City budget shortfall rocks park board: 'Soul searching' services review in the works
Sandra Thomas
Vancouver Courier
September 30, 2009

The chair of the park board's services and budgets committee says the implications from a $61.3 million budget shortfall at city hall for 2010 will be "huge."

"I'm still digesting it," said COPE park board commissioner Loretta Woodcock. "But it's still too early to say exactly how it will affect the park board."….

According to the city, the shortage is the result of historically low revenues, continuing weakness in the economy, budget cuts at the provincial and federal levels, the implementation of the provincial harmonized sales tax, new city facilities and wage increases resulting from the 2007 union agreement. In response, Ballem announced the city's corporate management team will implement shared services in areas such as finance, information technology, human resources and facilities management; work to improve payroll, absence management, capital planning and budgeting, and consolidate services duplicated in departments like the park and school board.

Woodcock said she sat through both the afternoon and evening presentations in an attempt to fully understand how the cuts will affect the park board. She added an estimate of how much the board is going to have to cut is expected Oct. 19.

"Then we'll have to hold a public consultation and do a core-services review," she said. "We'll be looking at things like childcare and breakfast programs. That's a big question, whether we're responsible for childcare. We've got a lot of soul searching to do."…