City council’s intention to make downtown feel safer by spending $471,000 a year for three years on downtown safety measures is an action we can all get behind – in principle.
Like many other communities of a similar size and larger, Campbell River’s downtown core has become unpleasant to look at and is unsettling to walk through. People living on the streets and camping in wooded areas are contributing to that feeling of lawlessness whether they are directly to blame or not.
Our city council has made it pretty clear, through its actions to date, that it intends to try and make our downtown streets safer for everybody in the community.
With council’s approval of three years of funding to address this issue, it’s finally come out with its most direct statement, so far, of its intentions. It’s about time it put its cards on the table, at least now we see it has a goal in mind and is not just flying by the seat of its pants and reacting negatively to whatever bothers them.
Developing a plan – we can’t say it has a plan, yet, because there has been little concrete detail – allows the public to see where council intends to go with this issue. And that allows for feedback. Hopefully, council will be open to that. And, of course, seek input ahead of time.
Because there’s a problem with this issue that’s outside of the need to address safety on our own streets. Everybody wants that. But there’s a way to go about it. And, so far, this council has appeared reactionary and heavy-handed. It’s handling of the art gallery’s tax exemption was not impressive. It got us some national media attention and not for the first time.
Openly opposing the province’s plan to test decriminalization also put Campbell River on the provincial news agenda.
But who cares about the provincial media? What this council also did was undoubtedly aggravate our provincial cabinet, the very body councillors are also lobbying for more funding to deal with community safety and housing. Provincial housing minister Ravi Kahlon has heard of Campbell River city council. He didn’t seem impressed.
We applaud the intention to respond to what was, indeed, a major civic election issue. Council does have the mandate to look at this. It’s what voters want.
But what we hope to see is a higher degree of finesse and, yes, sensitivity to the poorest and weakest inhabitants of our community – because, make no mistake, they are part of the community too. The appetite for roundups and strong-arming of the unhoused is not universal. We don’t want to be dragged across the video screens and news pages of the nation as an uncaring and insensitive community.
That doesn’t represent all Campbell Riverites.