City council carries second reading of alleyway bylaw

He noted Prince Albert and the Town of Nipawin also use the bylaw. Nipawin in particular has seen about a 50-per-cent reduction of people accessing back alleys overnight as a result.

“We [North Battleford RCMP] are very supportive of it,” Gilbert said.

He noted the city could look at its own numbers at a later date if the bylaw is implemented.

“We can access data down the road,” he said.

Gilbert believes the bylaw can be another tool to help reduce crime.

“I see this bylaw as an extension,” he said. “You don’t know if it will be successful. It’s important to make an effort.”

City Clerk Stacey Hadley said council received a letter from a citizen who was worried the bylaw might make potential criminals move into the path of innocent individuals instead if they can’t access the alleyways. She also received some voicemails – some for, some against. As well, Hadley read a letter from the city’s Community Safety Officers (CSOs) unit commander, Jerry Koliniak, who supported the bylaw.

Council voted in favour of the bylaw in the second reading, with only Coun. Kent Lindgren opposed. It had previously been carried in the first reading.

“For me, there are still some lingering questions that need to be answered,” Lindgren said following council. “I think it’s a new idea, a new approach, and for that, I think it’s good to question things, and good to provide some of those outside perspectives that are not necessarily from our CSO or RCMP, but more from a community perspective of when we are controlling people’s movement in our community. That can have a big impact, be it good or be it bad.”

He hopes to see more discussion on the issue.

Mayor David Gillan who favoured the bylaw, believes there might be enough potential benefits with the proposal that most councillors supported it.

“There is always a difference of opinions,” he said. “But, overall I think the majority of council feels that this is an approach that we hope is effective. We have discussed tonight a mechanism to review this. That motion will come to council at a later date to discuss how long before we are going to re-evaluate this…. over a reasonable period of time.”

Gillan said the majority of council still feels this is a reasonable bylaw to try to deter “some of the nefarious activity” that does occur in city alleys because they are dimly lit. There are a lot of garages that have access to alleys.

“Sometimes it is a place that people do like to do some of those [nefarious] activities, which we’re trying to curb with this bylaw…,” he added. “We don’t have a crystal ball, but we hope we’re making the right choices, the elected people, to lead this city to try to enact laws we think are for the betterment of the majority of the people.”

Council also discussed the importance of making sure the bylaw isn’t used to profile any groups of people when it is enforced.

At a future meeting, council will vote on the third reading of the bylaw, and also a separate motion to set a time period to review the impact of the bylaw after it has been implemented for a while, if it does pass.

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Angela.Brown@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow

by Angela Brown

City council carries second reading of alleyway bylaw

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