[ad_1]
Breadcrumb Path Hyperlinks
NewsLocal Information
A plan to abolish town’s elected park board reveals a rift inside ABC that burst into public view this week had been creating quietly for months.
Article content material
When ABC Vancouver’s park board commissioners have been summoned to the mayor’s ceremonial workplace in metropolis corridor Tuesday, they’d no prior discover what the assembly could be about.
However hypothesis had been buzzing since that morning when Mayor Ken Sim’s workplace issued an advisory a couple of information convention the next day. The advisory didn’t point out the park board, solely a proposed change to the Vancouver Constitution.
Commercial 2
Article content material
Article content material
Inexperienced commissioner Tom Digby, the one one of many park board’s seven members not affiliated with ABC, posted a tweet lower than two hours earlier than the 5 p.m. assembly saying it appeared the mayor appeared poised to axe the elected board.
ABC commissioner Laura Christensen, at residence along with her one-month-old toddler, had requested to telephone into the assembly. The opposite 5 ABC commissioners gathered across the massive desk within the mayor’s wood-panelled ceremonial workplace, together with Sim’s senior adviser, David Grewal, and the mayor’s chief of workers, Trevor Ford, who instructed the commissioners they couldn’t telephone Christensen to permit her to take part remotely.
Quickly after, Sim entered the room. He suggested the commissioners he deliberate to publicly announce the subsequent day his resolution to hunt the elimination of the elected park board. If the commissioners had any questions, Sim instructed them, they might ask his workers.
The mayor left the room after lower than 5 minutes.
Individuals in attendance mentioned the information landed like “a bombshell.”
Ford introduced the 5 commissioners with a deadline: they’d till 8 a.m. the subsequent day to let ABC know whether or not they deliberate to indicate up beside the mayor to help the park board’s elimination.
Commercial 3
Article content material
The next day, Sim publicly confirmed he would set into movement his plan to ask the B.C. authorities for the Constitution change to dissolve the elected park board and convey its operations underneath metropolis council’s oversight.
It’s not the primary time that Sim, a former businessman in his first time period as an elected official, has proven a willingness to shake up the political orthodoxy. He calls it taking daring motion to guard the broader metropolis’s greatest pursuits. His critics warn of an try and consolidate energy.
Sim’s announcement of his plan to abolish the 133-year-old park board, a novel elected physique amongst B.C. cities, got here with the help of some neighborhood and athletic organizations, however caught many Vancouverites off-guard.
It additionally uncovered a rupture inside the metropolis’s ruling occasion.
Three of the six commissioners elected final 12 months with Sim’s occasion declared that day they’d now sit as independents.
However whereas the fracture in ABC’s park board caucus grew to become very public Wednesday, cracks had began forming a lot earlier.
In February, all six ABC commissioners voted to take away short-term bike lanes in Stanley Park, asking workers to report again on a everlasting bike lane for summer time 2024.
Dawn
Article content material
Commercial 4
Article content material
Christensen mentioned this week that though she and another ABC commissioners weren’t thrilled concerning the lane’s elimination, “we held our noses and voted for it.”
She had campaigned final 12 months on a promise to take away the short-term bike lane however rapidly exchange it with a everlasting one. When she voted in February, that was nonetheless her understanding, she mentioned.
Christensen mentioned she was “actually disenchanted” when it emerged just lately there was no cash within the price range for a everlasting bike lane.
One of many first public splits in ABC’s park board majority got here at a Could assembly, when ABC commissioner Jas Virdi launched a movement that may, amongst different issues, allocate funds from the 2023 price range “towards the instant planning” of a lit artificial turf discipline for discipline hockey and soccer at Moberly Park in southeast Vancouver.
Fellow ABC commissioner Brennan Bastyovanszky proposed placing Virdi’s movement and as a substitute directing workers to conduct public engagement on Moberly Park’s future, and report again later this 12 months.
![VANCOUVER, BC - December 7, 2023 - Brennan Bastyovanszky outside Vancouver Park Board office in Stanley Park, Vancouver, BC, December 7, 2023.. (Arlen Redekop / Postmedia staff photo) (Story by Dan Fumano) [PNG Merlin Archive]](https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/vancouversun/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/png1207-bastyovanszky.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=288&sig=h2Sc6SUgoMVHnNrr1fyvNQ)
ABC commissioner Marie-Claire Howard opposed Bastyovanszky’s modification and Virdi abstained, nevertheless it was authorised with the help of Christensen, Digby, ABC commissioner Angela Haer and ABC then-board chairman Scott Jensen.
Commercial 5
Article content material
5 months later, the turf difficulty got here up once more, this time in a metropolis council assembly.
Council was contemplating allocating cash from the province’s rising communities fund towards the Moberly turf discipline and a twig park throughout the road. Inexperienced Coun. Adriane Carr proposed an modification, suggesting the price range allocation must be “topic to park board approval after public engagement.”
Carr’s modification was seconded and supported by OneCity Coun. Christine Boyle. However the non-ABC council members’ try and defer to the ABC-majority park board’s authority was defeated when all ABC councillors current opposed it.
“I actually suppose that we have to respect the elected physique of the park board and make it possible for we’re not overstepping our personal authority,” Carr mentioned.
After ABC councillors shot down the modification, Boyle commented she “discovered that bizarre, and I’m attempting to know it, having not heard from anybody why we wouldn’t help working with the park board on this.”
![Oct. 2022: VANCOUVER, B.C. Ken Sim on stage on election night October 2022 alongside ABC Vancouver's council, park board and school board candidates, all of whom were victorious. ( Francis Georgian / PNG staff photographer) [PNG Merlin Archive]](https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/vancouversun/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/png-1015.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=288&sig=uJx0BzpmXp2kR7LepoJR-w)
On Nov. 22, the ABC commissioners met to debate who they’d help for board chair for 2024. There was a transparent distinction of opinion, mentioned individuals on the assembly: Virdi and Haer supported Howard for chair, whereas Jensen and Christensen supported Bastyovanszky.
Commercial 6
Article content material
That made Tom Digby, the board’s seventh and sole Inexperienced commissioner, the deciding vote.
The next day, Nov. 23, Howard phoned Digby to ask if he would help her for chair, he recalled this week. He instructed her he wasn’t inclined to take action. The subsequent day, Nov. 24, round 2:30 p.m., Haer phoned Digby to induce him to help Howard. Thirty-six minutes later, Virdi referred to as Digby, additionally urging him to help both him or Howard for chair, and “it grew to become very clear,” Digby mentioned this week, “the mayor was keen to supply issues to assist help my vote for Jas or Marie-Claire.”
“I don’t do offers like that,” Digby mentioned. “I don’t do politics in a transactional method.”
As an alternative, Digby felt inclined to help Bastyovanszky, who he understood was additionally fascinated with being chair, with Jensen and Christensen’s help.
On the Nov. 27 board assembly, the place the chair was to be voted on, Haer and Howard didn’t attend.
Virdi sought to postpone the chair vote, saying the assembly didn’t have two-thirds of board members current, however the clerks suggested Virdi that the assembly might proceed.
Virdi “bought the rule flawed,” Digby mentioned, “and I believe he was a bit shocked.”
Commercial 7
Article content material
So the assembly, and the chair choice, proceeded.
Jensen nominated Bastyovanszky for chair and he was acclaimed, with Virdi abstaining and nobody else nominated.
When Sim was requested this week if he might level to any particular park board commissioners’ choices or conduct this time period that impressed his resolution, he declined to quote any examples.
As an alternative, he mentioned, after 13 months of “attempting to repair it,” he was satisfied the board’s governance construction was “damaged,” even when there have been “seven superstars in that chamber.”
Bastyovanszky mentioned he doesn’t know what steps Sim has taken attempting to “repair” the system, nevertheless it hasn’t concerned watching board conferences, chatting with commissioners or offering route on easy methods to repair something.
The board has had a listing of unfunded initiatives that “would assist deal with quite a few the problems Ken is elevating, for actually low cost,” Bastyovanszky mentioned, however commissioners have been unable to get an viewers with the mayor or council.
Council, metropolis workers and the individuals of Vancouver “ought to completely know,” Bastyovanszky mentioned, that the elected commissioners have been at the hours of darkness concerning the plans main as much as this week’s announcement.
Commercial 8
Article content material
Ford mentioned final week’s board chair vote had nothing to do with the mayor’s announcement this week. The mayor’s workplace had been in talks for months with the province about this and different attainable Constitution adjustments, Ford mentioned, and “the mayor made his resolution on the finish of summer time.”
“I don’t and the mayor doesn’t actually have any curiosity in relitigating the previous. If there’s a assertion to be made, it’s that,” Ford mentioned. “Everybody has completely different lived experiences, we’re centered on transferring ahead.”
“That is what’s greatest for Vancouver, and that’s the path that we’ve chosen.”
Tuesday night time, within the hours after the assembly, Jensen despatched an e-mail saying that he wouldn’t have the ability to attend the morning’s information convention, as a result of as an elementary college trainer, he wasn’t in a position to get time without work work on brief discover. He didn’t point out his place in some way concerning the mayor’s resolution to hunt the tip of the park board.
“That is all completed behind closed doorways to abolish the park board,” Jensen mentioned. “How is our park house going to be protected transferring ahead, if issues are completed at the hours of darkness like this?”
Commercial 9
Article content material
Wednesday at 8:08 a.m., Ford emailed Jensen, Christensen and Bastyovanszky, in addition to ABC’s board chairwoman Marie Rogers and the occasion’s govt director, Christy Thompson, informing the commissioners they wouldn’t be a part of the transition crew going ahead.
This was a shock to Christensen, who wasn’t at Tuesday’s assembly, and says she hadn’t been contacted by anybody from the occasion between then and Ford’s Wednesday morning e-mail. At 9:09 a.m., Christensen tweeted about it, together with a screenshot of Ford’s e-mail.
About quarter-hour later, Christensen, Bastyovanszky and Jensen acquired notifications on their telephones they’d been faraway from the ABC caucus group chat.
Ford later mentioned he wasn’t attempting to take away anybody from ABC, solely from the crew that may deal with the transition interval whereas the elected park board was dissolved. However Christensen, Bastyovanszky and Jensen all declared that day they’d proceed as independents.
Wednesday morning, two simultaneous information conferences unfolded: outdoors the Bloedel Conservatory, Bastyovanszky launched himself because the “unbiased chair of the unbiased park board,” whereas at metropolis corridor, Sim appeared onstage beside Haer, Howard and Virdi, alongside ABC councillors, and stepped behind a podium emblazoned with the slogan: “A brand new period for parks and recreation.”
Commercial 10
Article content material
Friday morning, two former ABC commissioners — Bastyovanszky and Christensen, along with her new child — have been noticed at a Industrial Drive cafe, chatting over espresso and muffins with Inexperienced commissioner Digby and Inexperienced councillors Carr and Pete Fry.
dfumano@postmedia.com
twitter.com/fumano
Associated Tales
Dan Fumano: Vancouver is B.C.’s solely metropolis with an elected park board. Mayor Ken Sim needs to alter that
Transfer to abolish Vancouver park board reveals rift in Mayor Ken Sim’s ABC occasion
Vancouver Election Outcomes: Ken Sim rolls over Kennedy Stewart, vows to behave quick so as to add cops
Bookmark our web site and help our journalism: Don’t miss the information it’s essential to know — add VancouverSun.com and TheProvince.com to your bookmarks and join our newsletters right here.
You may as well help our journalism by turning into a digital subscriber: For simply $14 a month, you will get limitless entry to The Vancouver Solar, The Province, Nationwide Put up and 13 different Canadian information websites. Assist us by subscribing immediately: The Vancouver Solar | The Province.
Article content material
Share this text in your social community
[ad_2]
Source link
