On Monday night the Park Board commissioners will vote on the Capital Plan which will be presented to voters to approve (or the borrowing to pay for it) in November on election day. One item conspicuously absent is funding for the Mount Pleasant pool and old community centre. This despite promises that funding would be provided. Margery Duda and her heroic group of activists at the Friends of Mount Pleasant Pool have been campaigning to save this neighbourhood amenity. Even with a community consultation process that showed the residents wanted the pool and centre to remain and promises from the Park Board that they would support the residents efforts, the pool is once again absent in the Capital Plan.
Neighbourhoods are what make Vancouver a livable place. They are the heart and soul of the city. Community centres and neighbourhood parks are our playgrounds. The NPA dominated Park Board has been moving to a policy of destination facilities and away from neighbourhood ones. This may be cheaper in the short-term but it will decimate neighbourhoods in the long-run. It is a foolish short-sighted view.
If you don't want to see your neighbourhood facilities whittled away, then the Mount Pleasant pool fight matters to you too. Please send a letter to the Park Board saying neighbourhood facilities matter. That keeping an outdoor pool in Mount Pleasant matters. That destination facilities are the wrong direction to be moving in. It just might be your neighbourhood that loses next time.
Stuart, where do you stand on the issue of the future of Mount Pleasant Pool that is once again before Park Board Commissioners for a decision on whether or not to respect the democratic process?
ReplyDeleteDespite the recent Park Board Pool Study Update http://vancouver.ca/parks/board/2011/pe110602/PoolAssessmentStudyUpdatforJune2P&E.pdf which recommends no further outdoor pools be built in Vancouver, the Vancouver Society for Promotion of Outdoor Pools urges citizens to continue to advocate for the replacement of Mount Pleasant and other outdoor pools in the city as per public consultation and democratic process as outlined below.
ReplyDeletePlease review the document in the following link which presents a clear policy change to the 2001 Aquatic Services Review. It was presented by Susan Mundick to City Council at a Capital Plan meeting on September 20, 2005. http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20050920/documents/rr1i.pdf
Please note that resolutions numbered 2, 4, and 5 did not transpire due to the reluctance of Park Board to accept this democratic resolution. Hopefully this memorandum will help to clarify in part why Mount Pleasant residents are insistent upon working with Park Board to fulfill the promises made to replace the outdoor swimming pool at Mount Pleasant Park. This resolution was born from the October 31st 2005 resolution that an outdoor pool will be retained at the Mount Pleasant site: http://vancouver.ca/parks/board/2005/051205/mom_oct31_05.pdf.
An additional comprehensive public consultation was carried out by Park Board in the fall of 2009. That consultation also yielded extremely positive results in support of a replacement outdoor pool. The community was advised that this consultation was necessary to give Park Board the evidence it needed to proceed with the resolution to built a replacement swimming pool at Mount Pleasant Park. http://vancouver.ca/parks/board/2009/091214/MountPleasantParkBoardReport.pdf
The Vancouver Society for Promotion of Outdoor Pools is in support of increasing the Park Board’s Capital Plan allocation to ensure that this recreational facility in our urban centre is renewed, and that other priority park’s projects are funded. http://vancouveroutdoorpools.org/index.html