NORTH BATTLEFORD - The City of North Battleford is getting an updated Community Safety and Well-being plan.
Consulting firm MNP was taken on to work on the project in recent months. The result was a presentation by MNP’s David Thorne and Grant Calder to council’s Planning Committee on Monday on a draft Community Safety and Well-being Plan for 2024-28.
The presentation on Monday was a summary of the key points in the plan. In developing the plan over the last few months, the idea was to incorporate input from the public and community partners. There were interviews done with key stakeholders, and a two day planning session was held that included key agencies and organizations and also with First Nations to develop the draft. A public survey was also put out.
Based on that feedback, the Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan will have four priority areas of focus: mental health and substance use, housing, youth supports, and community engagement.
Priority objectives outlined for year one include coordination and integration of service providers. That would include hiring a coordinator, setting up a steering committee and a working group, and to coordinate regular working group meetings.
Also a priority is substance use and mental health, including a priority in 2024 and 2025 to establish a sobering centre and a 24-hour drop-in centre.
A third priority would be housing, and in particular to explore adaptive reuse of existing properties to meet identified housing gaps. The plan is for Battlefords Housing Authority to be the lead agency there.
Also outlined in MNP’s presentation were the various roles and responsibilities. The steering committee would provide high-level strategic leadership, advocacy, coordination, and monitoring, and would be the champions and public face of the plan.
The Community Safety and Well-being Coordinator would serve a role similar to an executive director in planning and coordinating meetings, ensuring decisions are acted upon and public reporting on implementation.
The working groups would develop and implement action plans to achieve the objectives and report back to the steering committee. The community, meanwhile, would inform, support and participate in the community safety and well-being objectives, through participating in working groups, through volunteer activity and programs, and through providing input and feedback.
The plan could undergo some more tweaking before it is finally implemented. One observation noted at the meeting was that the city had already had many similar initiatives in the past such as a Community Safety Coordinator position which eventually went away, the housing strategy, and Crime Prevention Through Environment Design.
Councillor Kelli Hawtin wanted to know where those fit in, including the Battlefords Regional Community Coalition which evolved in recent years.
“Some of the pieces we already have. I’m kind of curious how we bring those in and then we continue to evolve from there,” said Hawtin.
Thorne responded by citing the importance of the coordinator position in having “somebody that owns this — that this is their responsibility” so that these items remain a priority.
Councillor Bill Ironstand was more blunt, as he made it known he was tired of hearing about plans — he wanted to see ways to move forward on items.
“I’ve seen this a thousand times before - everybody’s developed this pretty close plan,” said Ironstand. “It’s easy to involve people to create a report — how do we get anything concrete done.”
The MNP consultants responded he had "hit the nail on the head". They also expressed confidence in the community leaders and partners, and Thorne called the plan "the voice of the people responsible for delivering the services."
Thorne also mentioned that both the city of Winnipeg and the city of North Battleford had been both written about in Maclean's magazine. He said that when he was with the Winnipeg police service, a Maclean's article came out declaring Winnipeg the racist capital and murder capital of Canada.
Similarly, Maclean's wrote about North Battleford being the crime capital. "And that was the topic of conversation at that two day planning session," he said. "The focus was how do we prove them wrong and how do we reverse that. How do we turn that CSI Index, which is an awful way to measure safety and wellness in the community… and talk about creating what would a community wellness index look like, how would we create one of those for North Battleford."
Thorne expressed confidence in what they had developed, saying the plan "sets you up in the first few steps to make sure you're in the right direction."
The full plan with full details of what it entails is expected come back to council in the near future.
