Written for Daily Hive Urbanized by Liam Murphy Menard, who is 27 years old and the president and chair of the board of directors for the False Creek Community Association. He is currently running as an independent candidate for Vancouver Park Board commissioner.
No matter your political inclinations, we can all agree that change is needed at the Vancouver Park Board. But the change we need is not, as many are suggesting, to eliminate the elected Park Board altogether.
On April 16, 2021, mayoral candidate Ken Sim announced that — if elected — his ABC Vancouver party would eliminate the Park Board and absorb its responsibilities into Vancouver City Council.
ABC has since backtracked on that promise and is now running a slate of candidates under the message that they pinky promise not to eliminate the Park Board if they are elected. But the central premise of eliminating the Park Board and absorbing its duties into those of our city councillors has continued to be a popular topic of discussion in this city, despite its deeply flawed logic.
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- Half of Vancouver voters want to eliminate the Park Board: survey
- ABC Vancouver party names 6 candidates for Park Board ahead of election
- Ken Sim's ABC Vancouver party promises to permanently allow liquor in parks
- Vancouver Park Board hires new director for homelessness management
- Vancouver Park Board approves direction to explore First Nations co-management
- Opinion: Vancouver is falling behind on building community centres and infrastructure
City Council meetings already have a negative reputation province-wide for being far too long and polarizing. At a recent meeting of the Union of BC Municipalities, Municipal Affairs Minister Nathan Cullen did an extended riff on how dysfunctional and never-ending Vancouver City Council meetings are.
The idea that dissolving the Park Board and absorbing its duties into the responsibilities of our city councillors would lead to more measurable results is questionable at best and could be crippling to City Council’s ability to get things done at worst. If grouped together with more pressing manners — such as housing, public safety, and tax allocation — it is a safe bet to assume that our community centres, playing fields, and swimming pools would get even less attention than they do now, not more.
If we can all agree that something needs to be done to generate more effective results from the Park Board, and we can all accept that eliminating the Park Board and transferring its responsibilities to a higher — but severely more disorganized — level of government is probably not the way to go, then what’s our path forward?
The root of the problem is this: the issues that the Park Board has been asked to address have continued to evolve to a point where the duties expected of a Park Board commissioner today are unrecognizable from what they were even four years ago.
The upkeep of our playing fields, swimming pools, and community gardens has been overshadowed by pressing new issues that require a different type of commissioner to properly address. These include the humane management of homeless encampments, the ability to provide support to — and be held accountable to — a network of underfunded community centres, and the ability to lead reconciliation talks with the leaders of three separate nations.
All three of these issues were topics that the previous Park Board had little experience dealing with prior to their election.
If we want more effective results from our Park Board commissioners, it starts by electing individuals with the experience and knowledge needed to properly address these modern problems in a pragmatic and sustainable way. Ultimately, the only way to ensure that we have the right voices at the table is to take the time and do our research.
Above all else, one thing is abundantly clear: continuing to use the same voting strategy will continue to yield the same ineffective results. Until we change our voting patterns and vote for the right individuals for Park Board — instead of just simply voting for party slates — we will remain stuck in a cycle of party politics while the problems around us continue to get worse.
This election is our opportunity to break the cycle and do things differently in an effort to fix our broken Park Board. Whether we take advantage of it is ultimately up to us.
- You might also like:
- Half of Vancouver voters want to eliminate the Park Board: survey
- ABC Vancouver party names 6 candidates for Park Board ahead of election
- Ken Sim's ABC Vancouver party promises to permanently allow liquor in parks
- Vancouver Park Board hires new director for homelessness management
- Vancouver Park Board approves direction to explore First Nations co-management
- Opinion: Vancouver is falling behind on building community centres and infrastructure
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