New West Progressives commit $1000 to food bank while encouraging city council to think ‘out of the box’ in response to COVID-19

The Board of Directors for the New West Progressives (NWP) will provide up to $1000 in matching funds to the food bank to help support local residents impacted by COVID-19. The NWP’s goal is to raise $2000 for the Greater Vancouver Food Bank prior to June 30th.

The NWP also approved a series of recommendations for council to help deal with the health emergency which has cut off access to many community services and public spaces.

“Our Board felt it was important to support the local food bank as many people in our community have lost their jobs and have been forced to rely on this critical service,” says Daniel Fontaine, President of the NWP. “We also felt it was important to provide council with some recommendations we hope they will consider implementing during the COVID pandemic.”

The NWP recommendations include:

• Establish a new ‘curbside pickup library’ which would provide the community with access to books on select days throughout the week. Residents could place a hold on the books online and pick them up at special pickup location outside the library to allow for proper social distancing. Books would be available for the regular loan period and returned through the outside book drop. Several other libraries across Canada including in Burns Lake and Grand Prairie, AB, have successfully undertaken this type of initiative during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  
• The city should advocate to bring back the Provincial Hardship Tax Deferral Program for 2020, and that the rate of interest is lowered for both the hardship and family deferral plans to the same as the seniors tax deferral program.
  
• Utilize some of the city’s purchased advertisement space in the Record newspaper to raise awareness of local small businesses that continue to remain open during the health emergency. As part of this initiative, the city would also promote the New West Farmer’s Market as a means of encouraging residents to buy local and get better access to fresh fruits and vegetables.
  
• Conduct a ‘back to the basics’ review and determine which discretionary expenditures can be eliminated or delayed as a means of reducing property tax increases for both residents and businesses in the current fiscal year.
  
• Identify and prioritize new ‘shovel-ready’ projects that would be immediately eligible for partnership funding from other orders of government.
  
• Ensure the Canada Games Pool redevelopment project begins construction as soon as possible and that it secures infrastructure funding from both the Province of BC and the Government of Canada.

“We also want to take a moment to thank all the health care and essential service workers who deliver our food, work in our care homes, hospitals, assisted living residences, grocery stores and beyond during this COVID-19 pandemic,” says Fontaine. “They’re our real heroes and we all owe them a deep debt of gratitude for keeping us safe and ensuring we have access to all the basic necessities of life.”

Anyone interested in having their donation matched by the NWP should visit the Greater Vancouver Food bank website by clicking on this fundraising link. Funds raised through this campaign will be matched dollar-for-dollar by the NWP up to $1000.

The NWP Board of Directors has also rescheduled their annual general meeting which was previously planned for April 16th, but had to be cancelled due to COVID-19. The new ‘virtual AGM’ has been set for Wednesday, June 3rd at 7:30 pm and will now take place using Zoom technology.

NWP members and the general public are encouraged to attend with further details regarding the event posted on the NWP website in the coming days. The NWP will be electing a new Board of Directors as well as presenting an update regarding the society’s activities over the last year.

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UPDATE @ 6 pm on Sunday, April 26th: We have raised almost $1000 from the community in less than 8 hours after we launched the virtual fundraising drive. The NWP will match those funds up to $1000…so at least $2000 will be heading to the food bank. But don\’t stop there…we\’re still encouraging the community to keep donating! The Food Bank really needs our support. Here is a link to a New West Record story which was just published.