Efforts by the Downtown North Battleford BID to improve the safety of people downtown — and their feeling of safety — are now underway.
New signs are up in the downtown core, all to promote safety to people visiting the businesses there.
According to Downtown North Battleford Executive Director Lisa McEachern, it’s an effort to turn around the reputation of the area.
“Downtown’s reputation has disintegrated over the last few decades,” said McEachern. “We’ve made lots of positive changes downtown over the past few years, but safety’s still a main concern for citizens, so we wanted to address their concerns in a direct way.”
The signs were proposed at city council in January, at which time McEachern said they would feature phone numbers for the RCMP, Community Safety Officers and Crime Stoppers, as well as a number to call in the case of a life-threatening emergency.
She said the program puts “eyes on the street, gives people the knowledge to know who to call if they witness unsafe or criminal activity downtown.”
McEachern also notes the statistics show downtown is already a safe place, but “if anybody did feel uncomfortable or intimidated by any kind of activity happening downtown, what we wanted to do is make sure that they know exactly how they can get the help that they need.”
This avoids them having to go home and look up on Google the information. This way, they “know who to contact right away,” said McEachern.
As well, she emphasizes that reporting the activity downtown is not a nuisance to authorities.
“We know if the authorities don’t know that there’s a problem then it’s really hard for them to fix it. So it puts the members and visitors to our community in the driver’s seat potentially.”
Installation of the new signs began last week and they were finished being put up this week.
The signs are scattered throughout the downtown. They run from 100th Street down to the corner of 103rd Street.
McEachern adds “we’re all hoping it becomes a city-wide program.” She sees it as kind of a “new-age neighbourhood watch-type program” to encourage people to be vigilant in their community.
