Are Vancouver’s Parks Facing Tens of Millions in Cuts?

Last week Vancouver got a glimpse of how the 2026 municipal budgeting process will play out: Mayor Ken Sim wants zero property tax increases without cutting core services — including community centres — and the park board says that’s impossible.

At a special meeting on Tuesday evening, Nov. 4, park board commissioners passed a motion calling on the city to reduce the $15 million in cuts they say are coming next year to just $9.6 million.

The three commissioners associated with the ABC Vancouver municipal party voted against the motion, accusing their fellow independent and Green Party commissioners of misleading the public. With emotions running high, Marie-Claire Howard initially accused her fellow commissioners of lying, but later retracted that statement.

“There’s a lot of misinformation being spread, a lot of fear mongering,” said ABC commissioner Jas Virdi, who denied cuts are coming to the park board beyond unspecified “duplicate services” he says both the city and board provide.

For Virdi and his fellow ABC commissioners Angela Haer and Howard, any critical speculation on budget cuts from their fellow commissioners and speakers who addressed the board that evening was equivalent to endorsing a property tax increase.

“There’s a lot of property owners that are in an affordability crisis, that can’t afford the property taxes they’re paying, and they get shoved out of their homes,” Virdi said.

B.C. does have a property tax deferment program, open to home-owning families with children, people with disabilities and those 55 and older who cannot afford to pay their annual tax. The province eventually collects the debt when the property is sold.

The following day, Wednesday, Nov. 5, the public got their first look at a draft 2026 City of Vancouver budget, which notes that 56 per cent of the city’s revenue will come from property taxes. The budget calls for a zero per cent property tax increase, a departure from the usual annual increases.

Another 21 per cent of city revenue comes from utility fees for water, sewer and solid waste, which are budgeted to increase by a combined 4.2 per cent next year.

But while the 2026 draft budget does include the $120 million in cuts Sim asked city staff to find last month, neither the Vancouver Park Board nor its expected $15-million cut is mentioned.

The draft budget states a one per cent or $1.2-million increase for parks and recreation, a three per cent or $2.1-million boost to the library and a 10 per cent or $46.2-million increase to policing, the largest budget increase.

Cuts in the draft include a 12 per cent or $6-million cut to arts, culture and community services, a six per cent or $300,000 cut to mayor and council expenses and a 14 per cent or $5.5-million cut to planning, urban design and sustainability.

Park board commissioner Brennan Bastyovanszky told The Tyee the lack of park board budget specifics in the draft was intentional, to hide cuts from the public.

For example, Bastyovanszky said, the proposed 13 per cent or $4.9-million cut to the city’s department of real estate, environment and facilities management will affect park board facility and grounds maintenance.

“The maintenance and future of parks is really a trust issue, is really about integrity. People don’t trust the mayor just because he says there won’t be cuts to services,” Bastyovanszky said, citing Mayor Sim’s attempt to close the integrity commissioner’s office while under investigation by that same office in 2024.

“This low-trust environment is created entirely by the mayor.”

It has also been nearly two years since Sim abruptly announced his plans to dismantle the elected park board, which had an ABC majority at the time. But the province says the city must consult local First Nations whose unceded lands the park board operates on. That requirement has put Sim’s plan on hold.

Despite ABC Vancouver promising to provide line-item budget information to increase transparency in its 2022 election platform, Mayor Sim rebuffed city councillors’ request for a line-item comparison with last year’s budget, citing time constraints.

‘Zero means zero’ budget mandate

On Oct. 8, Sim announced a “zero means zero” budget strategy, asking city staff to find $120 million in savings in order to keep 2026 property taxes at the 2025 level.

During the 2022 election campaign, Sim pledged not to increase property taxes. But over the course of his administration, annual property taxes have increased every year, including a whopping 10.7 per cent in 2023 (translating to a median increase of $326 for single-family home owners).

In 2024, property taxes increased by 7.5 per cent, or a median increase of $260 for single-family home owners.

In 2025, council voted in a 3.9 per cent tax increase, or a median increase of $149 for single-family home owners.

As a baseline, the city calculated the average single-family home owner paid $4,635 in property taxes in 2024.

According to an October briefing from park board chair Laura Christensen, who left ABC to sit as an independent after Sim announced plans to dismantle the park board, the board is facing a $15-million cut next year.

That’s equivalent to 12.5 per cent of the $120 million in savings Mayor Sim is seeking for the 2026 budget, despite the park board making up just eight per cent of the city’s annual expenses.

In an email that accompanied Christensen’s briefing, which she shared with The Tyee, the park board chair wrote her calculations are based on budgeting information the park board received in a private meeting earlier this year, as well as publicly available documents.

It’s the park board’s independence from the city council that allowed them to be budget whistleblowers, Bastyovanszky, another former ABC commissioner, told The Tyee.

Christensen’s briefing also noted the city expects the park board, which increased its user fees by an average of six per cent in 2025 and recently introduced paid parking at parks and community centres, to increase its annual revenue by $8.9 million in 2026.

With less than 47 per cent of its 2026 revenue expected to come from taxes, Christensen says the increase will have to come from further user fee and parking revenue increases.

This would counter another ABC Vancouver 2022 election promise to freeze park board user fees in the name of affordability.

Finally, the $4.5-million surplus the board is reporting for 2025 must go back into city coffers.

In his special motion titled “Park Board Response to 2026 Budget Reductions,” board commissioner Bastyovanszky, who also left ABC in 2023, characterized the combined financial burdens as a $30-million cut to the park board’s 2026 budget.

In 2025, the park board had an operating budget of $184 million, funded by a combination of taxes and revenues.

“What the mayor is trying to do here is funnel money from parks and rec into other areas of the city,” he told The Tyee. “That means there’s $30 million the city is taking from the park board, and we only have a tax base of $98 million.”

On top of the tax base, Bastyovanszky estimates the board currently brings in about $92 million in user and parking fees annually.

‘Cuts far beyond what is reasonable’

Just a few hours before the Nov. 4 park board meeting, news broke that the Vancouver Aquatic Centre would close indefinitely after a piece of the concrete ceiling fell into the pool, the second time in two years that a piece of the ceiling has fallen off and closed the facility.

The pool is slated for redevelopment, but the crumbling building has highlighted the city’s aging recreation buildings and the need for ongoing replacements.

During the board’s 3 1/2-hour meeting to discuss, debate and hear from the public on Bastyovanszky’s motion, staff reported they had received 131 emails in support of the motion, while city hall reported receiving over 500 emails in support.

Every speaker who addressed the board that evening was in favour of the motion.

Speaker Dominic Denofrio referenced a Business in Vancouver article about an auditor general finding that as of 2022, 72 per cent of the city’s recreation facilities were in poor or very poor condition.

“There’s a funding deficit of $33 million per year facing our recreation facilities’ infrastructure maintenance already, and now the mayor is asking for cuts far beyond what is reasonable,” he said, citing the article and speaking in favour of Bastyovanszky’s motion.

Former park board commissioners John Coupar and Aaron Jasper also spoke, encouraging commissioners to meet with the mayor and council to push back on the potential cuts.

“When I was on the board, our staff suggested we shut down the Bloedel Conservatory to save money,” Jasper said. “We worked with our partners and our friends and we found money to fix that.”

Another speaker expressed concern the board’s maintenance of the public tree canopy across the city could be cut.

When The Tyee asked Bastyovanszky whether tree maintenance fell under the planning, urban design and sustainability budget that is facing a potential $5.5-million cut in the draft 2026 budget, he said it could.

“Tree cutting, stump grinding, urban forestry was not mentioned under the mayor’s protections,” he said. He added it also isn’t clear whether Sim’s pledge to protect core services like community centres includes shielding skating rinks, pools, sports fields and outdoor courts from budget cuts.

The city’s parks, community and recreation centres, sports fields and outdoor courts are the living rooms and backyards of the city’s renters and low-income and marginalized residents, Bastyovanszky said.

If Stanley Park’s 11 tennis courts land on the chopping block, speaker Cliff Galang, chair of the 2SLGBTQ+ Vancouver Tennis Association, told the board the association’s members have few other options thanks to expensive fees, homophobia and transphobia.

“It’s not as easy for us to go out to any tennis court or any tennis club and say, ‘I want to play here,’” he said. “We’ve experienced things that make that challenging.”