City insists 4/20 not really a protest
$2 MILLION IN POT SALES: If rally is ruled commercial event, organizers could be forced to pay police, clean-up costs
The City of Vancouver is consulting lawyers about its options to force 4/20 organizers to pay for costs incurred during and after the annual pro-pot rallies at Sunset Beach.
The city objects to organizers calling Friday’s event — at which a conservative estimate of $2 million of marijuana was sold — a “protest”, which would exempt organizers from paying for its extra policing and cleanup costs.
“The city does not have the legal authority to collect costs for this unsanctioned and unpermitted event that the organizers deem a protest,” said city spokesman Jag Sandhu in an email. “The city has significant concerns regarding the commercial nature of the event, and questions the characterization of that activity as a protest.”
He said individuals have a right to protest and money shouldn’t be a barrier to that, but “we expect commercial activity like the 4/20 event to cover the total costs incurred. We are continuing to look into that issue with legal counsel,” he said.
The city hasn’t yet tallied this year’s costs, but last year it spent almost $250,000, mostly for additional policing for the event that wasn’t granted official permission to take place by the city or Vancouver park board. The city’s costs were $150,000 in 2016. Last year, the park board recouped $7,000, the cost of reseeding the Sunset Beach Park lawn, from organizers.
“We agreed to repay $7,000 for the grass,” said organizer Dana Larsen, who said the rally is needed to protest laws against pot and “continued discrimination” against users.
Larsen said 100,000 people visited the event during the day. If each attendee spent $20, which Larsen agreed “was about right,” revenues for the eight-hour event would have amounted to $2 million.
He said he refused to pay, among other fees, a charge of $30,000 for park board staff who would have been working anyway, $200 for lost concession stand income, $2,400 for lost aquatic centre income, and $5,000 for a permit fee “that they refused to let us have.” He called that a “ridiculous effort to inflate the invoice. We’re not backpaying those costs, and we’re not backpaying costs for the past 22 years.”
Larsen, who said the $30,000 the organizers paid for rubber mats this year mitigated damage to the grass, added that he has agreed to pay for all costs the city charged them this year, except for policing.
Last year, police costs were $170,000 and other city costs were for sanitation, traffic management and emergency management. Those figures didn’t include costs to B.C. Ambulance Service or Vancouver Coastal Health, or regular staff wages. The park board’s invoice was for $36,000.
Vancouver’s 4/20 rally is held every April 20, as it is at other cities around the world.
Toronto’s was held at its city hall plaza, but had no vendor tables or food trucks since the city wouldn’t grant a permit because of non-smoking bylaws. In London, 5,000 tokers gathered in Hyde Park, but there were no vendors.
In Vancouver, vendors reserved 294 tables through a Cannabis Culture website for $500 or $750, up from $350 each for about 100 tables the year before. The rentals netted organizers $200,000, said Larsen.
Expenses included security and paramedics, for $5,000 each; toilets and a “sonar scanner” to check the lawn for ancient remains, at $50,000 each; $30,000 for the rubber mats; and water and free food, he said.
Larsen said a non-profit society, similar to non-profit societies that run the city’s illegal marijuana dispensaries, runs the rally, and last year it made two donations of $4,200 each to private charities with the money left over from expenses.
Under B.C.’s Societies Act, societies may be incorporated for religious, philanthropic, benevolent, educational, or sporting purposes, but not for “the purpose of carrying on a business, trade, industry or profession for profit.”
Meanwhile, the park board now says a reassessment of the park lawn Monday indicates Sunset Beach should reopen within six weeks, not the 10 weeks announced on the weekend.