BURST
The status of lifeguard services at some Vancouver beaches remains uncertain for the summer, after city council rebuffed the park board’s funding request Wednesday, instead urging the other elected body to reallocate money in its own budget.
Green Coun. Pete Fry introduced a motion at Wednesday’s council meeting, seeking to fulfil the elected park board’s request three weeks earlier for council to allocate $600,000 within the city’s operating budget or contingency funds to restore lifeguard services.
Significant backlash met the news last month that the number of Vancouver beaches patrolled by lifeguards would be halved, from 10 down to five for this spring and summer. Park board management notified lifeguard staff last month about the staff reductions, saying the changes were part of the city’s cost-cutting efforts to achieve a zero per cent property tax increase for 2026, which Mayor Ken Sim’s ABC party has dubbed the “zero means zero” budget. But safety advocates warned that the loss of supervision would needlessly increase the danger at these beaches.
On March 31, the park board’s first meeting after news broke about the lifeguard cuts, commissioner Scott Jensen introduced an urgent motion seeking to ask city council to allocate funding to restore lifeguard services, calling the $600,000 required “a modest investment relative to the scale of public use and safety benefit.”
At the meeting, Jensen said that city council had, in recent months, found additional money for a fireworks event and car-free day festivals .
“Their contingency fund is there to address … the unknowns that this ‘zero means zero’ budget is going to continue to present to them,” Jensen said. “So, as they move forward and unearth new cuts that the city is going to be unhappy with, or fee increases that residents are unhappy with, they are going to need to continue to look into their reserves and find ways to, again, meet their obligation that they will not be cutting core services.”
Jensen’s motion sought to restore service at four of the five affected beaches: Spanish Banks East and West, Sunset, and Third Beach. Jensen didn’t propose bringing lifeguards back to Trout Lake, he said at the meeting, because he understood that beach had few swimmers and was often closed due to contamination. But, he said, resources were best allocated to the other four beaches.
That motion was unanimously approved at the March 31 meeting, with the support of commissioners from the ABC party.
ABC commissioner Marie-Claire Howard said she supported Jensen’s motion and was “actually very surprised park board staff would even suggest removing lifeguards at city beaches.”
“It’s obviously a necessity, not necessarily at all beaches but certainly at Spanish Banks and Third Beach, where people are known to swim,” Howard said.
But when the matter came to council on Wednesday through Fry’s motion, the ABC majority punted it back, directing the park board to find the money within its own allocated budget.
Dozens of people signed up to address council about the motion Wednesday, with all of them speaking in support of restoring lifeguard funding.
After hearing from speakers, ABC Coun. Mike Klassen proposed referring the motion back to the park board “in recognition of the board’s authority to manage the city’s parks and beaches, including decisions related to staffing levels and resource allocation.”
“Where we find ourselves today has nothing to do with a zero per cent property tax increase,” Klassen said. “This has everything to do with the park board not properly prioritizing lifeguards at our beaches.”
ABC Coun. Kirby-Yung, a former park board commissioner, said: “Management will prioritize what its elected body of park board directs. And they have not, in my opinion, done that in this case. They sort of simply took the easy way, to go to mom and dad and ask for more funding.
“What it’s really about is prioritizing things that the public wants. And clearly we’ve heard from the public — 46-plus speakers today — how incredibly important this is to people.”
Sim and his party’s councillors have asked the province to abolish the park board. Vancouver’s governance of parks and recreation is unique among B.C. cities, with one elected body — council — allocating the budget, and another elected body — park board commissioners — responsible for operational decisions. Sim and his allies have said this arrangement is inefficient and stands in the way of better management of parks and recreation.
ABC councillors mentioned Wednesday that the park board budget was actually increased for 2026. But park board commissioners from outside ABC have argued this claim is disingenuous: while the total park board operating budget approved for 2026 is $1.2 million, or 0.6 per cent, higher than last year’s, that isn’t enough to cover increases to fixed costs, most of which are salaries, commissioners say. The current funding allocation means the park board needed to find $11 million in savings to balance this year’s budget, commissioners say.
COPE Coun. Sean Orr tried unsuccessfully Wednesday to have Klassen’s amendment ruled out of order, arguing it created unnecessary delay by referring the matter back to the board after the board had already asked council to act.
“I just think this is being unnecessarily politicized,” Orr said after it became clear that ABC was going to refer the motion back to the board. “I feel like this motion is easy to support as it originally stood. I don’t think $600,000 in the grand scheme of things — considering we’ve already taken out of our reserves for a number of other things — is a lot when life is on the line.”