City Hall hides the ball on service, staffing cuts in 2026 budget

For more background, you can read our previous reporting on Vancouver’s budget process, including an explainer and details on the decision to freeze property taxes this year. 

In a significant departure from standard practice, the City of Vancouver’s new general manager Donny van Dyk is asking councillors to vote on the city’s budget for next year without detailed information on what it contains. 

“I can't possibly be accountable for something that I would vote on with absolutely no substantive information. That's not accountability. That's [a] rubber stamp,” Green Coun. Pete Fry told Vancity Lookout. 

Previous draft budgets under the current council were book-length, numbering in the hundreds of pages (323 pages for 2025, 501 for 2024, 232 in 2023), including exhaustive breakdowns of service priorities, line-by-line projections for revenues and expenditures, and employment forecasts. Going back to 2018, Fry described how the first draft budget he reviewed as a councillor included so much detail that he needed to get prescription glasses.  

However, the 2026 version comes in at 23 pages, with only a high-level summary of spending by department. A city spokesperson told Vancity Lookout this approach “aligns with past budget processes,” although it’s clear this doesn’t match up with the city’s practices in the recent past. 

“Staff and leadership teams will refine the budget and finalize operational decisions to deliver on [council] priorities,” after the draft budget is voted on later this month, with detailed budget information not being shared until early 2026, the city said. 

Those council priorities are the direction from Mayor Ken Sim, supported by councillors from Sim’s ABC party, not to increase the city’s portion of property taxes this year. The stated purpose of Sim’s property tax freeze is to improve affordability for residents and businesses. For comparison, last year’s property tax increase of 3.9 per cent resulted in a median increase of $149 for single-family home owners, according to the Tyee. Property taxes account for more than half of city revenues. 

The tradeoff is a “back-to-basics” budget with $120 million in “revenue opportunities and expenditure savings,” according to the city, meaning increased fees and reduced spending. However, the specifics of how the city plans to do that are being held close to the chest by senior staff. 

What we do know from the draft budget is that four city departments are having their expenditures – the money they receive from the city – cut by 12-14 per cent. Those bigger cuts are coming to areas like arts and culture, community services, sustainability and environment, real estate and facilities management, planning and urban design, and corporate support. 

Meanwhile, the Vancouver Police Department and Fire and Rescue Services are getting expenditure increases of ten and six per cent, respectively, in line with ABC’s consistent support of those public safety services.  

While there hasn’t been much information shared about specific cuts, there have been a few examples, some of which were provided formally by senior staff, while other information has been anonymously leaked. 

Earlier this week, Canada’s National Observer reported that the city plans to eliminate its sustainability and climate department, based on information from unnamed sources. 

Fry confirmed that report, saying that’s “very likely the direction” based on information he’s gotten from various sources, including informal conversations he’s had with staff – which aren’t typical but have become more frequent due to the impending cuts, Fry explained. 

Deputy City Manager Armin Amrolia told council they’re looking at cost-saving measures like removing hygiene product dispensers and changing tables for babies in some public washrooms, according to CTV. More generally, cuts could also result in reduced capacity for maintenance and slower responses for repairs, vandalism, and “public service standards.” 

The budget shows parks and recreation with a $1.2 million increase in expenditures, but the embattled park board still needs to find $11 million in reduced spending, about $4 million less in cuts than previously anticipated. “It's incredibly disingenuous of ABC to point to [the expenditure increase] and say ‘we’re investing in parks and recreation,’” park board Chair Laura Christensen told Vancity Lookout, given the board’s rising fixed costs for things like labour, equipment, and materials, plus having to integrate new facilities like the Marpole Community Centre and Sunset Seniors Centre into its operations next year. 

“I honestly can't understand how we're in this position [of not having detailed budget information], unless the intention is not to spook the public even more than they already are… by just not mentioning [specific cuts],” Fry said. 

The public hearings on the budget this week drew an “unprecedented” number of speakers, Fry said. Over 600 people signed up to speak, including union and public body representatives, with the majority of them opposed to the budget proposal. 

Fry said he’d never seen that many speakers sign up for a public hearing during his seven years on council. “To hear Vancouverites show up and speak against this budget with some very reasoned and articulate arguments is great. It's a shitty situation, but it's great to see the passion and the understanding from folks,” Fry said. 

COPE councillor Sean Orr – who took it upon himself to post a synopsis of comments from many of the hundreds of public speakers over the first two days of hearings – shared that Mayor Ken Sim seemed less pleased about the big turnout on the first night of what has become a multi-day series of hearings. 

As city council was dispersing for the evening at around 10pm on Wednesday, Orr claimed he heard Sim call the meeting “an awesome waste of time.” Vancity Lookout reached out to the Mayor’s Office for comment on Orr’s claim but did not hear back by publication time. 

The alleged comment wouldn’t be the first time Sim has given the impression of not valuing residents’ feedback on the budget. While the city was conducting a survey on public opinions about reduced property tax increase scenarios and related reductions in city services, Sim moved ahead to freeze property taxes without waiting for the survey results.

The recently released survey results, which had over 6,000 responses from Vancouver residents and business owners, found that only 10 per cent of residents surveyed supported Sim’s chosen approach of a zero per cent property tax increase with service reductions. By comparison, 42 per cent of respondents favoured a property tax increase of five per cent that maintains the current level of services. 

Responding to those results, Sim told CBC that the data didn’t tell the full story of what voters wanted. “There's a whole bunch of other people that are struggling, who didn't fill out the survey, that are literally looking to feed their families,” Sim said to CBC’s Justin McElroy. 

In its 2022 election platform ABC Vancouver promised that “an ABC Majority will publish line-item budgets for the last five years and all years moving forward.”

ABC Coun. Lisa Dominato did not respond to Vancity Lookout’s request for an interview about the 2026 budget process. ABC Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung declined Vancity Lookout’s interview request citing a full council schedule, and did not respond to a request for a written statement. 

On the labour front, the budget cuts mean an estimated 400 full-time city staff positions will be eliminated, with around 270 of those being unionized positions, according to a leaked internal city memo obtained by the Vancouver Sun.

Those eliminated positions – whether through firing, early retirement, or leaving positions vacant – may be another reason, aside from not spooking the public more, as Fry theorized, that budget details aren’t being shared until after it's been approved. The belated sharing of detailed budget information “will ensure that the City can fulfill labour and collective agreement obligations and is respectful of staff whose positions may be impacted,” the city told Vancity Lookout. 

“Reviewing how teams are organized will be an important part of ensuring that the

City delivers services efficiently and effectively. Recognizing the scale of change that is required, the City will move quickly, thoughtfully and professionally. Council’s approval of the 2026 Budget will set the early direction needed to begin this work,” according to the 2026 proposed budget document. 

“There is a culture of fear at the City of Vancouver right now. These cuts are very real… and I think many [staff] feel devalued and threatened,” Fry said, based on conversations and interactions he’s been having with city staff. 

“This is the culture now, and I think a lot of staff are afraid to put their head up and out. Everybody's kind of aware that there are layoffs [and] changes coming, and people are being very mindful of it,” Fry said, speaking about the apparent reluctance of city staff to directly answer councillors’ questions on budget specifics. 

“The nature of [the] evasive answers that we got from the various department heads [about organizational cuts] suggests to me that they were instructed to keep the details light,” Fry said.

“I can’t get into specific details on team or position impacts,” head planner Josh White told council in response to Fry’s questions about whether the city’s sustainability team would remain intact.

Fry also pointed to the abrupt departure of former city manager Paul Mochrie in July – who Fry described as a “beloved team leader” at the city – and the quick hiring of new city manager Donny van Dyk, as a move by the Mayor’s Office to lay the groundwork for the budget cuts. 

“I think the timing of all this is not coincidental,” Fry said. “It's going to be a lot easier for [van Dyk] to come in and make big cuts and big changes, because he's the new guy. Obviously, it would be more of a challenge for somebody like Mochrie,” Fry added. 

The third day of public hearings on the budget is scheduled for next Tuesday, November 18, with about one-third of the speakers' list still to come. That will be followed by a council vote on the budget, as presented this week with all its mysteries, on November 25.