(Today’s Northumberland file photo)
By Cecilia Nasmith/Today’s Northumberland
Two stressors threaten order in Cobourg’s parks and public spaces to the point that money may have to be found to hire additional enforcement resources – the July 4 closing of a drop-in hub and vastly increased tourism.
The discussion came at Wednesday’s council meeting with a notice of motion by Councillor Adam Bureau, calling for renewed and proactive enforcement of the town’s anti-encampment bylaws. Along with enforcement of the 11 p.m. closing of municipal parks and public lands, the motion includes the removal of the two-week requirement for holding individual property and the minimum 48-hour notice to vacate public lands.
Deputy Mayor Nicole Beatty and Councillor Aaron Burchat protested that citizens legitimately use Cobourg parks at all hours, but Municipal Clerk Brent Larmer said that it’s a matter of public safety and liability – after dark, he pointed out, these parks are not well lit. And if an 11 p.m. curfew is on the books, it should be enforced.
Larmer added some surprising statistics that have occurred with Canadians deciding not to travel to the US for their vacations, some of them (in increasing numbers) heading to Cobourg.
“We are seeing a 61% increase in nuisance enforcement and parks patrol. This is 30% of the workload of the bylaw officers,” he said, citing such complaints as blocked driveways.
Larmer also mentioned an increase of 400%-plus in nuisance encampment calls – 26 of them between June 1 and 20, 2024, and 155 for the same period this year.
There was discussion of finding funds to beef up bylaw enforcement on a temporary part-time basis, especially with July 4 looming. This was referred to in a letter from Jenni Frenke, responding to Northumberland County council’s recent vote to discontinue drop-in services at its homeless shelter at 310 Division St. in Cobourg. A Cobourg resident and a street outreach worker in Peterborough, Frenke called the notice of motion “cruel and unjust.
“When you clear an encampment, people have nowhere to go. And soon they won’t be able to go to 310 to receive service, washrooms, water, food, potentially a place to rest,” Frenke wrote.
“It is clear that Cobourg council is trying to run people out of town, which won’t work.”
She shared situations she had encountered in Cobourg and Peterborough – bylaw officials forcibly taking belongings from individuals’ hands as they ran to save them, people losing the bags that held their only ID, parents losing the bags that held the containers for their dead children’s ashes, a wheelchair-bound person mired in the mud and unable to pursue officials making off with their belongings.
“Maybe these seem like extreme examples, they are not,” Frenke insisted.
“They are very typical examples unfortunately for those who are vulnerable and living outside,” she wrote.
“The shelter in Cobourg is about to be inaccessible to those with the highest needs. Where are people supposed to go?”
Councillor Miriam Mutton was uncomfortable with no requirement at all to keep personal property.
“There might be very important documents, there might be some very dear personal possessions. You don’t know the whole story of everyone who might be in that situation,” Mutton said, proposing a 48-hr. hold. Deputy Mayor Beatty made a motion to amend it to one week.
Bureau agreed.
“In the beginning, back in 2022, I put a notice of motion of holding items for two weeks. Having said that, in discussions with Director Larmer, there hasn’t been a lot of people that actually pick their stuff up, and it does take a lot of room,” Bureau said.
He added that his experience of enforcement is that bylaw officers are often helpful – assisting people with picking things up and helping them move along.
However, with the looming July 4 closure of all ground-floor facilities at 310 Division St. – the warming and cooling hub, the showers, the laundry facilities, the lockers, the washrooms – Councillor Bureau remarked, “Things are going to start getting worse.”
