An NPA park board commissioner says there's no reason the public should have been forced to come out to protest proposed cuts to the city's lifeguard services.
"I felt bad for all of those people," John Coupar said of the dozens of residents who spoke at a park board meeting Monday night that ended at midnight.
Facing a budget shortfall of $2.4 million in its $104 million operating budget for 2012, parks staff recommended this week that $270,000 could be saved by eliminating 4.3 seasonal full-time lifeguard positions. That meant lifeguards would remain at the city's busiest beaches, English Bay, Kits Beach, Locarno, Spanish Banks East and Third Beach, and be eliminated at Trout Lake, Sunset, Spanish Banks West, Jericho and Second beaches.
Not that it would make a difference at Trout Lake, where the water in the summer is typically too contaminated with fecal matter for swimming. Traditionally, lifeguards are on duty at all city beaches from Victoria Day long weekend to Labour Day.
Coupar says after hearing from the public Monday night, cuts to lifeguard services were cancelled in the 2012 operating budget, which was approved Monday night. Some of the other budget "efficiencies" approved include twinning management of six recreation centres, reducing programming by 900 hours collectively at 20 community centres, and deferring non-essential maintenance equivalent to three per cent of the gross operating budget for one year. (And you thought the grass in your local park was too long last year.)
"This should never have been on the table," said Coupar, who accused his fellow Vision Vancouver commissioners of not standing up to city council on budget cuts. "They're not advocating enough on behalf of the board. At some point they have to say, we just can't keep cutting."
Coupar said $270,000 is a small price to pay for lifeguards. He also wondered if such cuts would affect revenues at concession stands should the public avoid beaches with no lifeguards. For example, the lifeguard office at Jericho Beach is attached to the concession stand."That's one of the unintended consequences we might see," he said.
Prior to the meeting, Vision Vancouver park board chair Constance Barnes told me the recommendation wasn't written in stone and that she was willing to take a second look at the cuts depending on what she heard at the meeting. And apparently she and the rest of the commissioners on the board listened, because the lifeguard program was kept intact.
She noted, however, that some money saving ideas should be considered, including the fact lifeguards are on duty at Trout Lake when no one has gone swimming there for years. Barnes also told me she heard from many residents last summer concerned that lifeguards were being paid to sit in the rain watching a nearly vacant beach.
In response to the proposed cut, James Bodnarchuk with the Vancouver Lifeguard Association created a petition asking the park board to keep lifeguards on all the beaches. The petition was supported by the Vancouver Society for the Promotion of Outdoor Pools and its founder Margery Duda, who told me cutting lifeguard services after closing several outdoor pools across the city sends the wrong message. "We promote aquatic programs and outdoor pools across the city so people can learn how to swim safely in a pool," Duda said. "But now more of them will seek out these bodies of water in the summer without knowing how to swim and there should be a lifeguard on duty. This is unacceptable."
Twitter: @sthomas10
