A long-running game of chicken between the Vancouver Park Board and several community centre societies is all but over.
With the Sept. 30 deadline for the centres to accept a new Joint Operating Agreement (JOA), the matter appeared certain to head to the courts.
The Vancouver Park Board wanted “a legal contract defining the roles and responsibilities of the Park Board and the Community Centre Association,” according to their website.
The dispute over the new agreement would make several changes, including ensuring full access to all community centres for residents without a membership, and acceptance at all centres of the city’s OneCard and Flexipass, but some Community Centre Societies saw it as a power grab.
After a Park Board meeting Monday night, former president of the Killarney Community Centre Society Ainslie Kwan said, “I think it’s fair to say the standoff is 95 per cent done.”
“We went there tonight asking the Park Board commissioners to open up the body of the JOA and put in two key pieces of language that we needed in order to move forward and we’re very happy to report that they did that,” added Kwan, “there’s still some issues that need to be resolved but this is definitely a step much closer to the finish line for us.”
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In 2013, the B.C .Supreme Court issued an injunction against the city after it tried to force six associations from their community centres.
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