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Council approves contentious Crescent Acres care home

Feb 14, 2017 | 6:44 AM

A new residential care home will be moving into Ward 5, in spite of protests from the neighbourhood.

City council approved the plan from the Native Co-ordination Council (NCC) to purchase a property on Hadley Rd., for the purposes of opening a residential care home for five children between the ages of nine and 12.

The decision came down to a vote, which ended 4-3 in favour of the plan.

Keith Garrison, a resident in the area, spoke on behalf of those who opposed the home. He said he and his neighbours are not opposed to group homes or having more children in the area, it was the process and lack of information he was concerned with.

“I want to see them move into a neighbourhood that welcomes them, and we can,” he said after the vote. “I think if we all work together, there are still positives that can come of this.”

Linda Douglas, program director for Children’s Haven, the group that will oversee the home, was not originally on the agenda as a speaker, but Mayor Dionne asked her to take questions from council and she agreed.

She was upfront in clarifying the concerns of residents and council, and answering why the specific property in question was deemed the best fit. Both residents in attendance, and councillors, claimed Douglas informed a community meeting the house was appropriate because it had five bedrooms on one floor, a claim Douglas denied. She said five bedrooms on one floor would have been ideal, but difficult to find anywhere in the city.

Another concern voiced by residents at the meeting was the value of the property the NCC would be purchasing with funding from the ministry of social services. The home in question has a sale price of around $500,000, and there are other homes in other areas with a lower price tag.

“Yes, we could have bought a home for about $350,000,” Douglas said. “We probably, I know we would have had to gut it, this home is move in ready.”

Mayor Greg Dionne voted against the proposal, but said it wasn’t the job of council to pick sides in an issue like this.

“We’re a community and we have to work together to make our community better,” Dionne said before the vote.

Safe injection sites and engine idling discussed

Also at Monday’s meeting, council voted to hold off on approving an amendment to the city’s Traffic bylaw which would raise the fine for leaving your vehicle running and unattended from $25 to $100. Council will not approve the fine increase until a report is forwarded to the Board of Police Commissioners.

Ward 3 Coun. Evert Botha presented a motion to explore the opening of a safe injection site in the city. The motion called for forwarding correspondence to the provincial ministries of health, justice and social services, and Health Canada, to encourage a greater integration of harm reduction services in the city and health region. Only two supervised injection sites currently exist in Canada, both in Vancouver, while other jurisdictions have received approval from the federal government to also open facilities of their own.

 

shane.oneill@paNOW.com

On Twitter: @stroneill 

Editor’s Note: This story was edited for clarification at 5:08 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2017.