Amendment: Increase DVBIA Grant to $1,250,000

Yeah, thanks, Chair. Not seeing anyone else on the queue, I'm going to take this opportunity to move an amendment so that council has the full consideration of what's being asked on the table. It has been emailed to everybody. It is an amendment to Clause C, and it is to increase the disbursement of the grant to the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association from $500,000 to $1.25 million. As the mayor mentioned, it has been outstanding in terms of the experience. This is happening in real time, and we are responding. And one of the critical success factors of the pedestrian zone has been the quality of the activation. And so Downtown Van has done a full dive into the costs around it in order to keep the energy and excitement around that experience. This is the updated amount that they have requested and we agree is required in order to continue a real quality activation and so forth. I put that forward for council's consideration. Thank you.

Thanks. I might just go after Councillor Bligh because I think I have an amendment to the amendment.

Thanks very much. So just sort of noting that the motion itself is asking for up to $4 million, $500,000 of that going to the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association. There is no detail really on what the $4 million will be spent on, up to $4 million. So my question is, how would this amendment change that $4 million number, and that's to the city manager? Or I guess it's to the move of the motion, since it is not actually the business of staff yet.

Yeah, I said it was through the chair. It's a point of information.

Sorry, just to work through, is the question for me or the mover of the amendment?

The question is for the mover of the motion, assuming you've seen this.

Sure, I can start and then Deputy Mayor wants to add in. So the numbers that we have to make this work, it's about $300,000 per week for sanitation and traffic, and then another $200,000 per week for security, being the VPD. So that's $500,000 a week times approximately seven weeks, and then the updated number from downtown Vann to make this activation work.

Okay. Well, that's actually helpful detail. Is that in the motion? I just want to make sure I haven't missed it.

No, the detail is not broken down in the motion. It's just one gross number.

Okay, well, maybe I'll just ask a fairly direct question in that sense. Because this requires two-thirds vote, I don't know about my colleagues here, but I'm just wondering if there was a reason that if this is sort of the thing to do and it's really exciting for the city and super, super important, why none of these details have been circulated with councillors that I've talked to that are not part of ABC?

Well, I can just answer the question here from my perspective. The number that to be voted on isn't there, and then you ask the clarifying question and it was answered. So without anticipating every single clarifying question, the number, you know, it's pretty self, you know, the gross number is what we're voting on.

Okay, okay. Well, yeah, so without, I mean, I'm happy to support this. I think Dunham BIA has done excellent work in activating Granville Street's pedestrianized zone during FIFA. I... I think that $500,000, as was identified in the motion, is unrealistic for what would be needed should this actually go forward, which I am not speaking to at this moment. But what I am speaking to is the realistic number to support downtown band and being able to... properly activate in a way that is safe. I know that they've been dealing with a tremendous amount of vandalism, graffiti, sort of daily repairs to make sure that they're able to stay on top of this pedestrianized zone so it does stay positive for people coming down to enjoy it. But all of that comes at a significant cost. And so I don't think we should be setting up downtown van to fail, which I think the $500,000 did. So I'll support the amendment and reserve any comment to the broader motion for after this amendment.

Thank you. Yeah, I... Appreciate Councillor Bligh's comments about making sure that we don't set up the downtown Vancouver BIA to fail and that we make sure we give this the best chance of providing a really good demonstration for staff and businesses and residents to see how it goes outside the World Cup. And we... I'm sure that we can find ways of doing this more cost effectively in future years. So I've moved an amendment to the amendment, and if you could possibly move me to an amendment queue, I'll speak more.

Thanks. Okay. Councillor Maloney, go right ahead.

Yeah, my amendment just asks that we add in that staff, look ahead and identify and evaluate potential investments, particularly aimed at engineering costs and security costs for the extension of the Granville Street pedestrian project, which I'm fairly confident is going to go through, and the long-term pedestrianisation and... of the Gastown pedestrian area in order to support the ongoing operation of these two initiatives. Because we have it on good authority that programming these areas is very important to their success. And we know that we need time to allow, say, for example, on Granville Street, but also on Water Street, for the mix of businesses to perhaps evolve and change to ensure the success, make it more family-friendly during the day. At the moment, particularly Granville Street, is very nightlife-focused and we want to make sure that we are... giving businesses the certainty by reducing the costs. I mean, it's not really, we have so many other calls on city expenditure and we know that this is not budgeted for in the 2026 budget. We need to identify ways, whether it might be identifying pedestrian zones that will be operated on a seasonal basis with any luck into the future. and looking at where we might be able to replace policing costs with retractable bollards that could allow deliveries in the morning and allow flexibility with closing the streets to cars and make sure that moving forward we're reducing these costs as much as possible. I don't think that we want to be aiming this at... the programming aspect of it because I'm sure that that's going to require input from the BIAs and arts and cultural organisations in the city for whom there's a fantastic opportunity with pedestrianised areas. But we need to reduce the engineering and policing costs to make it possible to have this an ongoing thing.

Thanks very much. I think we need a seconder for this. Councillor Zhou, thanks very much. Okay. Any further discussion on this? All right, I'll call the vote on the... Councillor Kirby Young, go ahead. That's the cue.

Sorry. Yeah, no, I appreciate the sentiment, but I think this work is already happening. Council has directed staff to look at, and we'll do think that in the capital plan, because I've heard commentary from the mover of the proposed amendment on both operating and capital expenses. And this pilot is intended to inform future years and what that looks like. So the learnings are important. Also probably good for council to kind of remember that we are at the end of term, so we cannot fit our future councils with respects to operational budgets. But I'm very confident in the work we've previously directed for Gastown. that that includes, and we'll have that discussion very soon on the capital plan, additional opportunities for things like bollards. I know amendments have previously been made that allow more flexibility for different neighborhoods to be able to stage these kind of pedestrian-friendly activations, particularly seasonally. And so I think that council, including the mover, can rest assured that that direction has been given, and we do need to delineate between the work of the cap on the operating plan. Thank you.

Thanks very much, Councillor Maloney.

Yeah, look, I appreciate those sentiments, but I particularly agreed with something Councillor Kirby-Young said a few rounds of council meetings ago, and I liked it so much that I wrote it down, and it was that a lot of this work is already underway, but putting an exclamation on it is never a bad thing, and I think that that certainly applies to my amendment to the amendment, that putting an exclamation on it even if it is the case that this work is underway, that it is not a bad thing and that I hope that my fellow councillors vote in favour of my amendment, just to make it super clear that in this economic climate and with this being an unbudgeted expense, that cost reductions, both in the short and long term, should be top of mind. Thank you.

Thanks very much. Okay, seeing no further discussion, we will now go to the voting queue for the amendment to the amendment.

Okay, so moving back to the... Amendment queue Thanks very much Okay, so going back to the amendment queue and any further discussion. Let's see. We've got Councillor Maloney still on the on the No, I I don't wish to say okay any others Can't tell from my, so I'm seeing none. Okay. This is amendment.

Go ahead. Okay. So, all right. So we now will go to the, to vote on the, the amendment as amended.