British Columbia

Park idea
a waste
of money

Did you know that the Non Parti-
san Association-dominated Vancou-
ver park board is prepared to spend
up to $260 million to buy a narrow
strip of expensive property in the
Point Grey area just to establish a
small waterfront “dream” park? Can
you imagine anything more ridicu-
lous, or more wasteful?

Equally wasteful was its action in
paying a consultant $35,000 to bring
in a report on the proposed Point
Grey park, a report which provided
little or no information that the park
board did not already have. We don’t
need and can’t afford a new park of
this magnitude in the Point Grey area.

First of all, the Point Grey residents
don’t want it.

Second, how can the NPA justify
such an expenditure when it claims it
is so financially strapped that it had
to:

(a) Increase fees for all public facili-
ties (swimming pools, fitness centres,
and so on) by the rate of inflation;

(b) Add another increase in fees for
senior golfers, over and above the rate
of inflation;

(c) Impose a fee for public per-
formers (jugglers, mimes and others);

(d) Impose a huge increase in fees
for open air art displays;

(e) Install parking meters in Stanley
Park.

COPE seeking grassroots’ input |

Third, the Point Grey area already
has plenty of park space compared to
other areas of the city.

Fourth, the one area of the city that
really needs more park space is the
east end. But perhaps this doesn’t
count in the eyes of the NPA park
board commissioners. After all, east
Vancouver is made up of mainly
working people, many on low
incomes, and in the eyes of the NPA
they just don’t count.

City taxpayers don’t want their
money spent on Point Grey park. Has
the NPA no sense of priorities?

Committee of Progressive Electors
park board member Pat Wilson was
right on when she reminded the

mitted to providing equity through-
out the city.”

This park board is good at wasting
money. Were it not taxpayers’ money,
it would be almost hilarious.

It paid a consultant $35,000 to
design a logo!

It paid a consultant $4,000 to teach
parliamentary procedure to park board
members!

I strongly suspect that what the
NPA park board is mainly interested
in is establishing another park in a
well-to-do area so that it can be used
as another tourist attraction.

It’s all part of the same developer-
oriented and tourist-oriented policy

board, “You’re supposed to be com-.

that dominates the NPA at city hall.

in Community Directions meet

ALD. LIBBY DAVIES ... for whom shall Vancouver be developed?

When the Committee of Progressive
Electors entered the election fray in pre-
vious years, it used to table a program and
count on voters to support it.

No longer. The 22-year-old Vancouver
civic alliance will be asking potential sup-
porters and allies what kind of program
they’d like to carry the city into the future,
Ald. Libby Davies says. ~ .

“We want to step back and involve peo-
ple in a grassroots process to collectively
determine what’s best for Vancouver,” says
Davies of COPE’s upcoming Community
Directions Conference.

More than 2,000 mailings have gone out
for the conference which represents a kind
of “new thinking” on the part of the labour-
backed alliance formed in 1968 to end the
rule of developers and big business in city
hall.

With that objective again on the agenda
in 1990, COPE is hoping to draw on the
energy and ideas of dozens of community
and environmental organizations that have
sprung up in Vancouver in recent years,
Davies says.

“Now, more than ever, different groups
of people are working together,” says the
eight-year veteran of city council.

Those citizens organizations have arisen
to fill a vacuum of the past decade. New
alliances helped stop controversial plans
such as the downtown resource recovery
plant and have formed to fight for afforda-
ble housing during the current crisis.

Citizens are feeling a “renewed sense of
vigour” combined with a sense of frustra-
tion at the “awesome power of developers,”
Davies observes.

COPE believes that vigour can be tapped
to help form policies aimed at wresting con-

trol from big business interests and develop-
ing a people-oriented city based on a
program of that reflects the growing urban
environmental consciousness.

The conference, set May 25-26, centres
around four themes: Urban growth, city
autonomy, “inclusive” versus exclusive
development, and the municipal environ-
ment:

The latter theme will be discussed in six
workshops focusing on the areas under
examination by another COPE project: the
Environmental Task Force which is exa-
mining housing and development, trans-
portation, waste management, recreation
and green space, public participation and
education, and sustainable industry and
employment.

“This same process is already under way
in other cities,” Davies relates. Key speakers
include city of Toronto councillor Jack
Layton and school board member Olivia
Chow.

The task force will not have a completed
report for the sessions. Instead, it will table
its findings to date and offer them as a basis
for discussion, Davies says.

The same spirit applies to the conference
as a whole. There will be no hard COPE
policies to be adopted or amended. The
civic alliance will simply put forward what
it’s calling, “The Provocative Paper.”

In fact, there will be no resolutions. Says
Davies: “This conference is planned as only
the beginning of a process. Hopefully, there
will be a lot of enthusiasm for continuing
discussions.”

The very structure of the conference will
be innovative, says Davies, with new tech-
niques for workshops, cultural events and
an ice-breaking event: an “imagination

market” in which participants can make
their own lapel buttons.

Davies cautions that COPE is not trying
to change the basic philosophy struck when
the new alliance of trade unionists, com-
munity activists, New Democrats, Com-
munists and political independents helped
elect Ald. Harry Rankin in 1968.

COPE scored more electoral victories in
the Eighties and at one point controlled city
council in an alliance with centre-left forces.
But in recent years the organization has
tended to become somewhat stale and
bureaucratic, and the conference represents
“a genuine effort to go back to the original
principles,” she says.

“There are so many more people who are
our natural constituents,” and they should
be part of the policy-making process,
Davies says.

And there are those who likely voted for
the business-oriented Non Partisan Associ-
ation in previous elections and have since
become disillusioned with the, group
because of city council’s lack of action to
defend housing and deal with problems like
waste disposal, she observes.

Instead, the NPA “steals” traditional
COPE policies such as recycling and rent
control, but they “use these issues in a
grandstanding way.”

““We’ve got to get people to see that NPA
is the voice of developers” and that is bent
on developing an exclusive, executive style
city at the expense of its longer-term and less
well-heeled residents, Davies states.

“We're at the end of this century and
we’ve got to ask what kind of city this will be
and for whom.”

If this were a telegram, it would
probably read something like this.

“Dear Supporters: We’re hurting.
Please send money.”

A bit abrupt, perhaps, but then we
can’t think of a subtle way to put it.

Telegraphing our need ...

We're way behind as the 1990 Tribune
Financial Drive enters its seventh week.
And there’s only six more weeks to go
before the Victory Banquet on June 23.

We need your extra effort if we’re
going to have something to celebrate.

This year’s target is the same as last

year’s: $82,000. It’s a barebones amount
to keep B.C.’s only progressive weekly
publishing for another year.

Please make that effort, so we don’t
have change our “telegram” into an §.O.S.

... $82,000

2 « Pacific Tribune, May 14, 1990