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.
Vancouver City Councillor Mike Klassen, elected to office on the evening of Saturday, October 15, 2022
Vancouver City Councillor Mike Klassen is, and has been for a very long time, one of VanRamblings’ closest, and very best friends.
Not to get too maudlin, but Mike Klassen is an executor of VanRamblings’ will — the other two: current Vancouver School Board trustee, Christopher Richardson, and former Vancouver City Councillor, Colleen Hardwick. VanRamblings’ ashes will be thrown off the side of Peter Armstrong’s yacht, which will be temporarily ‘moored’ just off Locarno Beach. Colleen, Mike and Christopher will be on board.
Mike Klassen. On January 17, 2024 as Vancouver experienced a cold spell and a 20mm dump of snow
All of which is to say three things, if you’re wondering where we’re going …
VanRamblings has known and been close friends with Mike Klassen for 30+ years;
In the interest of full disclosure, VanRamblings’ readers should be apprised that you will never, ever, ever read material on this blog that in any, way, shape or form disparages Mike Klassen — although we reserve the right, from time to time, to be critical of a policy decision taken by the good and honourable Councillor;
As VanRamblings expressed to Mike Klassen during the course of the recent holiday season: “I will not allow a disagreement on the future of Park Board, or any other policy issue that may arise, to disrupt or in any way interfere with our friendship.”
In VanRamblings’ world, loyalty counts for something; for a great deal, actually.
Vancouver City Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung, who topped the polls on election day, October 15, 2022
For many years now, Vancouver City Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung has been VanRamblings’ favourite political person in the province: a dedicated, exceptionally bright public servant, who works night and day for citizens (the hardest working pol we’ve ever experienced); and a politician who doesn’t always ‘play by rules’ — which we think, on occasion, is a good thing, a very good thing!
Sarah Kirby-Yung succeeded in having cetacreans — whales and dolphins — in captivity banned at the Vancouver Aquarium during her tenure as Vancouver Park Board Chairperson, despite the fact that the initiative was contrary to the policy of the political party she ran for office with in 2014.
Even in light of the current contretemps surrounding the Park Board ‘abolition’ issue that has caused VanRamblings much consternation, and about which we have been writing endlessly in recent days, our affection, regard and respect for Sarah Kirby-Yung has not lessened one iota — although, in the interest of transparency, we will write that Vancouver Kingsway MP Don Davies has (unknowingly) worked hard in recent days, weeks and months to displace Councillor Kirby-Yung from her august position as VanRamblings’ favourite political person in the province.
Of course, VanRamblings is hoping saner heads prevail at Vancouver City Council, that Councillors Kirby-Yung and Klassen will lead the charge to convince Mayor Ken Sim that the time has come to “pull a Doug Ford” — which is to say, reverse his shameful position on eliminating an independent, elected Vancouver Park Board.
Today, 9 a.m., Jan. 25, 2024 | Mayor Ken Sim announces transition team that will lead to abolition of an elected Park Board. Pictured: Mayor Sim, Sarah Kirby-Yung, Brian Montague, Lenny Zhou, Mike Klassen
As someone who campaigned for ABC as a park commissioner, this is not true. Ken and the campaign team were clear that he was not going to abolish the Park Board. I would not have run otherwise. #vanpolihttps://t.co/oLPLTHuiIj
The maintenance of Kits Pool and Aquatic Centre was taken over by the City (under REFM department) and has been poorly managed since. This is not evidence of a broken Park Board. #vanpolhttps://t.co/S2Ti0DabUa
ABC Councillors: Lisa Dominato, 2nd term on Council | Rebecca Bligh, 2nd term, Vancouver City Council
ABC Vancouver Councillors Lisa Dominato, initially Non-Partisan Association Councillors, who switched party affiliations to join the nascent ABC Vancouver civic party seeking office, are serving their second term at Vancouver City Hall.
VanRamblings has known the principled and accomplished Lisa Dominato dating back to the autumn of 2017, when she was elected to the Vancouver School Board as a Board of Education trustee in a by-election that year. A strategic leader with 20 years experience in government administration, public policy, communications and stakeholder relations, Ms. Dominato was responsible for the construction and implementation of British Columbia’s SOGI 123 programme, which provides guidance to educators across our province to help make schools more inclusive and safe for students of all sexual orientations and gender identities (SOGI).
Rebecca Bligh is a passionate supporter of families, education and the environment who championed Vancouver’s diverse and inclusive communities in her first term of office — as she continues to do today — dedicating herself to helping make Vancouver a more livable city, while serving to address the affordability crisis and issues around public safety and the poisoned drug crisis, working in concert with her colleague, Lisa Dominato. Both make an invaluable contribution to our city.
On balance, VanRamblings believes ABC Vancouver had a good first year in office.
The ABC Councillors also brought a welcome civility back to the Council chambers.
Vancouver City Councillor Brian Montague | Lenny Zhou | and Vancouver City Councillor Peter Meiszner
All 10 Councillors and the Mayor worked as a team over their 12 months in office, arising from the expressed desire of Mayor Ken Sim to work collaboratively with “opposition” Councillors, One City Vancouver’s Christine Boyle — who is having herself some kind of (great) second term — and Greens Adriane Carr and Pete Fry.
There’s a tendency to dehumanize our elected officials — as if they’re not members of our larger family — to criticize the individual rather than the policy, to engage in the politics of character assassination over reasoned, thoughtful debate.
Was VanRamblings happy when the ABC Vancouver Councillors collectively decided to undo our City’s Livable Wage Programme, mandating that suppliers of goods and services to the City pay a living wage to their employees, currently in the $24-an-hour range? Absolutely not. We thought it was an abomination.
Which is to say, when you have a City Council where the average annual Councillor salary tops well over $100,000, it’s not just bad optics but borders on the inhumane, when you — as a majority ABC Vancouver Council — set about to cut the wages of working people struggllng to get by in Canada’s most expensive city.
VanRamblings realizes that the 36.3% of the Vancouver electorate who bothered to turn out at the polls in October 2022 to elect a new Vancouver City Council, did not cast their ballot the way they did to please VanRamblings as their priority for a new Council. ABC Vancouver won fair and square (unlike Donald Trump, we’re not given to saying things are ‘rigged’ when events don’t unfold as we might wish).
Dan Fumano, Postmedia: ABC Vancouver returns $116,000 in prohibited donations from 2022 election
VanRamblings will continue to be critical of our city’s majority ABC Vancouver City Council, involving their collective decision to attempt to eliminate a cherished 133-year-old environmental institution, the Vancouver Park Board. At no point, though, will we publish rhetoric that dehumanizes our ABC Vancouver elected officials.
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?
The mandate of the elected Vancouver Park Board: building a bridge to a better tomorrow
As the last bastion for civic democracy in our city, the Vancouver Park Board has played a vital role in serving the best environmental, recreational and family interests of the community for more than 133 years, since its founding in 1889.
For many years, members of the community who attended Park Board meetings to address an issue or a “cause” sat at the same table as the elected Park Board Commissioners while addressing their concern, and were successful in having a direct impact on the livability and humanity of our beloved home by the ocean.
Today on VanRamblings, the first of two “stories” revolving around humanity at the Park Board table, specifically involving past Park Board Chairperson John Coupar, as well as Park Board Commissioners Trevor Loke and Constance Barnes, who sat on the 2014 Vancouver Park Board with Commissioners Sarah Blyth, Melissa De Genova and current British Columbia Attorney General, Niki Sharma.
Vancouver Park Board Adopts an Inclusive Trans & Gender-Variant Policy
Trevor Loke, Vision Vancouver Park Board Commissioner
At the May 12, 2013 meeting of Park Board, Commissioner Trevor Loke moved a motion to establish a trans and gender-variant working group, aimed at creating more inclusive spaces for members of the trans and gender-variant communities.
The Park Board Commissioners unanimously supported the motion, drawing a standing ovation from the dozens of supporters of the motion, present in the Park Board meeting room that night, many of the attendees sharing trenchant stories with the Commissioners about their experiences of feeling unwelcome in city facilities, such as recreation centres, swimming pools, and washrooms.
“There are days when with the best intents I’m off to the gym or off to the pool, and I turn around and I go back,” said Drew Dennis, a member of the City of Vancouver’s LGBTQ advisory committee.
One year later, on Monday, April 28, 2014, the Vancouver Park Board’s Trans* and Gender-Variant Inclusion Working Group reported back to the seven Park Board Commissioners gathered at the table, on their engagement findings and priority recommendations, aimed at enhancing service quality and access to facilities.
On that warm, early spring evening, 150 members of the trans and gender-variant community were present in the Park Board meeting room to address the recommendations of the working group, a good number of whom who would come to sit at the Park Board table while speaking to the Commissioners: incredibly articulate physicians employed by Vancouver Coastal who identified themselves as gender-variant persons on the spectrum, who spoke movingly and with spirit.
Young persons, high school students, members of the business community, teachers, lawyers, construction workers, actors and entertainers, seniors, a broad and representative spectrum of members of the cultural and ethnic mosaic communities that comprise and have long defined the Vancouver we know and love.
Constance Barnes, elected Chairperson of the Vancouver Park Board, on December 5, 2011
When it came time for the Commissioners to vote to adopt and establish a 2SLGBTQIA+ policy, the first Commissioner to speak was Vision Vancouver Park Board Commissioner Constance Barnes, who spoke with eloquence in her support of each of the members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ who were present in the room, down the long hallway outside the meeting room, and who had been standing outside the office listening to the speakers, now ready to hear Ms. Barnes’ words.
Constance Barnes’ address to the community gathered in the room, and to her fellow Commissioners, was heartbreakingly poignant, as she spoke of “righting an historical wrong”, of how — as a member of a minority community — she had often found herself excluded and even demeaned, and of how important it was to her that the Board unanimously adopt the motion to establish a 2SLGBTQIA+ policy that, among other initiatives, would construct all new change rooms, including three separate change rooms: Universal (U), Women (W) and Men (M).
John Coupar, long-serving Non-Partisan Association Vancouver Park Board Commissioner
Next to speak: Non-Partisan Association Park Board Commissioner, John Coupar.
“Sitting at the Park Board table this quite wondrous evening, as was clearly the case with my fellow Commissioners, I was heartened and stirred by all that I heard, of the grace and vivid evocation of spirit of all the speakers, your pointed, poignant and potent argumentation for necessary change to establish a fairer and more inclusive society, and the role that the Vancouver Park Board has to play in realizing a more inclusive community for all.
Listening to the speakers who sat at the Park Board table this evening, I was moved. I am changed, forever. For me, the best part of being a Park Board Commissioner is how I am afforded the opportunity to learn about aspects of life about which I was not fully aware. I want to thank you for helping to make me a better, a more whole person, and for working with us to help create a fairer and more inclusive city for all.
2014 is an election year. If I should be so fortunate to be re-elected to Park Board this autumn, and should I become the Chairperson of the Board, I commit to you tonight, that my first priority will include the construction of the new change rooms that Commissioner Barnes spoke about, but more: I will establish, as was requested this evening, a gender variant swim at the Templeton and Lord Byng pools, and during my next term in office, I will work with the 2SLGBTQIA+ community to create a welcoming environment in our community and aquatic centres, to work with you towards the creation of a fairer community for all.”
Indeed, John Coupar was re-elected as a Park Board Commissioner on Saturday, November 15, 2014, and was soon after inaugurated as Chairperson of the Board at a ceremony held at the VanDusen Botanical Gardens, on December 1, 2014.
Park Board Chairperson John Coupar’s first priority?
Establish a gender-variant swim at each of the Templeton and Lord Byng pools.
Next, Chairperson Coupar instructed Park Board General Manager Malcolm Bromley to begin work on the construction of inclusive change rooms and washroom facilities for members of the trans and gender variant communities.
In the 50+ years VanRamblings has covered the work that takes place at the Vancouver Park Board table, never have we been more moved than was the case this hallowed evening of change for the better, never before or since have we experienced as moving and eloquent a speaker than was the case with Constance Barnes on that particular late evening of April, 2014, and never, ever have we been more proud of an elected official than was the case that halcyon evening, and since, in the person of John Coupar, a true hero in our fair city by the sea.
Mike Howell’s Town Hall report may be found here.
