Vancouver residents can sign up here to speak to council
council.vancouver.ca/20251112/spe...

Big thank you to @martyn.bsky.social for the fantastic tour of the shipyards and lonsdale, also great to meet the Better North Shore team and of course been very lucky to have had so much time with the amazing @lucymaloney.bsky.social

This was a difficult decision that I've explained in the replies to this thread. This vote related to cost overruns related to this year's budget rather than next year's. I asked the VPD & Police Board to improve its planning processes so that there are fewer "unforseen" expenses at year's end '26.

I have expressed to the VPD & Police Board how little confidence the public has in this process - to be asked to give large increases at one end of the year, then to give even more money for contingencies at the end of the year. Staff committed to work on a solution that moves away from this cycle.

I voted to support some of the overages, but I also voted against incremental funding for Task Force Barrage - which I do not believe was unforeseen whatsoever, as it was an initiative that was planned & announced, and whose funding did not comply with the legal process set out in the Police Act.

This was a very difficult vote, even though this was overages for the budget passed last year - ABC's arbitrary 0% tax increase & the spectre of brutal cuts & 100's of people out of work makes this feel very unfair.

Vancouver council member Brian Montague got very worked up the other day, claiming without evidence that Vancouver police regularly ask drivers to not drive on Halloween. They don't.

He was responding to a notice from @lucymaloney.bsky.social, which would have asked the city to do so.