Today Vancouver City Council declared a Local State of Emergency. This will give our Emergency Operations team (led by City Manager, Deputy City Manager and our Fire Chief) powers to react more swiftly to issues as we need to keep our city safe: ie shutting down unsafe situations, thwarting hoarding and price gouging, procuring emergency supplies and even temporary expropriations.
We also approved fast tracking of Community Service and Social Policy grants that we had granted earlier this month so that we can help communities help communities faster during this crisis.
Both of these emergency resolutions passed unanimously and with full support of the mayor and council from across political spectrum.
Massive thanks to our incredible city staff who are working hard to mobilize a massive response to a rapidly changing situation. Also massive thanks to the leadership of our mayor and the rest of city council working together on this response to such an unprecedented crisis for this time in our city.
These are difficult and challenging times, and especially working across jurisdictions, disciplines, populations and neighbourhoods – but together we will survive and thrive!For those who may have read my earlier post about what Emergency declaration means – today’s declaration is slightly different from a State of Local Emergency under Section 13 of the (BC) Emergency Program Act as this is a declaration under Section 173 of the Vancouver Charter – the key distinction is that we don’t have to check in with the province and we don’t have a 7 day expirey/renewal