Despite vocal opposition, council votes to dismantle Vancouver's park board

After a meeting where more than 150 people signed up to speak – most opposing the move .– Vancouver city council voted to move forward with a plan to abolish Canada's only elected park board.

The vote on Mayor Ken Sim's motion passed along party lines Wednesday night, with all of his ABC councillors supporting and the non-ABC councillors opposing.

“I think it’s a great day in the city of Vancouver," Sim said. "It’s a new era for parks and our parks are going to run better because the system is going to be better.”

Sim has been critical of the park board in the past. He initially campaigning on scrapping it but then walked that back and pledged to improve it.

He did, however, hint to CTV News that a move like this one could be coming if he won the race for mayor.

"We will definitely go to the province and we will ask them to help us fix the elected park board and if that means getting rid of the elected park board and have them report to council, that is exactly what we will do," he said in an interview.

The 162 speakers who signed up to voice their opposition to council included former park board commissioners of all political stripes and concerned constituents.

"Vote no to this undemocratic, out-of-line proposal," said one speaker.

"This looks and feels and has every feature of a power grab," said another.

Current park board Commissioner Tom Digby phoned in during the council session which lasted throughout the afternoon, wrapping up around 10 p.m.

"What the motion we're looking at here is a giant real estate play," said Digby, claiming the park board provides a last line of defense against developers. "It is literally an attempted real estate coup d'etat."

Sim provided a response to Digby's comment.

"That's completely ridiculous. We are literally building in massive protections. We've actually increased the level of protections so our parks will be parks for future generations."

Sim also claims the move will save taxpayers money in the long-term and help run the city's parks and rec centres more efficiently.

"All we're doing is basically changing the governance so we have one entity that actually sees the whole picture, that's actually accountable for the whole picture," he said.

Councillors Pete Fry, Adriane Carr and Christine Boyle voted against the motion.

“The substance of the motion is quite flimsy," said Fry. "There’s not a lot of examples that have been provided by the mayor that justify what goes ahead here, and we are un-electing democratically elected park board commissioners."

Fry believes council's decision didn't reflect the public's voice on the matter.

"We’re disenfranchising tens of thousands of people who elected those park board commissioners with the stroke of a pen and with a very flimsy rationale.”

Removing the elected park board requires amending the Vancouver Charter, something that can only be done by the provincial government.