Former city councillor and local businessman Evert Botha will host a community forum on Monday. (file photo/paNOW)

By Susan McNeil

City Hall

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A local businessman and former councilor is organizing a community meeting to help formalize the major issues in Prince Albert and make sure the message gets to the right people.

Evert Botha, who was not re-elected in the last general election, said that there needs to be more cohesiveness in the message residents, businesses and groups send to government. Botha and others have arranged a forum to help that happen.

“The purpose of the meeting is to create a platform for residents to come and speak and speak their mind,” Botha said.

In the last two years, he has talked to a lot of concerned groups and people and said there is a multitude of topics to be discussed, such as zoning, development or policing, and bylaw issues.

“We keep calling bylaw, we keep calling police and we keep hitting walls on a lot of things,” said Botha.

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He said he has been asked to host the forum for residents and businesses to discuss their concerns and then pass the information on to various governments.

The first meeting of what has been named the Prince Albert Business and Residents Advocacy Group will be on Monday at the Exhibition Association at six pm.

He is inviting all groups to come out and air concerns, with an eye on the fact that the city is about to start its budget process as will the provincial and federal governments.

Botha hopes to send one cohesive message to all three levels of government that represents the concerns of the community.

“This is open to all to communicate with the elected, with each other and to work toward a better community for all,” he said.

The next step, once the meeting has happened, is to formally incorporate the advocacy group in order to be able to continue its mission.

Botha is a former councilor, but has made presentations as a citizen as well and said the process can seem to discourage people from approaching council to talk about concerns.

“I would like to ensure that if something is on the agenda for city council or even for the provincial government, that we have more engaged residents, businesses, and organizations that can work toward for a common good for the community and a common good for all,” said Botha.

Crime has been a community priority for Prince Albert for years as have problems with homelessness.

It seems that more time is spent and there is more delay and more referrals on issues such as homelessness, issues, addictions and crime, Botha said, but that other issues also affect taxpayers and affect them all.

Botha said he has had many people tell him that they feel the process involving city council is unnecessarily delayed.

“Why can’t decisions be made at a council meeting? Why does there need to be additional calls made for additional information when we know homelessness is a problem,” he said.

Organizers will take notes and compile them in order to forward them to the right government.

This year’s budgets have already been drafted and will start public deliberations soon so it may be too late to impact those decisions, but they can be prepared for the next round.

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com