This is background for the committee of the whole meeting in Nelson, BC on Monday, Nov. 21. The live blog will start at 7 p.m.

A life blog is an instant report of a particular event, in this case the Nelson city council meeting.

6:57 p.m.

There’s a large crowd in the audience tonight. It looks like folks from the Occupy camp in front of city hall have come up. As this is a committee of the whole meeting there’s a chance they might make a presentation to council.

From council we have Deb Kozak, Bob Adams, Donna Macdonald, Robin Cherbo, Marg Stacey and John Dooley. From staff there’s Frances Long (manager of admin and legislative services), Kevin Cormack, city manager and Colin McClure, chief financial officer.

Marg Stacey is the acting chair and she asks if anyone would like to address council.

A man from audience asks if Occupy Nelson is on the agenda. They’re not, Stacey says.

Brett Rino (not sure about the last name), Kendra Cooper and Aneil Prasad step up to the podium to speak.

Rino says they want to introduce themselves to council. They want to end economic domination by the wealthy and work with council on homelessness issues in the town.

They submitted a request to the city for electricity. Over the last week they’ve been working with the fire department to address their concerns. They removed a wooden kitchen structure and propane heaters. The fire department said electrical heaters would be acceptable substitues. Rino says they need electricity to do that.

They would be willing to pay for the power they use, he says.

They’ve worked with the fire department and are working to make it fireproof and the fire chief has shown them where to get the necessary material to do that.

Rino says they also have a petition from people asking council to recognize the Occupy Nelson movement and allow them to have electricity.

They have about 80 signatures from an hour of canvassing.

Stacey notes there will be a meeting between the city and the Occupy Nelson folks tomorrow. She says the decision around electricity will be made then.

Prasad thanks council for listening to them asks them to keep in mind the support they have from council.

7:07 p.m.

Stacey asks if anyone else would like to make a presentation. Josh Wapp approaches the podium now. He introduces himself and says he always paid his taxes on time.

“That’s a good place to start,” says Dooley, to the laughter of the audience.

Wapp says his heart is full of sorrow about the state of the nation. He’s proud of Nelson for treating the Occupy movement with respect. He calls for an end to huge profits for corporations.

Christopher Keats now approaches the podium. He wants to talk about the relationship between the homeless and the police. Some have told him he doesn’t have rights and should leave this community.

“I will not tolerate your cops coming to our camp and telling us to leave,” says Keats. He levels some serious allegations against a particular police officer. Stacey says there’s a place to lodge personal complaints and this isn’t it.

5a) Neighbourhood facilitator program

Councillor Kim Charlesworth, Randy Janzen, chair of the Mir Centre for Peace, and Andre Piver from Transition Nelson are going to talk about a plan to train neighbourhood facilitators for Nelson.

Transition Nelson and the Mir Centre for Peace would like to train neighbourhood facilitators who would “pledge to provide a specific minimum number of hours to facilitate/mediate any neighborhood issues or conflicts that arise, when requested.”

Basically they’re people who would help mediate problems in a neighbourhood (a six square blocks) that don’t require the involvement of the police or other authorities.

The idea for these facilitators originally came up to deal with potential problems around backyard chickens, but organizers realized they could play a broader role in the community.

LIVE BLOG STARTS 7:11 p.m.

Now it’s open to Randy Janzen, Coun. Kim Charlesworth and Wayne Holland, chief of police. Janzen says this idea arose out of the Transition Nelson group to put forward the idea they’re calling the Good Neighbour Program.

It’s meant to resolve disputes without draining city resources.

Holland says he thinks a lot of good work has been done on this project. Any tool that can help his officers accomplish their purpose is a good one, he says.

He calls it problem-oriented policing at its best. The ideal is getting community to solve their own problems without having government get involved.

He sees this program a win-win solution. Free training from the Mir Centre. Transition Nelson can help ID those good for training and his officers and employees could also benefit from it.

Coun. Stacey says it’s a great idea and suggests training be extended to businesses.

Coun. Charlesworth notes this group will apply to the city for some funding through the community initiatives grants in the spring.

“So you won’t start until the spring?” asks Stacey. “You’ll have to get along with your neighbours until then,” says Cormack.

Charlesworth notes this group will need a new champion on council as she isn’t serving next term.

Macdonald asks what city staff can do for this. Cormack asks if they need funding to develop the model.

Janzen says the model is developed and Charlesworth jumps in to say this is just to make sure council is aware of what’s going on with this group.

7:23 p.m.

Cormack says this idea could help address many complaints that come to the city but don’t fall within any bylaws.

5b) Official Community Plan updates

Dave Wahn, senior planner, and Daphne Powell, from the Department of Development Services, will talk to council about how the Official Community Plan (OCP) will be changed to reflect recently developed plans like: the Sustainable Waterfront and Downtown Master Plan; the Path to 2040 Sustainability Strategy; the Low Carbon Path to 2040; the City of Nelson Housing Strategy 2010;
the Active Transportation Plan 2010 and; the Heritage Register Update.

LIVE BLOG BEGINS 7:25 p.m.

There’s a review of the OCP and how those plans listed above impact it and how they can be incorporated into it. Staff are working everything in at once to keep costs down.

Dooley asks Powell to go to one slide showing where they started and where they are now. He appreciates this because he says it consolidates the city’s efforts and shows the purpose behind it all.

7:39 p.m.

Council recommend people read the documents. They can be found online: the OCP; Path to 2040; Housing Strategy, part one, part two; Sustainable Waterfront and Downtown Master Plan; Active Transportation Plan.

5c) 2012 Nelson Police Department provisional operating budget

The police need to have a provisional budget approved by November 30 and have come to council asking to accept their provisional operating budget passed.

This is strictly operations, not purchasing new equipment or other capital expenses.

According to the staff report the police department isn’t expecting any major upsets because they recently concluded some major labour negotiations.

The police department’s 2011 budget was $2,579,309.

They’re predicting some increases in cost in 2012, however. Those include:  $43,612 for HST charges, utilities increases, records access cost increases and increased participation of the police board members in conferences. They also predict a  $138,176 to reflect collective agreement increases.

LIVE BLOG BEGINS 7:48 p.m.

Police board members Mike McIndoe and Barry Taylor join Police Chief Wayne Holland will talk about what they see as necessary for the police next year.

The NPD takes up about 22 per cent of the City of Nelson budget, says McIndoe. Council has a responsibility to make sure the police have the tools they need to do their job. The police board has a responsibility to come up with the appropriate budget for city council.

Holland asks council to take this presentation as a first report from him to council. He’s been here for about a year now.

Holland says he has a wonderful board that have been very supportive of the police department. He’s talking up his police department right now.

A priority call to police gets a response within seven minutes, says Holland. That’s four minutes faster than in Vancouver. He believes the Nelson Police Department usually respond faster than that.

Each officer responds to 500 calls for service per year, says Holland.

McIndoe now talks about the “core city phenomenon.” Nelson’s population swells on a daily basis, he says. The population swells to 13,000 people during the day. On a Friday night in the summer, it probably goes higher, McIndoe says.

8:06 p.m.

McIndoe says he saw stats from the Ministry of Health that say Nelson has 30 per cent more emotionally disturbed people than other communities its size. He also says many calls the police respond to involve emotionally disturbed people.

Holland says the city has delivered a good and balanced budget, but it’s cut to the bone.

The budget was tight and with some injuries among his staff, Holland made some cuts. The police closed their general investigation section and reassigned those staff to other sections within the police.

He’s asking why the police no longer have a police boat, K9 squad or forensic team. The city police used to have these resources but they’re being cut or have been cut due to budget constraints.

8:21 p.m.

Apparently the city no longer keeps prisoners for the RCMP. The Nelson Police Department used to keep RCMP prisoners for them and the department had to fight to get adequate funding. Now the RCMP have their own cells in the area.

Macdonald says she recalls the Nelson Police Department was working to integrate more with the RCMP, but now Holland seems to suggest they move away from that. She thought that integration was meant to help them save money.

Holland says he appreciates the RCMP doing some work for the NPD but he wants the NPD to be able to do more itself.

Dooley steps in and says the NPD isn’t moving away from integration. The challenge is at any day somebody in Ottawa can change the local agreements.

8:35 p.m.

The integration and local relationships are excellent, says Dooley, but changes can happen at a moment’s notice with a decision from upper management in Ottawa. Holland agrees with Dooley.

One thing Holland earlier said was there is “no call too small” and Kozak asks for some examples.

Skunks, noisy parties, checking on family members, “I could go on and on,” says Holland.

McIndoe goes back to the presentation, which was sidetracked to answer some questions from councillors. McIndoe says the high school (where he used to be principal) gets students from other countries because it’s a safe community.

But that could change, he says. If the NPD loses its intelligence (the general investigation section), organized crime could move in. Full-patch members of the Hell’s Angels have been in the community, he says. He would prefer the police have a position of strength based on good intel.

(That’s quite the spectre to raise)

Next Holland gets to marijuana. There are 12,000 medicinal marijuana licences issued in Canada. Forty per cent are issued in B.C. He says it isn’t too much to suggest organized crime is involved with that.

Stacey asks couldn’t it be that it grows better here?

Holland says he doesn’t think about that. He thinks about guns and hard drugs exchanged for marijuana coming into Nelson.

Holland “dares council to dream” about having a police department that has its own forensic section, police cadets, and better capability to serve the community.

“We’re going to do the best we can with what you give us next year [in the budget],” says Holland.

8:55 p.m.

Now council adjourns.

They’re going back to their special regular meeting.