By Cecilia Nasmith/Today’s Northumberland
Meeting in emergency session, Northumberland County council has voted to locate this winter’s overnight warming room in council chambers at 555 Courthouse Rd., Cobourg.
It will be open Nov. 1 through March 31 nightly from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. And in consideration of Cobourg’s Emergency Care Establishment bylaw limiting the number of licenses that can be issued, county staff will work with Cobourg staff to seek some kind of exemption or exception.
Unusual for a county meeting, the Zoom display confirmed more than 130 log-ons. And more than 125 separate piece of correspondence on the issue had been received from individuals and organizations as of the 4 p.m. deadline on Oct. 24 (anything received after that date will be referred to the Nov. 5 Social Services Committee meeting).
The interest may have been spurred by what Warden Brian Ostrander termed the go-or-no-go option, referring to the possibility that the decision might have been made not to have a warming room this winter following lengthy debate earlier this month at the regular council meeting.
Councillor John Logel said that, by his count, 85% of the correspondence supported having a warming room. And two of the three speakers – Maria Papaioannoy and Shawn Senecal – also voice their strong support.
The third speaker, Chance Brown, reported the results of a project he recently undertook with some friends. Counting people living rough in Cobourg, they reported 73 individuals.
Once Warden Brian Ostrander made the motion for the council-chambers option, support was apparent although there was some debate on details.
Councillor Lucas Cleveland sent everyone details on the model he would like to see, the one operating in Durham County. For one thing, he said, its operations don’t begin until Dec. 1 – which, he said, is the case for almost all the other models he studied.
Councillor Bob Crate expressed concern about drugs on the premises. Under the Durham model, Cleveland said, “they would not be going back to the old anything-goes policy.”
Should Northumberland follow that model, he suggested they would find “a Cobourg council that would be willing to have that conversation” about changes to the ECE bylaw.
Two of the options put before council involved busing the homeless to sites in Colborne and Fenella, and Cleveland chided the other councillors for not stepping forward with solutions in their own communities.
Crate expressed relief at not having what he termed “a travelling circus of driving people from Cobourg to whatever municipality so there’s a warming room they can use, and then in the morning we bus them back again.
“Anybody we have dealt with on the homeless scale (in Trent Hills), we have asked what we can do to help them. Usually they are looking for a ride to another locality.”
The staff report presented in October put the cost of the board-room option at $218,000 to cover security staffing, site improvements, cleaning and such things as coffee, snacks, tables and chairs, plus a contingency fund.
It was generally agreed that this measure is a stopgap for the 2025-2026 winter. There was some discussion of possibly making use of the vacated Golden Plough Lodge premises next year, once the county has possession of the new premises nearby.
As for the notice of motion Cleveland will be presenting to Cobourg council Wednesday night to use space in the new Golden Plough Lodge, he was told that could not be done without consultation with the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.
