After nearly two years of input from residents, stakeholders and community leaders, the City of Victoria has unveiled a draft plan aimed at boosting public safety.
Victoria city council is set to receive the draft Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan on Thursday.
“This is the beginning, not the end … of a very comprehensive and complicated journey,” Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto said.
“It is a plan that will, if endorsed and if executed well, which is always our hope, will quite dramatically and in a very sustained and comprehensive way reorient the services the city provides within the context of community safety and wellbeing.”
The 79-page plan includes dozens of recommendations for all three levels of government, broken into categories including housing, health care, service delivery and policing.
Alto said the plan represents a “system change” that would see all aspects of municipal policy, including bylaws, public works, parks, land use, “and pretty much everything a city does” reviewed through a community safety lens going forward.
“It is important for us to look at everything we do and ask the question what impact does this have on the community safety and wellbeing of the city, and if we can’t answer that clearly, crisply and succinctly, we need to ask the question again and again and again,” she said.
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Recommendations at the municipal level range from piloting a corporate ‘blockwatch’ program downtown to boosting police funding and staffing to exploring municipally owned health clinics. It also calls for a plan to manage current and potential encampments, the crafting of a “vulnerable people strategy,” and the development of “wellness indicators” to assess the impact of new municipal actions.
Some of the recommendations could be implemented quickly, while others project a multi-year timeline.
“The goal at some level is to be able to walk up to an average resident and say, “What is your experience of the city? Do you feel as if you are in a safer community?'” Alto said.
“If you can do that randomly with different residents, then yeah, we’ve done our work. Do I expect that to happen in two weeks? No. Do I hope it will happen incrementally over a couple of years? Absolutely. Are there things that can happen quick? Yes, I hope. Are there things that will take time? Absolutely.”
The group representing downtown Victoria businesses warned last week that nearly half of its members would consider leaving the area if their lease expired this year.
Downtown Victoria Business Association CEO Jeff Bray said there was little in the plan that to blunt that concern.
“Our members are saying we need to see major change in the next six months,” Bray said.
“This report doesn’t really talk about making quick wins with bylaw enforcement, drug use or crime that is driving businesses out.”
Many of the recommendations were for senior levels of government, and Alto acknowledged that some of the most crucial issues, including housing, healthcare and the criminal justice, remain largely outside of the city’s jurisdiction.
But she said the city has plenty of firsthand experience in those areas, and she believes listening to Victoria’s recommendations will lead to better outcomes.
If council adopts the plan, city staff will then spend the summer analyzing how it would impact the city’s finances and operations, and come back with details this fall.
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