Press Release

Here is a copy of the press release I sent out yesterday. It garnered a lot of coverage from CKNW radio to the Vancouver Sun newspaper

23 November 2009 Green Park Board Commissioner to Oppose Budget Initiative - "Save Vancouver's Trees"

At this Wednesday’s Park Board meeting Stuart Mackinnon, Green Party of Vancouver Park Board Commissioner, will oppose the 20009 budget initiative to reduce the Trees on the Street program.

"We need to save Vancouver's trees" said Mackinnon. "How can we be the greenest city while reducing the number of trees in the city? This is the most basic form of being green. From a birds eye view Vancouver would in fact be less green if these budget cuts go through".

One of the budget proposals coming to the Park Board this coming Wednesday is the reduction by 1/3 of re-planting of street trees. Approximately 1200 trees are taken down each year by the Park Board due to death, disease or danger, and these are replaced. A reduction in the trees on the street program funding would mean that only 800 of these trees will be replaced.

"Over time this will result in significant loss of trees for the city if we don’t stay on top of at least maintaining the existing number of trees. It also begs the question of which neighbourhoods will lose trees and which neighbourhoods will not, and who and how those decisions will be made." said Mackinnon.

Vancouver City Council recently released their Greenest City Action Plan which calls for the planting of 150,000 new trees by 2020.

“Most troubling to me is direction the Park Board would be going if this budget initiative is adopted” said Mackinnon. “While the city is advocating for the planting of an additional 150,000 tree over the next 10 years, the Park Board would actually be planting 4000 fewer! Not only would we not be on board with Greenest City Action Plan, we would be actively working against it”.

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For more information contact Commissioner Stuart Mackinnon at 778-389-1956