Category Archives: Municipal

Addiction, behaviour, Consider, Municipal

War? Terrorism?

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I stopped in for a coffee, but as soon as I stepped through the door I felt compelled to play Bingo. So I grabbed a pair of cards and joined in the next game.

Which I won.

Looking over the prizes a new tarp (for camping) spoke up and said it was what I was suppose to choose – so I did.

Sitting back down I found I had no interest in more Bingo so I started writing about the inadequacy of ‘April Fool’s Day’ and the overwhelming need for a ‘Stupid’s Day’.

When the time for smoke break arrived I asked if anyone had a need for the tarp. “Yes” said a voice from the doorway behind me.

While the gentleman was eating his daily meal (lunch at the Meal Center) the city had stopped by and, in accordance with their current scorched earth homeless policy, had misappropriated his and another gentleman’s belongings into a city garbage truck.

 “ASDAC [Abbotsford Social Development Advisory Committee] was created in 2006 through an extensive consultation with community and social agencies……”

The question is not simply When or How was ASDAC created but WHY?

In the two years it took Abbotsford City Council to go from council’s decision to create ASDAC to ASDAC’s first meeting council’s reply to Abbotsford’s increasing homelessness, the need for affordable housing and associated social issues was “We cannot do anything until ASDAC tells us what to do”. But ASDAC doesn’t exist! “We cannot do anything until ASDAC exists and tells us what to do”. That irrational argument bought city council two years of doing nothing.

In the case of homelessness that irrational argument bought city council two years to continue their irrational and pointless policy of chasing the homeless from spot to spot around Abbotsford – until the homeless being pursued by the city, arrived back at the spot the pursuit had begun.

Since even politicians can only drag their feet so long, eventually a point where council need to give [at least] the impression of taking action was reached, council appointed citizens to ASDAC and ASDAC was born.

Instead of fading away after ASDAC was finally formed, the advocates seeking support and housing for the homeless continued to meet and pursue support and housing funding from the provincial and federal governments and to raise the level of awareness in the community on issues related homelessness.

When it was decided ASDAC needed a housing subcommittee those who were pursuing housing were invited to attend sub-committee meetings. Which often featured city council’s representative explaining why it was not possible to do this…. or that…… or much of anything beyond talking.

Two items stick out. Well, three…….OK, let’s make it four and cut it off there.

The first was city council loudly blowing their own horn, proclaiming how wondrous the city’s misnamed affordable housing project, Harmony Flex Housing, was. The project was an 11 townhouse development using city property to reduce the cost of “homeownership units” to lower the down payment and income needed to qualify for a mortgage.

Misnamed because this project was about homeownership for people already housed and not providing affordable housing for the homeless or those at risk of becoming homeless.

City property, help and timeliness as opposed to city hall’s usual foot dragging and obstacle raising behaviours, effort, support, action….. spent on homeownership not affordable housing.

The second item that sticks out was the call by BC Housing for proposals to build a men’s housing project and a women’s housing project with the province putting up $22 million ($11 million for each project) in capital funding for the construction of the buildings and an additional $650,000 (adjusted for inflation) to fund programs to provide the needed supports to aid the residents in getting their lives together.

City council’s actions resulted in the loss of the $11 million capital funding and $650,000 per year for the men’s housing – and gave every evidence of blowing the woman’s project. However the prospect of having to explain why city council chased away $22 million in provincial capital contributions apparently provided sufficient motivation for council to rezone the property for the women’s project.

Council insisted that the $11 million for the men’s project was only ‘delayed’ – at this point in time apparently indefinitely delayed.

It was very hard work by several of the self invited members of the ASDAC housing subcommittee that brought about the province’s call for proposals to access the $22 million in capital funding and addition funding for support programs. Following the success in obtaining $22 million of provincial funding council decided the housing subcommittee was unnecessary.

The third item that sticks out was city councils favourite excuse for failing to address homeless issues and for why ideas, proposals and suggestions from the housing subcommittee vis-à-vis homelessness and housing could not be done – poverty.

Yet the city had $1.5+ million for a garden; $100 million to build an arena for a professional hockey team to play in; $ millions for yearly subsidies to the owners of the team; $ millions more in yearly subsidies for operating expenses to operate the hockey rink for said profession hockey team and its ownership; and $17.5 million for the Y to create competition for city facilities, thereby reducing the revenue of city facilities and creating the need for additional subsidies by taxpayers.

Which brings us to item 4 – the land the old Abbotsford Hospital was built on, now sitting there empty.

When the new hospital opened using the old hospital was advocated by numerous groups who stated the old hospital would provide a variety of facilities with which to address a number of homeless, substance use, mental health and the growing issues related to poverty.

When Fraser Health’s red herring – asbestos – did not appear to be carrying the day (not surprising since, as anyone who watches Mike Holmes is aware, asbestos left undisturbed is not a problem. Asbestos becomes a problem when you disturb it by……tearing down a building containing asbestos) Fraser Health pledged that significant affordable housing would be part of redevelopment of the site.

What has happened to the affordable housing promised, solemnly sworn to, by Fraser Health? Why did Abbotsford City Council sign off on Fraser Health’s failure to provide the promised affordable housing by committing to provide a $17.5 million subsidy to the YMCA?

Homelessinabbotsford.com was created in 2005 to share, to communicate, the insights, experience and knowledge gained as a result of experiencing homelessness as a consequence of decades of slowly intensifying mental illness; to advocate for rational responses, actions and behaviours to the issues arising from homelessness, mental illness, substance use and poverty; and to share the outrage my accountant’s soul (having become a Chartered Accountant in 1981) at the waste, the pointless waste, in continuously doing the same thing over and over and over – hoping for a different result.  

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”

George Santayana (Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás)

One of the first, if not the first, items the housing subcommittee of the Abbotsford Social Development Advisory Committee advised city council was that chasing the homeless, in particular the hard to house homeless, from camp to camp around the city time after time was pointless when there was no housing available to house them.

In response to the ASDAC housing sub-committee on this it was decided that city staff would take the belongings of the homeless to the works yard and the homeless would be able to make arrangements to pick up their property or where it would be delivered to.

Of course the homeless, having no place to go would use their property to set up a new camp in another location. Which at some point would be found, the belongings of the homeless taken to the works yard, the belongings would then be picked up or delivered to the person who they belonged to who would……….use the belongings to set an new camp. Which at some point would be found, the belongings of the homeless taken to the works yard, the belongings would then be picked up or delivered to the person who they belonged to who would……….use the belongings to set an new camp. Which at some point would be found, the belongings of the homeless taken to the works yard, the belongings would then be picked up or delivered to the person who they belonged to who would……….use the belongings to set an new camp. Which at some point would be found, the belongings of the homeless taken to the works yard, the belongings would then be picked up or delivered to the person who they belonged to who would……….use the belongings to set an new camp. Which at some point would be found, the belongings of the homeless taken to the works yard, the belongings would then be picked up or delivered to the person who they belonged to who would……….use the belongings to set an new camp. Which at some point would be found, the belongings of the homeless taken to the works yard, the belongings would then be picked up or delivered to the person who they belonged to who would……….use the belongings to set an new camp. Which at some point would be found, the belongings of the homeless taken to the works yard, the belongings would then be picked up or delivered to the person who they belonged to who would……….use the belongings to set an new camp. And so on and so on and so one………………………………………..

A process that would make a fair definition of frustrating (in addition to pointless); it is hardly surprising that over time frustration has caused this purpose to deteriorate into the current policy of tossing the belongings into a City of Abbotsford garbage truck.

Under the old policy one of the homeless was able to go to the works yard and rescue his cat from where it had been trapped in his tent by city staff. These days the cat would have run out of lives. Sadly, a cat getting killed as a result of the City’s new scorched earth policy would do more to end the current garbage truck policy than the fact this policy will at some point result in the death of a person. Albeit the person is a member of the homeless community.

November 25, 2013

At least until he can find another patch of bush to pitch his tent in – until he is rousted from the new location…… and so on, and so on, and so on.

**Shake my head** The question is where else do they go? They are homeless with no other choices.

Reality is that the homeless do not just cease to exist when displaced they just have to find another spot, then another … and so on, and so on, and so on. You can displace and move them along all you want, but until you begin to deal with the underlying causes and they have housing of some form they are going to be an Unsightly Sight.

February 10, 2013

….chasing the homeless from place to place around the city until they were back to where the chase had begun and then beginning the chase again was pointless when there was a lack of viable housing options for the homeless.

“The City cleaned out my camp and left me with nothing to survive with but what I am wearing.”…silence…“James — Why would the City want to cut a man’s chances of survival so low?”

On my way to lunch on May 4, 2013 I spotted a tent. I commented to a friend who is homeless that  about whether someone should warn the owner of the tent about the city and their garbage truck. “It is Saturday and the office is closed” was the reply evidencing the homeless adapting to the reality of the city’s behaviour.

If only the city would be so open to adapting behaviour to reality. Until action is taken to provide housing or other viable options the homeless have no option but to go back to the streets

War:                noun 5. active hostility or contention; conflict;

Terrorism:      noun 1. the use of threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes. 2. The state of fear and submission produced by terrorization.

Addiction, behaviour, Consider, Life, Mental Health, Municipal, Provincial

Shaminder

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I knew Shaminder Brar for close to a decade, starting at a point where I was homeless and on the streets of Abbotsford as a result of my own mental illness.

And while hearing of Shaminder’s death by hit and run, be it accidental or otherwise, did evoke a feeling of deep sadness, the feeling I most associate with thoughts and memories of Shaminder is pain.

Seeing the pain mental illness, self-medication through drug (legal and illegal) abuse and being a pretty young woman with an addiction inflicted on Shaminder, being witness to the slow striping away of Shaminder’s dignity and seeing her reduced to a husk, to the animal humans are at our most basic level……….was painful.

Painful not in the way of “breaking my leg was painful’, but painful in the sense of having a tiny piece of one’s humanity ripped away

I once spent close to four hours sitting in a small room in emergency at the old hospital with Shaminder and someone who, seeing the level of distress and pain Shaminder was in on that day, insisted on taking her to the hospital and press-ganged me into accomplishing this.

Four hours because that is how long it took emergency to find someone to help Shaminder and if we had not stayed with her, Shaminder would not have stayed either. More damning than the four hour wait was that even had Shaminder been capable of getting herself to the emergency ward at the hospital it is probable the behaviour and attitude of the staff would have sent her fleeing. It took the body language and attitude ‘you will provide help to this young woman or I will remove your head and get the help she needs from your replacement’ to motivate the staff.

During Fraser Health’s current fiscal year I have lost two people to suicide, and nearly lost a third, as a direct result of the rationing of mental health and substance use imposed by budget constraints.

So jumping on the “she was as much a casualty of the health care system as she was victim of any car accident” bandwagon is tempting.

I will not take the easy way out and jump on the bandwagon because it ignores the numerous other important factors that contributed to Shaminder’s Fate and, perhaps most importantly, it would be a terrible disservice to all the ‘Shaminders’ who remain in desperate need of help.

It is very easy to attack mental health because in matters like this their hands are literally tied behind them by privacy issues. The most that mental health can say is simply that there is a great deal of information and detail that the public is unaware of and will remain unaware of because of privacy laws.

I am in no way trying to absolve mental health and the Health Care system. They bear a share, perhaps the lions share, of responsibility for what aid Shaminder did not – and did – receive. But mental health does not bear sole responsibility. Responsibility for Shaminder’s Fate is shared widely and if our only reaction is to find someone to pin the blame on we are abandoning all those in similar circumstances as Shaminder was abandoned.

Although I in no way want to contribute to their pain, I could take some of the statements Shaminder made about her family, add in the psycho/social/bio realities of being human, mix in some rumour/innuendo and accuse Shaminder’s family of abandoning her to her mental illness, addiction and the streets of Abbotsford.

Or focus on the fact that while the Warm Zone helped keep Shaminder alive, it could be painted as enabling Shaminder and failing to build the bonds that would have helped Shaminder make healthier choices. One must not leave out all the other agencies and organizations whose stated purpose is to help those like Shaminder;  agencies and organizations that required Shaminder change to suit their needs rather than being flexible enough to adapt to Shaminder in order to meet her needs and that either enabled or failed to establish the needed working relationship – or both.

And if we are pointing fingers at government agencies that are charged with helping people who need help, where were social services during these years?

Then there was the Health Minister (now Finance Minister) Mike de Jong and the governing Liberal party, who for crass political reasons avoid addressing the growing problems/issues that are causing increasing failures of the healthcare system to deliver adequate healthcare.

These issues and problems threaten the nature and future of the healthcare system, but because addressing these issues and problems would involve telling voters unpleasant realities they do not want to hear – which voters punish by voting for the opposition – none of the current political parties has the leadership, intestinal fortitude, integrity or principles to act in the best interests of the citizens of BC rather than the (short term) best interests of the politicians of BC.

And then there is the major obstacle that Abbotsford City Council is to the homeless seeking to recover their lives. An obstacle that not only played a major part in this tragedy, but bears a major responsibility for additional lives lost over the years and will bear responsibility for lives lost in the future as a result of their behaviours.

It is a part that grows as the City steps up their harassment of the powerless, the homeless, social misfits and all those who not only will not conveniently disappear, but insist on resurfacing time after time after time after time…….

Without housing to act as a stable base, a foundation upon which to reclaim and rebuild her life, what chance did Shaminder have?

They speak of the homeless as failing to be ‘medication compliant’, but how can you be medication compliant when even the questionable stability of a camp as a place to have shelter from the elements, to sleep and to leave one’s meagre belongings is denied by a City Council that hunts you down and turns you out onto the streets of Abbotsford at the same time their actions deny housing for the hard to house?

Would being ‘medication compliant’ or keeping appointments be at the top of your ‘To Do’ list when you have no idea where you will sleep tonight, much less tomorrow or the day after tomorrow?

Survival topped my list. If I wasn’t so stubborn, a stubborness enhanced by Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Recovery and Wellness would not have remained on my ‘To Do’ list. And even when they remained on my ‘To Do’ list, it was only the good fortune to have a PDA (a Sony Clié) into which I could enter where and why I needed to be and set it to make sure I was reminded and had enough time to get where I needed to go……..

I have shared my “Theory of PDA Recovery” with various Case Managers at Mental Health, who acknowledge how useful a PDA would be to the homeless in making it to their appointments, taking their medications etc.

Stable, supportive housing can supply reminders and help in following the unique path that each person seeking Recovery and Wellness must find and follow.

There are solid reasons that the American Psychiatric Association recognizes ‘Housing First’ as an approach, perhaps the best approach, to helping the street entrenched homeless, the mentally ill, those abusing drugs (alcohol, prescription, the free enterprise street drugs) find their way to Recovery and Wellness.

Experience has demonstrated that, as counterintuitive as it may be, providing housing helps people to seek Recovery and Wellness quicker and provides support – a vital ingredient in finding Recovery and Wellness. Although given that human beings are involved, nothing should really be a surprise.

There are multiple targets to point fingers at and shout “J’ accuse”.

We have become a culture needing to find someone to blame and demonstrate our innocence, our lack of responsibility for the matter.

We seek someone to blame, make excuses, make it someone else’s fault and absolve ourselves of responsibility for causing The Matter – and perhaps for resolving the Matter?

Like the other major issues we seek to wilfully deny, avoid taking responsibility for correcting, do not want to hear or think about, want neat, easy, fast solutions………there is plenty of responsibility to go around among us all.

Society, the government is us. We have built the society we live in through our actions; we have gotten the government we deserve as a result of our actions.

Take a look around at ‘best practices’ for dealing with homelessness, mental illness and misuse of drugs of all stripes. We could make impressive progress in addressing these and other challenges we face today – if we where to choose to and if we were willing to make the commitments and do what is necessary.

But while we will complain, complain, complain……. we have become a province, a country, a society that seeks somebody to blame rather than accept responsibility for acting to correct what needs correction; a province, a country, a society that is unwilling to make any effort or sacrifice to address the growing number of issues that need our attention, decisions made and actions taken; that chooses not to see that the route to our wellness and prosperity requires that we renounce greed.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over and over and over…..expecting a different outcome.

If we want outcomes different from those we are getting now, our actions and behaviours have to change.

To change our actions and behaviours we need to change ourselves.

We need leadership that, rather than encouraging the worst in us (for their personal benefit), challenges us to be the best we can be. We need New leadership that is not about racing to the bottom, but about struggling to the top.

We need to stop taking the path of less resistance, the easy way out and accepting the Lowest Common Denominator; we need to demand and strive for excellence from ourselves.

Rather than wilful denial of issues we need to return to what Canadians have always done when faced with daunting issues – whatever is necessary to overcome the obstacles.

An old Cherokee chief was teaching his grandson about life…

“A fight Between two wolves is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

“One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego.

“The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.

“This same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old chief simply replied, “The one you choose to feed.

Consider, Issues, Life, Municipal

“Why would the City want to cut a man’s chances of survival so low?”

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I was asked that question by a homeless human being I have known and shared conversation with for the better part of a decade.

What made the question so chilling as to etch itself into memory, was the utter weariness of the voice, a voice devoid of spirit emanating from a body worn unhealthily gaunt and who’s every aspect spoke of defeat.

Over the years council’s egocentric, patronizing, financially irresponsible, ignore the needs of citizens and of the future behaviours and actions have left me shaking my head in disbelief and with a desire to castigate their profligate behaviours by the application of my pedal extremity to their backsides.

But tonight, looking at what they had done, not simply to a human being but to a citizen of Abbotsford, on behalf of the Citizens of Abbotsford I didn’t want to kick their asses.

For a brief moment following the question “Why would the City want to cut a man’s chances of survival so low?” being posed, my temper flared white hot. But the heat of anger lasted only an instant before it was subsumed in the interstellar cold of repugnance.

Filled with the longing to be able to take Council members by the ear, drag them out of their warm comfortable housing into the dark and cold to face the inevitable outcome of their behaviour and to explain how it was they chose to “Why would the City want to cut a man’s chances of survival so low?”

 

January 4, 2013

Council’s focus on bad management and burying the city and taxpayers under an ever growing mountain of debt has not prevented City Council from taking action on the homeless living on the streets of Abbotsford.

Unfortunately, for both taxpayers and homeless, the actions being pursued by City Council against the homeless are consistent with Council actions such as ownership of the Abbotsford Hubris & Ego Centre, John Smith’s taxpayer unfriendly friendship garden and Council’s recent attempts to panic taxpayers into approving the borrowing of $300 million to ‘solve’ a nonexistent water crisis.

For several years Council used the process of creating a Social Advisory Committee as an excuse to evade changing their behaviour and pursuing policies that address the causes of homelessness. Why council prefers to continuing doing the same thing over and over and over in hopes that the next time will not, once again, simply force the homeless to relocate to a new homeless camp, is as unfathomable as why Council felt the City of Abbotsford needed a professional hockey team so badly they hung the albatross of the Abbotsford Hubris & Ego Centre around taxpayers necks.

Unsurprisingly, once created, the Social Advisory Committee pointed out that chasing the homeless from place to place around the city until they were back to where the chase had begun and then beginning the chase again was pointless when there was a lack of viable housing options for the homeless.

 

“Why would the City want to cut a man’s chances of survival so low?”

You can see just how the City values the advice of the Social Advisory Committee. An Advisory that the City stated it could take no actions to address homelessness without direction from.

Council’s Social Advisory Committee has led to a plenitude of politically correct words – and the accomplishment of nothing of actual substance or effectiveness.

So Council continues to engage in the insanity of endlessly chasing the homeless from place to place around the city. With Council’s well developed ability to ignore reality and see only what they want to see, this pointless chase grinds on and on year after year.

With the same people, people who were residents of Abbotsford [many of whom grew up in Abbotsford] before fate placed them homeless on the streets of Abbotsford, being chased year after year around their home city to no avail.

Begun in the spring of 2012 Council’s current onslaught has been aggressively chasing the homeless around the City with great zeal.

This hasn’t reduced the numbers of homeless but it has physically and spiritually worn the homeless down, stripping away their human dignity and the belongings needed to survive the winter alive.

The two carts unceremoniously dumped into an Abbotsford city garbage truck belonged to one of the homeless whom the City has been particularly aggressive in pursuit of.

In prior years the city had not been able to harass him at this level because his camps were well off the beaten path making finding them a much more difficult task.

An injured leg has severely limited his choice of homestead this past year with the result he is an easy, and often, target for the City. Between the City and the second class medical treatment the homeless receive in Abbotsford his leg has worsened and taken  a heavy toll on his overall health – reducing him form lean to noticeably underweight and worn down.

Moving using shopping carts has become such a struggle, especially when his focus has to be patching together enough of a shelter to avoid becoming another ‘dead of natural causes’ homeless statistic, that his carts sat long enough to be misappropriated by the City and their garbage truck.

And before City Council begins its excuse mongering on its  failure to address homelessness with its old favourite poverty………how is it that Council has $17.5 million to waste by giving it to the YMCA to build a facility that that not only fails to address the needs of the citizens of Abbotsford, but will cost taxpayers addition $$$$ to offset the $$$$ lost at existing City facilities as the Y, subsidized by Council’s continued wastrel use of taxpayer $$$$, takes business away from the City’s existing facilities – forcing taxpayers to make up the lost revenue out of their pockets – yet pleads poverty when it comes to doing anything productive about homelessness.

Although…..there is a great deal of truth in Council’s claims of poverty when it comes to homelessness; not a poverty of $$$$ but of leadership, integrity and ethics.

A poverty of character which has City Council pursuing a scorched earth policy as it tyrannizes the homeless.

A behaviour that entails a human cost that is not only unacceptable, but unconscionable.

 

Interlude

I found myself partially thawing, cleaning and washing several bags of soaked, semi-frozen bedding for the person whose survival was threatened by the city relieving him of the necessities to avoid freezing to death. Once laundered, dried and packaged against the wet of the weather it was time to clean up the mess created in getting the bedding laundered and clean up the mess that I had become.

It was not my job to do any of that. Indeed, I already had a task list that was overwhelming and escalating stress levels. There were innumerable excuses available for not taking on the additional work and stress, and only one reason to undertake all the extra effort.

To me that one reason, a person’s life (their survival), left no option but to tackle the extra work.

In a fine twist of Irony, the actions of the City have resulted in a return to living on the same street he lived on as a child, albeit he is now living under a tree on that same street.

The reality as to where the homeless are from is that many of them grew up in Abbotsford. Indeed, Councillor Simon Gibson is not the first member of his family to have a major effect upon this homeless person’s life. His stomach still bears the scar from a knife in the hand of Simon Gibson’s

In a fine twist of fate the father saved a life with his blade and the removal of an appendix; a life the actions of the Doctor’s son, Simon Gibson, are putting at increasing risk.

 

February 8, 2013 

“Do you have any candles?” came the quiet voice out of the dark. ‘One left…….I need to move getting some more up the priority list.’

“You wouldn’t have a sleeping bag would you” ‘Sorry but with the City hunting down the homeless like there is a bounty on their heads……even the bag from my emergency car kit is gone.’

“The City cleaned out my camp and left me with nothing to survive with but what I am wearing.”…silence…“James — Why would the City want to cut a man’s chances of survival so low?”

The Question seems to echo off Reality itself in the Silence the Question evoked.

On the way to get a candle for a heat source, as someone stepped out of the building for a smoke break I enquired if he “happened to have a sleeping bag in his vehicle”. It seemed appropriate given the need, although I did feel curiosity as to what he thought of that question coming to him out of the dark of a cold winter eve?

Then one of those serendipitous happenings that occur when you are where you are suppose to be, doing what you are suppose to be doing, rolled up in a burgundy van.

It was somebody down from Boston Bar who, seeing me as he drove by, had pulled up to ask about someone who had stayed at his place in Boston Bar. Given that it was one of those happenings, I had seen this person on two different days this week for the first time in months.

He had a sleeping bag in the van that his dog lay on. He had no objection to parting with the sleeping bag other than some embarrassment at offering a sleeping bag his dog had been using to a human being. He did feel a need to offer assurances that his black lab was a fine, clean dog who was bathed from time to time.

Personally, if a dog’s sleeping bag can significantly increase my chances of survival……..I apologize to the dog for needing his bag and thank him for the gift.

You know that if City Council had treated a dog the way they treat the homeless……

………they would be dragged to court on criminal charges, the press would be all over them and the public would be screaming for their blood.

But a Human Being? Who cares? Obviously neither Council nor the Citizens in whose names Council are hounding the homeless.

 

Collatio Tomi Secundi   

Mayor and Council revisited the idea of protecting City assets from being used for ‘offensive’ purposes by any who paid for the use of those Assets, apparently finding a little female thigh flashed on the football field at the Abbotsford Hubris & Ego Centre ‘offensive’……

Yet Mayor and Council are fine with their offensive use of City assets and manpower to strip away the materials the homeless need to survive the elements of winter weather. Or perhaps it is the contention of Mayor and Council that the actions they pursue against the homeless are so totally reprehensible, these actions bypass any suggestion of being offensive because they are repugnant?

Be that as it may, Mayor? — Councillors? — Voters?

“Why would the City want to cut a man’s chances of survival so low?”

He awaits your reply.

Addiction, Issues, Municipal

Mayor Banman!

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Your proctologist called – he found your head.

That is the politest comment that came to mind after reading Mayor Banman’s comments on Fraser Mental Health and Substance Use’s [FMH&SU] presentation at the harm reduction forum on Tuesday January 29, 2013.

It is also reflects the obtuseness of Mayor Banman’s comments.

“If you want cooperation, you don’t start with threats,” said Banman.

FMH&SU didn’t start with threats. The statement about exploring legal options was made in response to a direct question from the audience.

The representatives from FMH&SU are bureaucrats not politicians, so while a careful choice of words, spin and gobbledegook were to be expected, outright lying remains the purview of politicians.

The panellists were from, specifically, Fraser Mental Health and Substance Use [FMH&SU] and Mayor Banman and any council members present should have been listening to what was being said, rather than being focused on listening for what it was they wanted to hear.

To those who listened, the representatives from FMH&SU conveyed an abundance of  information about the state of affairs within FMH&SU, within Fraser Health and the Ministry of Health.

That the Mayor and Council apparently didn’t hear the useful information being conveyed is not surprising in light of their well demonstrated selective hearing and that, when it comes to the City’s most vulnerable and marginalized citizens, City Council has shown it does not want to hear it, has no interest in the reality of poverty and homelessness in Abbotsford and has no interest in understanding or addressing the issues in an effective manner.

City Council has excelled at using buzzwords and the Social Advisory Committee to sound politically correct…… while accomplishing nothing.

Well, nothing of any positive value. They have managed to let poverty, affordable housing, homelessness and other social issues fester and worsen.

While the colour of the current notices posted by the City remains bright orange, the date reflects the passage of a decade or more while the wording is more politically correct.

The individual is unchanged from a decade ago and remains just as ‘hard to house’. City council’s choices and actions have ensured that, despite the passage of a decade or more, Abbotsford still lacks any accommodations capable of housing ‘hard to house’ individuals. Which continues to leave, as it has for the past decade, those who are ‘hard to house’ no option but to seek out a new location at which to establish their camp, their housing, their home..

Over the decade the zeal with which the City pursues the homeless, the pointless, wasteful chase, has increased to a level of unrelenting harassment that inflicts physical and mental damage on these marginalized citizens, injury that puts the lives of the ‘hard to house’ at risk at levels and in ways they were not at risk a decade ago.

“If you want cooperation, you don’t start with threats,” said Banman.

But extortion by Abbotsford’s politicians is acceptable Mayor Banman? Holding hostage the lives and health of the vulnerable and marginalized citizens harm reduction is   designed to help, in order to get what Mayor Banman and the City want from FMH&SU, is acceptable Mayor Banman?

“They’ve actually made matters worse. The council was expecting some better solution from Fraser Health than what we heard.”

If Mayor Banman had bothered to listen he would have know FMH&SU has neither the funds nor the resources to pay the ransom Mayor Banman demands since, unlike Mayor Banman and Abbotsford City Council, FMH&SU cannot simply reach into taxpayers pockets taking dollars as they want.

Mayor Banman words draw attention to his attempt to use the health and lives of vulnerable and marginalized citizens to extort what he wants from FMH&SU. In hounding the homeless across the City, while impeding any other option for these individuals but homelessness, Mayor Banman and council have increased the risk of mental and physical health injuries – and death.

I would suggest that before Mayor Banman point fingers and question FMH&SU’s behaviour; he and council might want to bring their own behaviour up to at least a minimal ethical standard.

Municipal

Bleeding?

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“ We’re just bleeding,” said Councillor John Smith.

Please……bleeding is what happens when you knick yourself shaving, when you slice open your jugular you are Haemorrhaging.

When Council’s desperate, no price to high to to avoid the embarrassment of having an arena with no hockey team, added the Heat to the fiasco that was (and is) the Great White Elephant (AKA the Abbotsford Entertainment and Sports Complex), Council sliced open the City’s financial jugular.

The debacle thus created has caused the City to haemorrhage – not bleed – millions, multimillions, of dollars every year down the twin financial black holes of the Abbotsford Heat and the AESC.

And suddenly after three years of ever increasing multimillion dollar losses it is “This just dismays me.” and “We have to deal with this issue. It’s killing us.”

A pity Councillors chose to ignore and run roughshod over those who dared question the divorced from reality assumptions, promises and numbers Councillors sold to taxpayers. If you look at what the ‘naysayers’ were saying, the current financial quagmire is what the ‘naysayers’ predicted would happen.

Mayor Banman’s statements on this matter do show he fits right in at City Hall. Only in Abbotsford City Hall would those nasty ‘naysayers’ who dared predict the City of Abbotsford would haemorrhage tens of millions of dollars, be used to obscure that it was Councillor’s egos that brought about the Heat/AESC financial debacle.

“There are solutions but moaning and groaning and crying about it won’t make it better,” said Banman.

“ Moaning and groaning” Mayor Banman?

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” George Santayana Reason in Common Sense (volume one of the five-volume Life of Reason)

It behoves us all Mayor Banman, to remember that the Heat were City Council’s “solution” to an empty Arena and that Council’s ‘solution’, in addition to the multimillion dollar yearly direct subsidies to the Heat, drains yearly multi-million dollar operating losses for the arena out of the City treasury and taxpayer’s wallets.

Remember because taxpayers and the City cannot afford another Council solution to the issue of the Heat that drains millions of dollars more out of the taxpayers’ pockets year after year.

“There are solutions….” The accuracy of the financial forecasting by the ‘naysayers’ on the cost to taxpayers of both the AESC and the Heat suggests a solid understanding of the fiscal and marketing realities of the Heat and the ASEC.

An understanding in alignment with that of the ownership group of the Heat: the only solution to losses incurred by the Heat is to have someone with deep pockets – currently the taxpayers of Abbotsford – on the hook to cover the losses.

It is clear Heat ownership saw nothing millions of dollars of red ink in having the Heat playing in Abbotsford since the ownership of the Heat would not purchase and move the team to Abbotsford without City Council’s agreement to cover the losses for a decade.

As to the likelihood of City Hall finding a way to stem the multimillion dollar haemorrhaging……. I would not consider a nearly 50% [(3905 – 2653)/2653 = 47%] increase in per game attendance to be: “A relatively small number of new fans were needed to secure the franchise success,” he (Mayor Banman) added.

Additionally Mayor Banman’s 3905 fans per game as break even requires an average price in of $38 per seat. Given that the most expensive seats are now only $42 and that tickets can be had for $15…..3905 is low.

He (Mayor Banman) also said ” Critics need to accept the arena and Heat supply fees are done deals and join efforts to solve the problem.”

I, and other ratepayers, are highly motivated to solve the problem

Which is why we support going to court and having the agreement with the Heat declared illegal (which it is) and therefore void, putting a stop to multimillions of dollars flowing out of taxpayers’ pockets into the pockets of Heat ownership.

Staff and politicians may not find this to be a welcome solution [in light of the fact that while protected from the consequences of incompetent actions, the consequences of illegal acts are a different matter], but for taxpayers it would end the haemorrhaging of taxpayer dollars.