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HomeMy WebLinkAboutSafe City - 1997-09-05-1- SAFECITY\1997-09-05 SAFE CITY COMMITTEE MINUTES SEPTEMBER 5, 1997 The Safe City Committee held its meeting under the Chairmanship of Councillor Karen Taylor-Harrison with the following members present: Trudy Beaulne, Nancy Brawley, Philip Fernandez, Lirondel Hazlneh, Alan Richardson and Jackie Marsh. Others Present:Brock Stanley, Julie Dean, Bob Arnot and Avril Tanner (minutes). Absent:Councillor Mark Yantzi, Bryan Stortz and Rita Westbrook. ACTIVITY REPORT FOR FUTURE MEETINGS From: September 5, 1997 NAMECOMPLETION DATETO BE DONE Avril TannerNext Meeting – Oct 3/97Contact Lloyd Parkhouse to find out if Re-appointment forms are available for Safe City Committee Members. Councillor Karen Taylor-As soon as possible.Check with Councillor Mark HarrisonYantzi to find out if he would like to Represent the Committee on the Community In Action Planning Committee Julie Dean & Bob ArnotAs soon as possibleMake necessary changes to the Safe City Brochure and forward some copies to Bob Arnot to send to the Community Centres Nancy BrawleyAs soon as possibleLook into scheduling an event for Manulife to help educate them and Welcome them to the Community. -2- ADMINISTRATIVE Councillor Karen Taylor-Harrison started the meeting by thanking Julie Dean and Avril Tanner for their help in promoting Rockway Park by implementing a Porch Lights On campaign. 1. APPROVAL OF SEPTEMBER 5, 1997 AGENDA. A motion was made to approve the Agenda for today with the addition of the following item. 1. Response Team Committee Update Moved By: Alan Richardson Seconded By: Trudy Beaulne CARRIED. 2.APPROVAL OF JULY 8, 1997 MINUTES It was moved to approve the minutes of July 8, 1997. Moved By: Trudy Bealune Seconded By: Alan Richardson CARRIED. 3.RE-APPOINTMENT PROCESS Brock explained that an advertisement would be placed in the K-W Record to indicate that we will be receiving applications for the Membership of the Safe City Committee. It was pointed out that if you wish to be re-appointed to the Committee you must fill out and submit a re-appointment form. Avril will look into seeing if we could have these forms available for the next meeting. Avril Indicated that she would also follow up with those who do not submit forms to ensure that they do not wish to be re-appointed. Appointments to the Safe thth City Committee will be made on November 17 or 24 , 1997. -108- 4.COMMUNITY IN ACTION PROJECT Brock referred to the two documents attached to the agenda and indicated that the first was a letter from Christiane Sadeler requesting that we send a staff member or Councillor to sit on the Community In Action Planning Committee. He also mentioned that normally he would have sent Julie Dean however indicated that she will be leaving us for a year and so he felt it would be best if the committee made the decision of who to send to the meetings. It was noted that the appointed person would have to attend approximately 2 meetings and would have to review entries received. No one volunteered at the meeting and so it was suggested that Councillor Karen Taylor-Harrison would check with Councillor Mark Yantzi to find out if he would be able to act as our representative. It was also pointed out that there would be a possible gap of 3-4 months when Julie leaves. 5.CREATING SAFER COMMUNITIES Julie referred to the Advertisement attached to the agenda and indicated that this item was added to the agenda as an information item. She also indicated that Carolyn Whitzman and Tom McKay would be speaking at this event. 6.INFORMATION ITEM FROM CITY OF SCARBOROUGH Brock passed around a brochure for the committee to review and indicated that the document was put together by the City of Scarborough to give out to developers and builders to alert them to specific issues when designing or building new buildings. He indicated that this information was included in the Urban Design Guidelines and he would like to see a document like this put together for the City of Kitchener. 7.BROCHURE Julie Dean circulated a revised version of the Safe City Brochure for everyone to review and indicated the new items on the brochure. It was suggested that if there were any new programs that should be included on the brochure and Julie indicated that there may be a problem with adding more information as -109- there really was not much room for more information. Another suggestion was made that we should give copies of the brochure to the Community Centres for display. It was also added that we could send some to Banks, Trust Companies, Hospitals, Buses, Transit Terminals and have some available at the information desk at City Hall. It was mentioned that some consideration should be given to this in order to determine which would be the best way to circulate the brochure to as many people as possible. After some discussion it was decided that we would place Avril’s phone number on the front of the brochure in case anyone wanted to contact us for information. This will be reviewed at a later date if it is causing a problem with Avril’s workload. It was also decided that Julie would make sure that she forwarded some of the revised copies of the brochure to Bob Arnot to make sure that the Community Centres had copies to hand out. WORKING GROUP REPORTS 1.LIGHTING WORKING GROUP REPORT Julie explained that the tender documents for the luminars, poles and bases are with the Purchasing Department and that we are looking to hear back by the end of the month if they go to tender next week as planned. Therefore there will have to be a Lighting Working Group meeting called some time this month to make some decisions. She also indicated that some of the criteria had been changed due to the fact that manufacturers were unable do some of the criteria. The Ontario Street Lighting will not be completed this year as there would have to be a temporary Lighting System in place and so this project will be completed in the Spring of next year instead. We are still trying to go ahead with the project on King Street and are hoping to have 2 blocks completed before the end of the year. Julie did indicate that Manulife will be bringing in approximately another 300 people into the Downtown and that all 300 will be here by the end of October and there is still some concern with the safety of these people. The parking lot at Duke, Eby and Cedar Streets will be used by these people during the day, evening and weekends. During this discussion the following suggestions were made in hopes to help dispel myths and educate people: -110- Have Jackie Marsh (representing Citizens on Patrol) speak to these individuals, It was mentioned that she and Rita Westbrook had spoken to the first group. They gave out welcome packages and talked about perception versus the area. The link pertaining to lighting along Eby Street should also be looked at to help with the parking lot and maybe we can look at creating a partnership with Manulife to look into this matter. If we can dispel these myths it will help the downtown survive, as the people will spend money in the downtown. Once the area looks safer with better lighting it will help with the perception of the downtown as well. It was mentioned that this is an opportunity to do something very positive and we should develop a group to look at creating a display, this should include a representative from the specific company (in this case Manulife). We need to show these people we care. Set up an open house or display area and hand out any information that is available on the downtown. Transit should be involved too, show them specific walking and jogging routes and what’s available in the area. It was also mentioned that the same type of situation will be arising at the Galleria, maybe we should set up a group of people to deal with situations like this that can give education classes and welcome people to the downtown. This would be an ongoing project. After this discussion it was decided that a team be struck to schedule a social event like a barbecue and get the businesses in the area to be involved. We can then use this as an opportunity to educate people, promote the downtown and Welcome them to the Community. It was also suggested that this will be an ongoing project and should include working with one of the Human Resources representatives from the specific Business. This committee will be the Research and Education Working Group and consist of the following people: Nancy Brawley, Philip Fernandez, Lirondel Hazlneh, someone from Parks & Rec and Rita Westbrook if she wishes. Nancy Brawley requested that we add an agenda item to the next meetings agenda to review the Panhandling Brochure that is being developed. Julie Dean indicated that she met with John MacDonald and Traffic and Parking pertaining to the parking lot that Manulife Employees will be using. Parking indicated that they currently do not have any money budgeted for this type of project however indicated that they would look at opening a new capital account to deal with situations like this. Julie indicated that Parking was not aware of the fact that Manulife Employees would be using the parking lot during evening hours and weekends. Julie asked Philip if he thought there was a way we could look into creating a partnership with Manulife to help cover some of the costs. It was indicated that we could contact the Regional Manager and inquire about this. Julie reminded the committee that we did approve the go ahead for John MacDonald to -111- complete the design details and that they should be completed by the end of the month and we will have a better idea of the costs involved at that time. This project will also enable us to set up a long term plan for upgrading other parking lots as well. We will need to determine which parking lots are unsafe and used on odd hours to set up a priority list of which parking lots will be upgraded first. It was indicated that any information that would help with setting up this priority list should be forwarded to Julie by the next meeting. It was also added that this priority list would only include municipally owned parking lots. Julie mentioned that she had asked Mapping & Graphic Services to start thinking about a Porch Lights On Poster that will hopefully be developed before our next meeting. She also mentioned that she will try to schedule a Lighting Working Group Meeting once the tenders have been received, this meeting will most likely be towards the end of the month. 2.PRIORITY WORKING GROUP REPORT Brock referred to the document entitled “DAC Initiatives” that was attached to the agenda and indicated that they were forwarded to us to review and comment on. Julie indicated that she responded to the initiatives and would like the committee to review her responses. She did mention however that a few initiatives were forwarded to this committee that she did not feel belonged to us. The committee felt that items 17, 18 and 19 should state that we will not be dealing with these items directly, however, if the situation arose we may look into it further. Item #2 – It was suggested that we send this item to Transit and indicate that we will send a representative from the Safe City Committee to help deal with the issue. We should also point out that this initiative is on our work schedule and is slotted to be looked at in the year 2000. It was recommended that item #13 under Safety be deleted from the priority list. The Committee was in agreement with Julie Dean’s responses. 3.PROPOSAL WRITING WORKING GROUP REPORT It was explained that this working group was started to write proposals for Grants from the Federal Government or other agencies. Brock indicated that they responded quickly to a proposal and it was submitted at the end of July. It indicated that we would like to formulate an ongoing Community Audit Program within the City. The projected costs involved for the project would be approximately $87,000.00. Brock indicated that Safe City Committee, Community Development would give some money towards the project and that they would like to obtain some Corporate Sponsor funding and donations in kind, including Safe City -112- Co-ordinator, Clerical Assistance, the cost of phones and computers would be donated and make up part of the $87,000.00. It was indicated that the Federal Government would not be making any decisions for a while. Julie inquired, given the fact that they have extended the deadline, whether there were any other projects the committee felt we should submit an application for. It was suggested that we resubmit the original application and make it more presentable by completing the form on the computer. Brock indicated that he and Avril would look at redoing the submission on the computer and making it look more appealing. It was also pointed out that out of all the submissions made so far we were contributing the most amount of money and asking for the least in the form of a grant. Alan Richardson made a motion that we should include attendance records with the re- appointment applications for the Committee Members who wish to be re-appointed to the Committee. Moved By: Alan Richardson Seconded By: Trudy Beaulne CARRIED. OTHER BUSINESS 1.RESPONSE TEAM COMMITTEE Trudy Beaulne gave an update of what the committee is doing to date and invited any members from the Safe City Committee to be on the committee. They just have to contact her if they would like to help in any way. (More information is attached to the minutes – document entitled “Citizens Responding to Citizens”). It was suggested that we remove the future agenda item for Responding Procedure for Current Events as this committee would be dealing with these types of issues. WEB PAGE FOR SAFE CITY COMMITTEE Jackie Marsh asked if Citizens on Patrol could have a link included on the Web Page for Safe City Committee when it was developed. -113- Meeting adjourned: 10:00 a.m. A. Tanner