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Column: Red flags have been waved about the future of green spaces, including some waterfront properties. If these concerns were misplaced, the mayor’s office was not answering questions Wednesday to dispel such notions
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As Vancouver’s council prepares to decide the fate of the city’s elected park board, questions remain around what this significant change could mean for some of the city’s best-loved public spaces.
Current and past city councillors and park board commissioners have been raising red flags this week about what Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim’s proposed new governance structure could mean for park lands that fall under various classifications, which includes some iconic waterfront properties.
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Current park board commissioner Laura Christensen said Wednesday she worries that the proposed changes could make the roughly 40 per cent of Vancouver parks not formally classified as “permanent parks” open to sale, development, or “being anything other than a park, which is what it should be.”
“This protection that (Sim) has advertised … lulls the public into a false sense of security that they’re not going to lose any green space,” said Christensen, who was elected last year to the park board under the ABC banner before quitting the party last week. “But their promise to do anything doesn’t matter anymore, because they also promised not to abolish the park board.”
If such concerns are baseless, the mayor’s office was not answering questions Wednesday to dispel such notions.
It is one of several unanswered questions as the city hurtles toward a possible major change in its governance, only a week after the public — and even the elected board members themselves — were stunned to learn of the park board’s possibly imminent demise.
When Sim unveiled his plan last week to pursue the park board’s dissolution, he emphasized proposed measures to ensure the protection of the city’s cherished public parks.
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Sim has presented his proposal as a way to improve the management of parks and recreation services by eliminating a layer of bureaucracy.
He has also said folding park operations under council jurisdiction would save millions of dollars annually for the city. By Wednesday afternoon, as council prepared to hear from more than 150 people signed up to speak about the mayor’s motion, no information had yet been made public to support Sim’s public claims about taxpayer savings associated with his proposal.
The unusually large list of speakers was just getting started Wednesday afternoon, with debate and a decision to follow.
A close reading of the motion caused some observers — including past city councillors and park board commissioners, and at least one lawyer — to take pause over a single word: “Permanent.”
Sim’s proposal, as outlined in his motion, would ask the B.C. government to eliminate the elected park board of commissioners and give all “powers currently bestowed on the park board” to city council. Further, Sim’s motion proposes a “process for revoking and/or cancelling the designation of areas designated as permanent public parks,” requiring a “unanimous vote of all council members, along with provisions for a public referendum.”
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In an interview last week, Sim emphasized that requiring all 10 councillors and the mayor to sign off on such a change is “an incredibly high bar.”
“We want everyone to know that as long as I’m mayor of the city, parks will always be parks, golf courses will always be golf courses,” Sim said.
But some observers have latched onto the specific language around “areas designated as permanent public parks.”
That is because while many of Vancouver’s public spaces are designated as permanent parks, many of its best-loved and most famous parks and beaches do not bear that formal “permanent” designation. So what would Sim’s proposed framework mean for those other areas? The mayor’s office has not yet answered that question.
A 2022 Vancouver park board inventory lists the city’s parks and beaches designated as “permanent” and “temporary.” Areas bearing the “temporary” designation include part of Jericho Beach, Sunset Beach, as well as Thunderbird Park and Foster Park in East Vancouver.
Postmedia asked Sim’s office for clarification on two points: First, whether revoking the park designation for such temporary parks would require a unanimous vote of council and a referendum, or whether that special protection was only afforded to parks formally designated as permanent. And second, whether changing the use of parks not bearing the “permanent” designation would only require a simple majority vote of council.
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Sim’s chief of staff Trevor Ford sent an emailed statement that did not answer either of those questions. Instead, the statement read, in full: “To be as clear, there is no plan, nor will there ever be a plan under Mayor Sim, to sell or develop any of our parks for housing.”
Postmedia responded Wednesday morning, asking Ford and Sim’s press secretary again if they could answer the two previously asked questions about what Sim’s plan would mean for any park land not formally designated “permanent.”
No response had been received by deadline Wednesday.
Park’s different classifications stem from their different histories. Some land came to be parks through bequeathments, or real estate developments. Parks formally designated as “permanent” have the most protection — revoking their status currently requires a two-thirds majority vote of both council and the park board.
Under the current system, temporary parks have less protection, and their status can be revoked by council with park board approval.
But if council tried to do that today — for example, revoking Sunset Beach’s park status — there is currently another elected body, the park board, that could try to oppose the move, said former Vancouver Green councillor and park commissioner Michael Wiebe, who opposes the mayor’s proposal.
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“It’s a healthy dialogue between two elected bodies,” said Wiebe, who planned to address council Wednesday to oppose the move. “A little bit of friction is helpful to ensure the best interest of parks and natural spaces.”
Tim Louis, a lawyer and former COPE Vancouver councillor, believes Sim’s proposal poses a threat to the future of the city’s public spaces.
“Their swagger would have us believe that transforming the park board into the park department, and inserting it neatly between (all the other municipal departments) will have no negative effect on the protection of our parks,” Louis said. “And of course, he’s absolutely wrong.”
“This use of the word ‘permanent’ is very clever. It leaves the door wide open for parks that have not been designated as permanent,” Louis said. “So, say goodbye to part or all of Sunset Beach.”
dfumano@postmedia.com
twitter.com/fumano
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