Maybe they're not "downtown" problems?

A plea to local op-ed writers, local politicians and pretty much everyone else.

I promise this newsletter is not going to devolve into a counter attack to every opinion The Citizen publishes but every now and then, I have a really hard time with feeling some big feelings.

So here’s a little rant about those big feelings.

Mo op-eds, mo problems

I’m not going to link to the opinion but I’ll sum up the whole thing to say that the writer feels like it’s time for Mayor and Council to finally get their butts in gear and fix up our downtown. Enough is enough! That it’s about dang time that they get off those lazy part-time butts, respect taxpayers and business-owners, meet with businesses and fix every downtown issue that is brought forward.

Let’s pause for a moment so I can be abundantly clear - we’re in complete agreement in looking at a laundry list of election promises and campaign points from last year that feel VERY abandoned right now *cough* emergency housing *cough* and *cough* using empathy to help our houseless population *cough* and feeling frustrated with how things have played out in the last year.

But I also want to be so very abundantly clear when I say that these “downtown” challenges are happening in literally every city I’ve visited in the last 2 years - from St. Catherines, to Winnipeg, to Terrace, to Edmonton, to Vancouver, and many others. If you survey any local paper op-eds or local Facebook groups or any municipal election that’s happened recently in a city, it’s an endless list of these gosh darn downtown problems.

And it makes a guy think - it’s starting to feel like these aren’t downtown problems…

Calling it what it is

Okay, so what are they? In my uneducated opinion, these feel more like gigantic societal problems that represent decades of failing policies on all 3 levels of government and when we call them “downtown problems” it feels like its negating that giant systemic collapse happening around us.

You ever have a bad cold - you feel god awful, you’ve got a headache, a sore throat, you’re tired, maybe a fever and chills, but outwardly, you’ve just got a stuffed nose? Do we call that a nose problem? Do we blow our nose and feel better immediately? No - we acknowledge that it’s a whole sickness in the body - we acknowledge that the runny nose is a symptom of a system that’s sick.

In no particular order: Inflation is at an all time high. Cost of living has risen at an unprecedented rate all around us. A housing crisis. We just exited a global pandemic that flipped lives upside down. A toxic drug supply. An opioid crisis. Reckoning with a complicated history of intergenerational trauma from residential school and attempted genocide. A VERY alarming uptick in rates of mental health crisis and feeling like there’s an imminent collapse of our healthcare system.

Do these sound like downtown problems?

So we just give up then, right?

Of course not - this newsletter isn’t meant as a get-out-of-jail-free-card for what has been a disappointing year with this Mayor and Council. I am in staunch support of the downtown business community and I think it’s fair to point out they’ve had to bear a huge portion of these societal failures on their own livelihood.

I work downtown often and get to both see and hear about these challenges - they’re very real.

That said, I am someone who believes words matter and every time we label all of this as “downtown problems”, it makes it feel like with just a few more RCMP officers, a rejigging of the municipal budget, a couple more bylaws, and golly we can just sweep these itty bitty problems away. If we disband just a couple more encampments, our downtown will finally be free of these “problems.”

My ask of future op-ed writers

I’ve said some version of this in almost every issue of this newsletter: if you’ve come here for the solutions to all of Prince George’s problems, you’ve come to the wrong place.

But I am a fierce advocate for incremental change, and I think we can start by really thinking about what we’re saying when we’re talking about downtown. Why are the streets so wide and the sidewalks so narrow? Why is there no protected bike infrastructure? Why is there no affordable commercial office space but so many empty buildings? These are downtown problems.

Why do people sleep under tarps outside of the Regional District? Why do people use drugs to cope with pain and exhaustion and trauma? These are societal cracks that people have sadly fallen through.

I hope we can learn the difference and speak in a way that acknowledges the difference. I think it matters.

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Alright. That’s all for this one. I promise there’s less heavy topics coming in this newsletter because I know reading about sad things is exhausting so stay tuned for more commentary on parking lots, streets that are too wide (looking at you, Dominion) and other stupid things I spend too much time thinking about.

Have a great week.