The nearly $1 million in taxpayer money spent managing Vancouver's Occupy protest for two months was misspent by paranoid politicians, according to local representatives of the global anti-greed movement.
Of the protest's estimated $981,103 price tag, the city says $394,000 was incurred by police during the first few days of the encampment set up behind the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Occupier Sarah Beuhler argues the initial police response was bloated and unnecessary, resulting in zero arrests in the first month and only a small handful overall.
She characterized the ongoing police presence as an unnecessary precaution taken by city officials anxious about appearing ill-prepared for catastrophe in the wake of the Stanley Cup riot.
"I sympathize that they were in a difficult position; they took a lot of flack for the riot... but they massively over-policed the thing," Beuhler said.
The first reported arrest was on Nov. 15 when a man was blocking traffic in the busy intersection of Georgia and Howe streets. Around seven other people have been arrested for breach of peace.
According to a memo sent out Monday by city manager Penny Ballem, Vancouver spent a total of $590,000 in policing from the Oct. 15 launch of the protest to Dec. 15. It spent another $345,878 on engineering staff, $28,494 manning an Emergency Operations Centre and $16,730 on Vancouver fire department services.
"It's hard to argue against fire trucks, but putting city workers there to walk around doing nothing basically seemed like a CYA (cover your ass) strategy. They were determined not to be caught with their pants down," Beuhler said.
Protesters also say the hefty price the city paid to monitor the protest was offset by the number of services provided at the Occupy tent city.
Over the course of the 37-day encampment, Occupiers estimate $672,000 in health care was doled out by volunteer doctors, nurses and medics and 1,000 free meals were served daily.
They also boast providing shelter for about 30 homeless people per night. Based on an estimated cost of $83 per person per night to stay in a Vancouver emergency shelter, they value the service at more than $92,000.
Overall, protesters say they contributed more than $1 million in services to the community.
"Every morning at 9 o'clock we would call and see if there was any shelter space available, and there was always zero for men and zero for women," Beuhler said. "We provided those services in exchange [for the city's costs]…. the balance is about equal at this point."
The protest and associated expenditures are expected to continue, however. Participants say the Occupy Vancouver movement is far from over, despite having been without a steady encampment site since late November.
Beuhler said Occupiers continue to meet nearly nightly, but are moving towards assembling a few times a week to prepare for a massive global relaunch of the movement planned for when the weather warms, likely in May.
In her memo, Ballem described the protest as a "challenging situation" for politicians, and lauded the city for managing it without resorting to the same violence and crowd control tactics employed by some international cities to break up their local Occupy movements.
"The City can be proud of the peaceful resolution to the protest in Vancouver," she wrote.
She also compared Vancouver's costs to those of other North American cities, such as Portland, Oregon and Oakland, California, which racked up more than $1.4 million and $2.4 million respectively in policing and park restoration alone.
