Referral: Postpone to July 14

Okay. Let me just. All right. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I wish this had been a lot more transparent in a process. I'm actually going to move a referral, but before I do, I'm going to speak to this. You know, I'm just going to add that this Granville pedestrian zone is programmed through until July 19th. So I'm going to move a consideration that the report be postponed to the next regular council meeting, which is July 14th. So, you know, a four and three quarter million dollar discretionary expenditure to pedestrianize five blocks for seven weeks is a significant policy and budget decision. It's not an emergency response. Council and the public have been deprived of the review period that would normally be contemplated in a normal council agenda process. The mayor does, of course, have the authority under Section 2.5 of the procedure bylaw to call special council meetings. But again, spending almost $5 million on a discretionary street closure program is not demonstrably urgent, especially because we have a council meeting scheduled. Proceeding on one day's notice, one day, folks, I received this motion yesterday during a stat holiday. I think many members of the public probably aren't even aware that this motion is coming forward. So proceeding on one day's notice undermines the transparency and public accessibility principles underlying the Vancouver Charter, and it deprives council and the public of the ordinary review period that's contemplated by Section 3.3 of our procedure bylaw. Yes, Granville Pedestrian Zone's been awesome. It's been a fantastic experience, family-friendly, exciting, vibrant, great for business. FIFA World Cup excitement has been infectious, and everybody's gotten on board. I'm totally on the bandwagon. But $5 million to keep it going for another month and a half without the benefit of the World Cup excitement bolstering and backstopping this is a different matter altogether. Now, given the magnitude of the expenditure and the limited notice provided to counsel the public, I do think that the consideration of this should be properly referred to a regular council meeting that we have scheduled on the books before this pedestrian zone has to close down. And coinciding with the FIFA Fan Fest at the PNE, we'll allow... adequate public scrutiny and review, and more importantly, more of a cogent staff rationale. So we have actually some evidence to back this up. You know, this council unfortunately has a reputation and indeed an indictment from various legal opinions about sort of playing fast and loose with the open meeting principle. And it's a principle that's mandated by law in the Vancouver Charter. This is our job. And it's clear that there's been work towards this goal that's outlined in the mayor's motion. There's been politically branded on-the-street interviews with proponents. We have a petition here that was dated from June 24th. So the work's been going on on this, but it hasn't been shared with the rest of council or the public. I love the idea of a pedestrian or car like Granville. not just for seven weeks, but permanently. And I'm happy with the idea of a trial or a pilot, but I need to see a lot more than what's presented here. So respectfully, I'm going to move a referral that the consideration of this report be postponed to the next council meeting, which is July 14th, and we can have a real informed conversation and the public can have an opportunity to understand how we're intending to spend $5 million of their tax dollars.

So...

Okay, thanks. We'll wait for that. And just for clarification purposes, the special council meeting notification was given on Tuesday afternoon, just before 2 p.m. Do we have a second?

Okay. One thing I think is important, when urgent matters come up, we address them in an urgent matter. And so the Granville Entertainment District, the pedestrian zone, is scheduled to close at the end of FIFA. And our next council meeting is a few days before that closure. From a practical perspective, businesses need to plan. And they can't wait, based on my lived experience having run a bunch of businesses and also speaking with tons of businesses who've had a really tough time during COVID for the last three years, and they're finally starting to succeed, to ask them to wait and then plan with hopefully five days' notice, if everything makes sense. It is just an incredible burden. and a ton of uncertainty placed on these businesses. And so I think, you know, I would hope that council vote against this referral and we give the businesses, the hardworking businesses and all the team members that work at all these companies and businesses and the residents of Vancouver a little bit of certainty so we can set them up for success. So I will be voting against the referral. Thank you very much. I advance a cue to Councillor Kirby-Young.

Yeah, thanks. I'll also be brief. I think that a referral to July 14th, which is just literally days before this is scheduled to end, would effectively kill the opportunity to extend this for everybody in the city through to the end of summer and through the end of Labor Day. In addition to the groups that the mayor mentioned around businesses needing to plan, downtown Vancouver needs to plan. They have some of the activations. I understand they own some of it. They lease. They need to make plans. You can't do that in a mere few days without having a significant gap. We need to schedule and plan our city staff. We also have a couple of key partnerships here that need time for planning as well. One is TransLink, because we're asking them to continue the temporary rerouting of the buses. They can't do that in terms of planning their information routes and that to the public on literally just a few days' notice. And then also the province, where we're at part of the motion, ask them to continue to expand the current... temporary extended areas for those businesses. So we have a number of partners and it's just infeasible to be able to do that in a few days. And so I think when opportunity knocks, and this one's knocking pretty loud, you want to open the door. And we've heard loud and clear from the public that they love it and they'd like to continue it. So these are the kind of opportunities that we get once in a lifetime. We rarely had the chance to host FIFA. The enthusiasm is there. Let's do it. Let's see what we learn from it. And it can help to inform the future planning for Granville Street, which does include a fully pedestrianized street. Thank you.

Thanks very much. Councillor Maloney.

Thanks. I... I received in my email inbox notification of this special council meeting just before 2 on Tuesday afternoon. Unfortunately, I'd finished checking my emails for the day and because yesterday was a public holiday and due to events and family commitments, I discovered this early this morning. So I spent the morning knowing that I would have five minutes to on a member motion to ask questions and that the relevant staff, apart from city manager, wouldn't be present. I spent the morning on the phone trying to gather as much information as I could from the downtown BIA, from transit users, from other groups, to try and come to some kind of a position on this. I appreciate that we received information in the staff Q&A document, but I really feel as though it's pretty hopeless that we got notification of this meeting just before two on Tuesday afternoon because of the confusion as well for public speakers. I note that we've got no public speakers. We don't have public speakers from downtown Van BIA. That would have been very helpful. But they're not here. And relevant staff that have been working on this aren't here. And it makes it very difficult for us to make good decisions without that opportunity on something that does involve a lot of taxpayer money. I couldn't be more enthusiastic about the pedestrian as... pedestrianisation of Granville Street and it would be nice if we had a forum where we could ask staff questions, where we could have more time to consider it, where we could explore options and not be throwing together amendments to try and protect the interests of people who aren't necessarily going to be winners out of this so that we can protect them properly. So all in all, I think that this is... I'm trying to make the best of a very difficult situation here that I think Councillor Fry is responding to. I appreciate that businesses need certainty and from that point of view, it would probably be a good idea if we were committing to, for example, a three-year seasonal pedestrianisation pilot so that businesses can plan and... We can budget and emergency services groups can plan and budget for it. I think that would be a great idea, but it doesn't help to give us less than two days notice with a public holiday in the middle to be grasping to do a good job of making this decision. So from that point of view, I really do appreciate where Councillor Fry is coming from with this referral.

customer meister yeah thanks chair who knew it would be so hard to extend one of the most popular pedestrian events in recent vancouver memory i mean this is hugely successful i understand that it's a short timeline we did get notice of the meeting 48 hours ago the city manager and the deputy city manager are here to answer questions through the chair Any counselor is able to ask those questions. They're right here and they can hopefully help provide information or get it to you. But we have to make this decision now in my eyes. We can't be making this decision three days before the event ends. So I can't support the referral. I think it's a delay. And there are many aspects of this pedestrianization that need to happen in order to have the extension. This isn't just closing down the street. This is activations. This is placemaking. This is renting large pieces of public art. This is securing extensions of liquor licenses for patios. There's a ton of things that need to happen in order to extend this hugely successful event until the end of the summer. So I can't support delaying it. I really don't understand why we would look at doing that. Otherwise, it's not going to happen. This takes a lot of planning, and downtown Vancouver can speak to that. And downtown Vancouver actually emailed all of council this morning. So I'm not sure if my colleague was maybe left off the email or their email address may have been incorrect. But we have heard from them. So I'm not going to support this delay, this referral. I'm going to support moving ahead with the extension of the pedestrian zone because... This is such a great thing for our city. So let's take advantage of this opportunity, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as mentioned by many of my colleagues to have FIFA here in town, and let's make this happen and continue it for Vancouverites. So not supporting the referral.

Councillor Frye.

Yeah, I appreciate the debate. You know, I just need to re-articulate the fact that I do believe that the work that has been going towards this emergency motion from the mayor has been going on, and perhaps in collaboration with other members of council, not... some of us, since before 24 or 48 hours ago.

Sorry, just a point of order.

I'm sorry.

Is Councillor Fry making assumptions and drawing conclusions about what other councillors are or are not doing?

I think you need to cite a number, Brian, if you're going to call a point of order.

I'm sorry.

Yeah. Or are you just interrupting me?

I'm just interrupting you.

Yeah, thanks, man. You can go now. So, you know, we have not received this information.

We haven't received this information within 48 hours. The public haven't received this information within 48 hours. We have not had an opportunity to hear directly from members of the public, from the BIAs, from the businesses. We have a petition that was circulated apparently from June 24th. You know, we took an oath of office to be accountable for the decisions we make. And, you know, what we heard today, even like when the Q&A, the roundup of the Q&A with the mayor's questions around this, we were told any pedestrianization extension would cost $3.5 million. Then the motion that we saw that was just delivered in the last 48 hours is now saying $4 million. And then we just had it amended moments ago to $4.75 million. That's $5 million of taxpayer funds. In the further context of the zero means zero budget that has decimated funding for organizations and initiatives across our city, and when I see the numbers jump from 3.5 to 4 to 4.75, what it tells me is that there's no real plan here. And not only is this council playing fast and loose with the idea of transparency to the public, but they're playing fast and loose with how we steward the public purse. And because I took that oath of office to be accountable for the decisions, this puts me in an impossible position, even though I support the idea of pedestrianized Granville Street. But I think we all need to be honest with ourselves that the excitement and activation around the FIFA World Cup... will cease on July 19th. We will need to find a new excitement and activation to make this work. And I don't see anything in this plan that suggests how that we would make that work. Again, I think it needs more time. It needs to be better baked. It's not fully baked. And I think that a referral is a reasonable approach, and I don't think that it would necessarily undermine the viability of reactivating, as others have suggested. That's it.

Thank you. Thanks. Councillor Bligh.

Yeah, thanks very much. So I agree with some of what Councillor Fry is saying, and I disagree with some of it. And one of the things is that I think a referral to our next meeting won't likely give enough time to plan. In that quick turnaround, I think particularly for the downtown van to have some certainty around the 1.25 million. But I think it actually is not really the point. The point is the process in terms of how we have gotten here and more so what the future looks like. And, you know, I appreciate the enthusiastic comments. from Councillor Meiszner related to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We harnessed that. We did that. It's FIFA World Cup and the Granville Street pedestrianization. We did it. We voted on it before Councillor Meiszner was actually even on council, and we made it happen in terms of the activation. So that happened. We did it. So I'd like to not be interrupted, please, Chair. So on July 19th, the World Cup, and even before that, I mean, the games in Canada will stop, or sorry, Vancouver will stop very soon, and people will disperse to other cities where they can watch games live. And things will probably shift, actually, even sooner than the end of the World Cup. So I just think we have to be realistic about the fact that we have... um done a very good job and and something that i and by we i mean downtown van i mean uh city staff i mean the the fifa team at the city and and council too supporting and championing uh all of the great things that have happened as a result of the men's world cup um but i think that we have to be realistic that the businesses need certainty beyond september 6th at the end of the day. And this doesn't provide that. So then it comes back to the question of value. And this is close to $700,000 a week. So, you know, a referral pushes it out. Is this been a good process? I don't think so. It's not hearsay. I know for a fact conversations happened as soon as the... as soon as the press conference. I mean, I was hearing about it by members of this council figuring out what would it be like to continue it on. That was almost four weeks ago. This is a lot of money to ask. And I'll just say, like, in terms of due process, this requires eight votes of council. And so if there was genuinely a desire to get this across the finish line, there would have been some outreach to... more beyond just the seven that I think clearly in support and maybe there are more I don't know but I don't know why you would take such a huge risk to have it not be supported if there wasn't you know some reason for that as well so I'm not going to sort of speculate but I just feels very bizarre to me that have been in the seat for eight years I know what it takes to get motions passed and it's not a surprise sort of pathway that seems to be here, especially when you require votes outside of one caucus. So I think we have to be honest about what's being suggested here. I'm happy to support the referral because I think at the end of the day, this motion lacks an accounting of the $4.75 million that we're asking taxpayers to endorse without even having their voice heard here. So support the referral on those bases.

Thanks very much. I'll cede the chair to Deputy Mayor Kirby Young. I thank the debate and discussion and comments from all of the members in this chamber here today. We have an incredibly unusual and exciting situation in the city right now where I think we've all been surprised by the scale of the joy that has been pouring out in the safe activities and just broadly speaking, how we've been able to do something that we've always wanted, which is to animate the Granville Entertainment District in a way that is so welcoming. And this, I recall being on Granville a lot during the 2010 Games, and on only one day did I ever see the kind of excitement that we're seeing almost nightly on the Granville Entertainment District, and that was after the Golden Goal, where crowds came pouring onto the streets to celebrate the win of Canada. in men's hockey so I would say that slow things down government needs to take more time with things said no one and I think that we actually have to take action here and we are actually taking action we're looking at the situation we've evaluated how incredibly important this is for our downtown we have the support of the downtown Vancouver Association who've done incredible work and I think that Council right now is faced with an opportunity of using the resources that we have to continue that excitement and joy that crowds are experiencing, whether it's fans from Canada or for other teams. We saw some of the biggest, most explosive nights on our streets after the Mexico win. I have to say that this is, to me, exactly what we've been looking for, and it'll allow us to learn from it and make sure that we can do something on a more permanent basis that will benefit our city and our downtown. So I will not be supporting referral. We've had very clear explanation as to why a referral would essentially end this in a few weeks' time and not allow us to extend it into the summer. Thanks very much.

Yeah, I want to address the regrettably dismissive response to getting information from crucial relevant stakeholders to this. I put in a call to the downtown BIA at 9.05 this morning and I understand that the email that was sent to all councillors was sent as a result... of me asking a bunch of questions and suggesting that other councillors would benefit from receiving that same information from the downtown BIA. So I did the best I could to get that information in a timely way, given the notice that we'd received. And in that regard, there has been confusion. I know at least one member of the public has this morning tried to sign up to speak and not being able to. and that there was no public announcement when the email was sent round to us on Tuesday. And so there's... But there was, on the city website, scope for people to sign up to speak. And... But there would have been confusion, given that yesterday was a public holiday, about whether the members of the public needed to sign up by five o'clock on Tuesday or five o'clock on Wednesday. So I think... Really, it is thoroughly regrettable that there wasn't any public announcement of this on Tuesday afternoon concurrent with the notification of council that this was a special council meeting. Thank you.

Councillor Dominato.

Yes. Thank you, Chair. Just a couple of quick comments. Just noting, I think my colleague, Councillor Montague, is looking for section 6.1, sections B and C of our Code of Conduct in terms of how we refer to each other and assumptions about council members' motivations. So just noting that because I think he was struggling to find those words. But what I think has become abundantly clear to me in this debate, and regardless of sort of the allegations being leveled, And this referral is being proposed is I won't be supporting the referral. And really, it comes down to, from my perspective, what I'm hearing is whether we focus on process or progress. Do you want more bureaucratic red tape or do you want to deliver results? And I think that's what the electorate's ultimately going to be being asked about. And I think that's what they're starting to see more and more of is. that potentially we get hung up on process and red tape when in fact what we're hearing from the public, what we're hearing from residents and businesses is that they want to see things getting done in the city. And so for those reasons, I won't be supporting the referral. Happy to support the motion as presented. Thank you.

Thanks very much. Okay, seeing no others, can we now get a vote on the referral motion? Voting panel, please, clerk.