Metro Vancouver regional board faces big turnover
Following last weekend’s municipal election, the regional body that makes decisions about drinking water, sewers and garbage for Metro Vancouver is on the verge of significant change.
On Friday, Metro Vancouver’s board of directors will meet for the last time before at least 25 of its 40 members — including the chair and vice-chair — are replaced.
“I don’t know if we’ve ever seen this across the region, at local council tables or at Metro,” said Port Coquitlam’s outgoing mayor, Greg Moore, who has chaired Metro Vancouver’s board since 2012.
The board is made up of elected officials from 21 municipalities, from the Tsawwassen First Nation and from Electoral Area A. Board members consider matters involving drinking water, sewage treatment, garbage, air quality, urban growth, regional parks and affordable housing. The 2019 budget is more than $800 million.
“A lot of the services that Metro delivers are the ones that make local government worth thinking about,” said Gerald Baier, a political scientist at the University of B.C. “It’s sort of invisible to some degree because of the way we take for granted some of those services.”
After they are sworn in at the beginning of November, councils in the region’s 21 municipalities will have to appoint board members. The number of members from each local government is determined by its population. Vancouver has seven members and Surrey has six, while Coquitlam and Delta each have two.
Baier said the appointment decisions could be easy or more difficult, depending on how many positions are available and the politics at play within each council.
“There’s kind of a meta politics going on within the municipalities,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of intrigue about who’s going.”
The chair and vice-chair will be elected by board members at the inaugural meeting, which is scheduled for Nov. 16.
Moore said the chair is an important position and experience would be an asset because, among other things, the person in that job leads meetings and determines the structure, membership and terms of reference of the regional district’s committees.
Observers of Metro Vancouver politics will be watching closely to see what unfolds over the coming months.