Council gets downtown update

But as has been pointed out a number of times over the course of the debate about the downtown, it has been noted repeatedly by local officials, much of what needs to happen is out of a municipal purview.

“There’s been a real shift in politics in the last decade from ten years ago when we were looking at just providing the basic core services of a city to now where all of our discussions are ones where we’ve got shared responsibilities and the province knows it,” says Garth Frizzell. “They’re struggling. The federal government knows it. They’re struggling. We’re all in this together. ”

But, as was noted at Council, a lot of money is being spent on an issue there seems to be no resolution to in the foreseeable future. “Yeah well I mean the simple, simple fact is that if we are spending less than a certain amount of dollars in terms of our bylaws and not to address some of the issues and some of hat ought to be better-spent on something somewhere else to address some of the problems directly,” says Mayor Yu.

“We’ve got a long haul ahead of us. It’s not going to be solved overnight. And we’re going to be collecting the data,” says Frizzell. “You can’t manage a problem if you don’t measure it. We’re just at the measuring stage right now.”

The evaluation focussed on three of the City’s interventions: Increased bylaw patrols, the creation of the Downtown Clean Team and the Community Safety Hub.

by Cheryl Jahn

Council gets downtown update

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