Vancouver Park Board increases fees by 2 per cent

Vancouver Park Board has voted to raise fees by two per cent, affecting recreation services like indoor and outdoor pools, fitness centres, arenas and sports fields.

The issue became divisive for park board commissioners on Monday night, sincethe increase had already taken effect September 1, on the decision of general manager Malcolm Bromley.

There was a two per cent fee hike last year as well but again,commissionersonly voted to approve it after the fees had already been raised.

"The General Manager has the ability to make fee increases, subject to the approval of the board, so this has happened many times in our history and it's been in our practice, depending on how the budget lines up," said Chair John Coupar.

Commissioners said they want to review fees before they're put in place, but ultimately backed this year's fee increaseby a narrow vote of four to three.

The board also agreed to set up a committee to come up with a name for the newly openedEmpire Fields/Plateau Park facilities near the PNE.

Windstorm damage revealed

The meeting was the first since the recent windstorm,whichtore down trees and power lines in Metro Vancouver, leaving710,000 BC Hydro customers without power, in their biggest outage in its history.

As commissioners took stock of the damage, it emergedthe windstorm destroyed 300 trees, and damaged 500 others, 50 of which were beyond repair, onVancouver Park Board land.

"We're still going to be inspecting this fall, we might find a few more, so it could end up being around 1,000," said manager of urban forestry Howard Norman.

• Why did the B.C. storm do so much damage?

It was also revealed that the boardreceived 1,218 service requests during the storm and its aftermath, in comparison to a 10-year average of 250 requests.