A closed trail in Stanley Park, Vancouver on Aug. 24, 2023.Jackie Dives/The Globe and Mail
For 135 years, residents have relied on elected members of the Vancouver Park Board to oversee everything from groundskeeping to the devastating moth infestation in Stanley Park to the tentative steps to allow people to drink in such spaces.
But last month, Mayor Ken Sim announced plans to abolish the park board, citing efficiency. The move would be significant, as Vancouver’s model is unique in this country, unlike in the U.S. In Canada, most municipalities look after their parks the way Toronto does: with the city in charge and with councillors accountable for decisions.
Parks, which are supposed to be green refuges from the myriad difficulties of city living, have become flashpoints for changing patterns of urban life and a plethora of social issues, including homeless tent encampments.
How to manage the increasingly valuable bits of green space needed for people living in ever-densifying neighbourhoods and small apartments has roiled city councils that are struggling to find the best way to accommodate activist residents while balancing wider city needs.
Parks “have become essential urban infrastructure,” says Dave Harvey, the founder and executive director of Park People, a 12-year-old organization that works to support park advocates across Canada.
“That makes them become more of a hot point. There was a trend the last 20 years in how people are using their parks differently, and COVID exploded that.”
And, for whatever reason, parks seem to generate more demand for citizen involvement than other city functions such as planning, social programs or engineering.
In spite of that, Mr. Sim has declared that Vancouver’s park board is no longer purpose-built for the challenges facing the city’s parks. Bringing management of them under the city would be more efficient, the mayor argues, but his December announcement – a reversal of his election campaign that included park board candidates on his slate – was met with outrage, including from some members of his own party.
In Toronto, where the city is in charge of running parks, the demand for better park operations has turned some people into high-energy park activists who bombard local councillors with pleas for change.
“There’s a real disconnect between the people making the decisions about parks and the people using them,” said Shawn Micallef, a freelance columnist for the Toronto Star, in an interview.
He has mounted a revolt against what he sees as bizarre, anti-public decisions the city has made, including shutting down parks during the pandemic, keeping washrooms closed even during the busiest times and scheduling garbage pick-up so infrequently that parks are a mess.
“A citizens’ board would have their finger on the pulse,” said Mr. Micallef, who resorted to lobbying individual councillors to try to get basic changes such as opening up washrooms. In the meantime, he said there’s potential for change, as the city looks for a new head of parks.
“It’s a moment for a reformer. There’s a whole culture that needs changing.”
In the U.S., the League of Women Voters posted a special announcement this October encouraging people in cities that have elected park boards to vote, saying the representatives “make critical decisions for the community.”
Minneapolis is the largest city with an elected park board in the U.S., but there are many others established, often as citizens tried to make sure green space was protected when city councils were focused on fostering development in new and rapidly growing communities.
The East Bay Park Regional District was created in 1933 for communities to the east of San Francisco, as people lobbied for an entity that could create a park system. The city of Grundy Centre, Ill., population 55,000, also has an elected park board.
There are also many appointed boards that play a strong role in their cities, notably Houston and, recently, Seattle. A dedicated group of park fans in the latter city lobbied to create a new “parks and green spaces” levy with a special initiative in 2008 that would provide US$146-million over six years for new parks and park improvements. Fifty-nine per cent of residents voted in favour.
In 2014, Seattle voters also opted in favour of creating a special park district that would be guided by a community board giving advice to council. That was transformed into a Board of Parks and Recreation in 2021, though still appointed, with the idea that it would “more efficiently utilize the time, knowledge, and expertise of community volunteers” and reduce ambiguity and overlap in the previous system.
Seve Ghose, currently the executive director of the Yerba Buena Gardens Conservancy in San Francisco, said many U.S. park boards were created in the postwar years, when suburbs boomed and people wanted to make sure there were green spaces set aside and developed in them. He said some were more powerful than the mayors of the city because they had control over a stream of separate funding, generated from special park taxes.
Mr. Ghose, who has worked for half a dozen park boards in the U.S., said the bodies, whether elected or appointed, can make a huge difference if they have control over their money. (Vancouver’s park board does not. City council ultimately controls the funding.) But when parks are simply shuffled to city hall without any special structure or dedicated revenue source, they often get short-changed, he said.
“In a typical municipal structure, police and fire get most of the money. They’re not going to cut money from that, but they will ask other departments to cut,” Mr. Ghose said.
Park board advocates see formal citizen participation as a better system than trying to badger individual councillors – people who are also juggling budgets, housing, social service, transportation, drug policy and policing – to take action on improving parks.
Mr. Harvey said park fans have always seen Vancouver’s system as something others should strive for.
“In the parks world, we point to Vancouver as a really successful model. Vancouver’s leading some great work in equity and decolonization. I think that’s maybe related to the fact they have more independence,” he said.
But Mr. Sim and his allies say eliminating the park board will make for more efficient decision-making. A public-opinion poll in June, 2022, conducted by Research Co., found that more than half of the 400 residents surveyed said they didn’t see the value of a park board. That was up from 44 per cent two years earlier.
The board has been the subject of increasing public criticism, as commissioners were forced to deal with the host of social and environmental issues that have emerged at city parks throughout the U.S. and Canada. Those have included the increasing use of parks as camps by homeless people; demands by people living in denser urban neighbourhoods for more space; pressure to allow new activities like drinking as those parks function like backyards; pressures to adapt to climate change; and rethinking of park design and management to take into account the history and needs of Indigenous and marginalized groups.
Sarah Kirby-Yung, a Vancouver city councillor, a member of the mayor’s party and a former park commissioner, said park issues are a lot more complex than when the board was first created in 1888, with the specific job of managing Stanley Park only.
She points to numerous delays that have been created as city planners, engineers and event managers have had to stand by while the board or park managers take weeks or months to decide whether to go ahead with a public bike dock, a sewer line or festival in a park.
“With the city becoming more complex, management has become more complex. And people are realizing that there is unnecessary bureaucracy,” she said.
Vancouver’s park-board advocates have been vocal in opposing the move, arguing it will erode democracy and potentially lead to the city selling park land for development – a claim not supported by any evidence so far.
“This mayor’s motion has awakened a sleeping giant,” said Brennan Bastyovanszky, the now-independent commissioner who was elected as the park board’s new chair.
He described Mr. Sim’s decision as a “political tantrum” that came about because the mayor was angry that the park board wasn’t going along with his demands.
Whatever Mr. Sim might wish, nothing will happen quickly: The province has said that council needs to come up with a transition plan and also demonstrate that it has consulted local First Nations about it. That is now on the new year’s to-do list at city hall.