North Battleford city council is implementing the new Community Safety and Well-Being Plan recently completed. (file photo/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

Regional approach

City adopts new community safety and well-being plan

Mar 26, 2024 | 3:47 PM

North Battleford city council formally adopted the city’s new community safety and well-being (CSWB) plan at its meeting Monday night.

The aim of the plan, prepared by MNP, covering 2024 to 2028, is to create a safer and healthier community.

A copy of the plan is available through the city’s website .

The city has a number of significant goals outlined as it puts the document into action. It received support from the province to create the plan, an update to its former Community Safety Plan.

In the coming year, the city will need to hire a CSWB coordinator to work on the project. It will also aim to establish what’s called a “sobering centre” and a 24-hour drop-in centre. A needs-assessment of the housing demand in the community will also be completed. Youth will be educated on what services and programs they can access.

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“The plan recommends creating a steering committee to provide high-level strategic leadership, coordination, and monitoring of the plan’s goals, objectives and outcomes, and includes membership from leaders from all the regional communities,” City Manager Randy Patrick said in his report.

The steering committee will include representatives from the City of North Battleford, the Town of North Battleford, the RM of North Battleford, the RM of Battle River, nine area First Nations, the Battlefords Regional Community Coalition, the Battlefords Agency Tribal Chiefs, and the Battlefords Tribal Council.

A community safety and well-being working group will also be established to focus on seven separate components of health and wellbeing, including education, physical and mental health, and policing and community safety.

“There is a lot of work that has to be done in there, but it gives us a road-map of going forward,” Mayor David Gillan said. “We want to engage our community. It’s not just a City of North Battleford initiative. We’re going to be putting together a steering group, a working group, trying to get some funding for a resource, someone who can work [on this initiative] in our community all the time…”

The mayor added council is pleased with the finished report.

“When we put the report together with the consultant, we got together a lot of the community in focus groups and sessions to really draw out: ‘Where do we see the gaps, where do we see the needs in our community, what do we need to do to move forward?’ So the recommendations that are in that report are a direct result of, not a consultant flying in here and telling us how to do things, but [one] coming in here and facilitating discussion within our community. That’s what’s important.”

Gillan noted the project was conducted with feedback from the whole community, taking a regional approach.

“Our region is just as important as our city because we all want to have healthy communities,” he said.

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angela.brown@pattisonmedia.com

On X: @battlefordsNOW