Victoria city council is set to review a major roadmap designed to improve public safety, after two years of community engagement and input from local leaders. “It is, I think, a watershed moment for council to determine whether they wish to make this a priority. I can’t imagine that they won’t,” says Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto. “I don’t think there has been a single issue that has been uppermost in the minds of residents in every municipality across the country than community safety and well-being.” The 79-page Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan has been created in response to complex, “entangled” challenges – including housing shortages, homelessness, inaccessible health care, mental health crises, and increased disorder. Victoria’s mayor convened a panel of community leaders to provide input, which has led to dozens of recommendations for all levels of government. There are 50 for the City of Victoria alone. “This is the beginning, not the end… of a very comprehensive and complicated journey,” says Alto. Some of the suggested priorities for the city include assigning more space for shelters or tiny homes; piloting a storage program to help people who are experiencing homelessness; and a corporate block watch downtown. Many of the recommendations are also for senior levels of government – including a request for the province to reform police budget rules to recognize a municipal government’s “ability to pay” and for the federal government to adopt bail reform policies to hold repeat and violent offenders within institutions longer. It also wants to see system improvements that emphasize rehabilitation and community-based intervention programs to address over-incarceration of visible minorities, Indigenous people, and people of colour. “The goal at some level is to be able to walk up to an average resident and say ‘what’s your experience of the city? Do you feel as if you are in a safer community, the decisions council has been making, the services that the city has been delivering has actually contributed to your sense of well-being?’ And if you can do that randomly with different residents, yeah, then we’ve done our work,” says Alto. If the plan is adopted by Victoria council, city staff would look at the financial and operational impacts and report back in the fall. The item is up for discussion in Committee of the Whole Thursday.
