Unsanctioned 4/20 event headed to Sunset Beach

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VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Taxpayers are being told to brace for another hefty repair bill after Friday’s annual 4/20 marijuana sit-in at Sunset Beach.

As many as 100,000 demonstrators are expected to show up on another rainy day in a park that’s already soggy from a wet spring.

Repairing the field last year and other expenses, including policing, cost the city more than $200,000, but Park Board Chair Stuart MacKinnon says less than seven thousand was recovered from organizers of the unsanctioned event.

“To help with the re-seeding…. After an event like this, we need to re-seed and then, if we get more and more rain, then that just makes it that much longer before the public has access.”

“Have you given any consideration into how you can stop them? If they don’t have a permit, they shouldn’t be here.”

“We try to work with our partners in the police department. Crowd control of that number of people, really isn’t their job.”

MacKinnon adds it doesn’t make sense to bill organizers after the fact, but he’s pleased to hear they plan to spend $30,000 for protective covering around the main staging area.

“We have to take people at face value and trust that they come here in the spirit of honesty and integrity and that we hope that their mitigations will help preserve the turf.”

As for rising policing costs, MacKinnon admits that is cause for concern because many people taking part in 4/20 are coming from out of town.

“It’s the citizens –the taxpayers of Vancouver–that need to pay and it’s not necessarily just people in Vancouver who are coming to that. In regards to police costs, you’ll have to talk to the police department for those.”

He also defends the board’s refusal to grant organizers a permit because smoking–of any kind–is banned in all Vancouver parks.

Earlier today, rally organizer Dana Larsen says they tried to move the event to the PNE grounds, but that proposal was rejected.

“Vancouver does not have many locations that are big enough to host an event of this scale, but we’ve been planning this event all year, we have extensive meetings with park board staff, with sanitation, with the VPD as if we had a permit. I mean, we comply with everything they ask us to do…. We’re investing $30,000 in special duradeck material to put down over the sections of the park which were damaged last time, so I’m really hoping that this year, there’s no mud damage and we can leave the park just the way we found it.”

Larsen is also skeptical about the park board’s motivation for refusing to grant organizers a permit.

“It’s not really about this location or anything. It’s about them not wanting cannabis in any park. The staff made it very clear to them that they have the power to grant us the permit to have a cannabis event and to smoke cannabis in the exact same way they give out permits to consume alcohol in a park which is also against the bylaws. It’s really just a political decision on the park board’s end.”

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