to wonder whether the Vancouver Aquarium under its previous non-profit ownership would have been in a better financial position to weather through the pandemic if the Park Board had not fought against the attraction in operational matters that were well outside of its jurisdiction. And if the Vancouver Aquarium’s landlord were the City of Vancouver, not the Park Board, would it have been sold at all?

In October 2021, after much debate, Park Board commissioners unanimously approved a plan to double the number of full-time park rangers from 16 to 31. This was a measure in response to a 1,153% increase in the number of reported park-related cases to park rangers over a five-year period — from 1,909 cases in 2015 to over 22,000 cases in 2020. Much of this increase deals with the city’s homelessness, mental health, and addictions crisis spilling into parks, but in turn the park rangers have been unable to adequately perform their normal responsibilities of ensuring 240 parks are safe and in good condition.

To double the number of park rangers, Park Board commissioners asked City Council for $1.8 million in new operating funding — $1 million in 2022, and $800,000 in 2023. But during their process of finalizing the 2022 budget in December 2021, City staff and City Council had other ideas, and only provided the Park Board with $300,000 for their 2022 budget towards adding more park rangers.

Perhaps one lesser-known fact about the Park Board is that it maintains much of the City’s public spaces beyond the designated parks, community centres, and recreational facilities. Park Board crews, not City crews, are responsible for maintaining all of the trees that line Vancouver’s streets — there are over 150,000 trees in the streets and parks — and ensuring the landscaping on medians is properly cared for. Given that such spaces are certainly not park spaces, it can be easily mistaken that this major aspect of street maintenance is the responsibility of the City, and therefore the mayor and City Council.

Park Board median maintenance work — BEFORE:

vancouver park board commercial broadway median maintenance

Vancouver Park Board crews maintaining the East Broadway median east of Commercial Drive, June 2022. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

Park Board median maintenance work — AFTER:

Vancouver Park Board crews’ completed maintenance work on the East Broadway median east of Commercial Drive, June 2022. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

Fundamentally, there would be greater accountability of parks and recreation responsibilities if it were placed under City Council jurisdiction, instead of a lower body that doubles as a farm team for higher municipal political ambitions. Greater accountability is achieved by adding to the responsibilities of these higher-profile politicians, who are comparatively less likely to pursue fringe causes.

The outgoing group of Park Board commissioners may be an exception, however, as after their turbulent four years of governance, residents of Vancouver seem to know their names for all the wrong reasons.

And by transferring the responsibilities and jurisdiction of the elected Park Board, the salaries of the mayor and City Council can also be correspondingly increased to help attract a wider pool of candidates in a city dogged by extreme affordability issues.

In 2021, the Park Board’s seven commissioners earned a combined total of $130,463, with regular commissioners earning $17,995 each, and the commissioner who is the chair for the year earning $22,493. The role of the Park Board commissioner is intended to be a part-time job.

During the same year, the mayor earned $178,473, while the 10 city councillors each earned between $89,886 and $103,216, which varies due to some city councillors taking on deputy mayor and other duties on a rotating basis.

For the 2022 civic election on Saturday, October 15, a total of 32 candidates are running to become a Park Board commissioner — nearly as many as the 33 in 2018. Here is the full list and order of how they appear (randomized in a City draw) on the election ballot form:

200 JENSEN, Scott (ABC Vancouver)
201 GIESBRECHT, Gwen (COPE)
202 CHARRETTE, Nick
203 DIGBY, Tom (GREEN)
204 FRENKEL, Carla (Vision Vancouver)
205 UPTON, Jason (NPA) UBC
206 PINOCHET-ESCUDERO, Andrea (VOTE Socialist)
207 LIVINGSTONE, Chris (COPE)
208 BARKER, Tricia (TEAM)
209 STOCKWELL, Caitlin (OneCity)
210 HOWARD, Marie-Claire (ABC Vancouver)
211 RollerGirl
212 IRWIN, John (Vision Vancouver)
213 JACKSON, Serena (OneCity)
214 CHRISTENSEN, Laura (ABC Vancouver)
215 RILEY, Tricia (GREEN)
216 VIRDI, Jas (ABC Vancouver)
217 HASSAN, Maira (COPE) UBC
218 MENARD, Liam Murphy
219 SEPTEMBER, Dehara (NPA)
220 ZARUDINA, Olga (NPA)
221 KIMURA, Kumi (TEAM) Richmond
222 LARSEN, Kathleen (TEAM)
223 MOLLINEAUX, Michelle (TEAM)
224 PASIN, Dave 戴夫·帕辛 (NPA)
225 BUCKSHON, James (TEAM)
226 RIVERS, Tiyaltelut Kristen (OneCity) West Vancouver
227 AUDLEY, Patrick (TEAM)
228 BASTYOVANSZKY, Brennan (ABC Vancouver)
229 HAER, Angela Kate (ABC Vancouver)
230 SMITH, Tracy D
231 CRAIG, Steven

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