We may see the return of the portable urinal

Taken to Task

The Downtown Task Force wants to stay up late

When Victoria city council opted to look at forcing late-night eateries to close their doors at midnight back in September 2008, it seemed we were taking one more step towards living up to our moniker as “No-Fun City.” But the release of the Downtown Late Night Task Force’s report and recommendations earlier this week appear to signal a change in approach. After spending the summer consulting with downtown stakeholders, pouring over statistics and looking at how other cities have dealt with the kind of late-night hooliganism downtown Victoria is bombarded with when drinking establishments shutter their doors, the task force—comprised of mayor Dean Fortin, city councillor and downtown liaison Charlayne Thornton-Joe and VicPD chief Jamie Graham—concluded that the solution isn’t to shut down the city’s core, but to throw open its doors.

“I think there was great fear that the report was going to come forward and say, ‘Shut downtown down. That’s how you deal with these issues,’” Fortin says. “Really what we heard was that the secret to success was going to be to make it more vibrant, to open it up and encourage more people to come down and participate.”

The report identified things like excessive intoxication, violence, noise, crowded post-bar streets, drinking and driving and the ever-popular peeing in doorways as key problems, and said these stemmed from downtown’s lack of late-night transportation, enforcement, non-booze-related activities and sense of individual accountability among late-night rabble rousers, as well as licensed establishments doing things like over-serving or operating as liquor-primary when they should be food-primary. Stakeholders consulted included restaurant, bar, taxi-cab company and other late-night business owners as well as downtown residents, student associations and a variety of other groups with an interest in downtown’s night time activities.

The 39-page report then suggested six ways to deal with the key issues, with specific pilot projects set to be launched as early as next month. The new integrated late-night transportation strategy will kick off in December with three designated taxi stands—one in front of the McPherson Playhouse, one near Bastion Square and one by the Strathcona Hotel—operating for a six-month trial period, as well as BC Transit’s temporary extension of hours on the 4, 6 and 14 bus routes beginning in January 2010.

Another recommendation that will come into effect quickly is the addition of four police officers dedicated to keeping the peace downtown Thursday through Saturday nights. Not only will there be extra cops working the streets, they’ll also be taking a different attitude. Fortin says much attention was paid to the community policing model in the U.K., where officers are trained to be more welcoming. Plus, he adds, “When you come out at two o’clock and the local constabulary are there, you also recognize that there are direct consequences to your actions if you choose to break windows. It’s about discouraging the bad stuff and encouraging the good stuff.”

Other suggestions included increased training and on-site security for liquor establishments; lobbying the government to increase fines for liquor-related infractions like public drinking; launching public awareness campaigns; having more non-alcoholic events, urinals, late-night eateries and vendors; establishing a “Late Night Great Night” coordination committee and the expansion of the BarWatch program, which came under fire earlier this year for collecting and storing personal information. Thornton-Joe says the expansion of BarWatch came recommended by the VicPD, the DVBA and the Bar and Cabaret Association and that changes to the system have addressed some of the civil-liberty concerns. And while the task force’s own report says similar systems implemented in the U.K. have had no success in curbing violence, VicPD spokesperson Sergeant Grant Hamilton says the program has had much success in Vancouver.

Reaction at a November 16 presentation of the report’s findings and recommendations was mostly positive. Don Monsour, chair of the Victoria Restaurant Association and one of the groups consulted for the report, says he is “extremely” happy with the results.

“It’s easy to put things on paper, but bringing it to fruition is a whole other ball game,” he says. “It seems that everyone involved is encouraged as to what we’ve seen so far and that goes a long way to making it happen.”

Downtown Residents’ Association president Rob Randall feels his organization’s concerns were listened to and incorporated into the report.

“We’re optimistic that we’re going to see a concerted effort to follow up on it, to really follow through on the things we can do, like the taxi stands and the busses . . . and to keep hammering away on those things that we don’t really have control over, like the fines for liquor.”

And while many feel this report is a move towards stopping downtown Victoria’s quaint Dr. Jekyll persona from morphing into a terrifying Mr. Hyde after 2 a.m. on the weekends, the pressure lies on the City and participating stakeholders to ensure the recommendations don’t disappear into the ether after short-term pilot projects wrap up. That’s something Fortin is confident won’t occur.

“This isn’t a task force that’s just going to die,” he says. “It now moves into, ‘Let’s go make this happen.’” M

Read the Task Force report at http://www.victoria.ca/cityhall/pdfs/taskforce-downtown-late-night-report.pdf