Vancouver School Board Chairman Speaks Out on ABC’s Departure

This week, Vancouver School Board President Victoria Jung decided enough was enough and she stepped down from ABC.

“I believe that leadership has to be done through openness, transparency and I think that is through having integrity,” Jung told CTV News in an interview Friday. “And I couldn’t go on with ABC and believe that my values ​​were aligned with theirs.”

Jung’s decision came days after Vancouver’s integrity commissioner released damning reports.

Those reports painted a less than positive picture of the relationship between Mayor Ken Sim’s office and the park board.

The mayor called a special meeting on Tuesday to review the integrity commissioner’s work, but the meeting was ultimately postponed until next month.

“I believe that trying to suppress the work of an integrity commissioner whose job it is to hold elected officials accountable is a dangerous game to play,” Jung said, referring to that meeting and her decision to leave the party the next day.

Jung is the latest to leave ABC. He is one of three park commissioners who have been serving independently since last year, after he refused to cooperate with Sims’ plan to dismantle the park board.

But what is actually the core of this dysfunction?

Park Board Chairman Brennan Bastyovanszky believes Sim should fire his chief of staff Trevor Ford.

“It’s hard to say who’s actually leading the party and who’s actually acting as mayor, when so much of the mayor’s job has been delegated to an unelected official,” Bastyovanszky said. “It just seems very strange.”

CTV asked Jung directly if she had an opinion on Ford and whether Sim should fire him as chief of staff, given her experience.

“I think there is someone else who could be put in that position who could do a better job for the city,” Jung said during the interview on Friday.

But how much damage has Sim and his group actually done this week?

“You can’t lose the president of the park board and the president of the school board in the space of a year and say nothing is wrong,” said Stewart Prest, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia. “That’s a clear sign that there’s deep disagreement.”

The mayor’s office did not respond to CTV’s requests for comment on this story before the broadcast deadline.