Prince George City Council will be holding a Community Safety Town Hall in the near future.
Councillor Kyle Sampson put forward a notice of motion calling for the meeting, which was supported by Councillors Tim Bennett and Cori Ramsay.
“I want us to talk about our challenging problems regarding the encampments, mental health, addiction, crime, fires and other social issues with our residents,” Sampson said at last night’s (Monday) meeting.
“The City of Prince George has taken many significant steps to address these challenges, including the ones we just made, and I’ve been proud to be part of those initiatives with my colleagues, and lead some others in fact. Despite increased resources and advocacy, the issues persist, what else should we be doing? We need to ask that question, a small population of our community is creating our greatest challenges and is requiring a lot of our resources, but we have not really taken time to talk to the rest of our community about them.”
The original notice of motion called for the meeting to happen on May 1st, but it was changed to in the month of May because of the short turnaround time.
Mayor Simon Yu added he would like to see more town hall meetings, not just for public safety.
“There is no way, no way that one town hall is going to address this entire city, we have to think beyond this,” added Councillor Susan Scott.
“We have to think about ongoing communication, ongoing town halls, ongoing connection with the people in Prince George.”
Council also approved a budget of up to $20,000 from the Council Contingency Fund for direct expenses such as venue and advertising.
In addition, the motion also included a follow up workshop and a report back to council with actionable items.
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