EPC INACTION UPDATE

[Gerbasi, Jenny]

Dear Friends,

 

After attending EPC this morning I have some less than inspiring Updates on Executive Police Committee’s lack of action:

 

1. Establishment of a poverty action committee…After months of waiting for an indication of an opinion or thought or an inclination to action on the request to work with the Social Planning Council to establish a poverty action committee…the item was again laid over for 30 days.

 

2. On establishing an intergovernmental committee with the province to revisit the idea of a Civilian Police commission at the request of inner city groups, aboriginal organizations, political activists and cyclists, EPC passed a motion to ask for another administrative report on the issue to come back to the Protection and Community Committee in July.   If the report actually does materialize in July we can then send the same motion back to EPC asking them to begin discussions with the province.   A more likely scenario is that the report won’t be ready for the meeting in July.

 

3. Centureventure (the city’s Downtown Development Agency) had it’s  operating grant of $250,000  per year  unceremoniously eliminated when a motion was walked on.   There was no discussion of why this was happening, what  impact this may have on our downtown development agency and what the vision is for CV in the future.

 

 

 

Some points of commonality about all these “decisions” today:

 

1. There has been minimal to no discussion and therefore no one knows if the Mayor and EPC thinks we should take any action at all on the issue of poverty, if they have any concerns at all or wish to act regarding our system of oversight of police policy and actions and no sense of any ideas or plans for our downtown agency.

 

2. Council doesn’t meet in August or October because of the civic election…so these decisions can easily be delayed until after the election at this rate.

 

3. The Mayor and EPC continue to avoid taking any public stand or act on these issues  even though concerned citizens repeatedly have been making the case that these issues are of great concern.  In fact, in spite of the City Summit being heavily weighted with friends and supporters of the Mayor and his staff, the number one issue that came up was revitalizing downtown.

 

 

I encourage citizens to continue to make these efforts to be heard on these and other concerns particularly during the Civic Election Campaign.  These issues ought to be debated and discussed broadly.

 

 

In peace,

Jenny