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Column: Pink flags have been waved about the way forward for inexperienced areas, together with some waterfront properties. If these issues had been misplaced, the mayor’s workplace was not answering questions Wednesday to dispel such notions
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As Vancouver’s council prepares to resolve the destiny of town’s elected park board, questions stay round what this important change may imply for a number of the metropolis’s best-loved public areas.
Present and previous metropolis councillors and park board commissioners have been elevating purple flags this week about what Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim’s proposed new governance construction may imply for park lands that fall beneath varied classifications, which incorporates some iconic waterfront properties.
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Present park board commissioner Laura Christensen mentioned Wednesday she worries that the proposed adjustments may make the roughly 40 per cent of Vancouver parks not formally categorized as “everlasting parks” open to sale, growth, or “being something apart from a park, which is what it must be.”
“This safety that (Sim) has marketed … lulls the general public right into a false sense of safety that they’re not going to lose any inexperienced area,” mentioned Christensen, who was elected final yr to the park board beneath the ABC banner earlier than quitting the occasion final week. “However their promise to do something doesn’t matter anymore, as a result of in addition they promised to not abolish the park board.”
If such issues are baseless, the mayor’s workplace was not answering questions Wednesday to dispel such notions.
It’s one in all a number of unanswered questions as town hurtles towards a attainable main change in its governance, solely every week after the general public — and even the elected board members themselves — had been surprised to be taught of the park board’s probably imminent demise.
When Sim unveiled his plan final week to pursue the park board’s dissolution, he emphasised proposed measures to make sure the safety of town’s cherished public parks.
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Sim has introduced his proposal as a means to enhance the administration of parks and recreation providers by eliminating a layer of paperwork.
He has additionally mentioned folding park operations beneath council jurisdiction would save thousands and thousands of {dollars} yearly for town. By Wednesday afternoon, as council ready to listen to from greater than 150 individuals signed up to discuss the mayor’s movement, no data had but been made public to assist Sim’s public claims about taxpayer financial savings related along with his proposal.
The unusually giant checklist of audio system was simply getting began Wednesday afternoon, with debate and a call to comply with.
An in depth studying of the movement brought about some observers — together with previous metropolis councillors and park board commissioners, and not less than one lawyer — to take pause over a single phrase: “Everlasting.”
Sim’s proposal, as outlined in his movement, would ask the B.C. authorities to remove the elected park board of commissioners and provides all “powers presently bestowed on the park board” to metropolis council. Additional, Sim’s movement proposes a “course of for revoking and/or cancelling the designation of areas designated as everlasting public parks,” requiring a “unanimous vote of all council members, together with provisions for a public referendum.”
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In an interview final week, Sim emphasised that requiring all 10 councillors and the mayor to log out on such a change is “an extremely excessive bar.”
“We would like everybody to know that so long as I’m mayor of town, parks will all the time be parks, golf programs will all the time be golf programs,” Sim mentioned.
However some observers have latched onto the precise language round “areas designated as everlasting public parks.”
That’s as a result of whereas a lot of Vancouver’s public areas are designated as everlasting parks, a lot of its best-loved and most well-known parks and seashores don’t bear that formal “everlasting” designation. So what would Sim’s proposed framework imply for these different areas? The mayor’s workplace has not but answered that query.
A 2022 Vancouver park board stock lists town’s parks and seashores designated as “everlasting” and “non permanent.” Areas bearing the “non permanent” designation embrace a part of Jericho Seaside, Sundown Seaside, in addition to Thunderbird Park and Foster Park in East Vancouver.
Postmedia requested Sim’s workplace for clarification on two factors: First, whether or not revoking the park designation for such non permanent parks would require a unanimous vote of council and a referendum, or whether or not that particular safety was solely afforded to parks formally designated as everlasting. And second, whether or not altering using parks not bearing the “everlasting” designation would solely require a easy majority vote of council.
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Sim’s chief of workers Trevor Ford despatched an emailed assertion that didn’t reply both of these questions. As an alternative, the assertion learn, in full: “To be as clear, there isn’t any plan, nor will there ever be a plan beneath Mayor Sim, to promote or develop any of our parks for housing.”
Postmedia responded Wednesday morning, asking Ford and Sim’s press secretary once more if they might reply the 2 beforehand requested questions on what Sim’s plan would imply for any park land not formally designated “everlasting.”
No response had been acquired by deadline Wednesday.
Park’s totally different classifications stem from their totally different histories. Some land got here to be parks by bequeathments, or actual property developments. Parks formally designated as “everlasting” have probably the most safety — revoking their standing presently requires a two-thirds majority vote of each council and the park board.
Below the present system, non permanent parks have much less safety, and their standing could be revoked by council with park board approval.
But when council tried to try this at the moment — for instance, revoking Sundown Seaside’s park standing — there may be presently one other elected physique, the park board, that would attempt to oppose the transfer, mentioned former Vancouver Inexperienced councillor and park commissioner Michael Wiebe, who opposes the mayor’s proposal.
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“It’s a wholesome dialogue between two elected our bodies,” mentioned Wiebe, who deliberate to handle council Wednesday to oppose the transfer. “Somewhat little bit of friction is useful to make sure the most effective curiosity of parks and pure areas.”
Tim Louis, a lawyer and former COPE Vancouver councillor, believes Sim’s proposal poses a menace to the way forward for town’s public areas.
“Their swagger would have us consider that reworking the park board into the park division, and inserting it neatly between (all the opposite municipal departments) may have no detrimental impact on the safety of our parks,” Louis mentioned. “And naturally, he’s completely fallacious.”
“This use of the phrase ‘everlasting’ may be very intelligent. It leaves the door vast open for parks that haven’t been designated as everlasting,” Louis mentioned. “So, say goodbye to half or all of Sundown Seaside.”
dfumano@postmedia.com
twitter.com/fumano
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