CITY of North Vancouver council has reneged on two community groups it agreed to help with funding earlier in the summer.
Beach volleyball players will no longer be able to look forward to a temporary set of beach volleyball courts at the city's Lot 5 on the waterfront, while the city determines the land's long-term future.
And the North Vancouver Museum and Archives will no longer have some of the seed money it had requested for a study to determine the feasibility, business case and potential designs for moving to the old Pipe Shop location at Shipbuilders' Square.
At the end of a long meeting Monday night, council faced a series of motions to release funds needed to complete projects that council had already approved.
While council voted 6-1 in favour of the beach volleyball plan and directed staff to begin working on designs in July, there was a shift in attitude when it came to putting up the $140,000 needed.
"I'm encountering this as spending $140,000 for one particular group and it's not really a general use park," Coun. Guy Heywood said, noting that if council were to spend the money, it should be on projects that appeal to everyone. "Or are we just subsidizing beach volleyball players?"
A frustrated Coun. Craig Keating retorted that almost every recreational facility like pools and ice rinks are only used by specific groups, as opposed to everyone.
Anything, he said, would be better than what sits in Lot 5 now.
"If we're going to wait around and say we're not going to have any temporary uses on that site, and instead we prefer what looks like a friggin' dump, let's be clear. . . . If that's the vision of this council, please get it on the record. The fact of the matter is, there's a great temporary use here," he said.
"The alternative is more years of dead space behind blue fencing and I am not in favour of that."
While the money was to come from the city's general reserve, it had been added to the coffers after Pinnacle International was forced to pay steep penalties for being late in fulfilling obligations it had made to the city, Mayor Darrell Mussatto said.
Couns. Heywood, Rod Clark, Pam Bookham and Don Bell voted the motion down, while Keating, Coun. Linda Buchanan and Mussatto voted in favour.
After the motion to go ahead with the courts failed to pass, the mayor asked for a separate vote on the museum's $50,000 in study funding. With virtually no discussion, the motioned failed 4-3 with Couns. Buchanan, Keating, Clark and Mayor Mussatto voting it down.
Council had already appropriated $75,000 to fund the studies and requests for proposals had already been issued, but according to a staff report, the rest of the $125,000 budget would likely be needed to finish the job properly.
Council voted unanimously in favour of putting up $200,000 for hiring a temporary project engineer and $550,000 for remediation work for the foot of Lonsdale.
