The most recent edition of Terrace City Council gathering for a meeting saw the councillors discuss the soon to be expiring contract that the Joe’s Place homeless shelter on Tetrault Street has with a security company.
Terrace RCMP Commanding Officer Staff Sergeant Michael Bourguignon also appeared at the meeting for the discussion surrounding this subject.
The Ksan Society, who runs the shelter, won’t be getting funding from BC Housing to renew the deal and Staff Sergeant Bourguignon said that the RCMP are expecting their call numbers for that area to drastically increase while also mentioning that the mere presence of a security company can deter illegal activity.
Councillor James Cordeiro had some strong thoughts on BC Housing’s decision to not give out any funds for security;
“I’d like to have a motion entertained that we write to BC Housing and the Minister of Housing and whomever the administration sees fit to CC. Removing Security is ill advised, unappreciated and frankly, not acceptable. I think we have been nothing but accommodating to BC Housing, going back many years. We granted them a significant piece of land with the conditions that they agreed to pay property tax on it, only for them to have it appraised at 0 dollars. I saw the email about Joe’s Place losing their security and it was mentioned that it was never meant to be permanent. That’s not my recollection and granted, I could be mistaken, but they were very clear that they were going to have security there. That was one reason I was not adamantly opposed to it and begrudgingly went along with it. And I don’t appreciate that the City is now going to have to pick up the tab to be their security.”
The motion to write a letter to the Provincial Housing Minister, Christina Boyle and BC Housing about the security funds was eventually put forth and outside of Sarah Zimmerman, who left the room due to her professional services contract with Ksan, everyone else on the Council agreed to it.