Coming Up: June 28

Council meets on Monday. The agenda includes two very significant discussions:

  • Coordinated Care Campus

  • Downtown Tower

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.

COORDINATED CARE CAMPUS

The biggest item on Council’s agenda is whether or not to rezone the Stonebridge Hotel to accommodate the proposed Coordinated Care Campus.

I won’t write too in depth here because I wrote a longer post about this proposal and Supportive Housing here. City administration has also provided lots of information about it here. But semi-briefly:

On a per-capita basis, Grande Prairie has Alberta’s highest rate of people living with out homes. This is largely because we are far behind everyone else in terms of having Supportive Housing to allow people to get stable and healthy.

Our current status quo approach to homelessness isn’t working. Someone living on the street has little to no realistic hope of getting better: healing from mental health and addictions requires a stable place to live and access to medical and social support. And people being stuck on the street isn’t just bad for them, it also creates complaints in the community and costs taxpayers a huge amount of money for shelters, RCMP response, and emergency medical care.

Supportive Housing, such as is proposed at the Coordinated Care Campus, is needed. Not just to help people living on the street, but also to improve our community for all and to save taxpayer dollars.

It’s also important to note that Supportive Housing is very different than Emergency Shelter.In Supportive Housing, people need to show and stick to a commitment to heal. They pay rent. And they have the ability to stay onsite 24/7.

An example of Supportive Housing in our community is Rising Above. Which is very different than our Emergency Shelter at Rotary House.

I fully believe that we need Supportive Housing in our community. And the Coordinated Care Campus could be a solution. I especially appreciate that its funding will mostly come from rent and redeployed homelessness supports rather than asking taxpayers to contribute significant new money. And all the evidence we have from similar developments in other communities is that they don’t have negative impact on the neighbourhood around them.

That being said:

I still have many questions about the operational plan and budget of this proposal. Although I don’t think it will have major neighbourhood impact, I want to know more about what will be done to monitor it and make sure problems are addressed quickly. I’ve also got big concerns about co-locating with Bylaw Enforcement: many of our folks living without homes are indigenous people dealing with the impacts of Residential Schools and other atrocities committed by our government. Having them live in the same building as Bylaw Enforcement may not be conducive to healing.

And I have many other questions and a few other concerns. I look forward to the Public Hearing and to debate on Monday so I can have more information about whether or not I’ll be supportive of this proposal.

DOWNTOWN TOWER

Council will be considering a Development Permit for a tower on the former Park Hotel site. A picture from the staff report found here:

Some highlights of what is proposed:

  • 12 story mixed use

  • 154 underground parking stalls

  • Main floor commercial space with 160 units on the other floors

  • Rooftop outdoor amenity areas as well as an indoor meeting area and gym

This is certainly an exciting proposal for our downtown. I look forward to considering the Development Permit.

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

Dylan BresseyComment