Beautiful community safety brochure for council

Ok, I’m being a bit tongue in cheek with the title. Not only is the Community Well-Being and Safety Plan a bit long to be a brochure, it doesn’t style itself as mere marketing. Unfortunately is also, in my opinion, not a plan. It’s a nice looking report that does have good information on root causes and issues that need to be addressed. It also has a lot of ‘aspirational’ objectives (which the report calls “Strategic Goals”).

What is woefully lacking is anything resembling concrete actions, with one exception. There is a plan to have a plan for the ‘MHA’ (Mental Health and Addictions) piece in 3-4 years time. Hrmmm…

In any event the so-called plan will no doubt be passed by council because the province has mandated that by July 2021 every municipality has to have a community well-being and safety plan in place, so there is no opportunity to replace this deficient one.

I can only hope that members of council will speak up and insist on a better plan with actual action items, and benchmarks at which it can be said whether there is success for failure.

I don’t just mean having a measure, but having an idea of the range of the measures that is normal fluctuation, and at what point the actions of council and other organizations is actually improving (for failing to improve) the situation.

This pretty document, sadly doesn’t look like it will actually lead to concrete action.

Time will tell if I’m too much a pessimist, but history does not point that direction.

Addendum:

Mayor Stewart Strathearn came back with a well though out, and very positive response. I am impressed, as I was rather cranky when I wrote both the letter and the post, and appreciate the Mayor’s positivity, and it makes me hopeful that we will in fact see real results from this plan.