Dozens of people signed up to address Vancouver city council about the motion Wednesday, all speaking in support of restoring lifeguard funding
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The status of lifeguard services at some Vancouver beaches remains uncertain for this summer after city council rebuffed a park board’s funding request Wednesday, instead urging the park commissioners to reallocate money in the board’s budget.
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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.
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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.
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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 called a “zero means zero” budget. But safety advocates warned that the loss of supervision would needlessly increase the danger at these beaches.
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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 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.”
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Jensen said that city council had, in recent months, found additional money for a fireworks event and car-free day festivals.
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“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.”
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Jensen’s motion sought to restore service at four of the five affected beaches: Spanish Banks East and West, Sunset, and Third beaches. 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.
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That motion was unanimously approved at the March 31 meeting, with the support of commissioners from the ABC party.
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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.”
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“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.
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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.
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Dozens of people signed up to address council about the motion Wednesday, with all of them speaking in support of restoring lifeguard funding.
