City of Powell River Council has voted to allow a temporary use permit for the Community Resource Centre to be used as an emergency weather response shelter on nights when there are freezing or extreme weather conditions.
At a special meeting on January 2, councillors overturned a decision made at the December 21 council meeting that denied the permit. On December 21, six council members were present because councillor Cindy Elliott was away on leave. The vote to allow the temporary use permit was tied, meaning the motion failed.
At the special council meeting, a motion was brought forward by several councillors to reconsider the failed motion from December 21. The motion to reconsider passed, with councillors George Doubt, Earl Almeida, Trina Isakson, Rob Southcott and Cindy Elliott in favour.
Councillors then considered the motion, which is that temporary use permit 011 to allow non-commercial short-term overnight accommodation use to support operation of an emergency weather response centre, until April 15, at 4752 Joyce Avenue be issued. The permit is subject to the applicant addressing all deficiencies related to life safety conditions to the satisfaction of the fire chief and chief building official, and updating the good neighbour agreement for 4746 Joyce Avenue to include 4752 Joyce Avenue, and providing a copy to the director of planning services for review.
Doubt said he thought the issue should be brought back to council for some sober second thought. Correspondence had been received from Lift Community Services, the organization that wants to operate the shelter, about some solutions to make things better in the neighbourhood, he added.
Approving the temporary use permit would be a positive thing and make the community better, said Doubt.
Site security
Mayor Ron Woznow said there had previously been a motion before council for Lift to provide security at the site and it was defeated. The mayor added that council had heard from Dr. Ashok Varma, whose neighbouring dental office has been affected by the existing overnight shelter adjacent to the Community Resource Centre. Woznow said for a small amount of money, Lift could have come to the table and said they understand the importance of this issue.
“There is no rationale for approving this,” said Woznow. “Lift has a simple solution, and it can come back and say it will do what is reasonable and there will be security.”
Almeida said he had read emails received from the community and the comments from Varma. He said the issue being discussed was only in relation to the extreme weather shelter response program. He said his guess is that an emergency shelter would have been activated 10 to 20 times in 2023.
“If we were to approve security, it would be focused only on that small percentage of days,” said Almeida. “Even if we had security on those days the weather shelter was in operation, those are days that people are going to want to be inside anyway. The chances of incidents happening in the community are probably reduced.”
Elliott said her thoughts were in line with Almeida. She said an extreme weather shelter is not the same as one that is open every day. She said the need for security is for the everyday facility and she doesn’t want extreme cold weather facilities to be held hostage by ongoing needs.
“We need to address those ongoing needs and I don’t think this is the place to do it,” said Elliott. “I support the extreme weather shelter permit and I support further ongoing discussions on how to improve our situation. I don’t want people to have nowhere to go in extreme cold weather.”
Councillor Jim Palm said for the past couple of years, Varma has been experiencing problems as a result of the full-time Lift facility adjacent to his office.
“We made a mistake the first time around when we didn’t ask for overnight security for that facility,” said Palm. “I see us repeating the same mistake a second time here today if we were to accept an extension into the Community Resource Centre for further overnights without that security in the area.
“It’s a safety issue. It is not a monetary issue. It comes down to safety first and that is not being met.”
Palm said he went into the centre and felt unsafe. He added that Lift has a reserve fund of $488,000, which could be used for security.
Council voted to allow the emergency weather response centre, with Almeida, Isakson, Doubt, Southcott and Elliott in favour.
