Homeless camps back on the agenda at special council meeting
By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on August 9, 2022.
Herald photo by Al Beeber
A jogger uses the Civic Centre track Monday against the background of the homeless encampment.LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com
A special meeting of city council today at 9 a.m. will address a couple of hot-topic matters including homeless camps and a ward boundary commission.
The meeting is open to the public and will be streamed online.
The first matter on the agenda is third reading of Bylaw 6374 – a bylaw to establish the ward boundary commission.
Council did first and second readings on the bylaw on July 26. It initially gave direction to establish the commission at council’s June 7 meeting.
The purpose of the commission is to provide a detailed report to council on a possible electoral ward system.
At June’s meeting, council approved a one-time budget of up to $297,000 for the commission. If the bylaw is approved today, the commission will “examine, analyze, engage stakeholders and produce a final report on the use of a ward system to be submitted to council,” says the agenda item.
If approved today, the commission will consist of eight members with seven of them appointed by council from members of the general public. The city clerk will be a non-voting commission member.
Various skills and backgrounds of public members may be considered including political science, municipal governance, legal, general research, statistics, urban planning, social science, methodology, democracy or a representation of life experiences within the city or a ward system generally.
Council will also today receive a report from administration on an encampment response as directed by city council at its July 26 meeting.
At that meeting, council asked for more information on several matters including the allocation of $470,000 to look into establishing a sanctioned encampment space.
Council also asked for more information on research that its department of Community Social Development has completed regarding strategies from other municipalities and other options.
Administration was asked to look into the creation of a community task force and a written request to the province to form a collaborative local and provincial working group to look into solutions for homelessness and affordable housing.
According to administration’s report, if the $470,000 is approved the encampment space project would be operational in late November.
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16-15
The world is doomed! The United Nations stands back as Russia takes over Ukraine, allowing Russia to sit on the UNSC and vote on important world security agendas, completely failing their mandate, the basis why they began in 1948.
9 penitentiaries in Canada have supervised consumption sites and now have needle exchanges . . . we can’t even secure a prison! Drugs flow in these institutions with overdoses in our local correctional facitity. Slowly the defiant are taking over in this world! Pretty bad when we can’t secure a prison!
Lethbridge has seen our central park used as a venue for many great events in the past, but Galt Gardens was given up to the addicts/homeless and millions was spent next to it to ‘revitalize’ and instead of cleaning up the park and enforcing the laws, they spent another $1.4 million to build Festival Square, across the street where a stage is used. We already had great venue for ‘festivals’ in the park, but instead of solving the issue, they blew more taxpayer funds!
Now, we are giving up another park, the Civic Center track and space where the old YMCA was. Now they have taken over two major parks in the downtown core. They move them out, then nobody stops them from moving back in!
Is there no one that had the intestinal fortitude to enforce the law anymore! It is a no brainer that once you remove them, someone has to make sure they don’t move back in once you leave!
The ongoing stance appears to be across the leadership, ‘there is nothing we can do, it is in every city’. Do we need to bring in the RCMP to clear our park?
Who will stand up against the non-profits and the Blackfoot Confederacy who now appear to run our city? Does anyone have the guts to stand up against them? Where are the leaders of the taxpayers?
The LSCO has had piles of feces around it, urine, garbage and even drug use in the washrooms, with one female running around naked screaming and security saying, there is nothing we can about it, ‘it is a public space’!
Really? Last time I checked, besides pot, the other drugs are still illegal, but we have been brainwashed into thinking it is acceptable now, naked in a public place is illegal, drunk or impaired in a public place is illegal, damaging public property is illegal, camping in the park is illegal, preventing the public from using the park is illegal!
Where is our leadership, our law enforcement, our bylaw enforcement?
Who is going to be on this committee? What about the citizens of this city who live in the area? Is this committee going to be again filled with the non-profits, the pro-harm reduction/SCS people, the indigenous while those impacted are ignored?
I have little faith in this committee! This is our city, not the non-profits or the neighbouring indigenous community! We don’t tell the Kainai or the Pikani how to govern their communities or enforce their laws! And for the record, the non-profits pay their administration and they are there for their jobs, not for the city or the clients! The non-profits were allowed to take over Vancouver with the DTES now paying over $360 million per year for over 290 groups for supports and housing. The greater DTES is under 20,000 people, the DTES itself, 7,000.
When our leadership is threatened as we saw in Council meeting in the spring by the indigenous leadership and when they listen to non-profits and not the citizens, then maybe the indigenous and the non-profits need to be the ones paying the property taxes in this city and not the citizens.
When your leadership and public servants are not performing their duties that they were elected and hired to do, then it is time for change! If they want to be sheep, then it is time they are retired and leaders are put in place.
This is our city and we are going to take it back, even if that means bringing in outside police to enforce the laws!
We are done watching millions being blown to revitalize when all we need to do is grow a pair and enforce the laws!