There are many issues plaguing the city which they must contend with regularly and some of it never ends like snow removal, infrastructure upgrades and the like.
Mostly, the city addresses these in a timely manner and sometimes finds itself floundering, as in the recent snowstorm at the start of the year. Overall, the city does a decent job of reporting on issues but I have a couple of questions for the mayor and city council that nobody seems to want to touch or answer.
First off, there is a fairly significant amount of street walkers that seem to be out 24/7. There is a large group that hangs out at the benches at 20th Avenue and Spruce Street at all hours of the day with sometimes as many as 20 people congregating there and turning the benches into makeshift homeless shelters. Sometimes they are good, sometimes they swarm you and sometimes they may mean to do you harm. It can be quite distressing especially for the average person who stops at the lights there or wants to cross the street.
Add to that some businesses have given employees training on how to administer NarCan for overdoses as it is so common in the area. My question is why is the city allowing this to happen and is the city doing anything about it or is it ignoring the issue?
Secondly, I went for dinner recently with some friends at one of the restaurants downtown. We had to park some distance away and walk to our destination. All was fine and dandy until after we left it was around 8 p.m. and we had to walk by several large groups of people who were asking for money, for a ride and so on. Several appeared to be impaired and it was uncomfortable walking by and through these groups of people. Some groups were quite large and we definitely did not feel safe at all. With all the money the city has spent on the downtown core over the past several years beautifying, it they still can't seem to fix the issue of large groups hanging around downtown.
This is an ongoing issue that the local government seems to love to skirt around and pretend it doesn't exist because I rarely hear anything being mentioned about it at council meetings or by the city itself.
Dean Soiland
Prince George
