For Midland residents with concerns about the presence of drugs in town, and all the illegalities that seem to go unresolved as a result, the mayor is all ears and ready to listen.
On his personal website last week, Mayor Bill Gordon offered an invitation to a virtual Zoom “mini town hall” meeting for Midland ratepayers to attend which will be held on the morning of Aug. 30.
“This is in response to a plethora of calls and emails I've been getting about people's general sense of not being safe in their own neighbourhoods with – what they believe and sometimes is – active drug dealing in the neighbourhoods," said Gordon.
In May, Midland residents raised awareness to a suspected ‘drug house’, with Ontario Provincial Police laying charges shortly after.
Gordon told MidlandToday that due to residents' frustrations of asking what can be done by the mayor and the town, he felt prompted to gather the people who could directly address those concerns and host a virtual conversation.
“These are problems that were happening last term, and then flare up when there's issues around homelessness downtown, lewd acts, and drug use; and then it evolves from homelessness into people's neighbourhoods where it's not the homeless people – there are people that are housed but they're living in what are typically termed ‘drug houses,' said Gordon.
“It just happens to be where the drug users and sometimes dealers live, and they do business out of these. The result is petty crime in neighbourhoods as people take to stealing and what not to try and get quick cash, so they can buy more drugs, and then you have the people selling them drugs,” said Gordon.
A council decision was made in the spring to support Coun. Catherine MacDonald’s initiative to have a community safety symposium in coordination with Simcoe County representatives, and although scheduled for mid-October, the municipal event has been in the planning stages ever since.
Gordon felt that asking ratepayers to sign up for a one-hour Zoom meeting in August – which he would host and moderate – would be a way to gather all the townsfolk concerns into one place outside of the formal staff-run proceedings, in preparation for what to expect at the larger symposium.
By signing up for the August session, attendees can ask the questions they’d like to have answered by himself and invited stakeholders including OPP Southern Georgian Bay Interim Detachment Commander Todd Pittman, as well as other members of the town’s senior staff including the head of the bylaw department.
Gordon said that in three days since the announcement went up on his site, nearly 20 participants have said they want to sign up, asking similar questions which he had anticipated would overlap and be presented at the meeting to save time in a consolidated way rather than one-on-one from everyone asking to speak.
“We're not going to solve addiction, we're not going to end criminality, and we can't fix abject poverty or the fact that people have low or no education and that this is what they turn to,” said Gordon. “So let's deal with the things we can manage.
“To a large degree, I think the community just wants to be heard. And I want to give them a forum to aggregate their concerns before we head into this larger symposium. It’s meant to be educational and bi-directional of the service providers in the community, and the community learning about all the amazing services,” Gordon stated.
The sign-up form for the Aug. 30 meeting is located on the ‘community safety chat’ post on Gordon’s personal website. Gordon said he would be accepting attendance requests until the morning of the meeting, and would send out the Zoom invitation shortly before the meeting to those who signed up.
