MEDIA RELEASE – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – JANUARY 29, 2024
Green Commissioner Seeks Legal Advice to Preserve Elected Park Board
VANCOUVER, B.C. – Today, Green Park Board Commissioner Tom Digby announced he is bringing a motion to the February 5th Board meeting entitled “Independent Legal Advice for Judicial Review of Mayor’s Motion”. The motion is to authorize the Board to retain a leading municipal law firm to advise on steps available to preserve Vancouver’s elected Park Board.
“The elected Park Board is preparing to respond to the Mayor’s surprise attack,” said Digby.
Vancouver’s world famous parks and beaches, including the iconic Stanley Park, have been built with direct citizen input via the elected Park Board since it was first established in 1890. Hundreds of supporters of the elected Park Board have sent messages to Commissioners, to the Mayor and City Council, and to Premier David Eby and his cabinet demanding that every effort be made to oppose the Mayor’s December 13, 2023 motion to abolish the elected Park Board.
“I share Commissioner Digby’s concern” said Brennan Bastyovanszky, Chair of the Park Board, and one of three independent Commissioners who were formerly members of the Mayor’s ABC party. “This issue was not on the Mayor’s election platform, and Council has no democratic mandate to abolish another elected body,” continued Bastyovanszky.
One remarkable outcome of the Mayor’s anti-democratic motion is the coming together of 30 former Park Board Commissioners spanning 1972-2022 under the multi-partisan banner #SaveOurParkBoard to defend the value and mission of the elected Park Board.
In related news, City Councillors Adriane Carr, Christine Boyle and Pete Fry have announced a Town Hall meeting to hear from the public on the future of the Vancouver Park Board.
Town Hall | Opposition to ABC Vancouver’s Initiative to Dissolve the Vancouver Park Board
Advance registration to attend the Town Hall is required.
Tom Digby’s motion (see below) will be put to a vote at the February 5th meeting of the Park Board.
Commissioner Brennan Bastyovanszky pulled no punches on Mornings with Simi today, firing back at Mayor Ken Sim's "autocratic" decision to dismantle the Vancouver Park Board.
Vision Vancouver celebrates their overwhelming victory at the polls on November 19, 2011
Developers have long run the City of Vancouver, with various of the elected City Councils over the years acting as their all-too-willing handmaidens.
Joel Solomon, Vision Vancouver founder, standing outside, near his home in Railtown
The godfather and founder of the Vision Vancouver municipal party in 2004 was financier / philanthropist / real estate developer, and heir to a capitalist fortune, Tennessee émigré Joel Solomon, a political organizer who cut his teeth working on Jimmy Carter’s successful U.S. presidential campaign in the mid-1970s.
In the early 1990s, Solomon found his way to British Columbia, as he sought refuge on Cortes Island, while recovering from a serious health issue. In 1993, Solomon met a young organic farmer named Gregor Robertson. Their views aligned, especially on the urgent need to address climate change. The two became fast friends.
In 2002 Solomon made a decision to form a Vancouver civic party, which in time came to be called Vision Vancouver.
Recruiting Mike Magee from Stratcom — a strategic communications company dedicated to progressive causes — working with Magee, Solomon promised the then Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) Councillors Raymond Louie, Tim Stevenson and Jim Green their political futures lay with his newly-formed Vision Vancouver civic party, committing to them that he would dedicate substantial financial resources to their re-election in 2005’s Vancouver municipal election.
Long story short — following the untimely death of Jim Green, who was Vision Vancouver’s Mayoral candidate in the 2005 civic election — in 2006, Joel Solomon recruited his friend Gregor Robertson to seek the nomination to become the Mayoral candidate for Vision Vancouver in our city’s 2008 municipal election.
The rest is history: Vision Vancouver became government, from 2008 through 2018.
Gregor Robertson, Mayor in the City of Vancouver, from November 15, 2008 through October 20, 2018
Upon assuming government at Vancouver City Hall in 2008, Joel Solomon was quick to establish a secretive, behind-the-scenes “Mayoral advisory Board” — most members of which were not only longtime friends of Solomon’s dating back to his days in Tennessee, but were, as well, extremely successful real estate developers.
During their time in government, 12 development-related lawsuits were filed against Vision Vancouver
Over the course of their years in power, there were a number of development-related lawsuits that were filed against Vision Vancouver.
Perhaps the most egregious — and many thought, corrupt — development-related failing by Vision Vancouver involved a legal petition filed with the BC Supreme Court on May 6, 2014, by the Community Association of New Yaletown, to prevent a mega-tower development on the city block containing Emery Barnes Park.
The legal petition alleged the City, in approving development of the 36-storey tower at 508 Helmcken St. and a related building across the street at 1099 Richards Street violated the Downtown Official Development Plan (DODP) bylaws in in numerous and significant ways, while thwarting the long-planned expansion of Emery Barnes Park “to help reduce the City’s significant shortfall in meeting its own green space targets in the area.”
Emery Barnes Park, in the heart of New Yaletown, adjacent to Davie and Seymour streets
That Vision Vancouver had not consulted with the community, nor even made any mention of their plans to build yet another mega-tower in the New Yaletown neighbourhood — a “favour” to the Tennessee-based developer, Brenhill Development, who just happened to be friends with Joel Solomon, and members of the Mayoral Advisory Board — exacerbated not only the ire of residents of New Yaletown, but esteemed British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Mark McEwan, who ruled in favour of the New Yaletown residents, “killing the New Yaletown development”, even though it was already under construction.
Read the Vancouver Sun article on Brenhill Development’s “sweet deal” here.
Some months later, the City of Vancouver prevailed at the B.C. Court of Appeals.
Peter Armstrong, owner of the Rocky Mountaineer, and founder / financier of ABC Vancouver
Now Peter Armstrong — who we know and very much like, who has pulled our behind out of the fire on more than one occasion, and who refers to us as his “favourite socialist” — will not be happy that we’re writing about him (reasonably, we can expect an irate call from Peter at some point today, as in “Why didn’t you call me to confirm with me what you’re writing about today?”).
But a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do (also, we hate to risk being lied to).
Founder Peter Armstrong’s Rocky Mountaineer offers unsurpassed luxury travel to discerning travelers
Now, Peter Armstrong — a pulled himself up by his bootstraps east end kid made good (we share a history as ‘east end kids’) — for many years was president of Vancouver’s oldest and most successful civic party, the Non-Partisan Association.
That is, until some dastardly folks staged a coup, taking over Peter’s beloved Non-Partisan Association in his absence, as he sailed his yacht to visit his good friend, Lululemon founder Chip Wilson, at his luxurious, well-appointed villa in Italy.
The consequence of the coup? Four of five NPA electeds resigned from the party.
And what became of the now former Non-Partisan Association Board members, who succeeded in killing the NPA, which party secured only, a paltry, unimaginably small 2.3% of the vote, when voters went to the polls in October 2022?
“Raymond, do you really think I’ll win re-election in Point Grey when we go to the polls in October?”
Premier David Eby will be heartened to know that these same far-right-of-centre nimrods are currently running the show with the nascent B.C. Conservative Party.
VanRamblings readers won’t be surprised to learn that ABC Vancouver founder, financier and Ken Sim backer, Peter Armstrong — as was the case with Joel Solomon, Vision Vancouver, and Mayor Gregor Robertson — has also created a secretive, behind-the-scenes Mayoral Advisory Committee, said committee comprised of developers, but mostly Peter and his very good friend, Chip Wilson.
A narrative, related to us recently by a very reliable VanRamblings source …
“Ken Sim ‘disappeared’ for a week this past autumn.
No one, save his family, knew where he was. In fact, Ken Sim was on board Peter Armstrong’s yacht, sailing up the west coast of British Columbia.
When Sim arrived back in town, returning to the Mayor’s office, he consulted with his Chief of Staff, Trevor Ford, after which the Mayor called in the ABC Park Board electeds to inform them of his decision to abolish the independent, elected Vancouver Park Board, leaving his now former ABC Park Board Commissioners in the room with Mr. Ford and David Grewal to explain details, and what would happen going forward.
Soon after, now former ABC Vancouver Park Board Commissioners Scott Jensen, Brennan Bastyovanszky and Laura Christensen made the decision to sit on Park Board as independents.
Subsequently, Sim called a press conference to announce his intention to eliminate the 133-year-old elected body, the much cherished, independent, and beloved Vancouver Park Board.”
The more things change, the more things stay the same.
Whether it’s developer Mayor Tom Campbell in the late 60s, or Joel Solomon and Gregor Robertson for a 10-year period when Vision Vancouver was at the seat of power at Vancouver City Hall, or in these latter days, with an avuncular — but dare we say, avaricious — Peter Armstrong and Chip Wilson, we who call Vancouver home are reminded yet again, and much to our consternation, this is not our city, for Vancouver is owned lock, stock and barrel by the developer class.
The quite barking mad Dr. Penny Janet Drury Ballem, Vancouver City Manager, 2008 – 2015
In 2014, Dr. Penny Ballem, the power mad, often disagreeable and fiscally irresponsible City Manager — moving her office from City Hall’s 3rd floor, in favour of a multi-million dollar renovation of the “closed” 5th & 6th floors at The Hall, giving her mightily expanded staff a new home — Dr. Ballem, hired by the Vision Vancouver administration in 2008 to impose their political and administrative agenda, found herself “fed up” with the operation of the Vancouver Park Board, had enough with what she termed their “tomfoolery”, their inefficiency and “spendthrift ways”.
All this after Vision Vancouver slashed $30 million from the Park Board budget.
Dr. Ballem’s choleric rage about Park Board occurred even in spite of the fact that, in 2010, she had installed Malcolm Bromley as her Park Board General Manager, in unprecedented fashion making Bromley a “city employee”, with direct reporting responsibility to the Office of the City Manager. Read, to her: Dr. Penny Ballem.
Less than a year into her tenure, it was not enough that Dr. Ballem “retired” well-respected, longtime Park Board General Manager Susan Mundick, Dr. Ballem also “relieved” the employment of several other invaluable, longtime, senior city staff.
Dr. Ballem, however, wanted more, much more.
Dr. Ballem wanted complete and utter control of the Vancouver Park Board.
Sadly, people do not realize that the City took over operational responsibility under the Vision regime, perportedly for efficiency and cost saving. They wrongly blame the Park Board, who used to do a better job.
In late 2014, Dr. Ballem had the Park Board led by Chairperson Aaron Jasper move a motion at the Park Board table that would turn over operational responsibility for Park Board to the City, as a “necessary cost-saving measure and rationalization” of the operation of Park Board. From that day forward the City would be responsible for all Park Board facility maintenance, garbage collection and recycling.
“When I was first elected as a Park Board Commissioner in 2011,” John Coupar recently told VanRamblings, “if there was a maintenance issue that needed tending to, through the Chair I could have her or him raise the issue that needed remedy, which “repair” was always responded to quickly and efficiently.
John Coupar, former Vancouver Park Board Chairperson, and Park Board Commissioner
When I became Chairperson in late 2014, I was disappointed to learn that when requests for maintenance made through Board General Manager Malcolm Bromley were forwarded to the City, the City maintenance department often took weeks or months to remediate an issue, if that concern was ever remediated at all.”
Mayor Ken Sim announces pending elimination of an elected Vancouver Park Board (Ben Nelms/CBC)
Since it was created in 1889, the Vancouver Park Board has been a source of discussion and division. But the decision by Mayor Ken Sim to try and abolish the 133-year-old elected body could make its final chapter its most dramatic.
“We are going to take the long overdue step that will ensure our parks and recreation facilities will serve our communities to their fullest potential, in the process saving taxpayers millions of dollars in Park Board operation costs” Sim told those gathered for a press conference Wednesday morning, December 6, 2023.
“I’m a lean-certified black belt, I understand workflow,” said Sim in response to a question about how much the city would save in costs, in a reference that left the media who’d gathered for the announcement flummoxed.
Mayor Ken Sim has yet to explain where the “millions of dollars in savings” by eliminating an elected Park Board will be derived.
In point of fact, top-voted ABC Vancouver City Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung — a former Park Board Chairperson — could easily have informed the Mayor that his statement was so much codswallop, that the City had long ago assumed fiscal responsibility for the operation and maintenance of the Vancouver Park Board.
“Bad enough that the Mayor misled the public when, at his announcement proposing to abolish the elected Park Board, he stated that there would be millions in savings to be had. Clearly, an untruth,” former Vancouver City Councillor and Park Board Commissioner Michael Wiebe recently told VanRamblings.
Michael Wiebe, former Vancouver City Councillor, and Vancouver Park Board Commissioner
“When I met with Mayor-elect Ken Sim and ABC Vancouver founder Peter Armstrong in the Mayor’s office soon after the 2022 election, I was assured by both of their full and unadulterated support for an independent Park Board. Clearly, the commitment they made to me the day we met, and to a public who voted for them, was a lie.”
Ken Sim. “So yeah, whaddya want to make of it, eh? Don’t like what I’m doin’? Too effin bad.“
On the day Mayor Ken Sim made the announcement that it was his intention to eliminate an elected Park Board in the City of Vancouver, he was clear that amid concerns being voiced that getting rid of the Vancouver Park Board could mean a loss of prized park land in the city, on his watch that was not going to happen.
“I want to be very clear: as long as I’m mayor, parks will always be parks in the City of Vancouver,” Mayor Sim told CityNews in an interview on Friday, December 15, 2023.
Of course, Mayor Sim made no mention that of Vancouver’s 242 parks, only 142 are designated as parks, leaving the remaining “green space” open for development.
Under the current system, a two-thirds majority vote on Council and Park Board is required to remove any parks from the city’s inventory.
Sim told CityNews that he’s going to bring in new protections for green spaces.
“We’re going to change it so it has to be unanimous in the chamber, so all 10 Councillors and mayor of the day have to be in favour, plus it would go to referendum,” Sim said.
All of which begs several questions.
Given that ABC Vancouver candidate for office Ken Sim misled the voting public on a commitment he made during the 2022 Vancouver municipal election that …
A Ken Sim-led civic administration would strengthen and support an independent, elected Park Board;
Given that a newly-elected Mayor Sim employed as partial rationale for the 10.7% property tax increase he announced in December 2022, in stating that “we felt we had to restore funding to and support our Vancouver Park Board;”
Given that Mayor Sim misled the public when he stated that there were “millions to be saved” in eliminating an independent, elected Park Board, when such is clearly not the case; and …
Given that Ken Sim boldfacedly misled former Vancouver Park Board Commissioner and City Councillor Michael Wiebe — not to mention current Park Board Commissioners Scott Jensen, Brennan Bastyovanszky and Laura Christensen when they ran under the ABC Vancouver banner as Park Board candidates — when he stated to Mr. Wiebe and his own party’s candidates for Park Board his unvarnished and ongoing support for an independent, elected Vancouver Park Board …
Can Mayor Ken Sim be believed when he makes the pronouncement that park land will not be sold off on his watch?
And, further, that any talk of development of green spaces should such come to pass would require the unanimous consent of all 10 Vancouver City Councillors?
Tom ‘Not So Terrific’ Campbell, controversial Vancouver mayor, in office from 1966 to 1972
In 1966, running as an independent, a brash Tom Campbell defeated sitting Non-Partisan Association Mayor Bill Rathie to become Vancouver’s 31st mayor.
From the outset, Campbell’s ascension to the Mayor’s office heralded a pro-development ethos that would make even our current ABC Vancouver-dominated City Council blush, with Campbell — and his now ‘on board’ NPA colleagues — advocating for a freeway that would cut through a swath of the Downtown Eastside, require the demolition of the historic Carnegie Centre at Main and Hastings, and bring about the construction of a luxury hotel at the entrance to Stanley Park.
Vancouver’s West End neighbourhood, 1960, pre-high-rise construction. Photo, Fred Herzog.
In the West End, where Campbell owned substantial property — a wealthy, successful developer, Campbell was reputed to own one-third of the land located between (south to north) Davie and Georgia streets, and east to west, Denman Street and Stanley Park — the newly-elected Mayor all but ordered the demolition of almost the entirety of the well-populated West End residential neighbourhood — housing mostly senior citizens in their single detached homes — as he set about to make way for the rapid construction of more than 200 concrete high-rise towers.
In six short years, Mayor Tom Campbell and the Non-Partisan Association transformed a single family dwelling West End neighbourhood, irrevocably and forever.
That all of these “changes” augered controversy among large portions of the populace was a given, leading to regular, vocal and sometimes even violent protests throughout Campbell’s treacherous tenure as Mayor, finally lead to his overwhelming defeat at the polls in the November 1972 Vancouver “change” civic election.
Oct. 22, 2022 | Newly-formed civic party, ABC Vancouver, wins an overwhelming victory at the polls
Why raise ancient history now?
Not since the late 1960s / early 70s have Vancouver voters — seemingly, unknowingly — elected a more greed-inspired (this, on behalf of their financial backers), and wildly pro-development slate of lock step Vancouver City Councillors to office, at the heart of our city’s seat of municipal government at 12th and Cambie.
In early 2024, Vancouver sits on the wary edge of massive tower development, as promulgated by the “super majority” ABC Vancouver civic administration installed by Vancouverites at City Hall only 15 short months ago today. If Tom Campbell’s greed was able to destroy a single family-oriented West End neighbourhood 50+ years ago over six short years in power, imagine what the current ABC Vancouver-led municipal government can achieve over the course of the next 32 months?
Vancouver Park Board Commissioner at Vancouver City Hall, holding her new, month old baby
Click on this link to hear (former, and now independent) ABC Vancouver Park Board Commissioner Laura Christensen address the whole of Vancouver City Council on December 13, 2023 — including her ABC Council running mates — on the initiative of the political party she ran with to eliminate the elected Vancouver Park Board.
It was difficult to distill my thoughts on this into a 3-minute speech. Incredibly disappointed in the mayor and ABC councillors for turning their back on their campaign promises and completely ignoring the electorate in this decision. https://t.co/W0we9exUHT
In her address to Council, Ms. Christensen pointed out to her now former ABC Vancouver City Council colleagues that there are 242 parks in the City of Vancouver, only 142 of which are designated as parks — leaving these latter non-designated “parks” open for development, including such beloved parks as Burrard Inlet’s Sunset Beach, Locarno Park, and Spanish Banks East and West.
Fans enjoy the Vancouver Canadians at Nat Bailey Stadium. Could the city-owned stadium be put up for sale? A report suggests sport & cultural venues should be shed by the city. Photo: Jason Payne /PNG
“… budget task force assembled last year by ABC Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim delivered its report with 17 recommendations on how the city could improve its financial health while reducing pressure to increase on property taxes.
One recommendation suggests the city look at divesting some of its “non-core assets.”
When Fumano asked ABC Vancouver Councillor Brian Montague, one of two ABC Councillors who served on the task force’s advisory panel, if the “non-core assets” in the report would include include community centres, libraries, civic theatres, and sports facilities, Montague replied …
“I think it’s something we need to talk about, because there might be assets where divestment is the best approach.”
Former Vancouver Park Board Chairperson John Coupar clarified the matter on X:
Former Vancouver City Councillor Colleen Hardwick, and 2022 TEAM Mayoral candidate writes …
@elviralount the land is at the heart of the matter. Removing the separate fiduciary responsibility of the elected Park Board for control of land disposition is existential. It was never about 'efficiencies' and saving millions of $. It is about the control of the land.
A cynical and egregious land grab, a decision demanded by ABC Vancouver’s avaricious financial backers, who fancy adding billions of dollars more to their already ungainly wealth, all at the cost of: environmental devastation and climate change unchecked, a degraded quality of life in Vancouver for decades to come, reduced access to our public beaches — or, in some cases, no access at all to what were once but would no longer be “public beaches”— and long dark corridors of black towers lining the arterials and Vancouver’s beach fronts, all across the city.
Mike Howell’s Town Hall report may be found here.
