By Cecilia Nasmith/Northumberland 89.7 FM/Today’s Northumberland
On Wednesday night, Carol Leighton made her second appearance before Cobourg council out of concern for the drug use in the washrooms at the municipal bus shelter and washroom at 35 Albert St., and she said she’s far less naive this time around.
It all seemed to spin out of control after that catastrophic snowstorm two years ago, when the building was designated an emergency shelter with volunteers to supervise,
“At least 20 people and their dog occupied that shelter for two days and two nights,” Leighton said, many of them using illegal drugs in clear sight of the volunteers. When the storm cleared, it took a number of police and bylaw officers to eject the people and their belongings.
For a time, the building was kept locked and two port-a-potties were brought in – structures that quickly became shelter space for more illegal drug use. Now that the facilities have been reopened, Leighton said, “they have become large, warm and private environments for an illegal drug user to camp out there for hours.”
And when they leave, the paraphernalia are left behind.
She recalled the time paramedics arrived for an apparent overdose case and found the doors locked.
They had to wait for someone from the town to come and open the doors – whereupon the apparent victim grabbed his bike and went on his way.
“What a waste of emergency services!” she declared.
“If the intention is to have a safe, acceptable facility for the general public to relieve itself, they have failed.”
The building is a handy place for users to gather, where their dealers can conveniently find them – dealers who are sometimes armed, just feet away from families using Rotary Park.
“It seems like we are placing less value on the rights of 99.99% of the community in favour of the few who have no incentive to follow the rules.”
Leighton lives in a condominium that faces that park and, in her estimation, accounts for $400,000 a year in tax revenue, many of whom came from Toronto to invest their life savings in new homes in what they thought would be a quaint community. What they got was multiple bike thefts, increased insurance premiums and $100,000 in costs for a new security-camera system.
Agitated, and at times close to tears, she denounced neighbouring communities for failing to set up homeless shelters and leaving Cobourg to deal with the problem – though she did praise the efforts of Cobourg police to deal with these situations when they are called in.
In the end, she called for several specific actions – for police and bylaw officials to provide “continual” monitoring of the building, to require security staff hired for the shelter at 310 Division St. to pay regular visits to the building, and to ensure police and ambulance personnel have a key to that shelter in case they have to enter.
Council passed a motion to implement these actions and to pass along her presentation to the Cobourg Police Services Board and Chief Paul VandeGraaf, as well as to refer it to staff for a report back.
Municipal Clerk Brent Larmer said it’s no problem to provide that key, and that bylaw staff already are making efforts to be there more frequently – after all, they are headquartered in the Market Building just steps away.
Updates have been made the Nuisance Bylaw, Larmer added, strengthening the powers of the bylaw officers in terms of such things as loitering and littering
