City bureaucrats searching for silver lining

Crime and safety issues along two downtown Kelowna streets aren’t as bad as they used to be in the minds of local residents, municipal officials say.

Only 13% of respondents to a city-sponsored survey said Lawrence Avenue and Leon Avenue are less safe than other Kelowna areas, down from 22% who felt this way three years ago, council heard Monday.

That improvement in public perception was cited by community safety director Darren Caul, who said it “offset” a declining sense of safety through the larger downtown Kelowna area, which for statistical purposes extends as far east as the Capri mall.

This larger downtown area was described as Kelowna’s most unsafe neighbourhood by 41% of survey respondents, up from 31% in a 2019 survey.

“When you take a look at those two metrics together, I submit that there’s virtually no change from a few years ago and I think that the way it’s been presented could lead to a false impression,” Caul said.

City councillors appeared reluctant to weigh into the details of the safety survey, with only a few asking questions about its findings or methodology.

“Clearly the trend is not what we’d like to see,” said Coun. Luke Stack. He asked if the results on Kelowna citizens’ perceptions of crime were similar to what the pollster, Leger, has found in other communities.

Company representatives said comparisons were difficult because similar questions had not been asked recently in other municipalities where Leger has been contracted.

Coun. Maxine De Hart said some aspects of the survey results were “disturbing to me” given what she said was the city’s ongoing efforts to invest more resources and attention to the downtown core.

“We’re doing everything we can, we’ve got this, that, people are out, whatever, and that usually will bring - well, we’re told - that will usually bring down crime, because there’s more people living, working, playing,” De Hart said.

Other survey highlights:

- the number of people who say they’ve been a victim of crime has fallen, from 28% to 25%, in the past three years;

- 96% of residents feel safe in their neighbourhood during the day;

- 52% of crime victims said they hadn’t made a report to RCMP because they’d didn’t feel police could do anything about it.