Red Alert: Speak Out on Ken Sim’s Zero-Sense Cuts
Ken Sim’s Austerity Budget Motion Might Be The Worst Of His Career. We Have to Stop it.
On Wednesday, Ken Sim is moving a motion to bring $100 million of uncosted cuts to City Hall. His motion “Zero Means Zero” overwrites previous staff direction to consider a variety of scenarios for the 2026 budget. It also ignores hundreds, if not thousands, of resident responses to the City’s Budget survey.
This is a desperate election gimmick, but it’s also dangerous.
Ken Sim is aiming for a political target without a plan or process. He and ABC claim their cuts won't hurt “core services,” but the motion does nothing to protect our core services from brutal cuts.
This chaotic move means that the things we care about are going to be on the chopping block:
Services like libraries, community centres, and garbage pick-up
Equity programs, reconciliation initiatives
Upgrades to infrastructure and amenities
Arts & Culture and social service grants
Housing & Homelessness prevention services
This is a vote that threatens to royally screw up our city, and we need to fight it.
Take 2 Minutes to Write to City Council Against This Motion Using COPE’s Letter-Writing Tool.
Why speak out against this motion:
It’s anti-democratic. There was a budget consultation process where thousands of Vancouver residents had their say in the next budget by completing an online survey. This motion overturns democratic process, and throws out the thoughtful feedback of thousands of residents. After a by-election where people in Vancouver repudiated Ken Sim and ABC, they’re doubling down.
The math does not add up. It will result in cuts to our services. In the non-partisan budget survey ABC is trying to throw out, city staff indicated Ken Sim’s 0% plan would result in significant cuts to services.
We don’t know what they will cut. Even they do not know. In order for City Council to make an informed decision on what tax rate to set, they need information on what is going to be cut so they can have a proper public debate. ABC councillors who support this motion are agreeing to cuts sight unseen, and are risking our public services.
This motion wastes time and money. This ABC motion directly contradicts an earlier ABC motion, meaning that city staff have wasted months of paid staff time pursuing the random whims of incompetent leadership.
Ken Sim is playing games, but has no credibility on this issue. Sim ran on finding efficiencies at City Hall. After three years and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent, he has found none. Instead, ABC has delivered two of the biggest tax increases in recent history: 10% and 7.5%.
Ken Sim and ABC are blowing through the city’s money like a kid with a credit card. The VPD has had an unprecedented blank-cheque budget increase. The police budget has ballooned by nearly $100 million, with wasteful overtime pay hitting record levels. ABC gave $3,8 million in affordable housing money to rich developers. He’s spending $850,000+ to get rid of an experienced, competent, and generally well-liked city manager and replace him with an untested new one at a higher wage in an opaque process that is raising questions of integrity. He’s spending almost a million dollars to get nothing for our city.
This proposal is not a serious way to govern. Steady, reliable, tax increases are part of civic governance. They cover the costs of inflation, even when they do not fund new services. This crass politicization by Ken Sim is unserious. The average yearly tax increase over the last ten years is 5.609% per year. If we remove the two largest tax increases, and average the remaining increases, the average is 4.736%.
Staff’s proposed 7% increase means less than $10/month for the average condo owner. It would cost the average single-family home owner around $20/month. For comparison, the average renter in Vancouver will be facing an over $40/month rent increase under the Residential Tenancy Act in 2026. Property taxes can be deferred for low-income owners, and there are rebates for seniors and people with disabilities. Freezing property taxes is not an affordability measure. It creates cuts to services regular people need.
This proposal is a ticking time bomb for our city. Ken Sim and the big money interests behind ABC probably know he and his party are not getting re-elected. By making cuts and deferring needed revenues until after the election, he’s saddling the next council with his debts and mismanagement. This means that future years will have sporadic and higher property tax increases instead of steady, predictable ones.
This is a screenshot of the question on the City’s Budget Survey. The scenerios staff have been working on were based on a motion from Ken Sim that ABC passed just months ago.
This is part of a pattern: Ken Sim and ABC are looking out for the rich, they’re bad and careless with public money, and they’re going to offload their failures onto regular people to protect their super-rich friends.
Speak to Council: Tell Ken Sim we don’t want his cuts.
If you already know how to sign up to speak to the motion, sign up here (Motion 1, in Opposition, via phone) and prepare to address the council on Wednesday. Even a brief message showing you’re in strong opposition is helpful.
If you want more information, or to get a text reminder to speak, sign up here on the COPE website to receive more detailed information and guidance on how to speak to council: Red Alert: Speak Out on Ken Sim’s Zero-Sense Cuts - COPE
Write to City Council
You can fill out this form on the Vancouver City Council website to leave feedback.