Dissolution of Vancouver Park board would save $70M over 10 years: mayor

It was touted as an update on the City of Vancouver’s transition away from an independent elected Park board, but Mayor Ken Sim didn’t offer much new information.

Sim explained the transition working group has come up with two recommendations for how city council should take over the elected park board’s responsibilities.

“We’re committed to getting this right, and that’s why I’m excited about the recommendations from the working group, including the creation of a dedicated council subcommittee for Parks and Recreation and a community partner relations office,” Sim explained during the news conference on Thursday morning.

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Sim explained that streamlining the parks and recreation processes will save city taxpayers money, totalling $70 million over 10 years.

“Make no mistake about it, this transition isn’t just about governance. It’s about unlocking opportunities to save, to improve, and to invest by streamlining services, cutting duplication, and eliminating unnecessary red tape,” he stated.

“We’re going to save Vancouverites $70 million over the next decade. That is $7 million a year, or that’s the equivalent of almost a one per cent property tax decrease — the inverse of a property tax increase in the City of Vancouver, and these are conservative estimates,” he continued.

Sim said that as the transition team works together with council, the city expects further savings. All savings, Sim stated, will be reinvested into city parks and recreation.

In December 2023, city council passed a motion asking the provincial government to dissolve the Park Board. The Park Board has most recently been challenging the move, voting to remain an elected body and preserve its own existence, in September.

On Thursday, Sim shared that the city has “already identified 89 acres of land; that’s right, 89 acres of land that could be designated as permanent park space” after the transition. When asked why these lands couldn’t be protected under the current model, Deputy City Manager Sandra Singh explained that the parcels are currently under “care custody and management” and due to critical infrastructure under those parks that the city requires access to, they wouldn’t go ahead and designate them.

When preparing the recommendations, the transition team looked to other jurisdictions across the country to assess their governance model, Singh explained.

“A quality [of] service review was not part of this contemplation. What we really were looking at was the governance structure and the operating structure of the current dual governance system,” she shared. “Typically when, when we develop strategies, or we develop plans, we do comparative analysis, so when the time comes to renew some of the existing strategies around parks that would be that would be undertaken at that time.”

Sim had previously shared that the elected 135-year-old Park Board has done “amazing work” and added the transition has “nothing to do with the people or the love and care that they — the elected Park Board — show, we are talking about a broken city.”

“This move will bring Parks and Recreation under the direct oversight of city council. This aligns the management structure for our parks and recreation with how it’s done in literally every single city in Canada, and with the exception of Minneapolis, every single city in North America,” Sim said in January.

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With files from Mike Lloyd.