City going ahead with new ‘system navigator’ position
Will assist downtown businesses, homeless people
City council voted a final time on Monday to help pay someone to assist people experiencing homelessness downtown.
“The status quo will not go … We need to try new things,” said Coun. Dean Pappas.
The vote was 7-4 in favour of the city offering funding for a threeyear position called the downtown system navigator.
The dissenting votes were from councillors Gary Baldwin, Keith Riel, Andrew Beamer and Don Vassiliadis.
The plan is to set aside $160,000 to help pay the person for the next three years. The Downtown Business Improvement Area association is willing to also contribute up to $15,000 annually for the pilot project.
The idea is to hire what the DBIA calls a “system navigator” to access quick help for people sleeping in storefronts, for example.
City staff recommended against it in a new report, saying there are already more than 40 city caseworkers — plus staff from10 various social agencies in Peterborough — doing the work a system navigator is proposed to do.
Prior to the final vote on Monday, council heard from DBIA chair Michael Gallant, an architect who works downtown at Lett Architects.
Gallant said it may be best to allow the system navigator to work earlymorning hours because that may be when store owners need the assistance most (some may come in to work to find someone sleeping in their front entrance, for example).
He said there needs to be “some nimbleness” in the working hours so the navigator can be effective.
Coun. Lesley Parnell made a friendly amendment to the motion so the system navigator is allowed to work “various hours” — not necessarily nine-to-five.
Parnell said what’s truly needed is “a place to navigate the people to” — a detox centre, for instance — rather than further job positions for people who would help marginalized residents navigate the existing homeless and addiction system.
Council also heard earlier in the evening from Wild Rock co-owner Scott Murison that it’s not just a detox centre needed — after-hours public restrooms would help too.
Murison said he went to the expense and liability of renting a portable toilet for the back parking lot of his store on Charlotte Street because people were using his property to relieve themselves.
Michael Cherney of Cherney Properties said having a system navigator would help reduce the time business owners and police spend trying to help sort out social issues.
But Brian Christoph, a volunteer downtown street advocate who’s running for council in Town Ward in October, reminded councillors that the issue involves vulnerable people.
“It’s a broken city, downtown. Yeah those downtown businesses need help — but so do people on the street,” he said.
Furthermore, Christoph said it wasn’t clear to him as a concerned citizen exactly what a system navigator would do.
“What are the job functions? I have more questions than answers,” he said.
Yet Gallant had explained during his presentation the job would entail collecting data and hearing out business owners who are having trouble doing business downtown in a homelessness and addiction crisis.
“It’s really about communication,” Gallant said, adding that business owners need someone to explain their challenges to and “to be heard.”
That person can then communicate back to downtown business people “in an efficient and proactive way,” Gallant said.
But if the job is a communications role, then the DBIA ought to fund it themselves, said Riel. The councillor called it “a feel-good” type of job position to “appease” business owners and he didn’t think the city ought to fund it.