ROB MURRAY: I want to talk a little bit about the Safe Park Program. This is the opportunity to try to have a creative solution to “Vanmore”. I live in the Eagleview Village area and I received a letter not too long ago about one of the proposed sites for Safe Park, apparently, which is the, Elk Run Ball Diamonds parking lot. There are a lot of community concerns – I know this letter has gone out to at least 700 households in the area regarding whether it’s an appropriate location and whether the neighborhood was properly consulted. I’m just wondering what to take away from this letter and where things are at with Safe Park right now.

MAYOR JOHN BORROWMAN: it’s unfortunate that whoever initiated that letter didn’t talk to the town beforehand because we might’ve avoided a lot of angst and grief in the community. Firstly, the locations haven’t been approved. Administration has developed a list of criteria that they would use to assess various locations and the Elk Run lot doesn’t meet the criteria. That’s not one of the locations that administration wants to consider. The Safe Park site selection process will consider a number of factors, things like public health directives, traffic flow, access to central resources, perception of community safety, and program logistics. Community safety is a key consideration in the program development, and that includes the safety of neighborhood residents and program participants. It will require the participants to register and then provide proof of employment. If people are not a good fit for the Safe Park program they’ll be supported by other programs or resources. There are a lot of checks and balances in the planning. As a society, we have to do better than we’ve done in the past at managing a number of housing situations, and this is one of them. I get really disappointed by people in general who talk about “those people”, talk about people that are living a different lifestyle than you choose as “those people”, as though there’s something inherently wrong with “those people.” We’re all part of this community and we should be wanting to look after them.

TANYA FOUBERT: When the Safe Park program came up in the budget discussions I did a story about it coming back to the community, but I don’t think I touched on the fact that it was coming back to Council and that the locations hadn’t been finalized. There were locations discussed a year ago when COVID was going on, so it didn’t really move forward. We all need to be aware that when we see discussions in our community about things that are speculative and that could easily be answered by just picking up the phone, that’s a bit of a manipulation. If you don’t know, you find out. I look forward to this coming back to council and to be able to put out accurate information around what this program actually is and what is moving forward.

RM: When is it coming back to Council, Mayor Borrowman?

JB: It’s going to be at the next council meeting on April 6th, and to what you’re talking about Tanya – the Town depends on a strong and informed press. We can’t be the only source of information. We try hard, we have a dynamite communications staff and we use a number of different tools for messaging on issues, but we count on the newspaper to be sharing that, and the radio as well. It’s so easy to get information from the Town. I’m amazed at how sometimes people just don’t bother even trying to get information from the Town.

Filed under: Canmore, Mayor John Borrowman, Mountain Insider, Vanmore