Charlottetown council to hold special meeting on proposed Park Street shelter
CBC
Charlottetown city council will meet again Thursday to reconsider a decision on allowing a provincial emergency shelter to open on Park Street, next to the old government garage.
The special meeting was called by the city's CAO after a request by Coun. Alanna Jankov.
"I believe there's a will of council to address this and move forward," Jankov told Island Morning host Mitch Cormier.
The province has put forward a proposal to set up two 25-unit modular housing units at 68 Park St., near the Hillsborough Bridge, to house people currently living in tents. Those units are due to be delivered Nov. 1.
But at a meeting Tuesday, council deferred the decision on opening the shelters back to the planning board in a 6-4 vote.
Jankov had to gather the support of two-thirds of council for Thursday's special meeting to go ahead, as per the Municipal Government Act.
Jankov along with councillors Greg Rivard, Terry Bernard and Julie McCabe all voted not to defer the decision on Tuesday.
Jankov said she emailed the rest of council to ask for support and received responses back from councillors Jason Coady and Kevin Ramsay.
"Once I saw that we had two-thirds [support], I didn't keep looking anymore … I'm quite pleased that we can now go to council this evening," said Jankov.
"We have a very vulnerable sector of our community and we all have that role to play."
Jankov is a member of the planning board that approved the resolution for the mobile shelters to be sent to council.
"We voted unanimously that this was a good resolution," she said.
She added the planning board addressed the concerns residents had, including fencing along Beech Street, 24-hour-a-day security, and continued conversations with the province.
"Local issues, they will intensify if we don't do the swift actions that we must do as council. And then we can continue working with the province on long-term solutions," said Jankov.
P.E.I.'s Public Schools Branch is looking for 50 substitute bus drivers, and it'll be recruiting at three job fairs on Saturday, June 8. The job fairs are located at the Atlantic Superstore in Montague, Royalty Crossing in Charlottetown, and the bus parking lot of Three Oaks Senior High in Summerside. All three run from 9 a.m. until noon. Dave Gillis, the director of transportation and risk management for the Public Schools Branch, said the number of substitute drivers they're hiring isn't unusual. "We are always looking for more. Our drivers tend to have an older demographic," he said.