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Opposition members of Vancouver city council are accusing ABC Vancouver of playing politics after the party used its majority to cancel the last council meeting scheduled before the summer break.
The move won’t affect regular city business due to be considered in an already jam-packed July schedule, but will prevent councillors from presenting new motions to be voted on.
Political fireworks erupted in council on Tuesday when ABC Coun. Brian Montague tabled an amendment to cancel the scheduled July 29 committee meeting.
Montague cited a staff memo calling for extra meeting time this month, including on weekends, to deal with a crush of city business, some of which piled up during a schedule slimmed down by the World Cup.
“Council just simply doesn’t have the time to get through our business this month,” he said, suggesting the alternative might be to work into August.
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City staff confirmed any business that was scheduled to be dealt with on June 29 could be moved to another meeting.
But because councillors must give two weeks notice before submitting a motion, it meant that any new proposals members wanted to bring for a vote wouldn’t be heard this session.
The move was immediately opposed by councillors Sean Orr, Pete Fry, Rebecca Bligh and Lucy Maloney, several of whom argued they had spent weeks working with stakeholders on proposals to bring to council that day.
“This seems that it is about limiting debate and limiting motions that are coming to the floor,” COPE’s Orr said.
“It’s also a waste of taxpayer money in the sense that we have put in hours of work crafting motions. I have five actually I wanted to bring forward.”
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Bligh, who is running for mayor in the upcoming municipal election under the Vote Vancouver banner, said she had been planning a motion to lobby the Build Canada Homes initiative for federal funding for non-market housing.
“I think its an egregious step of a dominating force in this chamber,” she said.
“I would be curious if this has ever happened before. I would probably bet based on decades going back that this is an unprecedented move.”
Fry, of the Green Party and who is also running for mayor, called the move “undemocratic,” and said if council had to sit through weekends or into August to clear its agenda, so be it.
“We have had to extend past our comfort zone, into our vacation time to contend with council business, that’s our job,” he said. “Yes, sometimes we get extraordinary schedules, and yes, that’s our job and we have to do the work.”
ABC Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung said she also had a motion she’d been hoping to present.
But she noted the city had yet to publish any agenda for that meeting.
“So there are no expectations from the public’s perspective of anything that happens at this meeting,” she said.
“We are really facing the clock down here and we have a responsibility to finish the primary business of council,” she added — noting there were several hot-button items on the agenda expected to take up a significant amount of time.
Council began holding a public hearing on Tuesday over its controversial “villages plan,” with more than 100 registered speakers — one of several major policy questions councillors are set to face this month.
Council ultimately approved the change, with the vote splitting down party lines.
