Enraged Speakers Raise the Temperature at County Meeting
Today’s Northumberland file photo
By Cecilia Nasmith/Today’s Northumberland
About half of the seven speakers who addressed Northumberland County council’s Social Services Committee meeting Wednesday exhibited rage at the shelter at 310 Division St. in Cobourg.
Vivian Vandenhazel lived near the Brookside encampment, but said that these problems did not cease to exist when the encampment was ended – they just moved a few blocks west.
“It’s time for the County of Northumberland to contribute financially to the Town of Cobourg policing and bylaw costs, as the majority of their time is focused on enforcement in the vicinity of 310 Division St.,” she demanded.
Vandenhazel also urged county councillors from outside Cobourg to drive into town and walk in the vicinity of the downtown.
“You need to see what you have done to our town,” she said.
The temperature rose appreciatively two speakers later, when James Bisson stalked to the speaker’s chair to declare the shelter “a joke.
“You people sit up here and laud it over all of us here in Cobourg that you’re doing such a fantastic job, and this is what we get?
“Why don’t any of you mayors try it yourself and take on this shelter in your own town? Fifty per cent of the people who are homeless in Northumberland come from somewhere else.”
Later in the meeting, a staff report containing statistics for actual Transition House usage clarified that 75% of users came from Northumberland and, of that contingent, 72% came from Cobourg. Warden Brian Ostrander estimated that this works out to about 54% of shelter users coming from Cobourg.
“When are you going to get rid of Transition House? Now they are going to get unionized on top of that?” Bisson thundered.
“When are you going to give us some relief and take it seriously about the chaos that’s happening in our town?”
He closed by making a commitment – “this shelter will either work or shut down. We cannot continue to have this level of chaos in Cobourg. No. Not on my watch.”
