Coming Up: December 14
Council meets on Monday. The agenda includes:
Mask Bylaw Petition
Emergency Funding for the Curling Club
Brochu Industrial Park
Supportive Housing Re-zoning
Following is more information and my take on agenda items.
As always, any mistakes or opinions belong to me and me alone, not to Council or City staff.
While I express my current views below, I work hard to go into meetings ready to listen and with an open mind. I learn new information and participate in debate. This always informs, and sometimes changes, how I vote on issues.
If you would like to watch the meeting or read any of its supporting material for yourself, you can do so by clicking here. The City will post the highlights of Council’s decisions here.
FACE COVERING BYLAW PETITION
Some residents organized a petition requesting that Council repeal the Mandatory Face Covering (Mask) Bylaw.
The rules surrounding petitions are governed by the province through the Municipal Government Act. My understanding of this particular petition:
To be declared “Sufficient,” it needed to get signatures 6,908 signatures (that’s 10% of the City’s population). Each signature needed to belong to to someone eligible to vote in the City of Grande Prairie, include their name and address, and be witnessed by an adult signing an affidavit. If this petition is Sufficient, then Council has two options: repeal the Face Covering Bylaw within 60 days, or hold a plebiscite on it within 120 days.
On Monday, Council will be receiving a report from City Administration about this petition. It has been declared “Insufficient” due to not having enough signatures.
2,405 people (3.5% of the population) signed it. However, about half of these signatures did not meet requirements under the Act (most ineligible signatures did not have witness affidavit attached or belonged to someone ineligible to sign the petition). This left the petition with 1262 valid signatures (1.9% of the City’s population).
Council has no requirement to repeal or hold a public vote on the Face Covering Bylaw. However, an important note:
Council chose to put a Sunset Clause into the Bylaw. As of January 31st, it will no longer be in effect unless Council passes a Bylaw to extend it. This means that Council will be reviewing the Bylaw in January.
Curling Club Emergency Funding
It is recommended that Council approve $100,000 in Emergency Community Group Funding to the Grande Prairie Curling Club.
The Curling Arena is owned by the City, but operated by the Curling Club, which is a non-profit society.
Having a non-profit society operate the building has a number of benefits. Top among them: non-profits can often operate more efficiently and access more revenue than the City can, and they are more connected to users. Often, a non-profit can deliver services better while spending less taxpayer dollars than the City can.
However, one big downside to having a non-profit operate this facility: it does not have the same sort of fiscal capacity that the City has. As COVID-19 has increased costs and reduced revenue, the Curling Club is struggling to stay afloat. Emergency Funding is requested to keep it financially viable. $40,000 would go towards paying for utilities, and $60,000 would go towards other costs.
Earlier in the year, Council set aside funding for non-profits requesting Emergency Funding. $85,000 remains in this fund and could be allocated to the Curling Club. The remaining $15,000 could be allocated from the small surplus the City is expecting to have in 2020.
I’m likely to support this funding recommendation. Coming out of COVID-19, local recreation and social activities are going to be more needed than ever. The Curling Club delivers those. And if the Curling Club had to fold due to finances, the City would have to take over operation of the arena. This would likely cost us much more than $100,000 in the long term.
BROCHU INDUSTRIAL PARK
The public infrastructure in the Brochu Industrial Park (SE of the airport) was built to a lower standard than most City developments. Most notably: there is no water and sewage service pipes to many lots. Properties need to truck in water and have on-site septic systems.
Here’s what utility service in the Park looks like. Blue lines indicate water service, green sanitary service, and red storm water service. A solid line indicates that a pipe is already in the ground. A dotted line indicates where a pipe could go in the future.
In 2006, Council passed a Bylaw prohibiting subdivision of lots in Brochu unless the are connected to water and sanitary service. The thinking of the day: that regular urban services should be required if property owners wish to create more density in this area. Owners can still build and develop on existing lots. But they can’t split them up to create additional lots.
This Bylaw was recently reviewed. The thinking of our current Administration: supporting fire fighting in denser development is a public good that impacts surrounding properties and City personnel. So if a property owner wants to subdivide their land, it makes sense to require that it be hooked up to water service to support fire fighting water flow. But if an owner wants to keep using on-site septic systems, that has minimal impact on others: they should be able to do so.
A Bylaw amendment is coming before Council on Monday. If passed, properties would still be required to connect to water service. However, they would no longer be required to connect to sanitary service.
Practically, what this means if you look at the above map: currently, to subdivide, a property needs to be connected to both a solid blue and a solid green line. Extending those lines can cost a property owner a lot of money. And only a few properties (on the bottom right) connect to both these lines.
However, if the amendment is passed: properties would only need to connect to a solid blue line. This means that a large numbers of properties would become eligible for subdivision without paying to extend sanitary service.
This is an amendment that provides more freedom for people to do what they wish with their property. And expanding this freedom won’t have significant impact on other properties. That seems sensible to me. I’m likely to support this amendment.
SUPPORTIVE HOUSING
Council will be debating re-zoning land to allow for a supportive housing development. This would be a medical based building. People with severe cognitive challenges would be housed and provided with on-site care, programs, and supervision.
This is a big need in our community. However, finding a location for it is a challenge.
Council previously re-zoned land in Avondale for a supportive housing project. However, there were some challenges with that land. Chief among them: it’s small and it is next to VLA which will be next to ANOTHER Supportive Housing development in the old Fletcher Building (just in front of City Hall). The City has been exploring other potential areas to put this project. One potential: a City owned lot in Gateway:
On Monday, Council will be debating a re-zoning of this land to allow for Supportive Housing. However, an important note: anything built on this land would still require a Development Permit to be approved by Council.
So if this land is re-zoned, it does not mean that a project would be built here. Instead, it would mean that administration could start work to develop a proposal (designing a building, working with AHS to create and fund supervision and programing, applying for capital grants, etc…). But that proposal would have to be approved by Council before anything could be built.
As we’re looking for a place for this Supportive Housing build, I do think this site is worthy of discussion. So I’m likely to vote in favour of this re-zoning. However, that doesn’t meant that I’ll support any proposals that get made for this land. It just means that I think they are worthy of being developed, discussed by the community, and brought to Council for consideration.
Additional Information About Supportive Housing
It’s important to note that supportive housing is not the same as emergency shelter.
In an emergency shelter (ex: Rotary House mats), people use the facility just to sleep. They don’t have a permanent place to store their possessions, they don’t get to stay in shelter through the day, they don’t pay rent, and there is no programming or care they can access as part of their stay.
In supportive housing, people are living in a unit. They pay rent. They get to keep their possessions in their unit. They can stay in their place 24/7. There are social and health care workers on-site to provide care. And there is social and other programming delivered on-site to contribute to their health and wellness and encourage sobriety.
Supportive housing is crucial in our community. We have many people dealing with mental health and addictions issues living on our streets and in our parks. It’s next to impossible for them to get better while living rough.
The first step to getting someone mentally healthy is getting them physically healthy, and that is next to impossible to do when they are chronically sleep deprived and have no warm/dry/safe place to be during the day. Additionally, many of these people have troubles accessing counselling, medical help, social workers, job readiness preparation, and other important services. Having these programs and social workers on-site where they live, to monitor and support them, is a HUGE help.
Supportive housing is an important step towards getting people off our streets. And that isn’t just good for the people in this housing. Getting them off the street and healthy decreases social disorder in our community. And getting people into supportive housing is a lot cheaper for tax payers than cycling them through medical and justice systems, and constantly having them interact with emergency services.
I strongly support the development of Supportive Housing in our community.
However, that is not the same as supporting a particular proposal. For me to vote in favour of an eventual Development Permit, I’d need to have a number of concerns addressed. This includes having concrete commitment from AHS for ongoing staffing and medical support in the building. It also includes having the impact on neighbours carefully weighed and minimized.
I do want to take some space here to address many of the common concerns I hear about supportive housing. That includes:
“There are already too many people wandering our streets.” Everyone has a right to be on our streets and in parks as long as they are behaving appropriately. However, people who are living rough will spend less time out in the community if they are transitioned into supportive housing. We often have people wandering our neighbourhoods because they have nowhere else to be, and because they have to get to different places to sleep, eat, socialize, and access various services such as counselling or medical treatment. Giving them a place to be 24/7 and delivering services they need on-site will lead to them spending a lot less time walking through communities. The monitoring on-site will also help make sure people aren’t acquiring possessions that aren’t theirs and that there is accountability for them when they are in the surrounding area.
“These people need accountability, not hand outs.” People in supportive housing pay rent- unlike shelter space, they don’t get it for free. And there is next to nothing the City can do to hold them accountable to anything when they are living rough. Our police are limited by federal and provincial legislation and courts, and those provide little to no tools to hold someone accountable when they are living on the streets. However, to be in supportive housing, people have to sign and get held to a housing agreement. And the relationships they build with staff on-site is the best way to hold them accountable to working towards sobriety and health.
“These projects will just draw more street engaged people to our community.” Supportive housing requires rent to be paid and a housing agreement to be adhered to. It won’t attract people to our community who are just looking for a free place to be with no steps towards getting healthy. Additionally, most people who are street engaged in our city are long-time residents of our community. And when someone shows up from another community, we work to get them back home.
“We shouldn’t be encouraging drug use.” There is no “safe consumption” elements of these projects, and public intoxication has consequences under the housing agreements. Supportive housing doesn’t encourage drug use. Quite the opposite. One of the big goals of it is to get people mentally healthy and sober by making them physically safe and giving them proper sleep. It also engages them with on-site health and social workers.
“We should just incarcerate, institutionalize, or banish these people.” The City does encourage and help people from elsewhere to get back home. However, it has no legal ability to prohibit someone from being in Grande Prairie, nor to incarcerate or institutionalize people, even if it wanted to.
"There are better priorities for tax dollars.” Saving taxpayers dollars is a priority for me. Which is one reason supportive housing is needed. We spend a HUGE amount on homelessness. The City spends money on having RCMP, Bylaw, and Fire responding to emergencies and complaints generated by people living rough, having Parks and Bylaw cleanup encampments, and funding emergency shelters. Our community also loses money as social disorder drives investment (and therefore tax revenue) from our core. Homelessness also costs the province a lot of money in terms of medical and justice resources. Someone living rough costs taxpayers a lot of money. Getting them into supportive housing is less expensive in the short term, and WAY less expensive in the long-term when it succeeds in getting someone healthy enough to live and work independently.
That’s what is on our agenda for Monday. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
You can comment below. Or, you can contact me at dbressey@cityofgp.com or 780-402-4166. I'm happy to talk online or over the phone. I'm also always willing to setup a time to meet for coffee.
We also always have great conversation in the GP Round Table group on Facebook.
After Council meeting, you will be able to find highlights posted by the City here.
Thanks for reading!
-Dylan