Downtown Prince George was the topic of several questions during last night’s (Wednesday) Mayoral Candidates Forum at the Prince George Public Library.
During the forum, each of the six mayoral candidates was given one minute to answer several questions from the community.
Three of the questions were focused on downtown issues.
The first question related to the downtown was ‘what would you do to address the social issues in downtown Prince George.’
Current Prince George City Councillor Terri McConnachie was the first to answer the question.
She said we need to listen to each other, and pledged to work head-on on the issue.
Lisa Mitchell, who has 15 years of experience as a legal secretary, said the city is failing businesses in the downtown core.
“They’re not being protected, we need to address this issue,” she said.
“The way we’re going to address it is we’re going to have to go down, talk to these people, and we’re going to have to find out what their issues are because there is more than one issue.”
She said everyone needs to go out as a community and talk to people downtown, find out what their issues are, get them the help that they need, and “we can get back to the community that we want downtown instead of zombie-land.”
Roy Stewart and Adam Hyatt agreed that patrols need to be increased in downtown.
Hyatt also said he would convert the youth custody centre into a mental health and rehab facility.
“I received confirmation from the Ministry of Children and Families there’s an average of two inmates in that 60-bed facility,” he explained.
Local Business Owner Christopher Wood said he would enact the emergency housing protocols that were enacted during the wildfires.
“Will this change anything? No. Would it allow us to measure the problem and the first thing that we have learned about performance and accountability, is if we measure it, it will get done,’ he said.
Addressing crime Wood added that “we have to start at the top, and remove the problems of crime in our own city council.”
Simon Yu, a Structural engineer, said we need to give people a place to sleep, and says he believes we have the resources available.
The next question asked the candidates what they would do to mitigate overdose deaths in Prince George.
Mitchell got a bit personal with her answer, revealing her nephew died this past summer and said “we have to give tough love.”
“I think we have to stop enabling these people,” she said.
“I think of my nephew and I go, ‘what a stupid waste, what a stupid waste of a life, and had someone been there to say ‘you’re doing something wrong’ that might have saved his life.”
Stewart agreed with Mitchell, saying letting people kill themselves is not reasonable or safe for anybody.
Wood advocated for education, safe injection sites, and safe supplies during his chance to speak.
Yu said he would like to provide youth with recreation opportunities to prevent people from starting drugs in the first place.
“We need to find the people selling these drugs, we need to put them away,” he added.
“We need to find out if this is a mental issue, or is this a drug issue, I think they’re intertwined.”
Hyatt and McConnachie agreed with Yu, saying we need to get to the root cause of the reason people use drugs and address those.
The final question related to downtown all six candidates got to answer was what their vision was for the future of the downtown core.
Stewart said he would want to develop downtown, specifically a performing arts centre, as well as more convention facilities.
“I think we can do that without much problem, we’ve been planning this for years,” he said.
McConnachie agreed, saying there’s an incredible opportunity for development downtown.
Mitchell said she would take more of a ‘fix it up’ approach.
‘I think we need to refurbish, I don’t think to spend crazy amounts of money,” she said.
“We have a very good structure downtown, we need to clean it up. We need to get some bars off windows and maybe spit-shine some buildings.”
Hyatt and Yu said they want to bring more business downtown.
“I’d like to encourage local, small businesses, and some of the ones we have there, support them and try to bring in some new ones,” Hyatt said.
Wood disagreed, saying we should be decentralizing downtown.
“We must take our commercial entities that do not want to be downtown because of the social issues, and move them around,” Wood explained.
“I wish to be able to offer the small businesses of this town a $40,000 loan from the city to be able to facilitate that.”
He said this would open more room for housing downtown.
Other questions included what programs the candidates would introduce to help promote education and remembrance of residential schools, how they would ensure city hall would be transparent with spending, and how they would protect renters.
The next All-Candidates forum will take place on Saturday at UNBC’s Canfor Theatre at 1:00 p.m.