Downtown Prince George nearly doubled its budget aimed at keeping downtown clean and safe in 2022.
Colleen Van Mook, executive director of the downtown business organization, said the cost of organization’s downtown clean up and safety programs has grown from $123,677 in 2021 to $200,204 in 2022, during a presentation to city council. Clean up and safety efforts now make up 32 per cent of Downtown Prince George's total annual budget.
“When I started the role (in 2016) we had the Brain Injured Group working with us. They were going out three mornings a week, cleaning up litter on the curbs and the street,” Van Mook said. “Well now, in 2022, we have them going out every weekday morning and every weekday afternoon.”
In addition, workers from the Drug Awareness Recovery Team (DART) are out seven days a week “to clean the back alleys of debris and needles,” she said.
Downtown Prince George has had to pay for a garbage bin to be located downtown because the DART team were filling their truck with several loads each day, and it was too time consuming to drive up to the landfill multiple times each day to empty it, she added.
ACME, a specialized cleaning company, also goes out seven days a week to clean up “biohazards” left on the streets and around buildings downtown, she said.
“I think you get what a biohazard is,” Van Mook told council. “With summer we do find we have more to clean up.”
The agency also worked with the Prince George Activator Society to remove, or at least cover graffiti downtown, Van Mook said, but that relationship ended and the group is looking for new alternatives to address graffiti downtown.
In 2022, the agency also provided seven “broken windows grants” of up to $500 each to businesses which suffered from vandalism, and five grants of $500 each to businesses upgrading their security with features such as gates and fences.
“It (vandalism) was happening so many times it was becoming difficult to them to secure insurance,” Van Mook said.
Coun. Garth Frizzell said the organization’s work, funded primarily a special tax levy on downtown businesses, benefits all the city’s residents.
“Your organization does really impeccable work, keeping our downtown clean and safe, and busy and inviting,” Coun. Cori Ramsay said. “And a lot of that work is really invisible. A lot of people don’t see it, because they see the end result of it being clean.”
