Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to today's episode of Red Eye. I'm Jane Williams. Coming up in this episode, City Beat, Lorraine Chisholm speaks with Red Eye's Ian Mass. Red Eye Collective member Ian Mass joins me now with his City Beat report. So on the agenda today, 100 mental health nurses, abolishing the park board, and a whole lot more. Hi, Ian. Good morning, Lorraine.
Speaker: Now, Mayor Simms and his ABC party campaigned on a promise to hire 100 mental health nurses along with the 100 new cops. What's happening with that promise? Well, we probably know that the cops got right onto that and hired about 100 new officers right away at a price tag of $15 .7 million a year. Council also approved half that amount of money, $8 million a year to hire
Speaker: these hundred mental health nurses, but they're actually looking at hiring a variety of people because they told council, look, the goal is really to develop a whole bunch of things we already have going, things like the various de -escalation services they have, increased partnerships with the police, which some people know is CAR 86 and 87, and strengthening indigenous approaches. But unfortunately, Vancouver Coastal Health
Speaker: has had trouble ramping these ideas up into action last year in 2023. They hired less than 10 workers last year and only spent a little over $600 ,000 of the $8 million they were promised.
Speaker: So this year, they hope to move that spending up and the services up, obviously, they've got about $6 .8 million to spend this year. So council is going to hear from Coastal Health on Tuesday about what didn't happen in 2023 and how they plan to spend $6 .8 million in 2024.
Speaker: Council's going to consider a plan to make Gastown a whole lot more pedestrian friendly beginning this summer. What does the report recommend that council do?
Speaker: Well, the report they're going to look at is called Gastown Summer 2024 Pedestrian Zone Pilot. A lot of words. Some PR firms are going to have to put that into a better package. But what the city wants to do, or what the staff say the city should do, is on the east side,
Speaker: of Gastown right at Maple Tree Square. They want to close that whole area off and Powell Street that goes into it. So that's going to be totally closed to traffic. And on the other end of Water Street, the west side of it, they're going to close Water Street from Richards to Cambie Street. Cambie's the steam clock and Richards is up there at Cordova. So what it's going to have is you're going to create two street parks at both ends of Water Street.
Speaker: Now, the middle two blocks of that is going to be what they call car light, and that'll be mostly deliveries and tour bus drop -offs and things like that. And they want to have the option of having car -free days on select days or weekends of the summer, because it's a two -month pilot, and it's going to be during the peak summer and tourist seasons, July and August. It's prime time. It costs about a million dollars. It's a part of a $10 million they have investment that it's designed to
Speaker: liven up gas town, promote pedestrians, bikes, food patios, street retail, all of that kind of stuff. But it doesn't come without fears. There's lots of fears about traffic chaos and business downturns and things like that. So we'll see what Council does with this next Tuesday.
Speaker: Now, turning to the Parks Board once again, eliminating the democratically elected Parks and Recreation Board, sounds like it's going to be a hot political issue for a long time. What's new there? Well, I really think it will be. Politically, there was a town hall meeting just yesterday on Thursday to discuss this plan
Speaker: It was organized by Vancouver city green party counselors, Adrian Carr and Pete Fry and one city's Christine Boyle. And apparently it was an overflow crowd. You had to register to get in and they cut off the registration two days beforehand because of the overwhelming response on that. So they're asking people to write their MLAs and sign the petition. They write the MLAs because it's really
Speaker: the provincial government that needs to make the changes. And they've got a petition going called Save the Park Board. It's started by a former Park Board commissioner and Downtown Eastside activist, Sarah Blyth. And if you're interested in that, it's on the change .org site. Moving on, on Monday, the Vancouver Park Board commissioners themselves are meeting to consider a motion to spend about $20 ,000 to get some independent legal advice
Speaker: on what the odds are, legally speaking, on taking Mayor Gensim and his ABC party on and find out if their decision to eliminate the elected Park Board is actually legal. But meanwhile, Mayor Sims is forging ahead with plans to take over the Park Board operation and assets. He's appointed another volunteer committee called Park Board Transition Working Group.
Speaker: And their mandate is to figure, and I'll quote here, to figure meaningful pathways for community engagement with council when the city takes over the park board. So everything else other than meaningful pathways for community engagement, everything else, operations, services, strategy, policy issues, everything that's important that the present park board does is outside of the mandate of this particular committee.
Speaker: But ultimately, the provincial government makes the call. And before they make that decision, they're expecting a complete, what they call, park board transition plan from the city. And ABC is onto that. The timeline, ABC would like this done.
Speaker: in the next six months, but you know, there's going to be a short provincial legislative session this winter. There's a provincial election this coming fall in October. So even though the city and province seem to have good relations, six months might be wishful thinking it's probably going to happen after the provincial election, if it happens at all. And the final piece, one of the loyal ABC park board commissioners, one that stayed with ABC and agrees with the
Speaker: elimination of the park board. A woman named Angela Hare, she's already looking for another job. She's running for the federal conservative nomination in Shaughnessy. It's called the Granville constituency.
Speaker: takes in Shaughnessy and much of that rich Granville corridor there. It's now held by the liberals, but it's a potentially winnable seat by Pierre Polyevanist conservatives. They didn't lose that seat by much last time. So anyways, there's lots going on and we'll know even more about ABC plans when council hears a planning update this coming Wednesday. On and on it goes with the park board. It won't stop for a long time. I don't think this one.
Speaker: Last week Vancouver City Council heard about the Mayor's budget task force, their just released report. What did Council do with the recommendations? Well, they essentially agreed with them. I mean, the task force reported out that the 18 .6 % tax increase over the last two years that ABC Council gave us is not sustainable. And even though that
Speaker: huge tax increases happened over the last couple of years. Vancouver is still functioning at about a $500 million per year shortfall in spending. And that spending is really essentially to keep the infrastructure and the services functioning in Vancouver. So they had 17 recommendations, three of which, at least three garnered a lot of political chatter, the potential selling of some parts of the $30 billion in assets that Vancouver holds.
Speaker: potential privatization of city services, and finally cutting back or eliminating funding for services that aren't seen as core mandate for the city. And the examples given climate initiatives, social housing, childcare, costs from drug poisoning, those kinds of things. So the mayor last Tuesday, in a pretty poorly worded motion, wanted to establish what he called an implementation oversight committee to facilitate the successful
Speaker: implementation of the recommendations. That's a quote. But Councilor Christine Boyle said, hold on, this new committee's job shouldn't be to facilitate the successful implementation of these recommendations. That's Council's job. They approve things. She wanted the committee to explore implementation and listen to the community about what they think because they didn't have a chance to talk about this and bring those recommendations back to Council.
Speaker: who then will make a final decision. Council, including Mayor Simm, surprisingly agreed with Councilor Boyle, and those amendments passed unanimously, but not before Councilor Sari Kerber -Young said with a clear chip on her shoulder, and I quote, if it makes you happy, I'll vote for it. But she considers that a political performance theater, which doesn't change anything. So take that, Christine Boyle.
Speaker: The council also heard about the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil -Waututh Nations plan for a 90 acre Jericho land site in Point Grey. What did the council decide to do on that? Well, they unanimously agreed with the vision, Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil -Waututh's vision of mid and high rise buildings, high density mixed use car light with a rapid transit stop there. If they push that
Speaker: Arbutus Subway, SkyTrain out to UBC. They want 13 ,000 new homes, 24 ,000 people living there, employment for 3 ,000 new jobs. And 30 % of that housing is supposed to be below low and moderate income households. And on top of that, about three quarters of a billion dollars in amenities. And all of that is planned and designed to promote MST's nation's culture.
Speaker: So the next step is an official development plan, which goes into much greater detail, and it's the legal blueprint for the development. That takes about a year. Council will look it over, likely pass it, and then all we have to do is wait 30 years until they're done building it, and it'll be perfect, supposedly.
Speaker: Last year, Vancouver decided behind closed doors that they would end its living wage certification policy, which required the city to pay its workers the hourly amount needed to support a family in the city. I spoke last week with Councillor Christine Boyle, who says she wants council to recertify Vancouver as a living wage employer. Do you have an update on that? Councillor Boyle has a motion going to
Speaker: open council meeting on February 28th. It's an open council because the last decision to decertify took place behind closed doors. And she's proposing that the council re -certify Vancouver as a living wage employer. And in 2024, that figure is $25 .68 per hour. That's calculated by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives here in BC.
Speaker: and living wages for families in BC. But the city on its website says the city's fair wage policy is $21 .86, kind of close to $4 an hour less than the one calculated by living wage families.
Speaker: Now, this 2186, it applies to all city employees who are unionized, but also it applies to all the employees of the contractors and subcontractors that work at the city. The city's definition of a fair wage is different. They say it's based on a five -year rolling average of the living wage rate, and obviously five years ago, it was quite a bit less, and it bumped up with inflation in the last couple of years, which is why
Speaker: It's so much higher than what the city is saying. So, Councillor Boyle's one -city party is gearing up for the February 28 date when it comes with lots of callouts for support.
Speaker: And although what's likely to play out here is ABC sticking with the lower amount, but people do want to be heard on this one. And that will happen unless the motion is ruled out of order or needs to go behind closed doors. So we'll keep the listeners up to date on this one. And there you go. That's all that fits. Okay. Thanks so much, Ian. Thanks, Lorraine.
Speaker: I've been speaking with Red Eye Collective member Ian Mass with his City Beat report of this week. The Red Eye Collective is based in Vancouver. You can check us out at coopradio .org slash redeye.
