Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim reflects on hits, misses after one year in office

A year ago this week, Ken Sim and his colleagues were sworn in after voters elected seven A Better City Vancouver councillors and put Sim in the mayor’s chair.

He agreed to sit down with CTV News at city hall for an interview to discuss the first 12 months in office.

“They wanted change, and people, change in Vancouver is here,” he said during his victory speech. “On day one we are going to requisition for 100 new police officers and 100 mental health nurses."

The familiar refrain was the cornerstone of ABC’s plan to address public safety by providing better mental health supports.

$15.7-million was quickly earmarked for the Vancouver Police Department to fulfill part of the promise.

The city gave Vancouver Coastal Health just $2.8-million to hire the nurses.

The 100 new officers are already on the street – but as many predicted, the mental health nurses have been harder to come by.

One year into his term, only 10 mental health professionals have been hired.

"We are having some impact with those 10 individuals. One person is working in our police call centre and that person is triaging calls to the right places as opposed to police calls. But make no mistake about it, more work needs to be done,” Sim said.

He has revised the target to 58 mental health professionals and says they will not all be nurses.

"What we're committed to is having a material impact on it. And so we came up with 100 mental health nurses and Vancouver Coastal said it would be more effective to have 58 instead,” he said. “We're not going to split hairs here, so if the health authority thinks it's more effective if we go in that direction we will 100 percent support them."

Christine Boyle, a councillor with One City, is not surprised the police have been hired but not the mental health professionals.

"Anyone could have told you from the moment they made this promise during the campaign that it wasn't realistic, it wasn't well thought out,” she said.

HOUSING AFFORDABILITY CONCERNS

Coun. Pete Fry, with the Green Party, said he has concerns over how some moves made by his ABC colleagues could impact low-income Vancouver residents.

"Getting rid of the renters office, getting rid of the living wage certification in the City of Vancouver, moves towards rebating developers millions of dollars out of the social housing fund from the empty homes tax,” Fry listed as things he found troubling.

He said he believes motions passed by council so far will do more to serve the development community than working-class people in need of housing they can afford.

"Pete's a great guy and he's an opposition member so obviously he's going to critique whatever we do. But what I can tell you is we are pushing big time on building all types of housing, including affordable housing,” Sim said.

He didn’t reference any specific affordable housing initiatives but he did say he thinks cutting red tape at city hall – which his party is working on – will benefit developers of all types of housing.

ON BRINGING ‘SWAGGER’ TO THE CITY

Since being elected, the word “swagger” has been a favourite of Sim’s and he’s been known to have a good time – even shotgunning an adult beverage onstage at last summer’s Khatsalano Street Festival.

During the interview, CTV News asked Sim what that word means in the context of the City of Vancouver.

“Well, I think it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So just being able to have a great time in our city, being proud of our city – that is swagger,” the mayor said.

“When I look at what we’re doing in uplifting Chinatown, giving that community a renewed sense of excitement and having a vibe on the street. We’ve committed to putting $10 million into the reimagining of Gastown.”

WHAT DOES HE REGRET IN THE FIRST YEAR?

On regrets, Sim brought up the 10.7 per cent property tax increase voted in during his first year in office – but said it wasn’t necessarily the increase itself that concerned him.

“I wish I did a better job explaining what the property tax increase meant. We did come out with a 10.7 per cent increase, but if you look at your tax bill, most of the taxes we collect have nothing to do with the City of Vancouver,” he said. “It could be Metro Van, TransLink and provincial school tax.”

Vancouver residents do benefit from services provided by Metro Vancouver and TransLink and schools in the city receive funding from the province.

Asked how he is actually enjoying the job now that he’s been in the mayor’s office for a year, Sim said he likes it better than he thought he would.

“The reason I ran was my kids don’t see a future for themselves in Vancouver. So I was personally willing to do a job that maybe I wouldn’t like a lot of the stuff that you have to do,” he said. “I actually love over 90 per cent of it. It’s great and it’s been an incredibly humbling experience.”