Staff suggest more funds for alcohol pilot programs
Recommends park board get $930,000 to continue booze-on-the-beach this year
Staff at Vancouver City Hall have recommended to city council that it approve a one-time increase of $930,000 to the park board's operating budget to carry out a second pilot project that allows drinking on beaches.
The request came from the board and the police department. The money would be reallocated within the city's 2024 operating budget, which was approved in December.
“The proposed alcohol on beaches re-pilot program responds to a growing interest by the public to consume alcohol on Vancouver's beaches safely and without recrimination,” the report reads. “However, there was a significant increase in operational and enforcement issues and challenges for those beach pilot sites and into the downtown area.”
Implemented in 2023, the pilot provided useful information to both the board and the police, the report says, but “given the complexity and multi-department impacts, it has been determined that another year is required to test these measures to determine the level of success and inform future decision-making.”
The city's director of finance and the city manager have the power to increase department budgets up to $750,000 a year as long as the overall operating budget stays the same, but because the park board's request is for more than that, it comes before council.
Last summer, seven beaches were part of the booze-on-thebeach pilot project (beaches along the Fraser River, at Crab Park, and English Bay and Sunset beaches were excluded). The booze-allowed beaches are all close to one of the 48 parks the city has designated it's legal to drink in.
“Beach sites were selected based on their adjacent amenities such as washroom facilities,” the report says. “Sites with known enforcement challenges or are difficult to reach from an operational perspective were excluded from the pilot.” Last summer's pilot project ran from June 1 to Sept. 4.
Both the park board and police reported that while overall incidents of crime have slowly declined since 2018, the number of violent incidents requiring police or ranger response increased, particularly at two beaches.
The report says the reported number of violent incidents tripled at Kitsilano Beach, to 12 in 2023 from four in 2018, and quadrupled for English Bay to 28 in 2023 from six in 2018.
Citywide, violent incidents also increased over the same six years, but much slower, according to the police: from 2,539 to 3,170 last year.
“This implies that while there are not more calls for service to English Bay and Third Beach than before the pandemic, more of those incidents are turning violent,” the report says. “We cannot determine if alcohol consumption was the cause of this increase ... however, the jump in the number of violent incidents cannot be ignored.”
Park board staff were surveyed as to how public alcohol consumption on beaches affected them.
“Responses showed that those most affected were lifeguards and park rangers ... the main impacts consisted of dealing with public outrage or disrespect, inadequate staffing on the beach and impacts to physical safety.”
Broken glass and excessive litter were also concerns, especially at Kits, Jericho, Locarno and Spanish Banks beaches.
“Overall, staff noted that waste bins were rarely reported as full, which implies that the excessive litter was due to people not carrying their litter to the available waste bins.”