PAST & FUTURE OF THE PARK BOARD

What would Vancouver look like without the unique institution?

By Jacqui Birchall

(click images to enlarge)

What would Vancouver look like without an elected Board of Parks and Recreation? How would the dissolution of the park board affect Vancouver’s parks, community centres, pools and other facilities?

**Welcome to the Beach Avenue offices of the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation -- AKA the Park Board.** *(Jacqui Birchall Photo)*

The impact would be a negative one according to Park Board Commissioner Tom Digby and first vice-president of the board of the West End Community Centre, Linda Johnston.

Both Digby and Johnston explained how an elected park board brings a level of understanding of the issues that a more distanced and over-extended city council would not be able to bring.

The park board can advocate for and listen to those concerned with the state of parks, facilities and community centres. The point of the elected park board, as Digby explains it, is to pay attention to the matters related to swimming pools, skating rinks, community centres etc. The city council, he maintains, has bigger fish to fry and thus is more distant.

The Associated Presidents’ Group (APG), which represents most city’s community centres, does not want the elected park board dissolved. On their Facebook page, they maintain that most of Vancouver’s community centres are run by the park board and a local community centre association, which makes decisions on programming. In their view, abolishing the elected park board puts this very successful arrangement at risk.

APG’s put out a strongly worded press release regarding the potential abolition of the elected park board. See “Related Links” below to read the text.

Digby points out that the elected park board commissioners and the community centre boards are hard workers. They all “recognize each other’s commitment because of the Joint Operating Agreement with the 18, soon to be 19, community centres. The value is you have a living, breathing person to pay attention to the small issues that affect many. An elected park board is very attractive to people who want small government. It seems that Mayor Sim, who is used to executive privilege, doesn’t want this level of discussion that he cannot control,” Digby said.

Created in 1888, Vancouver’s park board is the only elected park board in Canada. At the time, the board leased a 950-acre military reserve from the Federal Government which became Stanley Park. In 1890 the park board became an elected body of three. Over the following years, the number of commissioners was increased to seven.

Over the years, the park board has purchased and demolished homes along Beach Avenue — homes that blocked the view of English Bay — constructed the sea wall, purchased some homes on Point Grey Road allowing for viewpoints and parks, and created the many parks throughout the city.

It’s part of a wider Park Movement that began in the 1840s in the U.S. New York City’s Central Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, was spurred by the Park Movement. The movement sought to bring the country to the city through the creation of urban parks, based on the social benefits gained by such natural spaces. The Vancouver Park Board recently met with the Minneapolis Park Board, the only other elected park board in North America, as part of the Park Movement.

Montecristo Magazine notes Vancouver’s board has made controversial decisions over the years and yet, “those controversies get people involved, and some of those people end up running for the park board, which is a training ground for politics and other civic activism, particularly for women. It served as a launching pad for people such as B.C.’s Attorney General Niki Sharma, Grace McCarthy, who became a member of the legislative assembly and cabinet minister, May Brown, who became a city councillor, Phillip Owen, who became mayor of Vancouver, Libby Davies, who became a member of Parliament,” as well as West End MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert.

The article also highlighted Sarah Blyth-Gerszak, executive director of the Overdose Prevention Society (OPS), who served two terms as a park board commissioner between 2008 and 2014. Blyth-Gerszak founded OPS in 2016 and has since worked in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, the heart of B.C.’s opioid crisis. Her first interaction with the park board was as a youth, when she started advocating for skateboarding spaces in city parks. She says the consultation and consensus-building skills she honed while on park board informs her work preventing overdose deaths today.

The park board has two budgets, one for operations and another for capital projects. The borrowing portion of the Capital Budget is approved by voters every four years as part of civic elections. The Capital Budget would include things like repairs to Kitsilano Pool, and projects within that budget require approval from city council. The Operating Budget is funded by parking and recreation fees. The much-maligned parking fees help pay for many aspects of our parks, beaches, pools and facilities including subsidized swimming lessons.

In 1911, the park board ensured that the beaches from the Burrard Bridge to Stanley Park were public. The board also created Everett Crowley Park in Champlain Heights. Reclaimed from a landfill, it is now a 38-hectare forested park.

The VanDusen Botanical Gardens is on previous Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) land. This land became the Shaughnessy Golf Course and the park board worked to develop a public garden with funding from the philanthropist Whitford Julian VanDusen, the city, and the province. The gardens were opened in 1975.

“The park board can field complaints, and they value advocacy because the elected park board can bring attention to issues that city council doesn’t understand,” Digby explained.

Johnston points out that although the West End Community Centre (WECC) building is owned by the city, the contents have been supplied by WECC, which creates all the programming and hires the instructors. The city has suggested the instructors should be centralized and used in all the community centres.

The city’s suggested changes on Beach Avenue is an example of how the park board can be effective. The city wanted to install two-way vehicle lanes on Beach Avenue, accommodating 5,000 cars a day, including the large tour buses coming in and out of the park. They also wanted to put a paved lane on the grass between Beach Avenue and the beach, paving over the roots of the glorious trees that line Beach Avenue. But, based on the required incursion into park space, the park board had the jurisdiction to vote down the plan.

The felling of thousands of dead Hemlock trees in Stanley Park has caused a lot of public consternation. Digby explains that the park board has the responsibility to ensure the public is protected from falling trees.

“Dead trees are left standing in isolated parts of the park. Standing dead trees are good for wildlife although statistically half of them will fall in three to four years,” Digby told TWEJ.

The busy park board is also looking into making Lost Lagoon inter-tidal again, as it was before the Causeway was constructed. This would help mitigate the Lagoon’s persistent water quality problems. Remember Lost Lagoon was so named by Pauline Johnson because historically, at low tide, the Lagoon disappeared.

Park Board Chair Brennan Bastyovanszky submitted a motion in late July to start a review of the city’s Real Estate and Facilities Management (REFM) department. REFM has been responsible for maintaining the park board facilities since 2009. Since then, the city department has racked up a deferred maintenance bill of nearly $350 million, according to Bastyovanszky. The motion was deferred until September.

Both Johnston and Bastyovanszsky complain about the inadequacies of REFM availability. Johnston points out that REFM has many responsibilities throughout the city and thus has little time for repairs in the WECC and other community centres. She also points out community centres are open seven days a week and evenings, but REFM is not available during these extended hours. She shared that it took two years to get a new sink installed in the WECC’s dark room. Important toilet repairs prove to be slow too.

Bastyovanszsky tells a similar story, illustrating a lack of care for Kits Pool, the Aquatic Centre, the Stanley Park train, the Jubilee Fountain in Lost Lagoon and other water features throughout Vancouver’s parks. Historically, the park board had their own dedicated engineers and maintenance workers, meaning repairs were a priority and completed promptly.

“Hopefully, the elected park board can re-instate its own dedicated team of engineers and maintenance workers, thus benefiting all users of the facilities,” said Bastyovanszsky.

When Doug McCallum, the former mayor of Surrey, planned the extension of 84th Avenue through Bear Creek Park, Surrey has no elected park board to advocate for it. The council voted along party lines and agreed to move forward.

Despite 7,000 signatures from Friends of Bear Creek Park, McCallum pressed on and the paving of the park was completed. The City of Surrey, realizing the extension was controversial, did not have an official opening.

Surrey’s Hawthorne Rotary Park met a similar fate when Surrey’s City Council, under Mayor Linda Hepner, voted to extend 105th Avenue through the park, removing four acres and 200 trees. This despite same opposition from 11,000 residents.

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