Questions mount over council’s plan to dismantle Vancouver Park Board

As Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim pushes to dismantle the Park Board, one former city councillor says the circumstances in which this is happening are shocking.

George Affleck, who served as an NPA Vancouver city councillor for two terms before retiring from civic politics in 2018, says while he thinks abolishing the elected board after years of ineffectiveness is the right move, he expects some aren’t going to let this go quietly.

“I’ve already been contacted by people … pushing hard on this and saying, ‘No, no, no. Park Board independence is such a crucial part of our city,'” he explained.

Affleck puts the onus for the demise of the board on the former Vision Vancouver leadership for politicizing the elected body and strangling it financially.

Brennan Bastyovanszky, who had been elected chair of the Park Board last week, says this is a hot-button issue that is likely to divide the city.

“People are incredibly passionate about the parks. If you try and take away the democracy, if you try and take away the parks and gardens, you’ve got a sleeping giant that the mayor’s awakened,” he said.

Moments before Sim made the announcement that he was initiating the process to remove the Vancouver Park Board, commissioner Laura Christensen took to X to share a screenshot of an email she and two other ABC commissioners had received from the mayor’s chief of staff.

That email said the three commissioners, Christensen, Bastyovanszky, and Scott Jensen, had “chosen not to support the Mayor” in his decision to move away from the Park Board, and that ABC Vancouver would be “move forward with the Park Board transition team without” them.

“I found out through a tweet that the chief of staff had removed me from the party, which was surprising because during the press conference, Mayor Sim didn’t seem to be aware of that,” Bastyovanszky said.

However, Sim was clear in his address Wednesday that the three were not being removed from the party. But the ordeal has left everything unclear.

“This whole backchannelling to abolish the Park Board by the mayor’s office was news to me. I’m really disappointed. I joined ABC because the mayor and all the councillors and commissioners had promised to maintain an independent Park Board,” Bastyovanszky explained.

“I am most certainly taking my oath seriously and I am asking for the city, if they value their parks and green spaces, that they should contact the ABC councillors demanding that they honour their promise, their campaign promise to keep the Park Board independent.

In her social media thread, Christensen said the email from Chief of Staff Trevor Ford was the “first communication I’ve had from the party on this topic and I have never been asked my opinion on folding the PB.”

Meanwhile, Affleck says he’s stunned the three park commissioners, elected under the mayor’s ABC Vancouver slate, are publicly denouncing dismantling the board.

“I am very surprised there’s some pushback on this,” he told CityNews Wednesday. “It could cause some problems, depending on where the province wants to land on this, and whether or not they want to get involved in a political battle like they’ve been doing in Surrey, in regards to the police.”

Affleck says he is curious to see if the groups against the dismantling will work to delay, or at least frustrate, the transition.

A petition has already been launched to preserve the Park Board, with some non-ABC councillors sharing links to it.