City council approves funding for lawlessness workshop
City council last Tuesday voted unanimously to fund up to $2,500 from mayor and council’s budget allocation workshop on lawlessness.
Council voted 8-0 on an official business motion by Acting Mayor John Middleton-Hope to approve the funding for the workshop for mid-sized Alberta cities which would be staged on May 2, the day before the Alberta Association of Police Governance Conference & Annual General Meeting which is scheduled for May 3-4 here.
Councillor Jenn Schmidt-Rempel was absent.
“It is important from an advocacy perspective that we take the lead on this,” said Middleton-Hope in response to a question from councillor Jeff Carlson.
“As you’re well aware, we brought this to a number of mayors and their members that they brought to the Alberta
Municipalities this fall. We had conversations with them. This is a municipal government-led initiative. There will be police, there will be commissions, there will be administration invited to attend,” but the initiative is one of advocacy by municipal government, he emphasized.
Carlson said he wasn’t comfortable with putting his hand up with a blank cheque regarding the total costs of hosting such an event.
Upper limits of staffing would be perhaps two for the day working on regular business hours, council was told.
Middleton-Hope told council the term ‘lawlessness’ has caused “some concern or some confusion in some council members’ minds in the past. It is defined as a state of disorder due to a disregard of the law. These behaviours behave criminal, uncontrolled and antisocial behaviours that have a sustained and pervasive impact on communities. This is a term that is widely used by numerous cities and municipalities across this country to describe the condition of their downtown core.
“This is not a made-in-Lethbridge term,” he said.
The workshop is directed at the eight largest mid-sized cities in Alberta with a population of over 50,000 people each with a combined aggregate populace of over 700,000, he said.
“These cities were selected as they are frequently most impacted by displacement of problems from the larger centres without sufficient input into provincial solutions or resources to effectively address these issues, said the Acting Mayor.
He represented the City at the Alberta Municipalities meeting in Edmonton last fall and discussions were held with staff of members of five communities about an appetite for a one-day workshop.
“The response was unanimously positive and the mayors we met with expressed excitement over the opportunity of working with their peers and gratitude that we have taken the lead on co-ordinating the group discussions,” added Middleton-Hope.
“The workshop would be an opportunity to share successes and challenges through presentations dealing with lawless behaviours that we have all been contending with,” he said.